Archive for the ‘PCUSA’ Category
PCUSA: Word games, part 2
Tuesday, August 8th, 2006
[This second part was delayed by the news that the PCUSA had gone into the conspiracy business and by my reading of the Schori interview in Time magazine. I hasten to add that I read the interview in the dentist’s office. I do not subscribe to Time.]
Click here for Part 1.
So why did the 217th General Assembly ignore the constitutional process? First, we must look at the long-standing battle waged by homosexual activists for acceptance by society. There is no question that one objective of this fight was basic human rights – economic freedom, freedom from violence, and so on. The ultimate goal, however was – and is – much more than that. It was nothing less than to have their lifestyle and sexual practices considered normal, even noble or desirable.
The most rudimentary examination of human anatomy reveals that we are constructed for heterosexual relations. It is hard to make the case that homosexual relations are in any sense natural or likely to be considered the norm. The activists understood that when you want to impose a new social structure or attitude that is contrary to human nature, you have to capture key institutions. Since medicine considered homosexuality a disorder and a largely church-going culture considered it immoral, the targets were obvious – medicine, the church, and popular culture.
Medical societies and mainline Protestant denominations were particularly appealing because they are hierarchical in varying degrees and because they base their behaviors on established bodies of knowledge. (The assault on a pop culture lacking these characteristics is not relevant here.) Hierarchies were attractive because they provide a concentration of powerful and influential leaders to be lobbied. Reliance on an established body of knowledge is the perfect playground for – what else? – word games. If the literature can be made ambiguous, re-interpreted, or otherwise manipulated, new “knowledge” can be manufactured and used as a new foundation for a new structure or attitude.
Through a systematic campaign of lobbying members of the American Psychiatric Association and disrupting their meetings, homosexual activists conquered the medical establishment by winning a word game. In 1973, they convinced the APA’s Committee on Nomenclature to abandon 70 years of science and declare a change of wording in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual. With no new data, no new studies, no scientific basis at all, the committee caved in to purely political pressure and declared that homosexual behavior was not evidence of a psychiatric disorder. The members (the motivated one-third who voted) followed suit and two years later the American Psychological Association fell into line.
It is worth noting that four years after the activists’ political victory, a survey revealed that fully 68 percent of psychiatrists still considered homosexuality a disorder. See Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. for a detailed history of these events.
In Part 3, we will examine the political forces that led the PCUSA to abandon its own constitution and theology in order to achieve the same political result within the church.
Click here for Part 3.
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Culture: A cornucopia of crackpot conspiracies
Sunday, August 6th, 2006
My thanks to Talleyrand, who observed that “Life Is Too Short to Read Dumb Books”, for much of the information here.
David Ray Griffin has kindly summarized his goofy conspiracy theory (blaming 9/11 on President Bush) on a free website. This is a good thing because it deprives the author of royalties and the publisher, the dear old clueless PCUSA, of profits that might be gained by people actually buying the book.
The most hopeful part of Griffin’s article was the first clause of the first sentence: “In the spring of 2003, near the end of my 31-year teaching career at the Claremont School of Theology….” That’s a relief, at least he’s out of the classroom. So what was he teaching? Although he seems to have made his silly conspiracy his new life’s work, he was probably teaching them something called process theology – a materialistic postmodern philosophy that proposes a god who is part of the universe and constrained by it, an obvious contradiction of God’s self-revelation in the Bible.
The website that hosts Griffin’s fantasy offers a truly amazing collection of equally hare-brained conspiracies. For example, “using human beings [especially children] as guinea pigs to test the toxic strength of commercial poisons has become a central regulatory strategy under the Bush administration.” Or soon, maybe tomorrow we will all begin, “a slow, somnambulant walk as in a gray dream right out of the Talmud into the Neo-Con extermination camps now currently under construction by the fine folks at, you guessed it! – – Halliburton.”
Did you know that the U.S. deliberately kept all warnings of the 2004 tsunami a secret? How about DuPont’s plot to eliminate the growing of hemp and deprive Dead-heads and other American stoners of their favorite recreational drug? And you probably didn’t know that Rupert Murdoch is at the center of a conspiracy to turn the Internet into “a mass surveillance database and marketing tool.”.
This is the sort of company the esteemed David Ray Griffin keeps. I expect the PCUSA’s Westminster/John Knox publishing house to announce new author signings from among this crowd any day now.
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ECUSA – the future of the PCUSA?
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
As noted in the “about me” box on the right side of the home page, I am an elder in a mainline denomination seemingly bent on self-immolation. So I observed with some interest the selection of Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop-elect of another imploding denomination, the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. I am not personally acquainted with “Bishop Katharine” as she seems to be known. I’m sure she’s a nice lady and I wish her no ill will. But a recent Time magazine interview provided a chilling glimpse into the likely future of the PCUSA.
Asked what her focus would be as head of the ECUSA, she replied
Our focus needs to be on feeding people who go to bed hungry, on providing primary education to girls and boys, on healing people with AIDS, on addressing tuberculosis and malaria, on sustainable development. That ought to be the primary focus.
These are all laudable activities, the sort of things Christians are called to do (although my denomination seems to think that we are merely called to lobby the government to do those things on our behalf). But the “primary focus”?
The list sounds like the primary focus of the Department of Health and Human Services, not of a church that once believed it received its primary focus directly from Christ – “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20) I would have thought she might mention preaching the gospel as part of her primary focus, maybe down the list between malaria and sustainable development, but surely somewhere.
Asked if “belief in Jesus” was the only way to get to heaven, I hoped the leader of a church that once accepted the truth of Jesus’ words would mention his own reply to that question – “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) But no. She answered
We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
These are honest and frightening words. They seem to say that the ECUSA is reduced to a group of people “who practice the Christian tradition” while utterly disregarding the person and work of the one whose name they have borrowed. This notion of doing good works without a clear understanding of their source echoes the blindness of the PCUSA’s previous Moderator, Rick Ufford-Chase. On the page entitled What I Believe, Ufford-Chase confesses to believe only one thing about Jesus:
Jesus is God’s radical answer to the unbelievable suffering that exists all over the world.
But Jesus could be that answer only by first addressing sin – the real source of the world’s “unbelievable suffering”. Jesus could be that answer only by being who he was – untamable, unpredictable, dangerous, and holy, only by enraging puffed-up religious leaders and driving away casual followers with hard truths, only by laying down his life in a messy, bloody death, tortured and nailed alive to a tree because we humans had no other path to reconciliation with his holy Father, and only by taking his life up again three days later. Jesus could be that answer only by being God. So Bishop Katharine was right about one thing. Those “who practice the Christian tradition” of lip service and works judged good by human standards do indeed “put God in an awfully small box.”
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PCUSA: Purveyor of dumb conspiracy theories
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
PCUSA bureaucrats never cease to amaze me. In 2004, two denominational staffers led a group of Presbyterians to cozy up to Hezbollah in Lebanon and praise the terrorists for their humanitarian ways. This, of course, followed closely after the General Assembly’s dumb plan (enthusiastically endorsed by many of the bureaucrats but since largely rescinded) to punish Israel for getting its civilians killed by crazed Muslim suicide-bombers. The PCUSA was correctly perceived has having some very anti-Semitic tendencies. So what could this crowd possibly do that would be even dumber?
It turns out that they could publish a book that accuses the President of orchestrating the attacks on the World Trade Center. I’m not kidding. The PCUSA’s publishing arm, Westminster John Knox Press (having long since abandoned any connection to either the authors of the Westminster Confession or to John Knox) has indeed done just that. Since the PCUSA is rapidly losing sight of what orthodox Christian faith actually is, the publishers may have thought the book’s title, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, qualified it as a book about Christian faith. (Ok; that was a cheap shot. It is more likely that they just thought this crack-brained conspiracy theory would lend credence to the bureaucrats’ early and increasingly shrill criticisms of George W. Bush.)
The theory has another appeal to the bureaucrats too – it fits perfectly with the denomination’s unofficial policy of embracing Islam and deflecting criticism from it at every opportunity. To learn more about the crackpot author and one of his more notorious co-theorists – and what other Presbyterians have to say about this folly – see this Christianity Today article.
It’s getting really embarassing to be a part of this organization….
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PCUSA: Word games, part 1
Saturday, July 22nd, 2006
The PCUSA has a long history of playing word games with the Bible. Word games are played by social activists, peddlers of strange theologies, bureaucrats, tenure-seeking academics who have to come up with something novel to get published, and humanists (including atheists). They are the tool of choice for people who find the plain meaning of Scripture to be in conflict with their own philosophies, political aspirations, cultural objectives, or simple carnal desires. The appeal of a word game is that it leaves the words themselves intact while altering their meaning and intent. Word games have this in common with the old carnival shell game: Both use misdirection and a torrent of misleading words to convince the mark that what appears to be certain is not certain at all.
Biblical word games range from sophisticated plays on ancient linguistics to simple proof-texting gimmicks that distort the meaning of a passage by plucking it from its inspired context. In its most brazen form, the game consists of nothing more than the player lying about the meaning of the words. Skilled players (especially seminary-educated ones) can reverse the meaning of a passage entirely or show that it is silent about the very topic it is addressing. In all cases, the player’s first step is to convince the mark that the passage is ambiguous. If the victim can first be persuaded that the plain meaning of the text is not plain at all, everything else is just “interpretation”.
Ok, I get that. The Bible was written by someone else. Despite such recent foolishness as “justice-love” and a Trinity composed of “mother, child, womb”, even the PCUSA’s most committed players seem to understand that they can’t actually rewrite the Bible. But the 217th General Assembly decided to play word games with our own Book of Order. Since there is a process for amending the Book of Order, why would the G.A. simply issue an “Authoritative Interpretation” of a key provision and assert that it means something other than what it says? The answer – in part 2 (upcoming) – reads like an Oliver Stone plot line.
Click here for Part 2, here for Part 3.
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PCUSA: Bad stewardship
Saturday, July 15th, 2006
According to figures published at the time, the cost of a General Assembly in 2002 was around $5 million. I don’t suppose the cost has gone down. What did the church get for its money in 2006? What did the long hours and hard work of the 217th G.A. (official view, alternative view) actually yield? An end run around the constitution that will further splinter the denomination, tinkering with the language of the Trinity, backtracking on a dumb attempt to punish Israel for Palestinian terrorism, and a belated awareness that killing a viable baby during a partial-birth abortion might be a bad thing to do. (The PCUSA response to that discovery, of course, is to continue financial support of unrestricted abortion “rights”.) This is stewardship? This is what the church is called to do?
I don’t question the need for an organization the size of the PCUSA to occasionally get together to affirm itself, do business with itself, and get an emotional lift out of the whole process. By all accounts, Wal-Mart managers and Mary Kay Cosmetics salespeople do the same thing. What I do question is how much of this business ever translates into actual souls saved. I’m no expert in the cost of foreign missions, but some quick calculations suggest that $5 million for a biennial confab such as the G.A. could have supported at least 65 foreign and domestic missionary families for two years.
Paul’s first letter to Timothy (6:20-21) included an admonition to “guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.” The PCUSA should pay attention to such wise and Godly counsel as it plans the 218th G.A. in 2008, but will no doubt turn away from it as it has turned away from most of the Bible.
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PCUSA: Poisoning the well (updated)
Thursday, July 6th, 2006
Update: This story was originally posted on the author’s previous web site on November 1, 2005. The 2006 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) acknowledged “that the actions of the 216th General Assembly (2004) caused hurt and misunderstanding among many members of the Jewish community and within our Presbyterian communion. We are grieved by the pain that this has caused, accept responsibility for the flaws in our process, and ask for a new season of mutual understanding and dialogue.” The assembly also took steps that seemed aimed at ending the divestment process.
In 2004, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) – the denomination’s highest governing body – passed a resolution to “initiate a process of phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.” In 2005, Iranian president Ahmadinejad announced that “Israel must be wiped off the map.” Is there a connection? Clifton Kirkpatrick, the chief elected officer of the Presbyterian Church (USA) was understandably upset about Ahmadinejad’s remarks. Most sentient beings would be. But he and his cohorts seem unable to connect the two dots – the divestment resolution and the Iranian president’s remarks.
Following the approval of the resolution, statements from PCUSA officials revealed the politically correct thinking that produced it: some PCUSA leaders believe that Israel alone is responsible for the violence. The Washington Office (our little unregistered PAC) equated Palestine to South Africa under apartheid. The Presbyterian “Peacemaking” Program ignored a 57-year history of war and terrorism against Israel and endorsed the idea that “occupation remains the root cause of the conflict and of the continuing suffering in the Holy Land.” [The PCUSA’s enthusiastic endorsement has disappeared from the denomination’s web site, but the original statement can be found here.]
Such statements aside, the resolution was a cynical, feel-good gesture intended to enable General Assembly commissioners and PCUSA leaders to enjoy the pleasant sensation of having “done something” to promote peace in the Middle East. There was never the remotest possibility that any economic impact would ever be felt by Israel or by anyone doing business in Israel or that the cause of peace would in any way be advanced. (It is an interesting irony that the fattest target of disinvestment is Caterpillar, whose stock has risen steadily and enriched its stockholders – including the PCUSA.)
But there was an unintended impact. Kirkpatrick and other supporters of divestment can wring their hands over Ahmadinejad’s comments but they can hardly claim to be surprised. The Iranian president simply expressed the same policy that Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization did when it massacred eight Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. To side with these same Palestinians, even with an action as toothless as the divestment resolution, is to side with the murder and genocide that have been actively promoted by Muslim states and practiced by Muslim terrorists since 1948.
(In fairness to members, not all Presbyterians were blind to the implications of the resolution. The reaction against divestiture was swift and vocal and continues today. Sadly, it has not yet born fruit, as PCUSA leaders continue to defend their actions.)
I doubt that Ahmadinejad even knew that the PCUSA – alone among major Christian denominations – had indulged in this foolish act of anti-Semitism. But the PCUSA and its leaders nonetheless bear responsibility for tossing a little more poison into the well of Mideast violence. Did they suppose for one moment that adding to the toxicity with their bigoted approach to peace would somehow promote healing?
Any sign that the West is prepared to abandon Israel can have only one effect – to embolden the jihadists and invite them to escalate their efforts to do what the Arab states have sworn to do all along – wipe Israel off the map.
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