Churches without Christ

It’s no wonder all of these churches in Minnesota are dying. They have abandoned the Word of God so the Holy Spirit has left the building and people can sense it.

Minnesota’s mainline Christian denominations face unprecedented declines, altering communities and traditions celebrated for generations.

La Salle, Minn. — For 100 years, Lutherans in this farming community on the Minnesota prairie have come to one church to share life’s milestones.

They have been baptized, confirmed and married at La Salle Lutheran. Their grandparents, parents and siblings lie in the church cemetery next door.

But the old friends who gathered here early one recent Sunday never imagined that they would one day be marking the death of their own church.

When La Salle Lutheran locks its doors in August, it will become the latest casualty among fragile Minnesota churches either closing, merging or praying for a miracle. Steep drops in church attendance, aging congregations, and cultural shifts away from organized religion have left most of Minnesota’s mainline Christian denominations facing unprecedented declines.

St. Paul’s On the Hill Episcopal Church on prestigious Summit Avenue was recently sold to a developer after more than a century of religious service. Bethany Lutheran Church in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis held its “holy closure” ceremony last fall. St. Michael Catholic Church in West St. Paul celebrated its last mass 18 months ago.

Mainline Protestant churches have been hit the hardest. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in Minnesota has lost almost 200,000 members since 2000 and about 150 churches. A third of the remaining 1,050 churches have fewer than 50 members. The United Methodist Church, the second largest Protestant denomination in Minnesota, has shuttered 65 churches since 2000.

Once a Christian church goes Churchian, accepts women as leaders, and begins to preach the Gospel of Emma Lazarus and Martin Luther King, it begins to die. Every single time. I find it absolutely astonishing that so few Christians appear able to recognize the very clear and undeniable pattern of church decline and demise.

The blogger at the link notes: La Salle Lutheran Church. It is Lutheran Immigration Services in MN that is largely responsible for the growing Muslim population there. So should anyone be surprised that Lutheran churches are losing congregants.

The Supreme Court nomination

This is an open thread to discuss it. Please stay on the subject of the Supreme Court Justice and the upcoming Trump nomination.

Donald Trump has decided who he’ll nominate to the Supreme Court, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the president prepares to make a prime-time announcement of a choice that could solidify conservative jurisprudence for years.

The people would not say who Trump had selected. One person suggested it would be one of two U.S. Appeals Court judges: Brett Kavanaugh of Washington or Thomas Hardiman of Pittsburgh.

Trump will reveal his choice during a televised event from the White House East Room at 9 p.m. New York time, after a short but intense build-up since Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement less than two weeks ago.

Justice for Seth Rich?

Maybe there will be or maybe there will not, but I simply do not understand why people insist on teasing this kind of information ahead of time. Are they simply unaware of what seems to keep happening to people who are going to testify about the criminal activities of America’s leading crime family?

Jack Burkman, a Washington-based attorney and lobbyist who has worked with a private investigative team to solve the Seth Rich murder mystery, told The Gateway Pundit that the witness has conclusive evidence that will bring Rich’s killers to justice within a month.

“We believe that we have reached the beginning of the end of the Seth Rich murder investigation,” Burkman told The Gateway Pundit in an exclusive interview Sunday.  “After two long hard years of work, we have a witness who is prepared to identify the two killers of Seth Rich. One is reportedly a current DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent, the other is reportedly a current ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) agent”

The witness, who “fears for his life,” will be accompanied by armed guards and disguise his identity as he details how two employees of the United States government killed Seth in a press conference slated for Tuesday.

If I was in that position, I’d be damn sure to have 500 packages of evidence providing conclusive proof sent to various people and locations and authorities around the world. Harambe didn’t take precautions and look what happened to him.

Citizenship as aristocracy

This is a new spin on the universal right to be an American. Steve Sailer rightly takes the spinners to task:

King John should have had Ilya Somin working for him doing spin at Runnymede in 1215. He would have shamed those aristocrats into giving up all their hereditary rights to the autocrat.

Do you ever get the feeling that, leaving aside minor details about what kind of economic system, the Soviet Union will eventually triumph over the United States due to the sophistic skills of ex-Soviets like Ilya Somin, Max Boot, Masha Gessen, and Julia Ioffe? They may not quite agree on what should replace the U.S., but they are united in being committed to propagandizing Americans into believing that America isn’t for “ourselves and our posterity,” no matter what it says in the Preamble to the Constitution.

After all, who would know more about how to organize a polity than somebody whose ancestors helped set up the Soviet Union? Who cares what Goodvernor Morris thought, when what matter these days is what the Somin family thinks?

And by ex-Soviets, Steve is being extraordinarily polite, because he’s actually referring to (((ex-Soviets))) who, by any other name, are still Trotskyite World Revolutionaries.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, these ex-Soviets have been trying to turn the USA into the new USSR for the last 50 years. And while they haven’t entirely succeeded, they’ve made a considerable amount of headway, thanks in no small part to libertarians and conservatives.

Borixit for Brexit!

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has resigned. That should be sufficient to eject Teresa the Traitor from the Prime Ministership.

Et tu Boris? Johnson QUITS in devastating blow for May as she faces furious Tory MPs in the Commons over her ‘stinker’ Brexit trade plan – and more ministers could follow him out of the door.

Theresa May is in a desperate battle for her political life today after Boris Johnson dramatically quit over her ‘third way’ Brexit plan.

The Foreign Secretary resigned just minutes before the PM took to her feet the Commons in a statement to MPs about the compromise package she forced through the Cabinet on Friday night.

Mrs May tried to put a brave face on the shattering blow this afternoon, paying tribute to Mr Johnson’s commitment to ‘Global Britain’. She mounted an impassioned defence of her blueprint, saying it was the ‘Brexit in our national interest’.

But some Labour MPs jeered ‘bye’ and ‘resign’ as she stood up to address the chamber.

Mrs May must then endure the pressure cooker of a private meeting with Tory backbenchers later amid a massive backlash from Eurosceptics that is threatening to sweep her out of Downing Street.

First get rid of May. Then get rid of Merkel. Then Brexit, then Italexit, and it’s adios EU. Nationalism INTENSIFIES!

I’d like to see Jacob Rees-Mogg as PM. I could be wrong, but he seems to be the smartest nationalist in the room.

More good news from Thailand

Four more boys have been successfully rescued, bringing the total to eight:

Four more boys have today been rescued from the cave complex in northern Thailand where a youth football team became trapped two weeks ago, leaving just four teammates and their coach stuck underground for at least another day.

The first of today’s rescued Wild Boar FC players, whose identities have not yet been confirmed, was seen being carried out on a stretcher shortly before 5pm local time, a few hours after the mission entered its second day.

Boys number six and seven were brought out little over an hour later, with boy number eight spotted being taken out at about 7.40pm local time.

They were all carried out on stretchers and into ambulances before being airlifted to the Chiang Rai Pranukroh Hospital, where the four players rescued on Sunday are recovering.

The fact that they got the weakest boys out first is a very promising sign that all 12, plus the coach, are going to survive the arduous experience. It’s really an incredible story.

Darkstream: digital editions

Darkstream: I am the new Marvel supervillain. A clarification for the Alt★Hero backers was requested via email by a backer.

Just a note for future reference; you may or may not feel the need to make a clarification now. In your latest Darkstream, I am the new Marvel supervillain, around the 34:45 mark you mention the backers will receive all 24 digital editions of Alt Hero and Avalon.

The crowdfunding campaign as you know lists this for the $15 digital reader and all levels above that: “This is to receive the first six volumes of Alt★Hero and the first three volumes of Alt★Hero: Avalon in digital format when they are complete.”

I always understood this to be 9 digital editions for $15 which is a helluva deal.  However, now I’m questioning if those volumes were originally 48 pages and were each split in two, would it then be 12 volumes and 6 volumes for a total of 18? That is to the point of almost being overly generous; 24 editions for $15 would truly be preposterous.

Anyhow the best news I heard all day was that Dixon has already written 12 editions of Avalon.

I had originally envisioned 48-page digital volumes before discovering, post-campaign, that we could produce affordable 24-page print editions. So, each volume is now two issues. I also neglected to update the $15 Digital Reader reward to reflect the fact that three more volumes (six more issues) of Chuck Dixon’s Avalon were funded. But it was always my intention to provide the Digital Reader backers with all the volumes that were funded by the campaign.

So, to be clear, all Alt★Hero backers will be receiving the first 12 digital issues of Alt★Hero as well as the first 12 digital issues of Chuck Dixon’s Avalon for free. Preposterous deal or not, the entire Arkhaven team is deeply appreciative of the support Alt★Hero has received, and continues to receive, from the backers and newer supporters of the comics. The foundation we are collectively building is going to be strong enough to support an Arkhaven Comics Universe that will, in time, be capable of taking on both the Marvel and DC empires successfully. But we proceed judiciously, one step at a time.

However, I did misspeak about Mr. Dixon’s progress on writing the scripts for CDA and the usual volume/issue confusion is to blame. Mr. Dixon has actually finished the scripts for the first six ISSUES. CDA #1 will be completed tomorrow and will be going out to backers this week, CDA #2 is illustrated and is now being colored, and Frank Fosco is illustrating CDA #3 now. AH #2 will be available in gold logo print edition next week and AH#3 is being colored.

In non-comics news, Wardogs Inc. #3: Metal Monsters will be out this week and Jack Posobiec’s 4D Warfare will be out later this month as will John C. Wright’s Nowhither: The Drowned World.

7 signs of a religious charlatan

Saving Eve adapted my 7 Signs of an Intellectual Charlatan and adapted them to help detect religious charlatans.

One of my favorite bloggers to follow is Vox Day.

I follow him not necessarily because I care what he is talking about. I follow him to learn how to analyze anything.

In my reckoning, the most valuable video/post Vox ever produced is called “7 Signs of an Intellectual Charlatan.” The video is well worth watching in its entirety.

Identifying charlatans is a skill that is woefully lacking among the Body of Christ today. And I am indebted to Vox for pointing out the core patterns of charlatanry. In retrospect, it seems obvious. But until it was pointed out to me, I didn’t quite know how to tell whether I was being duped or not.

So with the aim of equipping fellow believers to avoid the craftiness of false teachers, I’d like to share some observations on how Vox’s Charlatan framework applies specifically to deception in the church.

The 7 Signs of a Religious Charlatan

  1. Uses imprecise biblical terms
  2. Does not accurately quote the Scriptures
  3. Uses theological jargon to answer simple questions
  4. Uses systematic theology and catechisms to justify his answers
  5. Quotes Bible teachers and theologians rather than the Scriptures
  6. Ignores the context
  7. Talks about the value of “theological training” instead of knowing the Scriptures

Read the rationales behind the seven signs there. But they are a few of the reasons that I don’t read or pay any attention to most theologians. Unlike Thomas Aquinas and CS Lewis, the vast majority of them are, at the very least, intellectually inconsistent, and most of them strike me as downright shady. I can reliably identify some level of obvious nonsense or bafflegarble in the first chapter of any theologian I read; in the case of some, such as John Piper, it’s usually in the first paragraph.

In my opinion, most theologians are rather like psychologists, disordered individuals who seek answers to their problems in credentials and authorities, who are inclined to rearrange the facts and ignore the logic in order to suit their preconceived notions. I can’t tell you how many times someone has recommended one theologian or another to me as “really wise” or “truly full of the Spirit”, only to see immediately in their work that they are either a) a rambling restater of the obvious or b) a spiritual con artist.

My position on matters theological is straightforward. No one knows what’s truly going on and our ability to comprehend the truth is limited. If even the Apostle Paul only saw as though through a glass, darkly, then we shouldn’t expect or claim to do any better. Also, most people are idiots, so it should not be a surprise that so much of our Sunday School theology is idiotic and incoherent.

Sunday School Teacher: God loves everyone!
The Bible: God hates the wicked with a passion. (Psalm 11:5)

Sunday School Teacher: God knows everything!
The Bible: Only the Father knows the day and the hour. (Matthew 24:36)

I mean, how logically deficient do you have to be in order to not be able to comprehend the way in which that teaching of divine omniscience necessarily and completely rules out the divinity of Jesus Christ? The theological blathering that will be generated in response to that previous sentence should suffice to explain why I pay no attention to theologians or theology enthusiasts.

May’s soft exit sellout

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Teresa May tried to sell out her nation to the EU despite the clear results of the Brexit referendum. Her cabinet is falling apart and so should her Prime Ministership in very short order.

David Davis QUITS in protest at Theresa May’s soft Brexit plans leaving government in chaos.

He walked out 48 hours after the PM’s crunch Chequers summit – which culminated in Mr Davis and six other Brexiteer Cabinet ministers losing their two-year battle for a clean break from Brussels.

Allies of Mr Davis said he decided to quit because he felt the PM’s proposals for a common rulebook with the EU and plans to keep Britain tied to 40 years of EU laws broke the Tory manifesto and Mrs May’s own red lines on leaving.

Brexit Office minister Steve Baker also quit last night. His ministerial colleague Suella Braverman was said to also be considering her position.

Sarah O’Grady, wife of Mr Davis’s chief of staff Stewart Jackson, said Mr Davis wanted to “honour manifesto promises to Britons”.

She added: “DD decided he couldn’t sellout his own country.”

I’m no expert on British politics, but I expect Boris Johnson to follow suit soon, at which point May’s Tory government should collapse. That’s why May should never have been permitted to serve as Prime Minister in the first place.

May actually showed the plans to Angela Merkel before her own cabinet. She’s done. Both May and Merkel must go, for the good of their respective nations.

SJW professionalism

Or, as you might suspect, the lack thereof. So, back in February, before we found our current colorist, I was contacting different colorists to see what our options are. Ethan van Sciver recommended a gentleman by the name of Bill Baumann, and I quite liked his approach to coloring so I contacted him. For some inexplicable reason, that email was posted on Twitter today.

I contacted Mr. Baumann to ask how this extraordinarily unprofessional publication of my email to him had come to be in the possession of Corey Hodgdon, and he didn’t see fit to explain himself. But Spacebunny did bring the following Facebook post to my attention; it appears that Mr. Baumann is foolishly attempting to ingratiate himself with the SJWs in the comics industry. Who knows, perhaps they will even reward him for behaving in this manner.

Of course, like all SJWs, Baumann is lying. I never said anything about being in the forefront of either Gamergate or Comicsgate; I never mentioned anything about Comicsgate and I’m not involved in it anyhow. And while I am, of course, the Leader of GamerGate, I did not see fit to mention that. I didn’t brag about anything, but I did give Mr. Baumann an accurate idea of who I am and Arkhaven stands for. The pretense that he didn’t know anything about me until he Googled it after our conversation is entirely false. I warned him that both the project and I were considered to be controversial by some in the comics industry and even told him that we had no problem with him using a pen name; he assured me that he had no problem working with us at all.

As for his over-inflated rates, he must be quite a bit cheaper these days, because the rates he quoted me didn’t seem unreasonable at all for a top-flight colorist. In fact, I was planning to take him up on coloring some covers until discovering how hopelessly unprofessional he is today. So, in order to set the record straight, here is the complete email exchange between Mr. Baumann and me, redacting only his telephone number and email address.

On 2/9/2018 5:39 AM, Bill Baumann wrote:

Heya Vox,

Thanks for the kind words. We’re going to get along a whole lot better if you call me Moose!

My dance card is pretty full these days, but I could probably fit in some covers, depending on what kind of deadlines we’re looking at. I’m in Iowa, I think seven hours behind you. You can usually catch me before I go into the office at 730am, or after 5pm local time. And I’m almost always free on the weekend. Feel free to give me a shout whenever it’s convenient for you. [telephone # redacted]

Moose-

On Feb 9, 2018, at 8:08 AM, Vox wrote:

Hey Moose,

Great talking to you this morning! I’m delighted to hear you may have some interest in working with us. Here are some examples of Cliff Cosmic’s work – we encourage the use of pen names – as well as what the colorists have done with it. This is his first pro work, so he’s very inexperienced, but I tend to like his style. I’ll be curious to know what you make of his potential and if you’d be willing to work with him.

As I mentioned in our conversation, I’d like to know your page rates for interiors and covers, as well as what interior scenario is of the most interest to you.

Best regards,

Vox

On 2/9/2018 6:45 PM, Bill Baumann wrote:

Hey Vox, I really enjoyed our talk this morning. You’ve got some exciting things going on, and I look forward to being a part of it all.

I definitely like Cliff’s work. It’s a little rough here and there, but he really has potential. The animation style coloring on the first piece is the type of look that I’d go for, more hard-edged coloring on the figures, which a painted style/look for the backgrounds. I did something similar in the past, and it turned out really sweet.

I’ll quote you my DC page rates, which is $250 for a cover, $150 for an interior page. I think I’d rather just stick with a flat rate, if that’s okay with you. I think it would be less hassle for everyone. 

Would this be a monthly book? The standard 22 pages? 

Moose-

On Feb 9, 2018, at 11:51 AM, Vox wrote:

Hey Moose,

I’m glad to hear you think Cliff’s work is sound. It will be a more or less monthly book, assuming Cliff can maintain his pace. We usually do 23 pages.

We don’t have the budget yet to meet those rates on the interiors, but I will definitely want to buy a cover or two from you. And that’s good to know for when we plan our summer Kickstarter. Given that we haven’t gone to print yet and we don’t know what our sales range will be yet, it’s probably too soon for us to be working with top notch guys like you and Ethan.

But we’ll get there soon, I think.

Thanks very much,

Vox

On 2/9/2018 7:16 PM, Bill Baumann wrote:

Sounds good. I’ll be here when you need me.

M-