Watch: Pope Francis addresses Congress (with subtitles)

Christian Zionism

In this section: Introduction Christian Zionism Jewish Zionism Israel Likud and Falwell An Expanded Israel The Settlements Subsidizing The Settlements Populating The Settlements Influencing Washington The Tragedy of the Settlements Postmillennialism and Premillenniallism Updates Introduction Ariel is a Jewish settlement in the West Bank of Palestine, and Faith Bible Chapel is one of hundreds of Christian Zionist Churches funding settlements like Ariel. FromThe Christian Science Monitor, April 25, 1998: Five years ago, Ariel was a town in the doldrums. Laying the groundwork for making peace with the Palestinians, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had frozen building plans and cut off preferential funding to Jewish settlements like this one, on land Israel occupied in 1967. Depression set in here as the settlers came to be seen as peace's spoilers and began to fear for their settlement's future. Then came faith. Faith Bible Chapel, that is, an Aurora, Colo., evangelical church whose members made it their mission to "adopt" Ariel. Would Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip be able to survive without massive support from Christian Zionists in the United States? This is the question this web page is exploring. Christian Zionism Christian Zionism is based on God's covenant with Abraham from Genesis of the Old Testament of the Bible. To read about the early Christian Zionists, click here. Jewish Zionism Jewish Zionism was not based on Scripture. The early Jewish Zionists were reacting to the fierce anti-semitism that was rampant throughout Europe. By the late nineteen thirties, when millions of Jews were desperately trying to get out of Europe, no country would take in large numbers of Jewish refugees. Only one country offered -- the Dominican Republic, but it, too, fell far short of its promise. To read more about early Jewish Zionism, click here. Israel Establishment of the State of Israel was seen by Christian Zionists as fulfillment of God's Covenant with Abraham. In contrast, it was seen by most Jewish Zionists as a place where Jews would be safe. To read about the establishment of Israel, click here. The early secular government of Israel agreed, for practical reasons, to leave the ancient Jewish lands of Samaria and Judea out of its borders. To read more about Israel's pre-1967 borders, click here. After the War of 1967, which Israel won in just six days, Israel occupied the ancient Jewish lands of Samaria and Judea in the West Bank along with the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Desert to the South, the Golan Heights in the North. and all of the city of Jerusalem. That war was seen by Christian Zionists and some ultra-orthodox Jews as a sign that God was further fulfilling His promise to Abraham. To read more about the War of 1967, click here. To read a chronology of settlement growth, click here. Likud And Falwell Government support of settlement building accelerated dramatically in 1977 when Menachem Begin became Prime Minister. Begin's ultranationalist notions had made him a figure on the fringe for the first three decades of Israel's existence, but his Likud Party had finally come to power. Ironically, Begin won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978, along with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, for signing the Camp David Accords. Thanks to skillfully managed negotiations on the part of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Begin agreed to return the Sinai desert to Egypt, but refused to discuss the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. And this is where our story begins - the same year that the Camp David Accords were signed. That year, 1978, Begin invited The Reverend Jerry Falwell for his first official visit to Israel, and the following year, 1979, his government gave Falwell a gift -- a Lear Jet. Begin's timing was perfect. He began working seriously with Christian Zionists at the precise moment that Christian fundamentalists in America were discovering their political voice. The same year that Falwell received his Lear Jet, 1979, he formed the Moral Majority, an organization that changed the political landscape in the United States. What was Falwell's interest in Israel? He was a Dispensationalist. Dispensationalism is a system of theology that believes the Jews must return to Israel as part of God's plan for Christ to return. To read more about the history of Dispensationalism, click here. An Expanded Israel In order to fulfill Biblical prophecy, Dispensationalists have been working hard to ensure that the world's Jews return to Israel and occupy all of Palestine. To facilitate that process, Dispensationalists have been leading groups of pilgrims to Israel since Falwell's first visit in order to win financial and political support for the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The late Grace Halsell, author of Prophecy and Politics, participated in two Falwell-led pilgrimages to Israel in 1983 and 1985, and quotes a fellow Christian pilgrim on the tour: "The Jews must own all of the land promised by God before Christ can return. The Arabs have to leave this land because this land belongs only to the Jews. God gave all of this land to the Jews." (p.87) The late Ed MacAteer, considered to be the godfather of the Religious Right, talked about his expansionist dreams for Israel in an interview on CBS' 60 Minutes: Zion's Christian Soldiers. "I believe that we are seeing prophecy unfold so rapidly and dramatically and wonderfully and, without exaggerating, makes me breathless. Every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Jew." When asked if that includes the West Bank and Gaza, his answer was "Every bit of it." Rapture Awaits in the Florida Panhandle, Toronto Star, February 12, 2005 Read about a Christian Coalition gathering in 2002 to witness the passion Christian Zionists, and some U.S. Republican legislators, feel about Israel. Did Tim LaHaye Just Call Israelis "Not-To-Be-Trusted Yids?," Talk To Action, December Jews and the Christian right: Is the honeymoon over? Michelle Goldberg, Salon The Christian Right, Dominionism, and Theocracy - Part Five, Talk To Action, December 26, 2005 The day after Christmas, Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind Prophecy Club" sent out its daily e-mail message with a 2005 "Year in Review" summary The teaser stated: "Are we living in the End Times? Could events of today signify that the Rapture and Tribulation could occur during our generation? Five important Signs from 2005 say yes!" read on The Settlements Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for the New Yorker magazine, estimates there are roughly 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with a total population estimated at 243,000. [This article was written well before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza] Goldberg writes: Perhaps three-quarters of the Jews in the West Bank and Gaza could be considered economic settlers ... The remainder of the settlers, fifty thousand or so, came to the territories for reasons of faith. Goldberg's article, The Zealots, is based on interviews with settlers of faith. While Christian Zionists have formed strong working relationships with settlers of faith, this web site is concerned primarily with economic settlers, many of whom live in the settlements due to financial support from the Christian Zionists. A survey taken by the Israeli organization Peace Now in July, 2003 indicates that more than 70 percent of settlers, a significant increase from previous polls, would agree to eventually leave the West Bank and Gaza if they were compensated, while 29 percent are ready to leave right away. (From New York Times, August 2, 2003)Peace Now monitors settlement activity and provides detailed maps of the settlements and outposts. Subsidizing Settlements It's not known how much money for settlements comes from the Israeli government, supported by U.S. dollars, and how much comes from Christian Zionists. The financial support of Christian Zionists, however, appears to be substantial enabling settlers to buy attractive homes at a very reasonable price. Lawrence Shafer, a businessman, moved to the settlement of Ariel for economic reasons. He told television producer Bob Abeshouse on Bill Moyer's Now, There's a lot of people in the outside world think that we all live here because we're all very right wing fanatics. No, we're people who do not have enough money to afford to buy a flat. But we want to leave something to our children. We've always wanted to buy our own house. And to buy a house inside inland Israel costs three times what it costs in Ariel. Donald Wagner is Professor of Religion and Middle Eastern Studies at North Park University in Chicago and executive director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He wrote a series of commentaries on the phenomenon of Christian Zionism for the Lebanon Daily Star. This comes from Part 4: The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, led by a former Anti-Defamation League employee and Orthodox rabbi, Yechiel Eckstein, claimed to have raised over $5 million, mostly from fundamentalist Christian sources. Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, based in Colorado, is one of the many organizations that runs an Adopt-a-Settlement Program. From their web site: The focus of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) is to link settlements in Israel with Christian churches and individuals throughout the world. These communities are located in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. $25 / month Partner of CFOIC-Israel $50 / month Friend of Biblical Israel $100 / month Patron of Biblical Israel $500 / month Pillar of Biblical Israel $1,000 / month Guardian of Biblical Israel The above opportunity to invest comes from Project Focus of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities. Sondra Oster Baras is the director of the Israel office of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities. She told the San Francisco Chronicle that she estimated "one-third of the 145 Israeli settlements receive funds from Christians." The Jerusalem Prayer Team prays .. for peace in Jerusalem because the Scriptures tell us to in Psalm 122:6. Also, the Great Commission proclaims that we would be a witness unto Him in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. From the Middle East Information Center, the goal of the Jerusalem Prayer Team .. is to raise enough to give a gift of $55 apiece to 14,000 settlers. Eventually we hope [to raise money for all] 200,000. But the best we can do now is 14,000....From Bridges for Peace: Many Christians have felt this desire to reach out and help in the prophetic restoration of Israel, in a tangible way, by blessing individuals (new immigrants and veteran Israeli alike) with material gifts. Bridges for Peace has done just that. From Prophecy and Politics, 1986, about the American Christian Trust headed by Mrs. Bobi Hormas: "The trust enjoys 501(c)(3) status and receives funds from private individuals, estates and large evangelical-fundamentalist organizations. The Trust in turn gives this money to Israel, expressly for Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Mrs Hormas told me the Trust planned to raise a hundred million dollars to purchase land for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the present target area being in the Palestinian town of Hebron... This I was told would help fulfill biblical prophesy. (p,170-171) Populating the Settlements: Funding Jewish Immigration to Israel In addition to buying land and subsidizing settlements, Christian Zionists have played a major role in supporting Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Republics to populate the settlements. From Donald Wagner: John Hagee, pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, announced in February 1997 that his church was donating over $1 million to Israel. Hagee claimed the funds would be used to help resettle Jews from the Soviet Union in the West Bank and Jerusalem. "We feel like the coming of Soviet Jews to Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy," Hagee stated. The Gratefully Grafted Ministries is one of the international organizations that supports immigration to Jerusalem and West Bank settlements through their Israel Fund: All funds are used toward serving the Body of Messiah in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the Galilee and beyond .. Their ministry sponsors the Ebenezer Emergency Fund and Operation Exodus: From 1991 through the Fall of 2004, Ebenezer has brought more than 100,000 olim back to Israel. If their numbers are accurate, and if most of their "olim" end up in the settlements, they could have brought into the West Bank and Gaza Strip as much as 41% of the settlers. (Author's note - Gratefully Grafted Ministries' website changes from time to time, so the quotes on this page my no longer exist in their site.) Christians for Israel is helping the Jews home to Israel from the former Soviet Union. This is an international project known as Operation Aliyah. It is more than just a humanitarian project - it is a divine calling for the Church to assist the Jewish people in their physical return and restoration of the land of Israel. Why does Operation Aliyah exist? In the fulfillment of Biblical Prophecy. The Jewish people were scattered throughout the nations according to God's word, because of their disobedience. God beckons to the gentiles to assist in the return of the Jewish people to Israel. Jeremiah prophesied that the return will be of greater magnitude than the exodus from Egypt and will involve all the tribes of Israel. This time they will remain in their land. I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God. Amos 9:15 Influencing Washington Akiva Eldar, journalist for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, claims that Christian Zionists are pouring money into Israel. "But that's not the only way they are supporting Israeli settlement of the West Bank." The most important thing is that they have so much influence in Washington, that they are so influential in the White House and in Congress. (Bill Moyer'sNOW, June 6, 2003.) Jerry Falwell told 60 Minutes: There are 70 million of us. And if there's one thing that brings us together quickly it's whenever we begin to detect our government becoming a little anti-Israel. Pastor John Hagee's Cornerstone Church raised $1 million dollars in 1977. When asked if he realized that support of Likud's policies and the increase in Jewish settlements was at cross-purposes with US policy, Hagee answered: I am a Bible scholar and a theologian, and from my perspective the law of God transcends the laws of the United States government and the US State Department. The Village Voice, May 18, 2004, documented that National Security Council Near East and North African Affairs director for President George W. Bush, Elliott Abrams, actually met with the Apostolic Congress, a dispensationalist organization, to discuss their theological concerns. Three weeks after that meeting President Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip. From Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy In Focus, June, 2004: It appears, then, that right-wing Christian Zionists are, at this point, more significant in the formulation of U.S. policy toward Israel than are Jewish Zionists, as illustrated by three recent incidents. After the Bush administration's initial condemnation of the attempted assassination of militant Palestinian Islamist Abdel Aziz Rantisi in June 2003, the Christian Right mobilized its constituents to send thousands of e-mails to the White House protesting the criticism. A key element in these e-mails was the threat that if such pressure continued to be placed upon Israel, the Christian Right would stay home on Election Day. Within 24 hours, there was a notable change in tone by the president. Indeed, when Rantisi fell victim to a successful Israeli assassination in April 2004, the administration-as it did with the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin the previous month-largely defended the Israeli action. When the Bush administration insisted that Israel stop its April 2002 military offensive in the West Bank, the White House received over 100,000 e-mails from Christian conservatives in protest of its criticism. Almost immediately, President Bush came to Israel's defense. Over the objections of the State Department, the Republican-led Congress adopted resolutions supporting Israel's actions and blaming the violence exclusively on the Palestinians. When President Bush announced his support for the Road Map for Middle East peace, the White House received more than 50,000 postcards over the next two weeks from Christian conservatives opposing any plan that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The administration quickly backpedaled, and the once-highly touted Road Map essentially died. The Tragedy of the Settlements Soon after the war of 1967, Israel's founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, by that time retired, spoke to the Knesset, Israel's Parliament. His prophetic words were recorded by Jewish scholar Arthur Hertzberg in The Tragedy of Victory. Ben Gurion said: All of the territories that had been captured had to be given back, very quickly, for holding on to them would distort, and might ultimately destroy, the Jewish state. A delegation of United States church leaders visited Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine in 2002. They declared: We emphasize the urgency of the crisis in the region and our sense that the Middle East and, indeed, the entire world, stands on the brink of a catastrophe if a comprehensive peace is not achieved soon. For Jews and Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, life has become cycles of violence, fear and hatred. Much of the world has come to see Israel as an occupier nation, a perception that has isolated Israel in the United Nations and led to anti-semitism around the world. Amidst all the tensions created by the settlements, Jerry Falwell told 60 Minutes, "The Bible Belt in America is Israel 's only safety belt right now." Falwell and the movement he helped create have played a major role in supporting the construction and maintenance of the settlements. They helped bring tens of thousands of Eastern European Jews to Israel to increase the population of the settlements. They have made it politically risky for any American president to promote a peace plan. Because of their passion to see Israel permanently expand its borders, Christian Zionists have added fuel to the flames of anti-semitism worldwide. Their work has also served to isolate Israel, particularly in the United Nations. And then Falwell has the chutzpah to say, "The Bible Belt in America is Israel 's only safety belt right now." Esther Kaplan writes in The Nation, July 12, 2004, The Jewish Divide on Israel, that "American Jews are at least evenly split on how to secure Israel." Postmillennialism and Premillennialism Postmillennialists are not Christian Zionists. They are adherents of Christian Reconstructionism or Dominion Theology. They represent the most extreme constituency of the Religious Right. They are the activists who claim the United States is a "Christian nation," calling for the United States to return to Old Testament Biblical law. They don't believe in the rapture theory, or that we are living in the End Times before Christ returns. Leading Reconstructionist author, the late David Chilton, explains that the last days ended with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D: the expression "the last days" and similar terms, are used in the Bible to refer, not to the end of the physical world, but to the last days of the nation of Israel, the "last days" which ended with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. (Paradise, p12) Gary North, a prolific Christian Reconstruction writer points out in The Unannounced Reason Behind American Fundamentalism's Support for the State of Israel: In order for most of today's Christians to escape physical death, two-thirds of the Jews in Israel must perish, soon. This is the grim prophetic trade-off that fundamentalists rarely discuss publicly, but which is the central motivation in the movement's support for Israel. It should be clear why they believe that Israel must be defended at all costs by the West. Postmillennialists believe that Christians must take domionion, or control over most of the secular institutions in the world in order for Christ to return. Therefore, they encourage Christians who share their biblical worldview to become politically active. From George Grant, a leading postmillennial writer in The Changing of the Guard , Biblical Principles for Political Action: Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less... Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. (pp. 50-51) Christian Zionists Are Premillenniallists Of the many theories about when Christ will return, the most popular is called premillennial dispensationalism. It is depicted in the best-selling Left Behind novels by the Reverend Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Premillennialists believe that since God has a plan, the future is already set in motion. It might seem logical that if events taking place on earth are part of God's pre-ordained plan, then political activism is unnecessary. But the Reverend Tim LaHaye explains why Christians who share his Biblical worldview should be politically active. LaHaye named humanism as the great evil threatening to destroy America and coined the term "pre-tribulation tribulation" to characterize what will come about if humanists are allowed to take control of the government. In 1980 LaHaye published The Battle for the Mind where he asked, "Is a Humanist Tribulation Necessary?" LaHaye answered that the Great Tribulation, is predestined and will surely come to pass. But the pre-Tribulation tribulation -- that is the tribulation that will engulf this country if liberal humanists are permitted to take control of our government -- is neither predestined nor necessary. But it will deluge the entire land in the next few years, unless Christians are willing to become much more assertive in defense of morality and decency than they have been during the past three decades." (Battle for the Mind, 1980, pp. 217-218) Susan Friend Harding, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has published widely on fundamentalist Christianity. She wrote Chapter 3, Imagining the Last Days, the Politics of Apocalyptic Language in the fourth Volume of the Fundamentalism Project. The Fundamentalism Project was sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to study the rise of fundamentalism worldwide. The volumes are published by the University of Chicago Press. Harding writes: LaHaye urged Christians to pray and witness as usual and also to help the victims of humanism ... to join the national drive to register Christian voters ... to run for public office ... (pp. 69) [Falwell] argued that unless born-again Christians acted politically ... they would lose their ... [ability] to fulfill Biblical prophecy. (p. 70) In other words, political involvement is required to get raptured. While pre and post millennialism differs on the subject of Israel, adherents share similar political goals for the United States government: dominion by those Christians who share their Biblical worldview. People of both belief systems support political candidates who support their narrow theocratic agenda, and they oppose the secular government, or godless Constitution that our founders gave us. What does George W. Bush believe? It's not clear. Unlike former President Ronald Reagan, who talked openly about his fascination with Armageddon, President Bush has not mentioned the Rapture or Armageddon. His road map for peace calls for a Palestinian state -- something opposed by Christian Zionists. His domestic policies, however, are consistent with Dominion Theology. (See video by Joan Bokaer about dominionism available to download for free on this web site.) Articles CBS 60 Minutes, Christian's Zion Soldiers, October 6, 2003 Washington Post, The Evangelical-Israeli Connection, March 24, 2004 On The Road to Armageddon, Beliefnet, 2004 From Bill Moyer's Now Christian Zionists in the Holy Land Troubled Lands1 Troubled Lands2 The Jewish Divide on Israel, The Nation, July 12, 2004 The New Yorker, Among the Settlers , May 31, 2004 Frontline, Israel's Next War? April 5, 2005 Destined To Clash: Zionism and the Settlements, The Forward, March 4, 2005 Evangelical Children's Novels Push Conversion of 'Spiritually Empty' Jews, The Forward, March 18, 2005 Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank, New York Times, April 19, 2005 Part IV: Pie in the Sky, Truthout, April 26, 2004 Threat to Divest Is Church Tool in Israeli Fight, The New York Times, August 6, 2005 Evangelicals Get a Piece of the Promised Land, IPS News, October 3, 2005 Discontent among Christian Zionists, Talk To Action, December 9, 2005Updates and more articles Last updated: December-2005 Source .

The Trinity Foundation - Ecclesiastical Megalomania

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Ecclesiastical Megalomania. A taped lecture by David Chilton. The Foundation for Christian Reconstruction, 1992. The cassette tape is available from Chalcedon, Post Office Box 168, Vallecito, California 95251.


In the March Trinity Review 1994 describing how Scott Hahn was the pastor of a Reconstructionist church in Virginia, I commented that someone should write a book about Theonomist/Reconstructionist churches.  The book would be quite illuminating, for it would show how the ideas of Reconstructionism have played themselves out in practice. No one, to my knowledge, has written or is writing such a book, but David Chilton, a popular Reconstructionist author who was a member of the Tyler church for years, has given us a brief description of life in the most famous Reconstructionist church, the one in Tyler, Texas. That church was co-pastored by Ray Sutton--who is now [1994] president of the Philadelphia Seminary, formerly Reformed Episcopal Seminary--and James B. Jordan, who continues to write for Gary North and is now [1994] speaking at events sponsored by R. C. Sproul’s Ligonier Ministries. Of course, Gary North himself was a prominent member of the Tyler church. Chilton left the Tyler church some years ago, but unfortunately he did not entirely leave the Tyler theology. Nevertheless, his account of the events in the Tyler church should be of interest to all. It appears to be quite accurate, for several people have independently corroborated his account. It is impossible to give a full report on Chilton’s talk here, but I have tried to hit the highlights.

Chilton begins his talk by recounting his personal experience in the Jesus Movement in California. He found the same abuse of ecclesiastical authority in that movement as in the Reconstructionist Tyler church.



The Jesus Movement

”In 1970, I was running a coffee house ministry--we had kids on drugs coming in...and we would have rock concerts there and I would preach at them.... There was a young woman who showed up at Calvary Chapel named Sandy. Lovely blonde--she was reputed to be a prophetess--she would float in and prophesy and then she would sing a little bit, play a guitar, and then she would float back out. We were all in awe of her.

”And one evening, very unexpectedly, she showed up at my coffee house, which was some...30 miles away from Calvary Chapel...and came in and we all made way for her, and she came up to the stage, announced that she had some prophecies..., and then she sang and exhorted us with a few things and floated back out. We were all very impressed. A real prophetess of God had been in our midst.Ö

”Well, one night she came in and delivered a prophecy and then she took me aside. I had never spoken to her directly; I was too much in awe--we all were. She was really somebody important. Everybody told us she was important and all the important people in the Jesus Movement gave great deference to her, and so we didn’t really know what to say. So nobody ever talked to her. She just came in, made prophecies, and went out. She came up to me, and she needed to talk to me personally. She took me aside and informed me that God had told her that she and I were to be married....

”Here’s this woman I don’t even know and she tells me that we’re going to get married. And so she looked at me expectantly and so I said, but I don’t love you. And she looked at me with infinite prophetic sadness in her eyes and she said ‘Oh, David, I’m so disappointed. Surely you know by now that you walk by faith, and not by feelings.’ There was no answer to that one. So we walked back into the coffee house a few minutes later and announced our engagement.

”I was miserable and the longer this relationship went on, the more miserable I got. I found that she was very strange in a lot of ways.... I still didn’t know her very well and hardly had conversations with her but she was now...my matriarch or something. But I kept putting this off and so discovering strange things about her. The thing is nothing she said was ever tested. She said it and it was Word and we all submitted to it. And I began to feel that there was something wrong with this but I didn’t know how to oppose it exactly. She was a little bit miffed at me that I was moving too slow on this. She kept wanting to set a date for the wedding and I kept postponing it. And so finally she said, ‘David, we’re going to have to really get this together immediately or just call the whole thing off.’

”I said, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking the same thing. Let’s call the whole thing off.’ And that was the end of that, I thought....

”There were these, what we called Christian Houses. They were Christian communes presided over by an elder--a patriarch, who was maybe all of nineteen years old, who didn’t have a job. Everybody else went out and worked and then they came in and brought [their pay] to him and he sat there meditating all day and telling everybody to move to Oregon and things like that. And so for months afterward, elders of Christian Houses were coming to me and telling me that I had disobeyed God in a very serious way--that I had rejected the Word of God because this woman, Sandy, was the walking Word of God. She was infallible. What she said was the Word of God and we could not question it. She eventually pulled it on a couple of other guys and one of them fell for it and they got married....

”And this really is the whole issue of what became known in charismatic circles and Jesus People circles as the Shepherding Movement. One of the prime theologians behind this is Watchmen Nee, and you can find these kinds of things in his writings where there’s this real heavy top-down authority. Every move you make, every personal decision you make, certainly anything as important as moving from one place to another or anything like that, or getting married, there has to be a decision that comes down from the leadership. You aren’t allowed to make decisions on your own.

”Coming into the Reformed faith for me was a great liberty and a release.... I found to my great delight that one of the most liberating verses in the Bible is 1 John 3:4: ‘Sin is the transgression of the law.’ That may sound like bondage to some people, but it’s not. It’s the most liberating verse in the Bible or just about. Sin is the transgression of the law--that means sin isn’t the transgression of anything else. It’s only the transgression of the law.... But apart from that we aren’t to make legislation for one another. And so I thought that coming into Reconstructionism and being surrounded by fellow Reconstructionists, we would all see things that way. Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way....”


Reconstructionism in Tyler

After relating more stories about the Jesus Movement, all designed to emphasize the hippies’ desire for collective control and their antipathy for individual decision-making, Chilton reports the rise of a “heretic in the making”--a quick study who read Cornelius Van Til and Rousas Rushdoony and began making wild inferences from their views--in the church he attended in California. Chilton next turns to his experience at the Tyler church:

”There was a widow in the church...a little bit eccentric. She had quite a bit of money. She had it in gold and silver and precious stones and things like that. And she didn’t trust banks.... She had read enough newsletters about banks so she didn’t want anything to do with banks. So instead the elders of the church took her money or took her valuables for safekeeping. They stored her money or her valuables--her wealth--so that she would not have to trust it to one of those unregenerate banks out there. And somehow that money just disappeared.... She began to suspect things were going on and she asked for it back from the elders, and they resisted giving it back but eventually they gave her some--they just apologized and said that it was gone.... And this was in the tens of thousands of dollars. This is everything that the woman had.... They eventually gave her a few rusty tools and things they scraped together and that was all they gave her.... No one was ever held accountable for this....

”There was one deacon’s wife--a very sweet woman who was caught up in this and consumed with guilt over what had happened. And I don’t get this from hearsay. I myself witnessed her in tears uncontrollably confessing to this widow what had happened. Very upset. Very overcome. And the widow kept telling her, you know, it’s not your fault, I know it’s not your fault, it’s okay. The deacon’s wife couldn’t stop crying. She was overcome with guilt. Eventually her marriage fell apart. A couple of years ago she committed suicide. This corruption that was going on was covered up.

”Paul says to Timothy that the elders that sin are to be rebuked before all (1 Timothy 5:20). But the elders of this church had a different doctrine.... The elders (one of the ministers of this church in particular) told parents not ever to make the mistake of confessing wrong to their children.... Don’t say I’m sorry because that immediately lowers you in the estimation of your children. They won’t have respect for you anymore....”

But the problems in the Tyler church were not simply conversion of funds and bad advice from the elders. The elders adopted, taught, and enforced a view of the church that has no support in Scripture.



Reconstructionist Ecclesiolatry

”This [notion of not admitting error to children] feeds into a doctrine that they developed there that became known as ‘Father God, Mother Church....’ [Where have we heard this before?-Robbins] The way it works is this: God is your Father; the Church is your Mother. How do you deal with things at home?... You do not allow your children to play off one parent against another.

”Father God, Mother Church. If Mother Church comes down with a decision to her children that is wrong, it is against what God’s law says, God will back up Mother Church.

”Now this sent...shock waves through the church...and people immediately came up with the obvious objection: What if...the church commands you to, say, sacrifice your children on an altar or something...? How far does this go? Does God always back up Mother Church?

”And they said, oh, of course not. Obviously if the church ordered you as a member to sacrifice your children on an altar, that’s not Mother Church anymore. Mother Church at that point has clearly become a harlot. And God will not back up the decisions of a harlot....

”That means, though, that if the church is wrong, if you say that the church is wrong enough for me to disobey, you’re calling the church a harlot.... If Father God will back up Mother Church unless she is a harlot, [and] if you say that Mother Church is wrong on an issue, it had better be an important enough issue because what you have just done...is that you’ve called Mom a harlot. Now if you call my Mom a harlot, you’ll get into trouble. And that’s what happened in Texas....

”One of the things that was going on with this in the [Tyler] church was that we found that the elders of this church were very class conscious.... This church was not primarily built up from the community. That’s how local churches usually are developed. The Gospel takes root in a society and the church is built up from the local constituency. But that’s not what went on in this church. People moved to come to this church. This was a Reconstructionist haven and so they moved to come there. People at great cost to themselves--people gave up good jobs to get lesser paying jobs and so on. And the church had a fair number of rather poor people in the church. The pastor of that church to other people outside the church said that one of the problems that he had to deal with in his church was that there’s so many ‘white trash’ in the church....

”The sermons became increasingly mystical.... I would sit in church Sunday after Sunday and think, I have read Rushdoony, I’ve read Van Til.... You know, I may not be genius level but I’ve got an intellect. And I’m sitting here, I’m rather well-read, probably more well-read than most members of the congregation, and I can’t make head or tail of what this man is saying. I have no idea what he is talking about in the pulpit. And if I can’t figure this out, how are these other people doing?

”Well, one way the other people were coping with it was that they assumed that this has to be really hot stuff. ‘This is profound because I can’t understand it. I’m sitting here in awe and wonder at all these things that are being said from the pulpit, I don’t understand it, but it must be true and it must be very important. And this is life-changing, culture-transforming stuff. I’m right here on the Inner Circle.’ Nobody knew what he [the pastor] was talking about. Bizarre, I mean bizarre interpretations were coming forth from the pulpit....

”The congregation was given to understand that everything that was being said from the pulpit, that here we are at the central point of the Reconstruction of this country, of indeed the world, and the things that are coming forth from this pulpit you won’t hear anywhere else.... As one Reconstructionist writer put it, ‘I want to save Western Civilization at cost plus ten percent, plus postage and handling....’ “


The White-Wall Tire Sermon

”There was this mysticism coming out of the pulpit. Nobody really understood what was going on. But sometimes it would not get mystical at all. There was one memorable sermon put forth by a deacon--he was really the deacon of the church: there were other deacons, but this was the hammer--and he announced at the beginning and gave a little exposition that the job of the deacon is only to do what the elders tell him to do. He has no discretion outside of what the elders tell him to do. Every word that comes out of his mouth, every action that he performs is in complete subservience to the elders.

”At that point, he launched into a talk about how the rest of us are to submit to the elders. We were given to understand, naturally, that everything that he said, he was saying on the direct authority of the elders of the church because he had just said he can’t say anything, he can’t do anything, apart from their direct command. So everything he said was coming from the elders but it was coming through him. And this was playing it safe.... Prime ministers and presidents do this sort of thing all the time.... That kind of game is played. Well, it was played at this church as well. And so when people objected to this, the elders were able to say that they hadn’t really meant any of this and that they weren’t really apprised of what was going on when, in fact, it was exactly the opposite.

”But the statement was made that we are to submit to every whim of the church leadership. Even to disagree in our thoughts is an excommunicable offense.... So we have to discipline our thoughts and bring them into line with what the elders said.... And the deacon gave a very concrete, you might say rubber meets the road example. He talked about white-wall tires. And he said if you have white-wall tires and an officer of the church comes over to your house and commands you to change them to black-walls, you are required to do so, and any disobedience to that command is rebellion against authority, rebellion against God himself. And you can be excommunicated for that....

”I went up to the deacon afterward and gingerly asked him some questions. I pointed to a man in the congregation who was a policeman....

”I said, ‘If that policeman comes over to my house and tells me to get white-wall tires, I will tell him, with all due respect, to jump in the lake, because he doesn’t have the authority to do that. He is exceeding his authority. And if I tell him to get lost, I’m not rebelling against authority, he is rebelling against authority, against his rightful authority. He is exceeding the law by coming over to me and telling me to do something that he has no right to tell me to do. So he’s the rebel. I’m not the rebel if he is telling me to do something that he doesn’t have the right to.’

”So I said, ‘Does church authority--can you--is it possible for you to exceed your authority? Where’s the line? I want to know at what point in my home I can draw a line and say you can’t cross that. You cross that line and we get into a little dust up here. So where’s the line?’

”And he didn’t answer that. He said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you, you know, if you disagree with the decision of the elders--they tell you to get white-wall tires and you disagree with that, you’re at liberty to go around to other people in the church and find out if they disagree. And if you have enough people that disagree, you can kick out the elder.’

”I said, ‘Well, I’ve got two problems with that. Number one, does everything have to be that extreme? Can’t we negotiate? Is it a choice of complete submitting, letting this iron boot step on my face forever, or I overthrow the authority? Can we negotiate here? Can we talk?’

”And he didn’t say anything about that. He just smiled.

”So I said, ‘Okay, my second problem with that is that while I’m disagreeing, and while I’m going around the church canvassing the church to find out who agrees with me and disagrees with the eldership, I am committing innumerable excommunicable offenses. Every time I think a thought against what the elders have said, I can be excommunicated for that. And certainly going around stirring up trouble, saying let’s kick these guys out, I can be excommunicated for that, right?’

”And he just smiled again. And I went all cold inside....

”I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, terrified that I was going to be excommunicated for what I was thinking....

”At that point there was this real uneasy relationship between me and them. I was not on the staff of the church at all but I was, after all, David Chilton. And I wasn’t the most famous member of the church, but people did come to the church to find David Chilton, and I was one of the advertising gimmicks of that church. And here I am going through these intense, gut wrenching struggles over the issue of whether I’m going to be excommunicated simply because of disagreeing over a subject like white-wall tires.”


1984

”But it got worse. There were people who disagreed with school policy.... it had to do with fund raising. We were going to let children go out into the neighborhood and collect money.... Well, there were some people in the church and school who didn’t like that. They said, I tell you what, you come to me and you ask me. If the school needs money, tell me how much you want me to give and I’ll write you a check. But don’t ask me to send my children around to the neighborhood collecting donations from heathens to build up this school....

”Now they did not start a revolution.... They stayed out of it. They didn’t send their children around the neighborhood and on the appointed day, they did not show up. Now I was one of the ones that showed up. I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel comfortable about it, but we went along with it....

”The result of that was they [those who disagreed] began being brought in and interrogated by the elders of the church--interrogating husbands and wives separately, and refusing to allow these proceedings to be tape recorded.... Sometime before this I’d gone out to a bookstore and bought two books that I had read in high school and now was beginning to see the importance of. George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984....

”By 1985 I was sending out resumes very discreetly and quietly, begging and pleading with anybody to accept me anywhere. I was willing to do anything. Just get me out of here. There was a real climate of fear.... A family in our church who had moved about 20 miles away-our church was very much into liturgy...--these people moved away and there was an Episcopal Church nearby.... They decided that they would like to go there to church. So they applied for a transfer and got it.... You can’t imagine the shock waves that went through the church at that point. I had people coming up to me...saying, I didn’t know you could get out.

”At this point there was something over 60 families in the church. And that one family moved out. And when people discovered that you could move out, people did so.... When that began to happen, that original couple was denounced from the pulpit in the most extreme terms, that they had left the faith, they weren’t Christian anymore, and going to Hell....

”Perhaps the leading American Theonomist, if I can distinguish that from Reconstruction, but the leading, the most important, the most erudite American Theonomist was very strongly critical of the church there [in Tyler] and yet in his [California] church he routinely excommunicated people for disagreeing with him, excommunicated people for leaving, excommunicated people for transferring to another church in the same denomination. Think about that. You’re in a church and you transfer to another church in the same denomination and the pastor excommunicates you for that.... There were members of our church there who, in escaping from this [Reconstructionist] church, fled to the relative freedom of the Roman Catholic Church. Think about that....”

There is far more in Chilton’s tape than I can review here. If you are at all interested in tracing out the ramifications of Reconstructionism, this would be a good tape to purchase. Chilton is still enthralled by many Reconstructionist ideas, but he has given us a glimpse into the ecclesiastical megalomania of the most famous Reconstructionist church in the world.


May 1994

Editor’s note: After this speech, David Chilton subsequently suffered a heart attack from which he initially recovered and eventually died. One wonders if the terror and desperation he felt in the Tyler Church contributed to his health problems. After his heart attack, Chilton and his lecture were viciously attacked by Gary North, the chief financier of the Tyler Church, both publicly and privately. This editor was threatened in writing with “destruction” by North for publicizing Chilton’s speech. Several former members of the Tyler Church contacted the editor after we published this Review, saying that Chilton had not told the half of it. They were still frightened of the leaders of the Tyler Church years after they had left.

The Trinity Foundation hereby grants permission to all readers to download, print, and distribute on paper or electronically any of its Reviews, provided that each reprint bear our copyright notice, current addresses, and telephone numbers, and provided that all such reproductions are distributed to the public without charge. The Reviews may not be sold or issued in book form, CD-ROM form, or microfiche. - See more at: http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=184#sthash.rpg4UODY.2MxNnaCE.dpuf

The Trinity Foundation hereby grants permission to all readers to download, print, and distribute on paper or electronically any of its Reviews, provided that each reprint bear our copyright notice, current addresses, and telephone numbers, and provided that all such reproductions are distributed to the public without charge. The Reviews may not be sold or issued in book form, CD-ROM form, or microfiche.

 Copyright © 1998-2011 The Trinity Foundation Post Office 68, Unicoi, Tennessee 37692 Phone: 423.743.0199 Fax: 423.743.2005

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Copyright © 1998-2011 The Trinity Foundation
Post Office 68, Unicoi, Tennessee 37692
Phone: 423.743.0199 Fax: 423.743.2005 Source
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Jesuits Call on Jesuit Alumni in Congress to Protect Central American Children Crossing U.S. Border

July 30, 2014 — The Society of Jesus in the United States (the Jesuit order) is making a personal plea to the 43 Congressional representatives who graduated from U.S. Jesuit high schools and colleges to “uphold the dignity of the human person and the sacredness of human life” when considering policy solutions to address the influx of children fleeing violence in Central America.

In a letter to Speaker John Boehner (Xavier University), copied to Jesuit alumni in Congress, Fr. Thomas H. Smolich, SJ, president of the Jesuit Conference, called on Congress to uphold the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA).

Currently, most unaccompanied minors detained by Border Patrol agents are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services, which coordinates their care and provides an opportunity for children to tell their story to an adult they can trust. As part of his response to the increase in the number of children arriving at the border, President Obama asked Congress to consider weakening the TVPRA in order to fast-track deportations of children. Now, House leadership is seeking to change the law, which would allow a single Border Patrol agent to render a deportation decision and quickly deport a child back to his or her home country.

Fr. Smolich said that a change to the TVPRA, “would result in children having a one-shot chance to disclose their persecution to a Customs and Border Protection agent or officer…” He called any attempt to dilute TVPRA “inhumane and an insult to American values,” particularly since some children might have been “victimized by armed men in uniform.”

The letter also asked Speaker Boehner and Congressional alumni of Jesuit institutions to protect the due process rights of vulnerable children and examine the root causes leading children to flee in unprecedented numbers.

“This is not a new crisis, nor is it primarily at our border. Rather it has been escalating over the last decade…90 children are murdered or disappeared in Honduras every month,” said Fr. Smolich, who also reminds Speaker Boehner that “this is the equivalent of eight children being executed in your Congressional district every thirty days.”

Recalling the assassination of six Jesuits in El Salvador nearly 25 years ago, Fr. Smolich emphasized the Jesuits’ commitment to working with fellow Jesuits and lay partners in Central America, who live the reality of widespread violence. They see “the elementary school teacher murdered when he tried to prevent gangs from forcibly recruiting his students; the young girl pulled from her home, offered as a birthday present to a gang leader and then raped by 16 men; lay colleagues of Jesuits assassinated and harassed by the police.”

Fr. Smolich closed his letter by asking the Speaker and his fellow Jesuit alumni in Congress to “uphold an American tradition” of welcoming “the refugee, the victim of trafficking, the child who has been abused or abandoned.”

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U.S. urged to use provisions of federal law to promote religious rights

Catholic News Service


WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called on Congress and the White House to boost defense of religious rights worldwide by stepping up actions designated under federal law.

Robert P. George told a congressional hearing that provisions of the International Religious Freedom Act, including diplomacy, presidential actions and the negotiation of binding agreements, could be better used to protect religious rights.

A bioethicist and Princeton University professor, George told the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations May 22 that the U.S. could raise the profile of religious persecution through its actions against some of the world's strictest regimes.

"USCIRF recommends that current and future administrations and Congress recommit themselves to the full and robust applications of IRFA's mechanisms. Interest has faded over the past decade and a half, allowing these structures to atrophy," George said.

He also called upon President Barack Obama to fill the position of ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and to raise the profile of the position by ensuring the person serving in it has "direct and regular access" to the secretary of state.

The Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook held the position from May 2011 until resigning in October. The position remains vacant.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., subcommittee chairman, said he called the hearing to call attention to some of the most serious violations of religious rights around the world. He cited incidents such as the imprisonment of Merian Yehya Ibrahim, a Christian expectant mother who is imprisoned in Sudan and facing a death sentence for not renouncing her faith, and growing anti-Semitism in Ukraine since the toppling of President Viktor Yanukovich in February.

He said U.S. leadership on religious freedom "could not be more critical," but noted that the tools to do so "are lightly used."

"History shows that when the U.S. makes religious freedom a priority and that priority is conveyed to countries of particular concern, we have seen conditions with minimal harm to security or economic cooperation," he said.

In his remarks, George urged the State Department follow the USCIRF recommendation to expand its list of countries of particular concern from eight to 16 because of rising evidence of crackdowns on religious practice. George pointed to the recommendations in the commission's 2014 annual report that Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam be added to the list.

Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan currently are designated as countries of particular concern by the State Department.

"Because religious freedom is so central to human identity, we would expect that in places where it is unprotected, societal well-being would suffer," George explained.

"Politically, religious freedom abuses are linked with the absence of democracy and the presence of abuses of other human rights, such as freedom of expression, association and assembly. Economically, religious persecution can destabilize communities and marginalize the persecuted, causing their talents and abilities to go unrealized, robbing a nation of added productivity and reducing its ability to fight poverty and make positive economic strides," he said.

"Wherever religious freedom is abused, peace and security may become ever more elusive," George added.

The commission chairman also called on Congress to pass legislation that would keep the commission in business through Sept. 30, 2019.

George was among several people to testify at the hearing.

Kenneth E. Bowers, secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States, discussed the persecution of people of his faith in Iran. He said that in January, 136 Baha'is were being detained in Iranian prisons.

Los Angeles attorney Amjad Mahmood Khan, a Muslim, told the hearing about persecution of members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan. Ahmadiyya Muslims adhere to the motto of "Love for all, hatred for none" and reject terrorism in all forms, he said.

Under Pakistani law, members of the community are denied the right to self-identify as Muslims, Khan said.

As a result, he explained, Ahmadi Muslim professionals have been targeted by extremist groups, police have failed to provide adequate protection to members of the community and "frivolous" blasphemy cases continue to be filed against members "as a means to settle personal scores and business rivalries."

Bob Fu, president of U.S.-based China Aid, testified that since January the Chinese government has intensified its suppression of house churches in China. In particular, Fu pointed to actions in Zhejiang province where authorities demolished what it called "illegally constructed church buildings" and the crosses on the roof of numerous churches.

He said the actions have spread to other provinces as worshippers have been held in administrative detention, fined, had property confiscated and faced criminal trial.

"The protection of religious freedom and other God-endowed human rights is the foundation of our nation and once was a sacred principle adhered by the U.S. government in diplomacy. Today, however, the U.S. government has given up the principle and its adherence to the sacred belief," Fu told the hearing.

He urged the U.S. to "take actions right away and send a clear, strong message to the Chinese government."

http://www.catholicsentinel.org/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=34&ArticleID=25192

RELATED

*Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey's 4th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 1981
Preceded by	Frank Thompson
Personal details
Born	Christopher Henry Smith March 4, 1953 (age 61) Rahway, New Jersey, U.S.
Political party	Democratic (Before 1978) Republican (1978–present)
Spouse(s)	Marie Smith
Alma mater	College of New Jersey
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Source: Wikipedia

Robert P. George 

Robert P. George
Robert P. George
Born	Robert Peter George July 10, 1955 (age 58)
Nationality	American
Occupation	Professor of jurisprudence

He is of counsel to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee PLLC in Charleston, West Virginia, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

...

George drafted the Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto signed by Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical leaders that "promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage."^[2]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P._George

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Pope Francis invited to address U.S. Congress

Reuters, 13/03 22:08 CET




By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday invited Pope Francis to address a joint session of Congress – an unprecedented event – during an expected visit to the United States next year.

Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have quickly sought to invoke the popular pontiff’s devotion to the poor.

Francis, who on Thursday marked the first anniversary of his election as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, is widely expected to travel to Philadelphia in September 2015 to attend the World Meeting of Families.

Mayors of several other U.S. cities have invited him to visit and Boehner moved to secure a spot on the pope’s itinerary in a letter to sent to the pontiff on Thursday.

“It is with reverence and admiration that I have invited Pope Francis, as head of state of the Holy See and the first pope to hail from the Americas, to address a joint meeting of the United States Congress,” Boehner said in a statement.

While Pope John Paul II visited Washington in 1979 and Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. capital in 2008, the U.S. Senate Historian’s office said it has no record of a pontiff ever addressing Congress.

“Pope Francis has inspired millions of Americans with his pastoral manner and servant leadership, challenging all people to lead lives of mercy, forgiveness, solidarity, and humble service,” added Boehner, the highest-ranking U.S. elected official who is Catholic.

But the Ohio Republican also used the occasion to reiterate Republicans’ views that increased government spending and welfare programs are not the way to meet Americans’ responsibility to care for the poor and the most vulnerable.

He said Americans “have embraced Pope Francis’ reminder that we cannot meet our responsibility to the poor with a welfare mentality based on business calculations. We can meet it only with personal charity on the one hand and sound, inclusive policies on the other.”

BUDGET CRITICISM

Boehner and Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, also a Catholic, have come under fire in recent years from U.S. Catholic bishops over their spartan budgets, which have proposed major cuts to programs aimed at helping the poor, in part to reduce tax rates.

Ryan and Boehner have argued that federal handouts and big government programs violate the Catholic principle of “subsidiarity,” which suggests that human affairs are best handled at the lowest level, closest to those affected. Instead, they advocate that the action of individuals, charities and private institutions and firms should take precedence in caring for the poor.

Previous Ryan budgets backed by Boehner have prompted sharp criticism from U.S. Catholic bishops, who have argued that their cuts would hurt the poor, elderly and sick, conflicting with Church teachings to aid the vulnerable.

Francis, a Jesuit who has taken a vow of poverty, last November called unfettered capitalism as a “new tyranny,” and criticized “trickle-down” economic theory, which is favoured by many U.S. Republicans.

In his first major document authored as pope, he argued that growth encouraged by unfettered financial markets will not result in greater social justice and inclusiveness.

In the same document, the pontiff also lamented growing income inequality around the world, a cause that U.S. Democrats have taken up as they seek to win back more seats in November congressional elections.

“This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation,” Francis wrote.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is also Catholic, welcomed Boehner’s invitation to the pontiff.

“Pope Francis has lived his values and upheld his promise to be a moral force, to protect the poor and the needy, to serve as a champion of the less fortunate, and to promote love and understanding among faiths and nations,” Pelosi said.

President Barack Obama, who is advocating an increase in the U.S. minimum wage, among other social policies, is scheduled to meet with the pope at the Vatican on March 27 during a trip to Europe.

(Reporting by David Lawder; editing by Sandra Maler, David Storey and G Crosse)


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Is the Religious Right responsible for America’s fading allegiance to religion?

Posted: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 13:26 by Terry Sanderson





Terry Sanderson on the Religious Right's baneful attempts to desecularize the United States with a raft of "religious freedom" bills.

There seems to be something of a disconnect in America between the rising number of people who profess to have no religion and the state legislatures that are falling over themselves to enact legislation that is little short of theocratic.

Research is repeatedly showing a sharp rise in the number of Americans who have no religion - the "nones" as they are known to academics who study the changing dynamics of religion.

Many evangelical Christians have been comforting themselves with the idea that even though these "nones" don't associate themselves with a particular church, they are still Christians at heart who worship in their own way.

But David Voas, a sociologist at Essex University, begs to differ. He has found from his own research that the "fuzzy faithful" – those who claim to believe in some kind of unidentified higher power and perhaps go to church at Christmas – are really drifting towards complete indifference to religion and all its trappings.

In his 2008 paper The Rise and Fall of Fuzzy Fidelity in Europe, Professor Voas concluded that those who sometimes define themselves as "spiritual but not religious" are actually more likely to be entirely indifferent to religion – a state of affairs that he says is much more dangerous for the future of religion than outright scepticism.

If the same pattern is repeating in America – and it seems to be – then the hope among evangelicals that the "nones" are really just non-practising, but faithful, Christians is little more than wishful thinking.

But despite this rapid secularisation of American culture, there are bills being brought forward in state legislatures that give mighty privilege to religious believers.

So-called "religious freedom" bills have been proposed in several states, but so far have only succeeded in completing the legislative process in Arizona. And even there the Governor still hasn't signed it into law. [Note: Since this blog was originally published, the Governor of Arizona has vetoed the bill].

But there are other battles over supposed "religious freedom" (which usually translates into religious privilege or the right to discriminate against gay people). The Catholic Church and its acolytes are fighting hard to destroy President Obama's flagship Affordable Healthcare legislation because they object to having to supply contraceptives.

Obama gave them an opt out that would relieve them of that duty, then he gave another one, but still they are not satisfied and continue to attack the Affordable Care Act in the courts. At present, a ruling on the matter is awaited from the Supreme Court.

And this is the problem with religious accommodation. Once one concession is made, another demand quickly follows. Religious hierarchies will never stop until they have complete control.

In Arizona the new law seeks to make it legal for businesses and individuals to deny services to gay people if doing so would offend their religious conscience. There could be all kinds of unintended consequences from this legislation (as well as it likely being unconstitutional).

So why is it happening? Why this sudden surge of bills seeking to give religion special privileges in American society? To get religion back into schools, to control what books can be read in colleges (if they are deemed anti-religious) and to promote creationism over evolution in schools?

The answer is that the Republican Party – fused as it now is with the Religious Right – is seeking revenge for the success of gay marriage campaigns around the nation.

As it realises it has lost the war against gay marriage, the Religious Right seeks compensation in the form of "religious freedom" bills, the ultimate aim of which is to make sure gay marriage becomes impractical, despite being legalised.

By putting more and more barriers up against gay people achieving equal rights before the law, the Religious Right and its Republican representation in politics now seeks to make life almost impossible for gay couples in some parts of the country.

But this may end up being a case of making the same mistake twice.

During the last election campaign, the Republicans/Religious Right came to realise that the tide of history had turned against their opposition to gay marriage, and they pragmatically toned down the poisonous anti-gay rhetoric that had been so prominent on their previous electoral platform.

After being trounced again at the ballot box by Obama, they have regrouped and their new plan is to derail gay marriage wherever and however they can with these supposed "religious freedom" bills. But hiding behind the high-falutin' claims of "protecting the liberty of believers to practice their faith" lies rank bigotry.

If they imagine this is going to revive their fortunes they are sadly mistaken. Much of America was repelled by their vile homophobia last time, and it is unlikely it will be impressed with it this time.

The fanatic evangelicals with their hysterical televangelists and lying propagandists are turning off young people, not just from Republicanism, but from religion in general.

The "nones" are growing, but the Religious Right does not seem yet to have made the connection between that trend and their hate-mongering. They have made religion toxic and Americans are fleeing it in their thousands.

Terry Sanderson is the President of the National Secular Society. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the NSS.


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God's Next Army

alexeykh

Uploaded on Nov 13, 2009


God's Next Army investigates Patrick Henry College (PHC), set up five years ago in Virginia, near Washington DC. Its mission is to train young fundamentalist Christians to become the next generation of America's cultural and political leaders. Though the separation of church and state is enshrined [OK, it's only strongly implied - alexeykh] in the US Constitution, with financial backing from the evangelical community the college aims to 'rechristianise' America; to 'preserve the world from the sinfulness of man'...
http://www.channel4.com/culture/micro...

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The Greatest Conspiracy in History

Posted on November 13th, by admin in Archives


Few could ever imagine the idea but the Bible says the destiny of those living at the close of earth’s history will decide their fate based on choosing to worship the Creator of all living things or going along with the laws of mankind for the peace of mankind. There will only be two sides to this issue.

Interestingly enough, in and around the year 1888 there was a bill presented to the congress of the United States (second beast of Revelation 13) to enforce or honor the first day of the week. This was known as the ‘Blair Bill’. This was the type of what Jesus referred to as ‘when you see the armies encompassing’… know that it is near. This was the antitype of the first siege and a warning to all watching to flee and prepare for the crisis. Few listened.

Now in 2011, it is that same group who are picking up the pace to get this Lord’s day agenda pushed into congress. Based in Atlanta, Georgia the Lord’s Day Alliance is built to restore society’s view of the first day of the week or what they call ‘the Sabbath’. I want to quote from their most recent journal:


from the section:

Summary of Implications
for Sabbath observance today- LINK TO FULL MAGAZINE

The importance of Deuteronomy is that it makes clear that the law was never intended to be a mechani- cal list of inflexible rules. Rather, it provides entry into the whole matter of true piety and true morality. It pro- mulgates a worldview encompassing what is entailed in an appropriate approach to God and what is entailed in an appropriate treatment of and relationship to one’s neighbor. It is easy to see why Jesus endorsed the sum- mary of the law offered by the Jewish lawyer: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ ” (Luke 10:27).

Sabbath observance plays a significant role in this endeavor. If we have to be reminded, commanded, or coerced to observe it, it ceases to serve its function.

Interestingly enough this sounds correct yet it is not their true agenda. What was then known as the ‘American Sabbath Union’ is now known as the Lord’s Day Alliance.

Another thing that really threw me off was how the article quoted the president of the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary Neils-Erik Andreasen. Interesting.

Why is this happening?

Because Lucifer was kicked out of heaven because he declared that God’s Law was arbitrary and not needing to be kept for true peace. The truth is that the last great conspiracy to come on the world will be Lucifer demanding a day of worship honoring him rather than the Creator on His Seventh-day Sabbath. You can be a Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and keep the other 9 commandments in essence but not the 4th.

The following is from my friend that shared this all with me:

So the Sunday Alliance which is the same group behind the Blair bill in 1888, first time a national Sunday Laws was attempted (first siege) is getting ready to mount the second siege of Jerusalem (this is in prophecy ask me if study needed). The quote from their website makes the timing clear and we know prophetically this will happen. Interestingly the same group that led the charge the last time is mounting the charge again. Time is short.

“Today, The Lord’s Day Alliance stands on the edge of a great opportunity to proclaim the message of the Sabbath (SUNDAY), a message of spiritual renewal and personal well being, in this fast-paced 24/7, 21st century American culture.”

Here are some recent quotes from the Roman Catholic Church:

“Sunday is an obligation for all the faithful which brings authentic freedom enabling them to live each day, that it is the Lord’s day, that it is a day to be sanctified, and those who do not keep it suffer the loss of an authentic sense of Christian freedom and the loss of being the children of God, that Sunday is the primordial holy day and is meant to be kept holy, a day of rest from work, which hopefully will also be recognized by civil society by law.”(Sacramentum Caritatis: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist as the Source and Summit of the Church’s Life and Mission, Given by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, February 22, 2007, the Feast of the Chair of Peter.)

“Without the Lord’s day, we cannot live, that meeting with the Lord only occurs on the specific day of Sunday, that life does not flourish without Sunday, and that Sunday is a day of rest, of freedom and equality for all the world.”(Eucharistic Celebration Homily of Pope Benedict XVI , Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, Sunday, September 9, 2007.)

“Encouraged America to exercise its leadership within the international community based on the common moral law [Sunday holiness].”(Address of Pope Benedict XVI to H.E. Mrs. Mary Ann Glendon, New Ambassador of the United States of America to the Holy See, Friday, February 29, 2008.)

“The world has greater need of hope for peace, justice and freedom, which can never be delivered without obedience to the law of God [Sunday holiness].”(Video-Message of the Pope Benedict XVI to Catholics and People of the United States of America on the Occasion of the Upcoming Apostolic Journey, April 15-21, 2008.)

The last thing to add to the pertinence of the moment is the recent call of the Vatican to establish a global political authority that could oversee a new global monetary system.

Source

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