Category: Announcements

“The (Pope’s) trip begins in Washington, and the White House has announced that the pope and the president will “continue their dialogue on the interplay of faith and reason.”

Announcement concerning the upcoming Papal visit to America

Pope Benedict XVI — “Tell me Mr. President how do you understand the interplay of faith and reason?”

President Bush — “Well, all I know is that I am the decider. I mean — I know that I decide… er, uh, rather I decide that I know.”

Pope Benedict XVI — “I see. Well, Mr. President do you decide on the basis of faith or reason or some combination thereof.”

President Bush — “I was a ‘C’ student at Yale, and only crawled out of the bottle when I was in my 30’s. In my 40’s I ran a baseball team. Following that I parlayed my name recognition, my father’s connections, and my recently established sobriety into the Texas Gubernatorial Mansion. What do I know of either faith or reason?”

Pope Benedict XVI — “I thought we were going to talk about the interplay of faith and reason.”

President Bush — “That’s boring. Hey, I’ve got an idea, I’ll call up Karl Rove and the three of us can talk about Machiavellian manipulation. Now, there’s a conversation to which I can contribute.”

Pope Benedict XVI — “But Mr. President I thought you said ‘that Jesus was your favorite political philosopher.’ Certainly you must have some thoughts on the interplay of faith and reason.”

President Bush — “Ok, Ok, already…, anybody ever told you that when you latch on to something you’re like a dog with a bone? When I said that ‘Jesus was my favorite political philosopher,’ I had faith that statement would manipulate the reason of the religious right. That is the closest to faith and reason interplay that I get B-16. Hey, want a shot of Wild Turkey?”

Pope Benedict XVI — “No thank you. I’ve already hit the sacramental wine to hard today.”

Today I received from Amazon a book from a good friend. The gift made me reflect how fortunate I’ve been when it comes to the generosity of friends and books.

My friend Mark Chambers, my most recent benefactor, has gifted me with many previous volumes that has helped me to grow in my understanding of post-millennialism and covenant theology. My friend Joe Graber, upon getting out of the ministry gave me a large part of his library from which I have yet to make a sizable dent. I have read much of the Rushdoony material that Joe gave me and have profited greatly by it. The friends among the people I have been privileged to pastor have been great at gifting to me book money. The Timmis, Trammell, Martens, Martens, Ehnis, and Bacon families all have seen the importance that their Pastor have the opportunity to be well read and have reached into their own pockets to make sure that I am. My friend Bob Heath recently grabbed some great books out of my arms that I was collecting to purchase and brought them to the sales clerk and paid for them. My friend, Carmon Friedrich, who I have never even met, shipped from California a book on paedo-communion that I immediately devoured. My friend Anthony Lombardi (who doubles as my Father-in-law) upon retiring from the ministry just gave me his whole library.

When I received this most recent unexpected book gift in the mail I was once again overwhelmed at how generous people have been to me. I certainly don’t deserve such kindnesses. I only wish I could consume all this material faster and then have the ability to think more deeply about what I am reading. Further, I pray that I will be given the ability to communicate and articulate in an understandable way what I learn from what I read. I sense such a responsibility to be able to adequately express all that is being impressed upon me through my reading.

To all those who have contributed to my education, I thank you. I don’t deserve your tender ministrations on my behalf. I only ask for your prayers that I might be able to both better absorb my reading and be able to better teach what I’ve learned.

“We must fight, whatever may be the danger to us; for what we have to consider is whatever may be the danger to us; for what we have to consider is not whether we shall accept and receive a new lord, as if our king were dead; the case is quite otherwise. The Norman has given our land to his captains, to his knights, to all his people, the greater part of whom have already done homage to him for them; they will all look for their gift if their duke become our king; and he himself is bound to deliver up to them our goods, our wives, and our daughters: all is promised to them beforehand.They come, not only to ruin us, but to ruin our descendants also, and to take from us the country of our ancestors. And what shall we do — whither shall we go, when we have no longer a country?”

English Chieftains Response To
William The Conqueror’s Surrender Terms Before The Battle Of Hastings

Chronicled by Augustin Thierry

History of the Conquest of England by the Normans; Its Causes and Its Consequences in England, Scotland, Ireland and On the Continent Part One (Paperback)

When William the Conqueror’s spokesman laid down the terms of surrender before the English court those English nobles realized that they only had two choices. They could one one hand die fighting to defend their liberties as Saxons or on the other hand they could surrender and willingly consign themselves and their descendants to Norman slavery for generations. They decided to fight — and fight they did like men realizing that defeat meant not only personal loss but the loss of all that their fathers had handed them as well as the loss of all that they could ever bequeath to their descendants.

The Norman’s likewise fought like possessed men. Like, the Saxon, they realized that the Battle of Hastings was one in which there could be no peaceful surrender. With the channel at their back there was no returning home. Flight in battle would only mean later being hunted down like wild game by righteously offended Saxons.

And so Christian men of honor on both sides fought for their King, their Fathers and their children. In the end, Harold’s Saxon troops, exhausted from only recently defeating the invading Norse Army of King Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge in the North, were themselves defeated. The Saxon King Harold along with his brothers Gurth, and Leofwine were killed at Hastings with the bodies of a great host of their own thanes, knights, and peasants as well as 25% of the invading force laying dead and dying about them.

The battle waged from the early morning well into the evening hours. The Saxon line held until it was broken by Saxon soldiers pursuing what was thought to be Norman retreat. The Normans, however, had used retreat as a ruse to draw the Saxon soldiers from their impenetrable defenses and once the Saxon soldiers had broken their defensive phalanx the Normans turned and breached the Saxon lines, eventually reaching and decimating the house and Nobles of King Harold, as well as the already brutally injured King Himself.

Edward Shepherd Creasy in his book, ‘Fifteen Decisive Battles Of The Western World’ insists that the victory of William the Conqueror though a trial for the Saxon people, in the long run beneficently shaped the West, if only because the oppression that the Anglo-Normans brought upon the Anglo-Saxons was eliminated and the two people made one by their coming together to establish the English liberties by signing the Magna Carta at Runnymede.

For our purposes I want to refer back to the quote with which we began. I pray daily that we alive in this country might be able to summon the Anglo courage to fight, realizing like they did long ago that a refusal to fight means the loss of our country, our heritage, and our ability to pass on a Christian way of thinking and living to our posterity. Our misfortune is that we don’t see the alternatives as starkly as the Anglos of old did. We don’t have an armed host encamped against us and so we think that we have options besides those Anglos in the 11th century. We fail to realize the traitors in our midst who would sell out our country to an unarmed immigrant host in hope of handing us over to globalist overlords. Just as much as the Normans at Hastings these Globalist have promised our land to their captains, to their knights, and to all their people. Should this fascist alliance of Global Corporatism & Statist Politicians succeed in their treachery and should we as Americans refuse to fight, as the Anglo-Saxons did, our goods, our wives, and our daughters will be forfeit to their wicked designs. This Fascist alliance of Republicans, Democrats and Globalists Mega Corportists not only intend to ruin us, but to ruin our descendants also, and to take from us the country of our ancestors. And what shall we do — whither shall we go, when we have no longer a country?

If we are to lose all of this then let us lose it like the brave Anglo-Saxons against William the Conqueror — let us lose it fighting to the last man, woman and child.

This morning I learned that it is dangerous for a pastor’s career aspirations to publicly record his convictions on a website. It seems that once people know what you believe it will limit the options for career moves that one might have otherwise had if they had not foolishly placarded their convictions for the world to see.

I’m not sure why a minister would want a pulpit that they gained by hiding their convictions but apparently that is what a wise person does these days. I guess that maybe it’s something like a political candidate running for a political office. A candidate may have their convictions but the last thing in the world they want to do is allow those convictions to be widely known for if they are widely known then the people who don’t have those convictions will be against them. Better to run a campaign where you keep everybody guessing about what you really believe, for in such a way you theoretically garner more votes. I think they call it being a ‘stealth candidate.’

Zoinks Batman… what has it come to when ministers are thinking of their careers in the way that politicians think about their campaigns?

Coming off a really bad Good Friday service. Your criticisms of the therapeutic nature of the modern gospel were wonderful – and dead on. I would love for you to expand on this in another post – revivalism is something that has poisoned so much of our mind space, so much of our church – in other words, I know it bothers me, I believe I know when I see it, but articulating it is quite another story.

A few good books to get on this subject is, “Revival & Revivalism’ by Iain Murray,’Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism’ and ‘Fundamentalism and American Culture’ by George Marsden, ‘The Democratization of American Christianity’ by Nathan Hatch and finally ‘The Methodist Revolution’ by Bernard Semmel.

First, we should note that Revivalism finds its origin just about the time that Romanticism / Transcendentalism as philosophical schools are starting to wash across American Universities and American Culture. Romanticism, as a belief system, emphasized the emotions, in correction to what it believed to be the arid rationalism to which it was responding. In my estimation Methodist Holiness Revivalism (and later its cousin Pentecostalism) in its American expression partakes of this emotional based Romanticist school of thought. So one sign of Revivalism is that it is emotionally based. Now, of course, this is not to say that emotions have no place in the Christian life (I heartily recommend J. Edwards ‘Religious Affections’),but classic mainstream revivalism cannot survive without large dollops of emotionally driven energy — emotionally driven energy that most often gets associated with ‘The work of The Holy Ghost,’ and sometimes gets labeled as ‘Feeling the Holy Ghost.’

This emotionalism, in its more deleterious forms, I can’t imagine looking a great deal different then what Elijah saw on Mt. Carmel when the Priests of Baal were whooping and hollering trying to get Baal’s attention.

This characteristic trademark of Revivalism then has a few implications. First, it tends to practice sentimentalism to an absurd degree. It is said that one of the ‘come down to the altar’ songs for one of the 20th century revivalist (I think Moody but I can’t remember for sure) was ‘Mother I’m Coming Home.’ The context would be that the Revivalist would hit heavy on how sinners had left their parents teaching and how Mother was in heaven, and wouldn’t it be nice for Mom if you accepted Jesus. After that type of message then the Revivalist song master would take up ‘Mother I’m Coming Home.’ I was exposed to an instance of sentimentalism recently when attending a funeral everyone was asked to hold hands and while singing the closing song in the memory of the deceased. Upon reading that sentence it doesn’t sound like much, but if you had been there with me you would have likewise seen the sentimentalism. We still see that type of sentimentalism today from your garden variety Evangelical. As before, there is nothing wrong with proper sentiment but it is this syrupy sentimentalism that is characteristic of revivalism. Second, emotionalism also drives anti-intellectualism which is a hallmark character of Revivalism. If you attend a Revivalistic Church don’t count on Sermons or Sunday School classes teaching on things like ‘the nature of the Atonement,’ or, the history of the Creeds, or, a Christian theory of knowledge or anything like that.

This brings us to the therapy angle. When a Church is driven by emotionalism and is anti-intellectual then the means of solving problems in the congregation is therapy — the goal of which is to make people feel (there is that emotional angle again) good. Further if you know anything about modern Christian versions of Christian counseling (therapy) you know that one could fill dump-trucks with the sentimental bilge that comes out of that context. Seeking to avoid the danger of being extremist, I will mention again, that I suppose there are times when therapy is a good thing (though I am far less sure about that than I am about the proper place of emotion and sentiment in the Christian life) but the problem is when therapy is used as an avoidance technique to do the heavy lifting of thinking God’s thoughts after Him, or when it is used as a means to lock people out of leadership positions because they don’t have enough emotion or sentiment.

A great contemporary example of what I’ve mentioned here was Promise Keepers. Since, when the circus comes to down, one always needs to go once to see the Elephant, I attended a PK conference. Emotionalism, Sentimentalism, and Anti-intellectualism were on parade. The Gospel proclamation was just plain stupid, as was most of the other presentations.I had people whooping and hollering all around me while I was calmly sitting in my chair reading a book. They looked sympathetically at me like I was someone who was missing out on the Holy Ghost.

So the first character of Revivalism is emotionalism which then brings to fore both sentimentalism and anti-intellecutalism, and the three of them together go a long way towards explaining our Therapeutic culture.

The Next entry we will look at Revivalism and the Cross.