I have a passing interest in the Church of England and its American variation, the Episcopal Church. An old friend is in the church so I get some first hand descriptions of what it is like to be in a dying institution. That’s the only way to describe the Episcopal Church. Attendance declines every year as old members die off and new members never materialize. Go into an Episcopal service and you can’t help but notice that most everyone is a senior. The actuarial tables are the church’s greatest enemy.
Of course, church attendance has always skewed a little older. Young people tend not to be attracted to the faith, even if their parents regularly attend services. As people get older, have families and begin to sink roots, they get more involved in their faith and attend services regularly. That’s the trouble with the mainline Protestant religions. The young are not coming back once they start having families. That means their children are not raised in the faith. As a result, these churches are now in a death spiral.
The story is familiar to anyone who has been paying attention. These churches made the decision to chase the latest social fads in the 70’s and 80’s, hoping to make themselves more appealing to the young. The only thing they did was make themselves less attractive to people interested in being part of a traditional Christian sect. It was not just in the pews, but in the clergy as well. Those feeling the call found that the church in which they were raised was not interested in defending and maintaining the faith.
The result is the clergy slowly radicalized. First came the women and then the feminist women. Soon they invited in the homosexuals and the clergy started looking like the faculty of a liberal arts college. That’s when the pews started to empty out. Why bother going to church, when you can get the same liberal lecture from television? That’s what started the decline in church attendance. Instead of offering a shelter from the storm, they decided to chase an over-served market – radical Progressives.
Talking to my friend, he tells me that there are elements within the Episcopal Church that know what must be done to save the church. The trouble is they are outgunned and out maneuvered by the radicals. That’s the thing. The conservatives make it a priority to serve the church and serve God, while the radicals are always scheming to advance the radical agenda. The conservatives are constantly outmaneuvered because they are not playing the political games. They end up getting marginalized, despite having numbers.
Of course, young people seeking to join the clergy are confronted by a politicized bureaucracy full of homosexuals and social justice warriors, who are mainly interested in advancing their own agenda within the church. Like the old commie radicals of yesteryear, the current radicals use struggle sessions and purity tests to boil off those who would challenge their agenda. Imagine you’re a young priest and you are told you now have to celebrate a special mass for the transgendered.
The General Synod of the Church of England has voted to ‘welcome transgender people’ by considering preparing a church service as a way to “mark a person’s gender transition”.
The official church of the United Kingdom voted four to one in favour amongst the Clergy and more than two to one amongst the Laity (members who are not Clergy) at the four-day Synod, the motion reading:“That this Synod, recognising the need for transgender people to be welcomed and affirmed in their parish church, call on the House of Bishops to consider whether some nationally commended liturgical materials might be prepared to mark a person’s gender transition.”
Vicar of Lancaster Priory Church, Chris Newlands, posed the motion to the Synod, saying he would speak on behalf of transgender people as the church’s Synod has none.
He said: “We need to be aware of the impact that our actions – be them welcome or rejection – have on the members of the trans community.
“I hope that we can make a powerful statement that we believe trans people are cherished and loved by God, who created them.”
The BBC reports that, “Such a service would not be a second baptism, however, as the Church’s teaching is that humans are made in the image of God – transcending gender – and baptism takes place only once.”
Archbishop of York Dr. John Sentamu said there was a need for vicars “to welcome and affirm, in their parish, transgender people”, adding that the “theology has to be done” by the House of Bishops and “can be done very quickly”.
Notice the feminine language. They want to “welcome and affirm” trannies into their churches. I’d like these guys to point to the passage in the Bible that covers men who like to play dress up or people so mentally unbalanced they believe their sex organs are imaginary. Ministering to the mentally ill has a place in a church, but that’s not what they are saying. They want to make mutilating people a sacrament. Imagine being forced to embrace this sort of madness. It is no wonder the sane clergy are leaving.
Of course, it’s also why the pews are empty. It’s another reminder that Progressives must be treated like rage zombies or highly contagious disease carriers. Once you let one into your organization, it will set about bringing in more of its kind. In this case, it was women in the clergy, then feminists, then homosexuals. They have reached the point where few inside the church care at all about the faith. It’s all about the latest Progressive fads and how they can outrage the remaining members of their congregations.
The West is done, the Marxists won.
Question: If SJWs use struggle sessions and purity tests to boil off non-SJWs, then should we assume that non-SJWs must also adopt some sort of signalling regime which will boil off SJWs? If SJWs invade and then force the organization to require signal ping-backs, such as affirming transgender as a sacrament, then aren’t non-SJWs also required to force the organization to require signal ping-backs which dis-affirm SJWs?
I’m not sure if this can be done. The Left is a cult, a religion, which is always via positiva, meaning that it has positive aspirations around ‘equality’. They have a positive vision of what society should look like and work toward it. The Right are society’s warriors and judges, and it is the nature of warriors and judges to enforce limits or boundaries, just as referees in a game do not tell the players what they must do (via positiva) only what they may not do (via negativa).
How do we root our SJWs and eject them?
I’ve heard for years that the Catholic Priesthood was infiltrated in much the same way by homosexuals, and possibly pedophiles.
The true Church may have to go form it’s own Church.
My wife worked part time for the Episcopal church in Conyers Ga. They were assigned a pastor from California after the old one left, and he has destroyed what was left of it in less than two years. The final straw was 9/11 when he brought in a guest speaker. It was a Muslim who propogandized for his faith in place of a sermon.
Possibly the only growing episcopal church in the state of Georgia is in the next town to the east. It’s gained 75% of the Conyers congregation since entirely due to it’s more conservative pastor. They were sister churches, but the more traditional one has severed all ties with its closest neighbor.
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I don’t think is this particularly new: during the Albigensian Heresy of the 1200s, the Church was openly corrupt with many nunneries operating as brothels, priests extorting money, and fathering illegitimate children, and so on. So the reaction was to rather than reform, frame the physical world as of the devil, claim Jesus was only divine, not part human, and do things like voluntary self-castration, suicide, and opposing reproduction even among farm animals.
This is an old, old feature of Western thought that invaded (mostly) Western Christianity but not so much Eastern Christianity — the physical world is flawed and of the devil, and there is secret knowledge known only to a select few that will create a paradise on earth. Communism in this sense is nothing more than a Christian Heresy with a series of Dictators instead of Kings who at least have cooler outfits and titles.
The Albigensians, the Gnostics, the Oneida Commune, the Shakers, the Free Love folks in the 30’s — the 1830s! all that stuff long predates our current predicament. The Pope hates hates hates Steve Bannon and wants immavaders galore in the US particularly Muslims and rails against the Original Sin of Industrialization and the need for penance by living in the mud. There were Borgia Popes murdering people and fathering illegitimate kids with their daughters. So this one is nothing new.
Most of the problems of the West are old, innate patterns that crop up again and again: division, GoodWhites vs. BadWhites, Gnostic/Cathar like religious cults, idealizing the noble non-White savage by gays and women (but I repeat myself), cutting deals with Islam, etc. The solution is hard-pressed survival first, and if possible due to survival, reform.
But first the West must survive, and that means not betting on Trump but from the ground up. Big men like Diocletian can arrest decline for a while, but they cannot turn it around. THAT takes from the ground up decades/centuries organizing.
Left the Episcopal Church for much the same reasons as you listed, plus they denied us the use of the church for his funeral. I believe they were having a little in-house war over the new (female) radical minister. Too busy.
We had a few good years with the Congregational Church, but the advancing influence of their incorporation with the UCC and a new bleeding heart, liberal minister ended that. The last straw there was the replacement of the “Pilgrims Hymnal” with the “New Century Hymnal”. (they even rewrote the words to “America the Beautiful”.
I hope that Glen Filthie is right.
You just hit the nail on the head. They rewrite everything. Like dogs who just have to pee on every hydrant and lamppost. They can’t leave well enough alone and accept things as they are.
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Great article. Definitely my favorite of your most recent.
Dear Presbyterians,
You’re next. Idiots.
That train left the station years ago. They just don’t know it yet.
The Protestant mega church down the street had its founder/pastor embark on a gay sex + meth spree. They used to have to have people park in the field across the street, and had off duty police directing traffic. Now we drive by it on our way to mass on Sunday, and the main parking lot is 2/3 full, and no police. Lunacy indeed.
I find it hard these days as a Catholic, though. We have a Pope who is heavily invested in neo-Peronist economics, and very earthly matters, such as transnational taxes to “combat” “climate change”. The Church is tilting at windmills while that gay orgy ring is operating just across the way. My parents always say, “the Church is not the Parish”, and that’s true, and I’m glad the Parish has not embraced Liberalism, other than the occasional prayer for immigrants and refugees.
But I wonder how long that’ll last?
The Progs now have the Catholic Church in their sights, as they have successfully broken the mainline Protestants. The evangelicals and black churches are tougher nuts to crack. The Catholics look like the weakest animal in the herd, so they will be hunted down. The Progs turned the 30% of Americans in the mainline Protestant denominations to 11% in 50 years or so. The 20% of the country that claims Catholicism as their faith looks like a fat hog to them. That 20% has been roughly steady for decades, despite the pervy priest thing. Under the Prog way of thinking, the pervy stuff could become a feature, not a bug. And the patriarchy and anti-abortion things have to go, too, in their eyes. Lots of reasons to step up the attack.
The Church should be run as a business, nothing immoral about that.
Any business that rejects 98% of the available customer base to cater to the 2% is destined to fail.
The Church has turned away Christians in droves in the name of political correctness.
The mainline hierarchies like to compare the gay thing with the slavery and civil rights movements. Emancipation and anti-racism were quite unpopular in quite a few places, yet church support for those movements turned out to be the right thing to do.
The difference, never talked about, is that emancipation and anti-racism have some strong scriptural support. The gay thing, er, “the bible was written a long time ago by old white guys that don’t have a clue”. Yeah, that’s it.
Perfectly timed for me, Z-Man. Our church’s pastor just announced her desire to officiate a gay wedding, a first for us, though she is hosting a congregational meeting to secure our approval. Her argument boils down to, “God made them the way they are, and he loves them, how can we not?” As for scripture holding homosexuality as sinful, why it was written by white men of privilege–God’s arm didn’t descend from Heaven, pen in hand.
So I guess the Ten Commandments are bunk too–after all, who’s seen the Moses-Cam footage proving Divine creation of the tablets?
The problem is, your church’s pastor is a “her.” You are in the wrong church, and if you are sane, should never return. Women should never be pastors, period.
Get the hell out of that church and tell the bitch why you are going.
I have never been associated with any Protestant Church but was raised a Catholic by father who I remember attended daily mass from when I was a child to his first stroke in his late 80s and a mother who always said a daily rosary if not always attending daily mass. Personally I am a lapsed Catholic but not anti-Catholic. Yes I was a Torch boy, a Choir boy and an Altar boy. And, I had no experience with any homosexual priests as a child or adolescent. I was educated in primary school by generally crazy nuns and in high school by mostly brothers who were masculine disciplinarians and level headed at an all boys institution which is now sadly co-ed.
Let me tell you about the Catholic Church something that might also apply to the Protestant denominations. The Catholic Church has been subverted over the past two centuries by the Masons. The story is laid out in the article by the late John Vennari that I will give the URL below. Books have been written also about the subject. Many, many Catholics are aware of this crisis and the topic is being discussed and opposed worldwide by the laity and renegade clerics. The Society of Pius X is reviving traditional Catholicism and growing: . The current Pope as one may expect is considered to be an abomination by traditional Catholics.
Take the time to read John Vennari’s The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita — A Masonic Blueprint for the Subversion of the Catholic Church .
Dan Kurt
The Society of Pius X:
http://sspx.org/en
The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita http://www.brizek.com/endtimes/altavend.htm
Dan;
I don’t know about the Masons subverting the Roman Catholic church for the simple reason that I am not one, but I have seen homosexuals in action subverting the Episcopal Church. As I related some time ago on another thread, back in the early mid-’80’s I went to the Bar Mitzvah of one of my wife’s colleague’s son. His mom, her male colleague’s wife worked for the Episcopal hierarchy, despite being Jewish. She brought two of her own work colleagues. They were both pretty openly gay.
Now, the heirarchy’s jobs paid poorly and the Episcopal Church had yet to endorse homosexuality by about 10 – 15 years or so. So one had to ask what they were doing working there. I mean, who goes to work for a then unwelcoming organization for little pay when there were so many other more lucrative gigs for openly gay men at the time in a big city nearby_?
In retrospect, the question answered itself. So the hierarchy was willingly letting itself be infiltrated no less than 35 years ago. Yet to the parishioners, homosexual acceptance and then affirmation and celebration came like a bolt from the blue.
I don’t know if the gang here is all familiar w/ The Daily Shoah podcast, (why aren’t you? It’s great), but they were discussing a recent article by some famous faggot, whose name I’ve forgotten, who has written & spoken in gritty detail about his time as a practicing homosexual, his horrendous health issues, etc., culminating into finding religion.
My understanding is, that he had experienced quite a bit of disillusionment when his fellow priests were continuous trying to make ass buggering assignations, w/him. In any event, I found it to be a very interesting, (and sad), commentary about our modern world, that the escape from depravity is now institutionalized depravity. YMMV.
Feeling like Sunday mornings were just another volunteer committee meeting my husband and I had to go to in the mid80s, we left our very large and posh Episcopal Church in a handsome suburb and began attending an Anglo-Catholic inner city church that had escaped the clutches of the local diocese with its church building, but not much else. Nice-enough pastor, kind of scared of his own shadow. Burnt-out neighborhood. About a dozen families, from 30 miles away, some of us, a handful of children including ours who were then grade schoolers, and a largish group of arty gay men, several former RCs who had grown up in wealthy families. No women in any position of power/authority; no servers at the altar; some temporary “priests’ that I felt funny about leaving my son with–this was before the flap in the Catholic church. Reminded me of my working days in the field of historic preservation. Women without connections given the scut work and the pretty boys promoted to accompany their patrons. The occasional visiting Brit clergyman brought some tone to the proceedings and preaching. Beauty of the old style service/mass and nice small choir, but honestly, there was no life to it. The regular families who did attend were suspicious of us for reasons known only to them. The gay guys at least were friendly at coffee hour and had interesting lives. Attending church here did get our kids used to hearing the beautiful language of the original Book of Common Prayer–or its 1928 version–so that’s something, at least, although they are not church goers nor do they have their children attending church. As I said, I saw this coming almost 40 years ago..
I’ve thought about this a bit more. What Christianity needs is men that are leaders. Women don’t lead well. We are hard coded in our DNA to be followers. And we have seen Christianity in a slide since we’ve allowed women to be leaders in the churches.
What society needs more than ever are people willing to stand up and do the unpopular thing. Young men need to learn how to be men, how to lead and be responsible. Young women need to be told that it’s fine to have children and raise a family. These things should be common sense but our cultures push the opposite. Churches started to cave on things like adultery and divorce. it was wrong. There are solid reasons to oppose both.
@ notsothoreau – You just nailed the leadership problem in Europe; mostly women, all without children, none of whom are Christians all pushing a liberal-progressive agenda.
It’s the perfect combination for failure. Especially when the incoming hoards have lots of children, and are hard wired religious zealots who are not afraid to defend and spread their religious beliefs.
It’s a sad commentary that Christians could learn a lot about strength and conviction of faith from these people.
I have noticed that women in positions of power over people have what I call a certain frission about them, perhaps better described as a sort of frenzied unfocused intensity, when they are in public. I see this particularly often in women politicians and church leaders. It is some kind of “here I am, how about that?” along with “I am in charge now, screw you”. I don’t see it so much in male leaders. Strangely, Angela Merkel has none of it. Women with public personas do not necessarily have this, think news readers and actresses. They aren’t taking the helm of a traditionally male-dominated and powerful position. They are simply filling the spot some other woman would have held, and there is no power in it. But politics and the clergy, now you are talking about seizing the controls of people’s lives, yeah, baby, look at me! Think Hillary, Elizabeth Warren, Pelosi, Debbie Whasshername. When they are in the public eye, they seem completely engaged in the “here I am, world!” as part of it. Most other people simply get on with the task at hand. The female denominational leadership in the mainlines has the same thing going on, but turned up a couple of notches. Once I became sensitized to it, it began to creep me out. Obama also carries that vibe in his public speaking, by the way, as does John Kerry.
Women make terrible leaders, on the whole. It drives other women crazy when I tell them that I will never vote for a woman president, but I really can’t see a time I would. We do not handle power well, & wearing the mantle uneasily from day 1 to end, is the best case scenario.
I know that none of you’d ever like to see me as a major world leader. I’m irrational, I’m implacable, and I would do things that would make both Hitler & Mao blush, if given opportunity.
Don’t put women in powerful positions, guys, please.
My secret take on Hillary, Pelosi, Warren, DWS, B Obama and J Kerry is that none of them have any patience to deal with real people in a normal manner, and simply want to invoke their idea of how things should be, wave their hand about, and make it so.
The freaky unfocused intensity is their stifling of their inner red queen from Alice in Wonderland, just aching to bust out with a cry of “off with their heads!”
Angela Merkel and Theresa May, to their credit, along with a number of woman US Senators and Congresspeople, seem to have an inner peace and some patience. They show a willingness to bear down and work through their tasks with persistence and a sense of calm and determination.
Look at the barren cat women in the UK and Germany.
What is the population of the trannie world? .0014% or some such? … yet they are treated like the rulers of the Galaxy. What’s with that shit anyway?
The left uses trannies and other mental defectives to beat us over the head. Weaponized crazy. The existence of even one tranny is sufficient for the left to seize the purported high ground. If mental defectives did not exist, the left would create them.
The Novus Ordo (post Vatican II Catholic Church) is not much better.
“The conservatives make it a priority to serve the church and serve God, while the radicals are always scheming to advance the radical agenda.”
True. And they will continue to fail until they come to understand that in order to serve God and His church, they must fight the radical agenda, and declare anathema on those who attempt to introduce it in place of faith.
Since it’s all about sex, a trans welcoming service should be followed by the announcement, “Hey, Bob and his wife Priscilla are happy to announce they had good heterosexual activity last night. Twice.”
> I’d like these guys to point to the passage in the Bible that covers men who like to play dress up or people so mentally unbalanced they believe their sex organs are imaginary.
Sure, here you go: Deuteronomy 22:5
A woman shall not wear men’s clothing, neither shall a man put on women’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your G-d.
However, Christianity has a big problem, which is that this is one of the many, many commandments in the Bible which pertains to Jews. Christians like to pretend that they are the new Jews, and thus all these commandments now pertain to them, but there is no principled way to filter which commandments stay and which go, so they end up keeping the convenient ones. The bans on homosexuality and transvestitism used to be convenient, but became inconvenient. “Oh, you know, that Bronze Age stuff does not apply to us enlightened Christians, and Jesus would have embraced trannies if he lived in {presentYear}.”
The other thing, of course, is that most of the commandments are subject to interpretation, worded in a peculiar or ambiguous way, etc. So their interpretation (given that Christians don’t have an Oral Law) tends to follow political convenience. So here, even if they didn’t say that this commandment is outdated, they’d creatively reinterpret it to mean that a “woman” (who just happened to be born in a misgendered male body) should not wear male clothing.
In short, Christianity is in big trouble because the chickens have come home to roost-once you remove some foundations for the sake of marketing, you will eventually remove all of them. We’re all worse off for it in the short run.
It’s pretty clear that the fastest way for a religion to murder itself is to get soft on enforcing its rules. Religion is about intolerance. It draws bright lines between what is and what is not acceptable. That’s most of its appeal. People like rules.
Christianity is in need of a restoration movement.
The question is what its rules are and where they came from.
Christianity itself is largely Judaism with most of the rules thrown out the window for feels and marketability.
Hard to say “yeah, but we will never throw the rest of the rules out” and get it to stick in the long term.
It’s like knocking out some growth inhibitor genes-every successive mutation makes the next more likely.
If you’re going to restore, you might as well restore.
I thought Christianity was mostly Christ?
That is a very good question, Karl. You have no idea how big a can of worms it opens. Putting that aside for now, what Baruch seems to be saying is that since its beginnings, Christianity has been picking and choosing which of the Old Testament laws it wants to follow. In the last century or so, that has provided a beach head for progs to invade and destroy Christianity from within. It’s a very good point, actually. How do you enforce the Old Testament laws on homosexuality if you don’t enforce the dietary laws? By ignoring the dietary laws, you’ve already ceded that the Law is relative. The rest is just quibbling.
The civil and ceremonial laws given to Israel have expired in Christ who fulfilled the law. The moral law, summarized in the Decalogue, was published at creation and, though fulfilled by Christ, remains in effect forever.
If Baruch is going to be such a stickler for the ceremonial and civil laws given to his people, why haven’t his people razed the Dome of the Rock, rebuilt the temple, re-instated the Levitical Priesthood, and resumed sacrifices? Seems he’s picking and choosing himself. Talmudic lawgic knows no bounds to its hypocrisy.
That’s the issue right there: “forget all those Bronze Age rituals, the important thing is, you’ve gotta be moral.” Well, what’s moral? It turns out “moral” means “loving”, loving means “nice”, and you’ve got to be “nice” to trannies, Muslims, etc.
(never mind that the 10 Commandments include keeping Shabbat and the prohibition on graven images, which both went right out the window from the beginning of Christianity-I guess those have nothing to do with morality)
As for why we haven’t rebuilt the Temple etc.-give it a bit of time, we’re working on it.
El Baboso, it’s not the last century, it’s about the last five centuries. The Progs didn’t invade Christianity, they sprung from it-they’re more Christian than the Christians.
You don’t know anything about Christian ethics which is why you’re making these ignorant statements. Actually read the New Testament before commenting like this.
As a Jew, you’re in a glass house and shouldn’t be throwing stones. Even when you had a temple, Levites, a sacrificial system, and a king in the Davidic line (which God gave to you to restrain your waywardness after the period of the judges), you failed to keep the law. You accuse us of making graven images and working on the Sabbath, what about your worship of Baal and Molech and taking up the other abominable practices of the Canannites? Didn’t God send one prophet after another to you calling on you to repent and you did not? What about all the invaders he sent to punish you for your immorality? What about the exile? You’re making the same arguments the Pharisees made to Jesus and the apostles 2000 years ago and I’m giving you the same answers they gave. Have you ever actually read Moses and the Prophets?
Maybe you’re trying to argue that you keep the law now. Has Israel resumed stoning adulterers, homosexuals, and those who disobey their parents? What about other aspects of the civil and ceremonial laws? What about your failure to kick out the modern-day Phillistines since God commanded you to drive them all out about 3000 years ago?
The point of the original post was, the Christianity thing is not working right now, and it’s getting worse. I pointed out that the reasons it’s not working are inherent in its very makeup and origin.
Your response is, “yeah, well, you Jews X, Y, Z”.
First, this is a non sequitur. Even if we sacrifice babies to Moloch every day and twice on Saturday, that will not make Christianity work any better.
Personally, I would like it if all Christians were good Christians, and so it brings me no joy to see Christianity failing, since its replacement is presently a philosophy driving its practitioners straight into extinction. I rather like the American and European Christians, and do not want to see them extinct.
Second, I’ve read your addition to the Torah. What immediately jumps out is what I said-it moves from Jesus adapting minority Talmudic positions on, e.g., gleaning on Shabbat (a minority position was that this is permissible if you are eating what you glean on the spot) to Peter and (especially) Paul throwing out giant sections of the Torah entirely because they are not convenient-“it’s okay to eat anything you want as long, since it’s not what goes into a man’s mouth that makes him unclean, but what comes out of it,” etc. And it’s pretty obvious that this is throwing out the Torah entirely for marketability. From there, it’s a straight line to the idea that homosexuals are fine.
Third, you think that you are bringing up anything new by pointing out that the Jews have sinned against G-d repeatedly? You only know this from our own Torah.
In the same Torah, it says that we will be punished for our sins with e.g. the destruction of the Temple, exile, etc., and that G-d will then bring us back to our Land for His Name’s sake, and because He loves us, that we will rebuild the Temple, re-establish the Davidic monarchy, etc. Which events we are currently watching the lead-in to. For 2000 years, one of Christianity’s key arguments for supercession was that the Jews were in a lowly state of exile and diaspora. Now, that is changing. You can see that the Christian churches which care about having a position which is consistent with observed reality are leaving supercessionism and trying to find an intermediate stable position. But the situation is not stable-the Jewish people are increasingly leaving the exilic mindset, becoming more religious and seriously talking about re-establishing true national sovereignty, rebuilding the Temple and so forth. Which I hope will happen speedily, in our days.
Baruch, you’re both right and you’re both wrong. Good points are made by you and PRCD.
For example, he said, “The civil and ceremonial laws given to Israel have expired in Christ who fulfilled (OBEYED) the law…” The rest were “moral”—and remain. This is no doubt true, from a Christian perspective (that is in believing on Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God); but your point about defining “moral” is a valid one.
It seems my brethren in Christ have very much confused God’s Law as to what it is, who it applied to, and for how long.. Most of that confusion results in the “who” part. God gave his law expressly to His People, Israel. And to no one else. Although God’s Law surely affects ALL peoples, when kept and acted upon by those for whom it was given, nevertheless, the “Commandment” was given solely to the Children of Israel, that “they should obey it throughout their generations”.
The reason Christians don’t keep the Sabbath, or obey the dietary laws, or believe in/adopt/teach the civil moral laws, statutes, and judgements (as in negligent or criminal) is largely because they are disobedient to Christ, and that because they are deceived .. in that they DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE. And they have largely been deceived by imposters who have “crept in unawares” and succeeded in Judaizing them (Jude 1:4, Gal 2:4, 2 Peter 2:1).
You are wrong in claiming the Progs “sprung from the Christians”. The Jews—your brethren—are the Progs. You are the fulfillment of Peter’s prophecy in 2nd Peter that Jews would infiltrate the church and corrupt it. You are also wrong about Peter’s vision of the clean and unclean meats. The vision was explained in the text by Peter himself: it was a SYMBOLIC vision of the truth that there were “no clean and unclean MEN” –not foods (read it yourself: Acts10:28) Finally, you’re wrong about a third physical temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem. Not going to happen. But if it did happen, God said He’d “throw it back down” (Mal 1:4). Note that curse is for Edom…
All of that error is because you likewise do not know who you are. Presuming you believe yourself to be a “Jew”, you probably do not mean you are a “son of Isaac”—that is, Israel. Rather, you see your stock a bit left of that. If you don’t, your heritage does. In fact your very ‘church fathers’—the Pharisees of Jesus’ day—were accused of being “liars…who say they are Jews but are not”, and in fact confessed that they were not of Isaac’s Seed (John 8—read carefully), because, as it is, they are Esau’s Seed. They, and you if you are an ethnic Jew, are Edomites.
Christians (Israel) have not kept the Law properly—only recently. At the founding of our Christian nation (Zion) we were overtly law-abiding children of Israel. And prior to that, for most of our Christian history in the West, the cradle of civilization, God’s Law was for the most part respected and obeyed in all the nations of Israel (Europe). Kings, princes, pastors, priests, at least outwardly followed the “Commandment of God” found in the book of Deuteronomy, and the “whole counsel of God” found throughout the Old and New Testaments. That’s just a fact of history. Study it.
Unfortunately you are right about Christian churches leaving “supercessionism”…if by that you mean they’ve succumbed to the lie that the “Jews” are actually Israel, and the Christians are not Isaac’s seed, literally and spiritually, as history and the Bible declare they are. But, this is a temporary delusion, Baruch. We will be delivered of our enemies at length. And we WILL discover who we are, forever “establishing OUR true national sovereignty” and rebuilding the true Temple, of which we ARE. And the enemies of Christ will never again subvert and enslave His people.
You’ve got Jacob and Isaac confused there.
We come from Jacob, largely through Judah and Benjamin, partly through Levi.
As for who the Progs are-was John Brown Jewish? Was Judah P. Benjamin Progressive? Come on-Progressivism is a typical Christian heresy.
Malachi 1:4 does not speak about the Temple but rather about Edom, which is traditionally associated with Rome and its heirs.
Obviously, anyone can look at the Bible and say, hey, I don’t believe that Bronze Age stuff. That’s totally within their rights (although they have a bit of a quandary explaining how that Bronze Age stuff spread throughout the whole world, while all the other Bronze Age stuff didn’t, and why parts of it are coming true before our eyes, as opposed to the prophecies of Mithras or whatever-but it could just be a string of coincidences.)
On the other hand, one can believe in it, and see the return of the exiles of Judah to the Land of Israel, and notice that the other prophecies involve the subsequent return of the exiles of Israel to the Land (meaning, the 10 Tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel,) which we are starting to see now, and the rebuilding of the Temple.
Either of these two viewpoints is internally consistent. But I don’t understand how one can say he believes in the Bible and then twist the prophecies whose plain meaning is not convenient into empty metaphors.
To each his own, I guess-as I said, I’d like for all Christians to be good Christians, and they are free to interpret whatever they want however they want.
You are correct about Jacob and Isaac–I should have clarified. Modern Jews and Christians are both the seed of Abraham and Isaac, but nearly all the stock of ethnic Jewry today are demonstrably of Esau/Edom, not Jacob. As I said, the Pharisees of Jesus’ time denied they were of Israel, even claiming “we have never been in bondage!” Which Jesus did not refute, rather told them they “were of their father, the Devil”.
Malachi 1:4 is speaking about the temple–and all of the “desolate places” of Jerusalem. God said, “they shall build, but I will throw down”. They have thus far re-buiilt Jerusalem. The entire 36th chapter of Ezekiel also identifies these people as the enemy of Israel, who said, “Aha, even the ancient high places are ours in possession!”. You are correct, as I already said, that enemy is Edom. Edom has the ancient places in possession. Jews are Edom.
Progressivism is not a “typical Christian heresy”. It is, and has always been a Talmudic Jewish heresy. JUDAIZED heretical “Christians” have brought that false doctrine into the Church.
You assert that we are descended from Edom, without any support whatsoever.
In our sources, Rome has been consistently identified with Edom: http://noahide-ancient-path.co.uk/index.php/christianity-2/esau-edom/2013/06/rome-edom-the-image-of-rome-in-judaism/
http://www.jewish-history.com/cresson/cresson25.html
https://asknoah.org/faq/edom-magdiel-rome
Malachi does not anywhere in this passage state that he is referring to the Temple or the Jews. He explicitly says Edom.
The Talmud is very clear on innate human inequality between various peoples, genders, etc. It certainly takes a very dim view of sexual degeneracy. It believes very strongly in private property and its protection by laws. It believes procreation to be a great thing, and marriage to be required. All of these are inimical to Progressivism.
On the other hand, we can see most of the features of Progressivism (equalism, communism, sexual degeneracy, antinatalism) appear in Christian heresies such as the Munster Rebellion, the other Anabaptists, the Hussites, the Albigensian Rebellion, the Moravian Church, and the American radical Christians such as John Brown. Not a Jew in sight.
Please-no need for projection. Own what you are.
There is a bright line between accepting all people as God’s children, and celebrating the deviance and illness that is contrary to the word of God (and a properly functioning culture). Once the mainlines decided to celebrate the deviants and shame those who would notice, the game was over for them. The rest of it, over the last few decades, is just a playing out of the string.
You’re completely wrong about this.
OT I think, anyone here may enjoy the new series “American Gods” which is about the old gods being displaced by new — modern deities — because that’s who the population thinks about now (the new gods).
…and once they’re fully converged, the Anglicans will make attendance and tithing mandatory for all, just like the “good old days.”
TRX,
A long time ago I bought a house from someone who had apparently been a member of the Episcopal Church.
Who cares, but for at least ten years I was getting the house rag from what was plainly a seriously converged sjw anti-church. I occasionally flipped through it before tossing it into the trash.
Nothing in that pathetic publication would surprise anyone reading this thread- but near the end I was amused to see that they had instituted mandatory diversity training for church deacons, costing $200 each, if I recall.
Apparently it wasn’t enough coin, because soon after that there were stories about closing churches- more than usual, I should note- and then it stopped showing up at all.
They can make attendance and tithing mandatory for their members- but they plainly can’t make those people stay members of their anti-church.
There’s a real opportunity here for someone with the gift of preaching — bring back Muscular Christianity. Do it 4GW style — make sure you have no physical base that can be sued, rent accommodations (and when you’re refused that, meet in an open field). Then infiltrate your people back into the denominations to chase out the deviants. 19th century missionaries used to talk about “Darkest London” like “Darkest Africa;” we need to preach to “Darkest Suburbia.”
you sound like the people who go on about how communism hasn’t been done “right” yet, that’s why all communist countries are shit holes. Christianity had a good run, but it is fading like an old newspaper now. Doing things just to goose attendance misses the point by a mile.
I guess you missed that part about “infiltrate your people back into the denominations to chase out the deviants.” Like the man said, this shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers.
In my experience, they are stripping the denominations and the buildings of their most faithful members. The old denominations will just fade away as empty shells. No need to infiltrate, just let them blow away. One beauty of a faith community that holds up and empowers the individual, is that those same individuals can renew and reinvigorate the faith in unorthodox ways.
What you-all urge has been happening for the last 30 years or so in my part of the country. Non-denominational, fundamentalist protestant churches are doing just fine. They grow by doing what you said, striping faithful Christians from the SJW converged mainline denominations and also by bringing in new folks.
Sometimes they take over empty denominational buildings and sometimes they build new ones of their own. In any event, they own outright or rent from venues not used on Sunday. There are many such venues in any community so a SJW tweet-storm against one of them is of little effect.
Because they are independent and locally governed, there is no hierarchy and hence no leverage for SJW subversion. So long as they maintain biblical standards they can exclude SJW’s from leadership. And should one of them allow SJW subversion to bring apostasy, most of the faithful simply leave for another, more faithful, congregation nearby. This possibility usefully concentrates the minds of the elder board.
Now, because Christians bring our fallen humanity with us, there can be the usual issues of faction, pastoral megalomania and divisiveness. But the harm is limited to a single congregation.
So, loss of elite confidence in The Word => Elite-dominated mainline denominations lost the ability to maintain critical standards in leadership => Subversion of mainline denominations by degenerates of all sorts => Collapse of membership by anyone committed to The Word => Degenerates run wild. Degenerates running wild => Committed Christians form new, independent communities largely immune from their influence under the power of The Word. Evolution 😉
I know for a fact that the first half of your comment is definitely going on. It is out there, with meetings and services in people’s homes and in nondescript rented commercial space. The second half, the infiltration of the existing denominations, not so much. But they are picking off disaffected mainline congregants (and a few from the big evangelicals), one by one, as the word of mouth goes around. It is a form of personal salvation accomplished from the bottom up, not the top down. As it is done by Christians in Africa, the Middle East, and China, all places with powerful forces that try to hold back Christianity.
The personal empowerment and the value of the soul of each person under Christianity is such an antidote to the Orwellian tendencies of the powers that be. Christianity is subversive to the totalitarians. That is why the powers-that-be often try to fold elements of the Christian faith into the cultures, but without the underlying faith and meaning, in order to capture and defang the ability of faith to elevate and empower the individual. The mainline Protestants are just practicing the same Orwellian activity, but from the inside out in their own denominations. Sadly, many of them are deluded into thinking what they are doing is God’s work, because they are doing it in a church.
My daughter is a militant lesbian social justice warrior. I know these people like the back of my hand. If there was anything good about them, even one redeeming quality – I would have found it. Trust me when I say this: queers and their mentally ill variants do not want to join the church to get closer to God. They hate God with the heat of 1000 suns.
Those people want to get into the churches to replace God, and force you to bow down to them rather than your Maker.
At best I personally am an outhouse Christian – I go with my wife from time to time, throw a few prayers out for people I know and love and that’s about it. I don’t know if her church does it right or not as I am no expert on scriptures and the bible. But – believe it or not, we are seeing the odd new young families showing up. Not a lot, but some. The preachers at the wife’s church don’t get political but they have made it plain they will not abide homosexuality, feminism or other destructive influences on the family.
The cross has survived Romans, Commies, and Nazis. It has displaced the religions of savages,head hunters and moslems. It will survive the queers and sexual freak shows too.
The reason is that those animals can’t build or maintain communities, they have no morals and ethics and without those they will destroy themselves. It’s happening already; Trump has largely put an end to the social justice war single handed. He crucified CNN. People openly laugh at stupid women in funny pink hats that don’t know what they’re protesting about. Guys like you, Z-Man, used to be lone voices crying out in the wilderness. Today you’re a dime a dozen. The tide is turning folks. Do not despair. Adversity has a great way of dealing with loons, SJW’s and progs.
And you keep up the good work too Z-Man. You are being heard and you are changing minds. All you guys are.
between your “mother” and your “daughter” you have quite a “family” waiting to hear about your “sister”, next
No sister. Family is pretty much kaput. The women pretty much all went off the deep end. This is why I advocate traditional solutions to new problems. Traditions arose because they worked. Feminism clearly isn’t working for anyone – unless you care to disagree?
I was going the path of Karl, tbh. I am curious, do you have regular contact with these family members? If so, do you mind saying why? I’m a mother, but I wouldn’t have contact with my child if they were some odious feminist lesbian. I do not believe in torturing oneself, for the sake of another.
How did this occur, with your family members?
Canada is a very liberal nation ZT. My daughter is at the leading edge of the Generation Snowflake/SJW phenomenon. When she first came out of the closet, the ‘social justice warrior’ term had not even been coined yet. She was part of a new breed of cry-bullies nobody had ever seen before. We parted ways for good about 7 years ago. I am still very bitter about it.
Aw hell – we were on the skids before that too. One day she came home and told me that she was dumping the sciences at University and taking Fine Arts. I flipped but was told to shut my gob by my liberal family – everyone knows that if you follow your dreams, the money will follow that, right? She dropped out of the U of Calgary and enrolled in some mickey mouse arts program at a no-name institution. While there, I guess she met her creepy love partner and decided that she was going to be a gay artiste and as such – she would be the moral and intellectual superior of her knuckle dragging conservative father. (Today we call it the Education Scam, where disreputable institutions sucker kids into programs that will never result in any kind of real career). When she came out of the closet she announced that she had re-defined her sexuality… and our family would need some re-defining as well. She put together a list of politically correct ultimatums for me that would effectively put me in the closet she had just come out of… and we kind of rejected each other right then and there. Last I heard, she was 32 years old and working as a part time bicycle mechanic in a sports shop.
Who knows? Maybe today she is a big wheel somewhere making big dollars and has a successful life doing something else. I hope so and when I throw out prayers for her, I don’t ask for her to straighten out or grow up… I just hope that on some level she’s happy.
As for me, I will not be told what to say or think by a couple of young lesbians with bad attitudes and maturity problems. There is no place for me in their world and I am just peachy with it I suppose.
That’s my sordid story and I’m sticking too it. We can argue about whether homos are healthy and sane or not… but their maturity problems, and their fondness for censorship, bullying, thought policing and all the rest of that shit that goes with being politically correct – that ain’t right and no amount of fast talk and bullshit makes it right. I still love her and hope for her… but life is what it is. They say kids are reflections of their parents so on some level it probably is all my fault. I just can’t think of anything I could have done to make things different.
Don’t beat yourself up over it. People turn out how they do partly out of how they are hardwired, and partly their environment. Their family life is only a piece of it. Could be that the rest of it, in this case, just overwhelmed her development.
I can tell you that one of my kids did the STEM thing in college and came out great. The other one did the lib arts thing and is busy blowing up family relationships because the other family members don’t adhere to his ideas and prejudices. He didn’t go into college with that kind of disrespect for the ideas of others.
When the crazy kids get done burning down the universities, there is a part of me that quite ready to break out the marshmallows and make some ‘s’mores.
Wow. The Prodigal Son comes to mind. As hard as it may be I’m confident I’ve done my part during the formative years. It’s now up to them. Their choices aren’t my choices at that point. If they choose to go certain routes I may disagree with, so be it. It will hurt me inside I’m sure, but I’ll always be here if/when they decide they’ve exhausted all their “feelings” of what makes them “happy” versus what is right or “truth” worthy. After my liberal nonsense of my youth (latchkey kid raised by single mom) exposed to all sorts of depravity, having children changed my world view and my purpose on this planet. I grew closer to the faith of my youth (RCC) and was strengthened through my children’s journey. They’re in their soon to be college years and I hope I’ve given them the roots to survive in this turd we call Western Civilization. I’ve recently fallen away from attending church due to its embrace of unfettered immigration because no human is “illegal” nonsense, and with an expectation to fund my country’s destruction and chaos. Not to mention the Archbishop felt a bequeath was to be used for purchasing a 2 million dollar mansion for entertainment. Add that to our Commie Pope, you get depressed and feel dejected.
“Dime a dozen” sounds harsh. How about, “more plentiful”?
Yeah it does sound harsh, my apologies – poor choice of words.
[On the road, so no access to the Discus account.]
As a grad student many years ago, I took a course in Coptic at the Harvard Divinity School. I thought it hilarious when someone informed me that among the div students, those who had a traditional belief in God were so remarkable that there was a special term for them: the “God squad”. For the life of me, I couldn’t see why anybody who didn’t really believe in God would want to go to divinity school in the first place, much less how and why they should become the dominant force (and this was thirty years ago).
Now we know why, and it really isn’t that funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6oO4p9ghfo
Oh, turns out the computer does know the Discus account…
I had a buddy back when at Yale Div who said it was the same there. Jesus? Never heard of him. Now let me tell you about my dissertation on lesbian intersectional performativity in Navajo rain dances at the Council of Trent.
There are several reasons why Christian church attendance in the US is on the decline. But the number one is the failure for parents to practice what they believe in, and to teach their children to live the Gospel principles in their lives. You cannot just show up at Church once a week, like a spiritual tune up, and then just go the rest of the week living like the world. Daily prayer, scripture reading, significant donations to the Church and poor, and giving oneself to the service to others makes one character become more like Christ. A religion that does not demand its members to rigorously walk the talk in their own live is nothing less than a form of welfare that will never produce a righteous and independently spiritual motivated people.
It doesn’t help that so many treat the Sabbath day so casually, shopping, fishing, golfing, and so on, instead of spending quality time at home with the family talking, teaching, reflecting on the sermon, or serving others. A religion that kotows to fashion is serving empty calories instead of spiritual meat to its congregations. Say what you will of the Islamic faith, but you have to give it credit how it instills theology and spiritual discipline deeply into the lives of its adherents. I doubt most Christians today could be convicted on being one of faith by any evidence that they really understand what they believe, and practicing it in their daily lives.
How can the average Muslim know any of his own theology if he is forbidden to own a Koran in any language other than Arabic? You started out well and then drove your car through the guard rail and over the cliff.
“How can the average Muslim know any of his own theology if he is forbidden to own a Koran in any language other than Arabic? ”
My point is, look at how Islam, promotes their members to follow the traditions of their faith. You must admit they seem to have a stronger commitment and community unity than most Churches in the West do. Too many Protestant churches have dropped their core teaching of repentance and striving within to become a better disciple of Christ, and instead focus on political social issues and stress self-righteous virtue signaling.
There’s certainly some truth to this, Ron, but Christians have been failing to fully live up to the tenets of their Faith for over 2000 years, and it hasn’t destroyed the Church. Something new is at work. The churches used to encourage people to live the Gospels, now, as we see, it’s the reverse. People are by definition weak and fallible, that’s one reason that they need the support of a great institution like the Church. They are not getting it, to put it mildly. A lot of what you are describing is a symptom, not a cause IMHO.
In the past, people needed to conjure up all of the support they could find from family, friends, community, and church to survive and prosper. I mean this in the economic, social, and spiritual sense. It all went together, and those who could not socialize to the point where they had all these things going for them could easily end up ostracized from the community and starve, physically and mentally.
These days, the general prosperity and the safety nets of government programs and diktats, along with EBT cards, has rendered moot all of the old necessities for survival. The old cultural links have become optional. Some of us still honor them and keep them in our lives, and others walk away. Some of those who walk away are the crazies, who feel the need to burn down the house on the way out.
What the crazies fail to comprehend, is that the general prosperity that funds their ability to walk away from the old cultural order and survive, is likely falling away. Those who honor and live by the old cultural norms still have the remnants of family, friends, community, and church to support them and protect them. Those who walked away from all of that have nothing. And those who have been crazy enough to burn it all down on the way out will likely be the ones least likely to be accepted back into the old cultural fold. They have burned their bridges.
For me Christianity is about a relationship, not a religion. There are lots of “religious” people of all faiths, but what’s important is a relationship with Jesus Christ. I think too many depend on an institution, rather than working on improving a relationship.
It’s like people who are in love with the idea of being married, because the like the concept and the sense of security. But they put very little effort into the actual relationship and then wonder why it failed.
At no time does the Bible talk about believing in a church, it’s all about a personal relationship, one-on-one, with Christ. Otherwise it’s just another big club, where you pay a membership fee, get together once a week to sing songs and bingo and feel good about yourself.
I’m not Catholic, but I highly recommend likemotherlikedaughter.org. She addresses exactly what you talk about here. There is some great wisdom on raising children and living your faith.
This pretty well sums it all up…
2 Timothy, Chapter 3:
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.
Great comment. At the same time I’m curious. How many blogs based in Germany could you make such a comment on without being moderated or swarmed?
@ teapartydoc – We are still free to discuss our religious beliefs, but we tend not to be quite so open about it. Not because we are afraid or embarrassed, but it’s more personal and Germans typically are more subdued about such things. No one would ask “…and what church do you go to?” as many Americans might do.
It’s clear to everyone that attendance numbers are becoming less and less especially for our youth. As noted in thezman’s commentary, many of the Church’s problems are self inflicted and people are smart enough to see through the hypocrisy. And unlike America, we have a very long, and very bad history of relationships with the Churches and religion throughout European history.
Karl, I’d TRIPLE vote that one up, if I could.
Amein, mein Bruder.
There are several new denominations of traditional Christians that have recently left the traditional mainstream Protestant churches. There are groups of Presbyterians that have left the Presbyterian Church (USA), and a couple of Lutheran breakaways from the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). I myself am a member of an Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) parish. The ACNA was formed a few years ago by several groups of former conservative Episcopalians that had left that church at various times. Before ACNA was formed, my parish, when we left the Episcopal Church in 2005, placed itself jurisdictionally under the Anglican Church of Uganda, in Africa. As far as I can tell, ACNA congregations are mostly flourishing. My own certainly is.
I attend an Anglican Church which is part of ‘the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (The Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion), using the
1928 Book of Common Prayer. It’s small, but not tiny, and growing.
I’m in my 50s, from California. Attending church was never a part of my childhood as my parents were atheists and my neighborhoods were devoid of church-going people. As a curious “seeker” in my twenties, I attended an Episcopal church, which I later joined, and after a years of listless boredom and putting up with increasing weirdnesses, I found this Anglican church.
Legions of us, children of atheists, struggle with any sort of faith. For me, doubt overwhelms daily. Merely believing the basics of Christian faith seems far more of a struggle to me than it does for those who grew up in the church, that is, in real churches where something other than progressive social policy is/was taught.
In my first grade of school, my parents inexplicably became Presbyterian. This blip in normal secular family behavior has given me memories of wiping oil off seagulls on the beach and wandering around Chinatown in San Fransisco giving sandwiches to hippies. I vividly remember when the Sunday School teacher was told we had to memorize a part of a psalm (23rd, perhaps) so she left the classroom to find bibles. It took a bit of time, but she came back with a shiny bibles and passed them around. This was the first time I had seen a Bible — I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought, perhaps, it had magical powers, that the words within were charmed and so ran my fingers over the text so the magic would stick to my little fingers like sweet honey. Strangely, I licked my fingers afterward because I didn’t want to waste or lose any of the magic they had touched.
I asked the Sunday School teacher if I could take the magical book home for a week … and was refused.
Tragically, I didn’t learn from my own parent’s mistakes and so didn’t raise my own kids in churches. I repeated what I experienced, giving my kids only occasional forays into foreign, churchly places. My children are the latest iteration of a continuing process of spiritual degradation which has been manifested generationally. Seven generations of my family, ending with my grandfather, attended Princeton to train for the ministry. Seven! But my father, who is still alive, became a physicist, a thorough-going secularist/materialist who rejected the hypocrisy of his own father, a corrupt minister. This probably explains why I wasn’t raised in the church. It also explains why my children weren’t raised with any faith. And, sadly, their children won’t be raised in the faith, most likely.
In spite of all the hoopla about “outreach” and “missionary work within our own communities,” the number of converts who raise their children successfully in churches, and then their grandchildren … is vanishingly small. What I see, as a struggling Christian, are churches populated with people who grew up in the faith, not newbies or converts with families. Once an extended family “goes secular,” the path to re-Christianizing that family is long, difficult and usually unsuccessful.
Great comment krbu, very insightful. I think many people are like your father in their atheism; I know I was at a younger age. He may have looked at the world and saw a great machine in perpetual motion (the beauty of the physical laws of kinematics) and chose to believe in that instead of the faith of his fathers.
We are all believers in something. In his love our creator has given us a choice of what we are to believe. He knocks at the door that only we can open. Some never do. Some do and then reject his call. It is a mystery why.
Princeton was the first seminary founded in the Americas, I think. Jonathan Edwards was the first president. Lions of the Presbyterian faith such as the Hodges, BB Warfield and Geerhardus Vos. After Warfield died, the seminary followed the denomination off the deep-end.
All of these mainline denominations have conservative offshoots but most are much, much smaller. The Presbyterian CHurch was the largest mainline denomination 100 years ago with millions of members. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has 50,000 and the PCA has 300,000. The Missouri Synod Lutheran church is small. So is the Reformed Episcopal church which started in the late 19th century.
PRCD, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod dates back to the mid-19th century and is the 2nd largest Lutheran denomination in the USA. The Reformed Episcopal Church , interestingly enough, was one of the groups I referred to in my post above that joined in starting the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) a few years ago.
I’m getting fairly fed up with our local Presbyterian Church since our old traditional Pastor retired. The feel-good, pop-culture nonsense isn’t what I go there for.
Since I’m also fed up with the state of New Jersey, I can’t be bothered to go looking for a real church since I plan to leave this place within a couple of year.s
Teenagers know when they’re being condescended to or patronized. When Reverend Lovejoy tries to tailor his proverbs to what happened last week on a TV show, or starts “Jamming with God,” a Christian rock band, the kids tend to roll their eyes and figure church is just something you have to sit through, like class. Not surprisingly, a lot of these disaffected kids much prefer high church/Orthodox Christianity, with its pride in the past (rather than shame), its strength, and conviction. Meaning and mystery are important. The left doesn’t do mystery, since their whole “freaking out the squares” bit is about sharing way too much information in the hopes of grossing out or degrading the normals and the decent.
Regarding music and church and heaven ….. for musicians.
These two old sax jazz players are in the hospital. One is dying of an
incurable disease, and his friend is seeing him through to the very
end.
As the dying man takes his last breaths, he whispers into his dear
friend’s ear, “Watch for me, ’cause I’m coming back to tell you what
the afterlife is like.”
“Cool.” His friend replies.
Later that night the man passes on. About a week later the sax player
is walking in the park, and feels a cold rush of air creep down his
back. He looks around only to see his dear departed friend!
No longer sickly and in pain, he now has a warm smile on his
transparent face.
“Can you believe it, I went to HEAVEN!’ He said excitedly. “It’s better
than I ever dreamed! Everybody’s there! Miles, and Ella, Sarah,
Basie,..even Bird! Everyday and night we jam, and we got all the
blow, pot, and booze we want! We even trade instruments, and I
found I can play them ALL with ease! Heaven is better than I ever
thought it would be!”
“That’s so wonderful!”, his beaming friend replied, tears streaming
down his face. “Now I have something to look forward to!” The two
men sat staring out onto the lake, not speaking for a while.
“There’s just one thing.” The departed man said wistfully. “God’s got
a girlfriend……… and she sings.”
Nail head, meet hammer.
There is some weird form of feminine/beta male white knighting for the “oppressed” gays and Muslims going on. Save the gays and swarthy guys (not the women), save the world.
It is a form of madness, replacing Daddy or traditional marriage or something.
The femis and betas get some sort of empowerment out of it all. Taking down the churches is a bonus, an extra happy thing. There is a thrill in dancing on the altar of a seized and broken institution, breaking the will of an “oppressive” place of faith. Take that, you so called God. The Prog Mainlines have fallen into the trap. The rest of the faith practitioners have standards, mind you, and the crazies never get in the door.
Great comment, Dutch. I agree with you except for the last line. The crazies can get into ANY door. Only people who really know their faith, have an actual relationship with the actual person Jesus Christ, and offer the Truth with love, can deal with the crazies. If you’re weak or lukewarm in your faith, and don’t deep-down BELIEVE it is true — and are ready both to explain it and to live it out sacrificially — the crazies will walk all over you.
Belief in my case, is involuntary. Something either rings true and worthy, logical and reasonable or it does NOT.
I cannot see logic or reason in the belief in an all wise, all powerful diety who created the entire universe and everything in it.
And he did it using the modern-day week-days, with Sunday off for dinner with the Angels or something. How percent of him or her or it. What use would genitals be to a god? So it must be an ‘it’ if anything at all.
I see religion as a fable told to children to console them when someone dies … you know … don’t cry little Johnny we will all see mommy again when we get to go to heaven ….. she will be there waiting for us. Then they told Johnny about hell if he didn’t behave.
Don’t be afraid … god will protect you … don’t worry about anything … your invisible friend shall provide whatever you need.
I respect that people want and even need religion, but I simply cannot join the ranks of the believers no matter how I try to view the god phenomenon. I just cannot believe what looks like bullshit … climate change comes to mind.
I do abide the 10 commandments because they are a sensible, reasonable guide to good behavior and good values. But I shy away from prayer to an invisible god. The invisible and the non-existant have a lot in common.
Pretty good argument for agnosticism, but I think there is still room for spirituality.
“The laws of physics and mathematics are like a coordinate system that runs in only one dimension. Perhaps there is another dimension perpendicular to it, invisible to those laws of physics, describing the same things with different rules.
These rules are written in our hearts, in a deep place where we cannot go and read them except in our dreams.”
excerpt from “The Diamond Age” Neil Stevenson
This book is for people like you. I’m not religious,either. But this book will blow your preconceptions out of the water… https://www.amazon.com/What-Religion-Words-Swami-Vivekananda/dp/B002SCHISA/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500063741&sr=1-6
To believe in something not seen nor fully understood is an ancient practice. My ancestors, the Celts, were so inclined. That you cannot see the transcendent does not make it imaginary. That dimension can be real without being apparent to the ordinary senses.
So, you have rejected American Protestant fundamentalism. That’s a pretty small part of Christianity you have rejected. The rest might surprise you.
let me introduce you to islam, where only crazies get in the door.
Yup. But crazy Islam wants to tear down everybody else. Crazy Mainline Protestant wants to tear itself down.
Also, radical (or should I say “mainline”) Islam and the mainline Protestants share a fascination with the sexual organs of their constituents, and the mutilation of them.
Agreed. It’s like the man said: “Women ruin everything.” Protestant churches in the North had this same gripe on the eve of the Civil War — women had taken over the congregations, turning them into social clubs that occasionally mentioned Jesus.
As a sensible human being, I realise from the start that this invitation to transgenderism will turn away more than it attracts. Why would an organisation commit such a deliberate blunder? Is it the purpose of those organising such craziness to destroy the church? Jim Jones did that effectively one afternoon with cyanide and 22s. I don’t think it is deliberate. I think it is really poor leadership and men within the church assuming that the women of the church know what they are doing. Or too weak to wear the consequences of opposing this nonsense. Just as with the UK police recently decorating their patrol cars with homosexual signalling. It’s a humiliation to us normals. Worst of all is that the organisers are congratulating each other, not over helping the gender-bending weirdoes but on aggravating the homophobic Nazi boogeymen who spend night after night stalking the innocent gay people, beating them death without mercy.
“…the homophobic Nazi boogeymen who spend night after night stalking the innocent gay people, beating them [to] death without mercy.”
Is it possible to join such a group? Where might one inquire for further information? Do we have to furnish our own uniforms?
Ask the nearest SJW. They claim that every (white) industry, (white) institution and (white) neighbourhood swarm with such groups.
The Episcopal church has sued its own congregations that sought a divorce, and won, now owning multiple empty buildings.
They skipped right over the everybody gets a trophy phase to exalting only the degenerates. Now what?
They did have the trophy phase. When was the last time you heard a fire and brimstone you will go to Hell if you don’t obey the word of God sermon? Everybody goes to Heaven. Even their dogs.
You’re right but the whole concept of heaven first bored, then embarrassed them. They’re not churches, they’re SJW social clubs.
Yeah, but at least it’s fair and inclusive. Anybody who ever read the Bible knows that God is all about fairness and inclusivity.
The good new, if there is any, is that this nonsense acts like a type of “Darwin Awards” for churches. As the loonies drive out the normies they will dwindle away until they barely have enough members to carry the rainbow banner in the local gay pride parade.
Sounds like a spiritual application of Gresham’s Law.
The muslims are waiting for those christian churches to be vacant so they can turn them into mosques.
Sadly true. Happened in my old home town.
African Anglican churches are providing “reverse missionaries” as priests to congregations in U.S.A. and U.K. that cannot abide the limp-wristed agnostics appointed for them by the Archbishops. I am sure one purpose of this effort by the Africans is to send a rather humiliating message to the Anglican high-and-mighty, who never dreamed that their flocks would prefer the ministrations of a blackamoor.
Much of what you are describing is part of an effort to keep church property. When a congregation decided that the church hierarchy is so crazy they need out they will try and get switched to a more conservative diocese, rather than leave the church and loose the building and grounds they’ve been using for generations. The African dioceses recognize the problem and have tried to help.
The local Episcopal diocese in my town built a very nice suburban church campus, only to find the members walked out en masse as the powers in charge went more and more liberal. I forget the tipping point but it might have been the installation of a gay bishop. In any case, this entire parish found a small Anglican congregation and joined leaving the Episcopal church to pay the $10 million note on the new campus they vacated. The nearby Catholic parish was beyond overflow, and rented out the sanctuary for Saturday afternoon mass for several years.
@SorenK…..
Pardon me for the personal question within the thread here. Sorry everyone…but my brother John had a friend named Soren K. whom lived in WI many years back. I know it’s a terrible long shot but…..?
Sorry.
Okay thanks.
The Episcopal Church in my small town where I still live and attended as a child is still holding services. I should probably go back there. When I was eight years old in Sunday School, I remember our nice teacher saying something to the effect that Jesus was a Jew, we are his disciples and we’re Christians. I raised my hand and she called on me. I said “If Jesus was a Jew and we’re his disciples, then we’re Jews.” She thought this was very funny and gently corrected me. A chivalrous little boy came to my rescue as well.
Religion, especially the Catholic Church, has been the glue that has held the world together for two millennia. Without a faith foundation, society will come apart, which is what the sickos mentioned want. Europe is gone, the U.S. is not far behind.
The western world was doing just fine before Christianity. The Greeks and the Romans laid the foundation for the west before Christianity came around. Christianity perhaps rounded out the foundation of Greek philosophy and Roman legal traditions with a moral code and social control.
If you read much in the history of ideas you find that the same processes affecting our churches today affected the religions of both Greece and Rome, and that Western Civilization, so defined, went into decline in both of them. No. Things were not fine before the Christians. If they were Julian would have been successful. As it was he barely knew enough of the old religion to practice it. Much of what he went back to was the degraded paganism of his immediate forebears.
The Greeks and Romans has slaves .. and indenture system and men had power over their families …sort of how muslims do nowadays.
But them Rome went progressive and gave away the whole store by supporting the losers with the money taken from the winners … everything became free as Rome neared it’s demise.
Like the USA and the west is doing today … paying People to hate the people whose money they live on.
That’s a bit like saying if you skipped the flour, you’d still get bread.
No, you can replace Western people with foreigners and still have Western culture would be like saying you can have bread without flour.
Well, not sure what you mean, but I took your original post to mean that the West was on a particular trajectory regardless of Christianity. I would argue that the Christianity is to the West as flour is to bread.
Mass immigration into the West is like adding lots and lots of salt to the mix. A little bit of salt improves the flavor and strengthens the bread. Too much, and you get a mess.
Yes, they were doing just fine. Killing their female children, enslaving whole populations, taking over the world by force. Yup. Doing just fine.
Boy, good thing Christianity came in and ended slavery and conquest in the west.
Evangelicals did end slavery in the west, Thank one, the next time you see one, not that they will know what you are talking about. Conquest? Well, no. We did manage to mitigate and channel violence during the middle ages to mostly prevent the warrior class from trampling all over the peasantry in there incessant wars. There were certain days when you weren’t supposed to fight. But no, reigning in the human tendency to make war has only been partly successful, if at all.
Canada is on fast-track with the idiot Trudeau as PM.
it’s not glue that makes the catholic church sticky…
this post begs the larger question “why are so many people in the West demonstrably mentally ill?
It goes back to their core belief: liberation. Liberation puts one in a constantly transitive state. You are liberated from something, whereas you can be free without having to be free from something. The left didn’t realize this put them on a quest that ends in the self annihilating the self (liberating one from one’s own gender/sexual organs, is pretty much suicide, the liberation of the self from the self). Christianity (and conservatism for that matter) is about preservation, not liberation, although if something that is sacred and is meant to be preserved is threatened, you liberate it, whether it be your lands or a holy site, but after the threat has past, you don’t turn around and make a cult of liberation (that’s what James Cone/Jeremiah Wright’s “Liberation Theology” BS is about).
Because ALL DA CHEMICALS IN DA WATER ARE TURNIN DA FREAKIN FROGS GAY!
Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, right? People with too much stuff, and lots of free time, start believing that this is how the world “is”, and they set about looking for the new thing to chase. They also tend to forget where they came from, and the people, traditions, laws, and norms which were the source of their bountiful harvest.
Short answer: Idiocracy.
Because we live in a time of No Consequences. There is no consequence for any action (people are let off crimes for trivial reasons, excuses are made for people who behave badly, no one is allowed to castigate wrongdoers lest their feelings be ‘hurt’) and anyway, no matter what a lunatic does do it can be given a positive label like “exercising choice” or “kicking back against the system.” And for every step towards madness, someone is more than ready to go that step further.
I think the answer is as simple as this: we have made it too easy to stay alive.
In the fairly recent past, a great deal of one’s time was spent getting food, shelter, and clothing. As we became more “advanced” the necessities became easy to get – so easy today that one need not even work for them if one chooses a life of poverty and dependency over a life of effort and achievement.
Now that we have to spend so little time staying alive, we have oceans of time to spend on foolishness – and the result is that foolishness is the currency of modern culture.
Well articulated.