ARP Gives Nothing but Bare Assertions on Kinism … Where’s the Beef?

“Kinism is backwards theology; it is man trying to justify his own prejudices with the Bible, rather than letting his prejudices be transformed by it.”

2026 ARP Study Committee Report

1.) Note, there is no definition of Kinism in this report that a Kinist would recognize as Kinist therefore what is being reported against is a straw man.

2.) If Kinism is a backwards theology then all our fathers were backwards theologians since, as the anthologies, “Who Is My Neighbor,” and “A Survey of Racialism in Sacred History,” both demonstrate with quote after quote from the centuries of the Christian faith that Kinism is what the church has believed in all times and in all places where it has been orthodox. The ARP and other NAPARC churches are seeking to overturn the Christian faith in the name of Cultural Marxis egalitarianism

3.) Kinism has demonstrated that it is in keeping w/ the prejudices of the Bible. In point of fact, to be anti=Kinist is to be worse than an infidel we are told by Scripture.

4.) Only someone with prejudices against what the Bible teaches on Kinism could conclude that men who teach what is consistent with the Bible on Kinism are men “trying to justify their own prejudices with the Bible, rather than letting their prejudices be transformed by it.”

5.) Men who say what the ARP has said are Anathematizing the Christian faith and are serving the interests of Cultural Marxist egalitarianism.

Dr. Stephen Wolfe on How Nations Change … McAtee Critiques Wolfe

“Nations change by elites via institutions, not by reforming everyday life or ‘focusing on the family’ or reforming the church or ‘gospel-changed hearts.’ We should do all that. But it isn’t sufficient. Nations change by elites via institutions.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

1.) This is a Pelagian assertion because it suggests that it is the Institutional environment that creates the elites who in turn create the Institutional environment, who alone can change the Institutional environment.

2.) Why would the elites change institutions unless they first experience a “gospel-changed heart?”

3,) Wolfe wants to place the emphasis on elites but elites are not going to change Institutions unless those elites are first visited with the Gospel.

4.) Wolfe’s message here is that it is NOT individuals that are the problem but the institutions. This is Pelagianism with its teaching that it is the environment that is the problem. Change the environment, so Pelagianism goes, and you will change the individuals. Wolfe is teaching Pelagianism. If Wolfe really believes all this Wolfe is a Pelagian and not Reformed.

5.) Wolfe is giving a top-down explanation of how a culture is changed and this explanation is completely devoid of a bottom up dynamic. The simple truth is that cultural change is both a bottom up and top-down movement that includes from the inside out (change hearts) and that unless all this happens simultaneously cultural change is not possible.

6.) Wolfe’s approach guarantees top-down tyranny forcing change on a population that will bring substantive push-back.

7.) For the Pelagian Wolfe the only thing that must happen is elites changing the environment but how will elites do that apart from being raised in Christian families, Reformed Churches, and the reforming of everyday life. Per Wolfe only changed Institutions by elites is sufficient for change.

8.) Note, that the disagreement here isn’t that elites must change Institutions. The disagreement here is that elites do so apart from Christian families, changed hearts, and Reformed churches.

Natural Law thinking is inherently infected with humanism and this post by Wolfe demonstrates that truth yet again.

Rev. J. D. Greear & The Fear of Christian Government

“At the same time, Greear warned against movements that seek to use government authority to enforce Christianity itself.”

Neil Shenvi X Post

1.) Why doesn’t Rev. J. D. Greear warn against movements that seek to use government authority to enforce humanism itself?

2.) Since there is no such thing as religious neutrality, all governments seek to use the government authority to enforce some specific religion. As such, why shouldn’t Christian government be used to enforce Christianity itself?

3.) All governments legislate, adjudicate and execute laws for a people. All law is based on some morality, and all morality is based on some religion. Because the above is true all governments routinely and inescapably enforce specific religion(s). Greear is not a wise man to suggest that a Christian people should not advocate for Christian government that enforces Christianity.

4.) Because the “reasoning” of men like Rev. J. D. Greear is so common in the clergy the laity must realize that the clergy is not a trustworthy place to gain wisdom.

On People & Funerals

In attending various funerals one has a real glimpse into worldviews if only in the way they are conducted. A Lutheran funeral tells me a great deal about the way Lutherans think. A Wesleyan funeral tells me a great deal about the way Wesleyans think. The same is true of Pentecostal, Reformed, Catholic funerals. They all serve as a clear window into the belief system and the behavioral consequences of that belief system into those attending who belong to one of the faith expressions.

Of course, the same is true about pagan funerals where it is clearly seen that the people are without God and without hope.

I find it all very fascinating. I often have to remind myself at a funeral that I am not there to analyze but to pay my respects.

I worked for a funeral home for awhile and so was exposed to a large number of funerals. I had to quit that job because what I was seeing and hearing at funerals were working depression in me because they were so shallow and hopeless.

I went to a Holiness funeral recently. Large number of references to God, the power of God, the Love of God, the change wrought by God in the deceased’s life. However, the word “Cross” was not mentioned once.

I went to a liberal Reformed funeral once. I asked the Pastor afterward, “are you a Buddhist?”

I attended a Pentecostal funeral once — this one really stands out — and in the middle of the funeral some lady spoke in tongues followed by her husband’s interpretation of the tongues spoken by his wife. I don’t remember the interpretation. I do remember thinking, “even here, in this setting?”

I officiated at my father’s funeral and clearly articulated that I did not know of any time my father embraced Christ. Afterwards, a woman who was a complete stranger to me, came up to me and as clearly agitated she kept insisting that “your father will one day be the angel who comes to collect you when you are dying.” I remember thinking, “Lady, that would likely not bode well for me.” The point here is that the woman was quite uncomfortable with the idea that some people might not be in heaven.

I attended a funeral once of someone who perished in a horrible car accident and the first words out of the minister’s mouth were… “I want to let everyone here know that God had nothing to do with this.” That was the funeral that pushed me into quitting working at the funeral home.

When I was 17 I attended a funeral of a remote family member. I was concerned for their soul and so I asked the minister afterward if he thought that my family member had trusted Christ. He smiled at me condescendingly and asked, “Why would you be concerned about that?” That response has always stuck in my memory.

In South Carolina I co-officiated a funeral where the Pastor kept repeating in the eulogy … “James loved his truck.” After each statement that “James loved his truck” the Pastor would tell of how it was known that “James loved his truck.” It is a standing joke now in the McAtee household to say … “Yeah, but James loved his truck.”

More than a few times in the ministry where I have co-officiated a funeral service I was compelled to correct some really bad theology. I never said “What you just heard was shinola.” Most often what they had heard that was shinola was something like, “And if people liked you when you die you’ll also go to heaven.” I would make it clear when I spoke that “in life as well as in death our only hope is the atoning Cross work of Jesus Christ.” Some of my most satisfying moments as a minister was in these kinds of settings someone unknown to me would come up to me afterwards, pull me aside and say, “Thank you for setting the record straight.” I have had more than a few co-officiants refuse to talk to me after a funeral because they understood that I verbally stepped on their toes.

It’s also worked in the other direction. I once had to do a funeral for a suicide victim. The family felt shame. The sister even felt compelled to stand up during the funeral and say that her brother wasn’t a bad person and that people shouldn’t think that because he killed himself that he was in hell. I was able, during the funeral sermon, to say that while suicide is sin, it has never been an unpardonable sin and that doubtless heaven will have many occupants who committed suicide. The issue always is, have we embraced the Cross and trusted Christ alone for forgiveness.

Honestly, it has been my observation that most funerals are about the people attending more than either about the deceased or about the Triune God. More often than not funerals across the board, regardless of denominational trappings are quite man-centered. Praise God there are abundant exceptions.

Funerals are one of the clearest windows into the way people think, live, and act. I think it is because the pressure is on, stress is high, and mortality is staring at everybody. Not only a window into the lives of the family of the deceased but windows into those who put the funeral together and who are participating in the funeral.

Show me a funeral and I will tell you the theology and worldview of those in charge and those attending who are comfortable or uncomfortable with the funeral.

Theology remains the Queen of the Sciences.

Andrew Sandlin Wrong on America Not Being Race or Place

“Not race or place, but ideas, have always been at the root of what it means to be an American.”

Andrew Sandlin
2023

This was certainly not true of the founders as we will see below. It only became true when that criminal proto-Marxist Lincoln fundamentally changed the definition of America with the support of the immigrant Revolutionary German Forty-Eighters.

So, sans Sandlin America was a race and place and not merely about ideas. America was founded as a ethno-nation.

That was the original intent. Yes, it was a confederacy but all members of the confederacy were European in their origin. American was a nation where all the European cousins married one another. So … if you’re not non-Jewish European, you’re not American. And you can probably make the case that originally Eastern Europeans need not apply.

“The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.” — George Washington

Or this description of the “new American man”:

(America qua nation began as a mostly English but also Western, European people:)

“…whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes… What, then, is the American, this new man? He is either a European or the descendant of a European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. . . . The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared.”

John Hector St. John de Crèvecœur
Letters from an American Farmer in 1782 

Or John Jay’s comment that American are a single people:

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, without which a common and free government would be impossible.”

~~John Jay, Federalist #2

Or John Dickinson:

“Where was there ever a confederacy of republics united as these states are…or, in which the people were so drawn together by religion, blood, language, manners, and customs?”

~~John Dickinson, Delaware delegate to the constitutional convention

Similar quotes could be found from Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris as well as later figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge.