Tag: Christianity

Invasion and convergence

Apparently we’ll soon discover how completely converged the Methodists are:

Karen Oliveto clutched a friend’s hand, closed her eyes and wept when she learned last year she had been elected a bishop of the United Methodist Church. Oliveto, who is married to another woman, had become the denomination’s first openly gay bishop.

Within minutes, a formal complaint was filed challenging her election as contrary to the church ban on clergy who are “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” – a petition that the highest Methodist judicial authorities agreed to consider. On Tuesday, the court will take up the closely watched case, the latest flashpoint over LGBT rights in a denomination splintering over the Bible and homosexuality.

“It highlights very greatly that we are two different churches and that the real difference is whether or not we’re going to live by the covenant that we each have agreed to,” said the Rev. Rob Renfroe, who leads Good News, a caucus of evangelical Methodists that has lobbied to uphold current teaching. Said Oliveto, “I’m in deep prayer, reminding myself of what God has called me to do.”

Oliveto, who is based in the Denver area, will attend the hearing in Newark, New Jersey, accompanied by fellow bishops from the church’s Western Jurisdiction, her wife, mother and childhood pastor. LGBT clergy and their supporters plan to pray outside and wear T-shirts listing the first names only of gay clergy who would risk losing their ministerial credentials by coming out.

The goal is to underscore the human cost of church policy, said the Rev. Lea Matthews of the LGBT advocacy group Methodists in New Directions. Prayer vigils are planned in the Methodist Mountain Sky Area region, which Oliveto leads, while others will join a prayer vigil online.

The court, or Judicial Council, is expected to issue a ruling a few days later.

The 12.8 million-member church, the third-largest in the U.S., was already in turmoil over same-sex relationships when Oliveto was elected. Methodists approved language in 1972 calling same-gender relationships “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The top church policy-making body, or General Conference, has upheld that policy ever since, even as LGBT rights gained acceptance and other mainline Protestants, including the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), approved same-sex marriage. In recent years, the Methodists have seen their greatest growth overseas, especially in Africa, among more theologically conservative people, who have been standing with U.S. evangelical Methodists against recognizing same-gender relationships.

Deeply frustrated, Methodist LGBT advocates have stepped up pressure for new policies, holding same-sex weddings in defiance of church prohibitions and coming out as gay and lesbian from the pulpit. Conservatives responded by intensifying demands for church discipline over such actions. In one high-profile case, the Rev. Frank Schaefer was tried by a church court and defrocked for presiding at the wedding of his son to another man. Schaefer was later reinstated as a minister on an appeal of the ruling.

This really isn’t that hard. Any acceptance of same-sex relationships is sufficient to not only defrock a minister or a deacon, much less a bishop, but merits immediate expulsion from the church. Any so-called “Christian” church that embraces formalized sin, of any kind, is clearly nothing of the sort. This is not even remotely debatable.

Conservatives need to understand that the infiltrators are not seeking acceptance, and that they are not misguided, but they are there to destroy the organization from within. It’s not as if Christians weren’t warned of these “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, after all.

And furthermore, from a practical standpoint alone, it should be obvious that every single church that accepts female ministers, in direct contradiction to Scripture, has set itself on the wide and easy path that leads to worldly approval, declining attendance, societal irrelevance, and eventual destruction.

If those who wish to formally embrace everything from same-sex relationships to gluttony wish to set up their own organizations to pretend to worship the gods in whom they obviously don’t believe, there is nothing stopping them from doing so. So, ask yourself this: why is it so very important to them that they not only be permitted to join existing churches, but assume leadership of them and change their long-standing policies?

Christ is risen

Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”


Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed— for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. Then they went home.

Mailvox: Convergence and the Presbyterian Church

A reader writes up a very informative summary of Gary North’s detailed account of how the Presbyterian Church was successfully converged over a period of 60 years.

Given how reliably organizations get captured by the left, there’s an amazing lack of curiosity about how it happens. I recently read Gary North’s 1996 book Crossed Fingers: How Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church, a rare case study of liberal takeover. North provides a detailed – at 1100 pages too detailed – case study of how the left took over the northern Presbyterian church between 1875 and 1936.

This books echoes many of the same themes of SJWs Always Lie. It’s uncanny how little things have changed, including the failures of conservatives. I’m attaching three docs: a one page summary, a writeup of lessons learned from the book, and a collection of substantial quotations from the book that pulls key points out of this monster. I thought you might be interested in other researchers who validate your SJW analysis, and am providing multiple length options depending on your interest level.

Crossed Fingers: How Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church
By Gary North / Institute for Christian Economics (September 1996)

1. The single most important cause of the liberal capture of the Presbyterian Church was the conservatives’ failure to kick out liberal heretics and impose negative sanctions while they had the chance.

2. Liberal strategies and characteristics that led to their victory:

  • Willingness to lie (they had their “fingers crossed” when swearing that they held to the Westminster Confession): “SJWs always lie”
  • Intense public calls for freedom of inquiry, tolerance, pluralism, unity while weak or assimilating power
  • Deliberate focus on institutional capture, which included the property, money, and brand prestige.
  • Long game perspective (the takeover took 60 years: 1875-1936)
  • Far superior skills at bureaucratic maneuvering, including an analog of a “code of conduct”.
  • Presence of amenable authorities (the WASP establishment, media) & outside money (esp. from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.)
  • The liberals “took care of their wounded” – anyone who suffered in the fight got a cushy job somewhere else.
  • Once they consolidated power they were willing to kick out conservative leaders like Machen.

3. Conservative strategies and characteristics that led to their failure:

  • They also had “crossed fingers” and did not themselves fully support the Westminster Confession (e.g., they rejected six day creationism). This limited their ability to call out others for heresy.
  • They were on the “wrong side of history” with slavery (i.e., took a stance of neutrality on what the Bible said about it), which weakened their moral authority, rather like modern political conservatives and the Civil Right Act.
  • Initial inability to respond compellingly to key challenges to orthodoxy: Darwinism and Higher Criticism
  • Strategy was purely defensive – nothing on offense (“surrender on the installment plan”)
  • Focused on ideas, theology and church mission, not institutions and bureaucracy, and had a very weak understanding of bureaucratic warfare.
  • Were incredibly polite, charitable, and moderate in their rhetoric – they rarely dared to directly confront heretics

4. Other lessons and implications

  • The modernists were fighting to win the war; the conservatives didn’t even understand they were in one
  • High standards people tend to lose out vs. low standards people. Key: conflict between orthodoxy and church growth mindset, stay pure but small or grow large but compromise on beliefs.
  • The more bureaucratic and complex an organization, the more vulnerable to liberal takeover (Confessional documents and hierarchical structures were perceived as strengths but were – and are – really weaknesses)
  • Confessional documents are irrelevant when faced with liars (cf: today’s US Constitutional law)
  • Presbyterian takeover pre-dated Gramsci and could not have been inspired by him
  • Presbyterian takeover pre-dated the modern political Conservative movement
  • You can’t fight the tape – the tides of history were with the liberals
  • Despite best efforts of smart but flawed conservatives, the liberals won: God preserved only a remnant and the Presbyterian church was lost
  • The winners write history; noxious liberal causes like eugenics were memory holed.

You can’t domesticate ferals

It doesn’t work on an individual level and it doesn’t work any better on a societal level. This couple’s lethal experience is an apt metaphor for the cataclysmic error of Western societies:

A 23-year-old homeless man who was taken in by a woman and given a job by her husband has been charged with attacking and killing her and her 13-year-old son at their family home.  Former ballroom dancer Tracey Wilkinson, 50, was pronounced dead inside her £440,000 detached property in Stourbridge, West Midlands, while her company director husband Peter, 47, was found in the garden with stab wounds to his chest and back.

He is continuing to fight for his life and is understood to be in a critical but stable condition in hospital. The couple’s teenage son Pierce died in hospital. It has since been claimed that the alleged killer may have been given a home by the family just before Christmas and was also offered a job at Mr Wilkinson’s firm. Friends suggested the Wilkinsons had been taking in ‘down and outs’ and police say they are probing the claims as a ‘line of questioning’.

This afternoon Aaron Barley, of no fixed address, was charged with murder and attempted murder.

There is a reason the Good Samaritan put up the injured traveler at an inn. He didn’t take him home or adopt him.

On the plus side, no doubt the couple felt very good about themselves right up until the time their feral pet started stabbing them. I have zero sympathy for people like this. They were so intent on doing “good” that they failed in their primary duty as parents, which is to protect their children from the world.

Secularism’s pyrrhic victory

The Atlantic laments that shiny, sexy, science fiction future predicted by the It’s a Small World secularists has not come to pass:

Over the past decade, pollsters charted something remarkable: Americans—long known for their piety—were fleeing organized religion in increasing numbers. The vast majority still believed in God. But the share that rejected any religious affiliation was growing fast, rising from 6 percent in 1992 to 22 percent in 2014. Among Millennials, the figure was 35 percent.

Some observers predicted that this new secularism would ease cultural conflict, as the country settled into a near-consensus on issues such as gay marriage. After Barack Obama took office, a Center for American Progress report declared that “demographic change,” led by secular, tolerant young people, was “undermining the culture wars.” In 2015, the conservative writer David Brooks, noting Americans’ growing detachment from religious institutions, urged social conservatives to “put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations.”

That was naive. Secularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it’s also making America’s partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of both Donald Trump and the so-called alt-right movement, whose members see themselves as proponents of white nationalism. As Americans have left organized religion, they haven’t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between “us” and “them.” Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.

Maybe it’s the values of hierarchy, authority, and tradition that churches instill. Maybe religion builds habits and networks that help people better weather national traumas, and thus retain their faith that the system works. For whatever reason, secularization isn’t easing political conflict. It’s making American politics even more convulsive and zero-sum.

For years, political commentators dreamed that the culture war over religious morality that began in the 1960s and ’70s would fade. It has. And the more secular, more ferociously national and racial culture war that has followed is worse.

What were they expecting? Did they know NOTHING of the history of pre-Christian cultures? Christianity has transformed EVERY culture with which it has come into contact, from Aztec to Viking, and reliably transformed it in the direction of what we consider to be civilization.

Not only that, but for all the dancing and No True Atheism on the part of the atheist apologists, it is a historical fact that non-Christian modernists have slaughtered people on a scale that no Christians ever have. From Genghis Khan and Zhang Xianzhong to Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao, the great murderers of history have never been Christian.

Like Voltaire or diaspora Jews who prefer living in someone else’s homeland to their own, many secularists are beginning to discover that they would rather live a godless life in a Christian society than do so in a godless one.

The path of truth

An observation on Gab

voxday is fiercely loyal to people. But there is something else. He has an almost uncanny ability to sense who is seeking the path of righteousness, even if it is not superficially apparent from their behavior. Roosh has taken a far more spiritual path of late. Milo clearly wants to change.
Samuel Nock

There is really nothing uncanny about it. Most people tend to look at others where they were, and judge them by things they have done in the past, even in the distant past. That is why the Left constantly digs through long-forgotten personal histories in seeking to discredit people; to them, you will forever be whatever the worst interpretation of the worst thing you have ever done or said is. That this is patently absurd, of course, is irrelevant to them. They care nothing for the truth, they only seek to destroy. They are little satans, accusers in service to the Great Accuser.

But they are not alone. Petty people always insist on trying to force people into the box of their past. They cannot conceive of change, of personal growth, or personal improvement, and they hate it when others make them feel as if their understanding of the world is incorrect. They will never stop trying to remind even the most successful, most transformed individual of his less impressive past.

Fewer people look at others where they are. And fewer still look at the trend line formed by what a man was to who he is now, thereby providing a glimpse of what he may one day become. The man I am today is very different than the arrogant young man with a record contract whose primary interests were girls, music, and video games. The writer I am today is very different than the author of Rebel Moon and the generic, obvious-twist-at-the-end short story that was rejected by Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

The individuals I appreciate most are those who seek after the truth, even when they find it uncomfortable or personally distasteful. I am far more comfortable with the seekers than with those who are convinced that they have arrived at the final one true understanding of God, Man, the universe, and everything, whether it is the Catholic Church, the Bible, or Science that provides them with the basis for their baseless confidence.

I prefer those who know they see as though through a glass, darkly, probably because they are the only people who are not hopelessly self-deluded who also possess the courage to reject the despair of the nihilist.

Not everyone who walks the hard and narrow path of truth is, or will become, a Christian, but it is a path that eventually leads to Jesus Christ all the same.

The culling of the cucks

This is what failed SJW entryism looks like:

Joy Beth Smith joined Focus on the Family in May 2016 as the editor of Boundless.org, a website for single people in the church. The 28-year-old is fairly media savvy: By the time she started at Focus, she was shopping a book proposal and had bylines at magazines like Christianity Today. When her blog posts for Boundless started getting picked up—including a piece republished by The Washington Post in June—her bosses were thrilled, she told me recently.

But Smith was also pushing the Boundless audience. She commissioned a post about race that she described as “mild”—“it basically addressed that there are still racial divides,” she said. When Omar Mateen murdered dozens of people at Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando, she wrote a tribute post, which caused a “bit of a stir” among readers, she said: “I don’t know how you can get stirred up over lives that were lost, but people were. That’s kind of the conservative space we existed in and were working against at times.”

In October, Smith wrote a piece for The Washington Post about her experience with sexual assault, criticizing Trump for his derogatory comments toward women and Christian leaders for not speaking out. And that’s when she started getting serious internal pushback.

Almost as soon as the article went up, Paul Batura, Focus’s vice president of communications, pulled Smith into a meeting with her supervisor, Lisa Anderson, Smith alleges. Batura asked Smith if she could have the piece removed from the Post’s website. That would be impossible, Smith explained; and besides, she had written the piece under her own byline, not as a representative of Focus. Batura told her to remove her affiliation with Boundless from her personal social-media accounts, and at the end of the day, she was given notice of an official conduct warning.

The next day, Focus leadership sent out an email to the staff clarifying the organization’s policy on political speech, according to documents shared by Smith. “The most prudent path for all of us—and the most protective approach for Focus—is to leave the policy statements up to Jim Daly, Paul Batura, the quarterbacks, or others authorized to speak on Focus’ behalf,” wrote Joel Vaughan, the chief of staff and human-resources officer at Focus. He added that “it is permissible of course—and often helpful—to agree publicly with positions Focus has taken, such as linking personal pages to Focus posts … or to Jim Daly’s blog.” A few days later, they asked Smith to take down several social-media posts about Evan McMullin, who she was supporting for president. The message was that “‘sometimes the wisest course of action is not to engage,’” Smith told me. “Of course, that’s what Christianity has been doing for years, and it hasn’t worked so well for us.”

At the beginning of November, Focus circulated a “spokesperson” policy, according to Smith. It stated that public-facing representatives of the organization were not allowed to comment on candidates for political office, and could only speak on political issues with Focus’s authorization. Smith was asked to take down more posts: Right after the election, she wrote a Facebook status lamenting transgender suicide. “It comes across as smug, disrespectful, and distinctly partisan,” a staffer told her, according to a text exchange Smith shared. “I think there’s a lack of wisdom in going at this on social. Please pull.”

On November 18, Smith’s bosses told her they didn’t think she could be a good spokesperson for Focus on the Family, according to Smith. She was given two options: She could resign, get a severance, promise not to take legal action, and sign a non-disparagement agreement. Or, she could choose to be fired. She chose firing.

That’s exactly what an organization should do once it discovers an SJW has infiltrated. However, there is no point in issuing warnings; SJWs are always going to double-down, so at best they’re going to bide their time and continue to undermine the organization in every way they can.

Any organization that does not wish to be converged needs to establish proactive anti-SJW measures, including formal policy statements banning the advocacy of social justice and warnings that any public support for social justice will be grounds for instant termination. The inevitable SJW rules-lawyering needs to be anticipated, and stamped out the moment it appears.

Remember that they always start with mild and gentle prods at the boundaries. Focus should have known – and probably did know – that she was trouble at that point. And anytime you hear phrases like “contrary to conservative Christian opinion”, “staying silent isn’t an option” and references to “fighting”, you know you’ve got an SJW entryist on your hands. Deal with them accordingly.

This is not Christian leadership

Here is the thing. There are some jobs where you can make certain mistakes, apologize, and just keep doing them. Being a Christian pastor is not one of them:

According to the woman, Simmons came over to discuss starting a business and providing less fortunate kids with clothes and shoes,” but they ended up in bed together. The woman told police she and Simmons began “establishing a relationship” last October.

After the husband interrupted the tryst, he yelled “I’m gonna kill him” and ran to the master bedroom for his handgun; Simmons fled the apartment naked and hid behind a nearby fence.

The wife then called the police and her husband left with Simmons’ clothes, wallet and car keys, which he threatened to drop off at the church. He also threatened to expose Simmons on Facebook.

The wife told police her husband never threatened her and she declined to press charges. Simmons also declined to press charges. State Attorney Jack Campbell, “citing the interests of all involved,” decided against prosecution.

After phone negotiations with police, the husband arranged to return Simmons’ belongings. The husband turned over the handgun to NAACP Tallahassee Branch President Dale Landry.

“My prayers to the families involved and the church and our community,“ said Landry. “May God guide all our hearts and minds as we move through this period.”

Simmons, who has led the independent church since 2005, said he won’t quit.

“What I want from God, I have already received – that’s his forgiveness, ” Simmons said in his address. “What I am asking of our members is your prayers and your forgiveness.”

In response, the congregation stood and applauded for several minutes.

No, you don’t forgive and applaud for a charlatan like this. If the man hasn’t resigned, he clearly hasn’t repented. One of the primary banes of the modern Churchian pseudo-church is easy, repentance-free, consequence-free forgiveness.

I would not hesitate to leave a church that hesitated to fire a pastor guilty of adultery. There is virtually no chance that this guy isn’t going to do the same damn thing again at the earliest opportunity. He’s obviously a con artist; I particularly enjoyed the lame cover story of “providing less fortunate kids with clothes and shoes”.

Nobody is perfect. But nobody has to be a leader either. And if you can’t keep yourself off the women in the congregation, then you can’t be a Christian leader. Period.

“Christians” oppose helping Christians first

This is utter madness. It’s time to start aggressively expelling the Churchians from the Church. They are worse than unbelievers. Since it’s not possible to assist everyone, assisting non-Christians ahead of Christians means not providing for fellow Christians. Moreover, those Christian refugees aren’t Americans and therefore don’t belong in the United States anyhow. Assistance does not mean moving people permanently in next door.

Is there any doubt these people also oppose the America First policy as well?

Christian leaders have said they oppose Trump’s decision to prioritize Christian refugees.

‘We believe in assisting all, regardless of their religious beliefs,’ Bishop Joe S Vásquez, who chairs the migration committee of the US Conference Of Catholic Bishops, told the newspaper.

One of the religious leaders speaking out against the executive order was Jen Smyers, the associate director for immigration and refugee policy of Church World Service, a ministry with more than 30 denominations in its members. Smyers said that Friday, the day Trump signed the executive order setting up the immigration bans, was a ‘shameful day’ for the US.

‘Christ calls us to care for everyone, regardless of who they are and where they come from,’ World Relief’s senior vice president of advocacy and policy Jenny Yang told The Atlantic. ‘That has to be a core part of our witness—not just caring for our own, but caring for others as well.’

Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
– 1 Timothy 5:8

As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
– Galatians 6:10

What Christ is that, exactly? Judeo-Christ? Antichrist? Meanwhile, are there any doubts about the Argentine Francine being the Pope of SJWanity?

Answering questions from young people in the group this morning, the pope said, “the sickness or, you can say the sin, that Jesus condemns most is hypocrisy,” which is precisely what is happening when someone claims to be a Christian but does not live according to the teaching of Christ.

“You cannot be a Christian without living like a Christian,” he said. “You cannot be a Christian without practicing the Beatitudes. You cannot be a Christian without doing what Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25.” This is a reference to Christ’s injunction to help the needy by such works of mercy as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and welcoming the stranger.

“It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help, someone who is hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help,” he said. “If I say I am Christian, but do these things, I’m a hypocrite.”

The idea that the worst sin is “hypocrisy” is straight out of the Left’s playbook. Granted, we are told that faith without works is dead, but Francine isn’t even disguising the fact that he is playing works police here. And speaking of hypocrisy, if there is anyone on this planet I suspect of not being a Christian despite claiming to be one, it is Francine himself.

Here is the question: if Jesus came, as we are told, to divide us, in whose service is Francine seeking to unite us?

Pagan rhetoric is not Christianity

The actual Christian position on refugees and immigrants:

It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.
– Matthew 15:26

Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
– 1 Timothy 5:8

But what about that verse from Exodus?

Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.
– Exodus 22:21

When were Americans ever foreigners in Egypt? That is not Christian compassion, that has nothing to do with Christianity at all. Anyone who is appealing to Christianity in arguing for settling refugees and foreigners in the USA is a confirmed liar.

Got that, Churchian cuck? You have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever. If you genuinely want to go help the foreigners, go to foreign lands and do so. Take your neo-Babelist melting pot paganism with you and go.