Category: Culture

Was The Early Church Uniformly Anabaptist In Its Pacifism? Did The Early Church Always Yield To Their Civil Magistrates?

Alexander Shield a 16th century Covenanter, speaking on the post-advent gospel church early history as concerning the early church resisting their enemies

“To come to the history of the gospel dispensation: It is true in that time of the primitive persecutions under heathen emperors, this privilege of self-defence was not so much improved or contended for by Christians, who studied more to play the martyrs, than to play the men… yet even then, instances are not wanting of Christians resisting their enemies, and of rescuing their ministers, &c., As they are found on record.

(1.) How some inhabiting Mareota, with force rescued Dionysius, of Alexandria, out of the hands of such as were carrying him away, about the year 255.

(2.) How about the year 310, the Armenians waged war against Maximus, who was come against them with an army because of their religion.

(3.) How about the year 342, the citizens of Athanasius their minister, against Gregorius the intruded curate and Syrianus the emperor’s captain, who came with great force to put him in.

(4.) {688} How about the year 356, the people of Constantinople did in like manner stand to the defense of Paulus, against Constantius the emperor, and killed his captain Hermogenes; and afterwards, in great multitudes, they opposed the intrusion of the heretic Macedonius.

(5.) How, when a wicked edict was sent forth to pull down the churches of such as were for the clause of one substance, the christians that maintained that testimony resisted the bands of soldiers, that were procured at the emperor’s command by Macedonius, to force the Mantinians to embrace the Arian heresy; but the Christians at Mantinium, kindled with an earnest zeal towards Christian religion, went against the soldiers with chearful minds and valiant courage, and made a great slaughter of them.

(6.) How, about the year 387, the people of Cesarea did defend Basil their minister.

(7.) How, for fear of the people, the lieutenant of the emperor Valens durst not execute those 80 priests who had come to supplicate the emperor, and were commanded to be killed by him.

(8.) How the inhabitants of mount Nitria espoused Cyril’s quarrel, and assaulted the lieutenant, and forced his guards to flee.

(9.) How, about the year 404, when the emperor had banished Chrysostom, the people flocked together, so that the emperor was necessitated to call him back again from his exile.

(10.) How the people resisted also the transportation of Ambrose, by the command of Valentinian the emperor; and chused rather to lose their lives, than to suffer their pastor to be taken away by the soldiers.

(11.) How the Christians oppressed by Baratanes king of Persia, did flee to the Romans to seek their help. And Theodosius, the emperor, is much praised for the war which he commenced against Chosroes king of Persia, upon this inducement, that the king sought to ruin and extirpate those Christians in his dominions, that would not renounce the gospel.”

Quotes on Social Engineering Achieved via Television, Government Schools, and Pharmacology

Man’s conquest of [human nature] means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce.

-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, (London: HarperCollins, 1999) p. 46

…[T]he man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.

Ibid, -Lewis, p. 37

If the system succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human behavior to assure its own survival, a new watershed in human history will have been passed. …industrial-technological society will be able to pass those limits [of human nature] by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human beings will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.

-Theodore Kaczynski, Industrial Society & Its Future, (Filiquarian Publishing) pp. 68-69

…[N]ew technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using that technology… [S]uppose a… treatment is discovered that, without undesirable side-effects, will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of people choose to undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be reduced, so that it will be possible for the system to increase the stress-producing pressures… Something like this seems to have happened already… [M]ass entertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on which most of us have become dependent.

-Kaczynski, p. 71

Our society tends to regard as a “sickness” any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because when an individual doesn’t fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a “cure” for a “sickness” and therefore as good.

-Kaczynski, pp. 70-71

Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction?… Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.

-Kaczynski, p. 65

Now let us consider another kind of drug — still undiscovered, but probably just around the corner — a drug capable of making people happy in situations where they would normally feel miserable. Such a drug would be a blessing, but a blessing fraught with grave political dangers. By making a harmless chemical euphoric freely available, a dictator could reconcile an entire population to a state of affairs to which self-respecting human beings ought not to be reconciled…

-Aldous Huxley, cited in Jim Keith, Mind Control, World Control, (Kempton: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997) p. 95

There will be in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing… a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies.

-Huxley, cited in Keith, p. 95

The twenty-first century… will be the era of the World Controllers… The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Under a scientific dictatorship education will really work — with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.

-Huxley, cited in Keith, pp. 95-96

[Education] is becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child’s development.

-Kaczynski, p. 66

What if there is no “problem” with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right?… Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?

[In 1934,] Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years… Cubberley… had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: “Our schools are … factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned…. And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”

[Schools are] laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands.

We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults.

-John Taylor Gatto, “Against School”

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?

-Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew and the godfather of consumerism

Two institutions at present control our children’s lives – television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, non-stopping abstraction. In centuries past the time of a child and adolescent would be occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to become a whole man or woman.

-John Taylor Gatto, “Why Schools Don’t Educate”

Two Cosmologies

“I stand before you as a 40-year-old, single, celibate, and chaste yet openly gay man . . . no longer willing to be silent,” Bowman told the hushed delegates.

Saying he had been excommunicated from another church, Bowman added, “I want to thank this denomination for being affirming of somebody like me.”

Delegates gave him a standing ovation.

Journalist Report From CRC Synod 2013

“All the crosscurrents of present-day liberation struggles are subsumed in the gay struggle. The gay moment is in some ways similar to the moment that other communities have experienced in the nation’s past, but it is also something more, because sexual identity is in crisis throughout the population, and gay people—at once the most conspicuous subjects and objects of the crisis— have been forced to invent a complete cosmology to grasp it. No one says the changes will come easily. But it’s just possible that a small and despised sexual minority will change America forever.”

1993 Cover Story from “The Nation” magazine

Some observations cross correlating the two quotes.

It should be noted that the word “cosmology” in “The Nation” quote is largely synonymous with “Worldview,” and I am using it that way as well.

1.) In a Christian cosmology the main means of identifying one’s self is by the noun “Christian.” In a Christian cosmology one finds their identity in Christ. We are baptized into Christ. We are crucified with Christ. We are raised with Christ. We are even seated in the heavenlies with Christ. The Catechism reminds us that “we are not our own but belong to our faithful savior Jesus Christ.” ST. Paul even can say that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” All of this is what one expects to find in both the individual and the covenant community where a Christian cosmology is in the ascendancy. In a Christian cosmology Christians identify with Christ.

However, when sodomy comes to the fore a new cosmology has to be created in order that the chief identifying mark is not “Christian,” but rather “gay.” In a sodomite cosmology one finds their identity in their homosexuality. This is so true, that the sodomy identity even for the “sanctified Christian homosexual,” is “gay” and not “Christian.”

Now in a Christian cosmology there is understanding that all Christians struggle with what the Scripture call besetting sin and Christianity is sympathetic towards those who are constantly seeking to mortify the old man in order that the new man in Christ might be vivified. As such, in a Christian cosmology there might be those who would confess that they struggle against sin and who might even admit that they have been made a “eunuch for the Kingdom,” (Mt. 19:12) but they would not identify themselves — their persons — with their sinful inclinations. St. Paul reveals this kind of mindset in his letter to the Corinthians when he, speaking of those who have been redeemed from such sinful lifestyles,

9 Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality,

10 Nor cheats (swindlers and thieves), nor greedy graspers, nor drunkards, nor foulmouthed revilers and slanderers, nor extortioners and robbers will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.

11 And such some of you were [once]. But you were washed clean (purified by a complete atonement for sin and made free from the guilt of sin), and you were consecrated (set apart, hallowed), and you were justified [pronounced righteous, by trusting] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the [Holy] Spirit of our God.

Note that their identity has changed. They no longer are foulmouthed revilers and slanderers or those who participate in homosexuality. They are now known simply as Christian. They once were the old man but now they are the new man.

In a Christian cosmology it is true that all the saints are sinners but it is also true that in a Christian cosmology no Christian, who is self conscious of their identity in Christ identifies themselves with that sin from which they’ve been delivered. They identify themselves with Christ because they’ve been washed.

2.) Another difference between the Christian cosmology and the sodomite cosmology, when it is played out to its fullest implication, is that in the Christian cosmology how people engage their sexuality cannot be divorced from their Christianity. In the Christian cosmology sexuality is disciplined and harnessed by the Christian faith. In the the sodomite cosmology absolute individual freedom of sexual expression is the center around which all other considerations must orbit. Note the distinction here between a Christian cosmology and a sodomite cosmology is that in the former there are sexuality prohibitions that are part and parcel of the Christian cosmology while in the sodomite cosmology, as it comes into its own, it is only sexuality prohibitions that are prohibited. In the Christian cosmology lust is sin and is to be confessed and denied. In the sodomite cosmology sexual repression is sin and is to be confessed and denied.

3.) In the historic Christian cosmology anthropology and sexuality are bound up together. Man without a helpmeet woman is incomplete (where he or she is not gifted with singleness) and man is not complete until woman is taken from him, fashioned anew, and returned to him in marital union. This historical imagery is so integral to the Christian cosmology that it is taken up in the New Testament with its testimony that the male female union relationship is a reflection of Christ’s relationship with the Church. In the Christian cosmology this male female relationship is fruitful and is to the end of glorifying God and raising faithful covenant children. Sodomy overturns all this cosmology and anthropology for a cosmology and anthropology that teaches that sexual intimacy is not unique to a male and a female and that sexual union is by definition sterile apart from technological contrivances.

4.) The cosmology of Christianity and the cosmology of sodomy are in antithesis and so are incompatible with one another. If there is an attempt to mix them together the end result will only be semantic deception. By semantic deception what is meant is that any mixing of these two antithetical cosmologies will result in the language of Christianity being retained but emptied of its historic orthodox Christian meaning in favor of meaning that is subservient to the cosmology of sodomy. The results will be a retention of Christian jargon but only as that jargon is emptied of its objective historic Christian meaning.

5.) The whole issue of sodomy is so important because it is not just about who is sleeping with whom. I really couldn’t care less about that. The whole issue of sodomy is so important because if the LGBT – sodomy agenda is to overthrow standard historic Christian cosmology then everything changes. If the cosmology of the LGBT crowd wins the day it is not merely a matter of a slight alteration in our social order. No, if the cosmology of the LGBT crowd wins historic Christianity is thrown off completely and with the embrace of the new sodomite cultus a new culture and social order is born that is opposed to Christ and His Kingdom.

At this point it appears that the sodomite cosmology might win in the short term. It has been steamrolling since the enlightenment in one form or another. However, in the long term it can not win because it is a cosmology of death.

The Enlightenment Nation State Myth

“If the struggle between state-building elites and other powers like the church predates the Reformation by at least a century, however, it may be that state-building process is not as innocent of the ensuing (putatively “religious”) violence as the myth of the religious wars makes it out to be. Is it possible that the state-building process is not simply the solution but a contributing cause of the violence of the 16th and 17th centuries.”

Wm. T. Vaughn
The Myth of Religious Violence — pg. 141

Vaughn is advancing the idea that the burgeoning modern Nation States of the 16th century contributed significantly to the what the bureaucrats and court historians of the modern Nation States later styled as “The Religious wars of the 16th and 17th century.” Vaughn is contending that in the contest between the growing Nation States and the existence of various expressions of Christianity (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism) what the Nations States did, once they vanquished Christianity to a “private realm,” and a pietistic interior existence is to have labeled all the violence of the 16th and 17th centuries as “religious wars.” They were able to do so as victors in the contest between themselves and the Church and it served their purpose to do so because in doing so they would forever be able to use the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century,” which they contributed to and used to advance their agenda, as cautionary tales against letting the Church ever have any influence in a public square that they now dominated with their victory over the Church. Living out of this Worldview accounts for why R2K chaps like Dr. R. Scott Clark can bring up the specter of “the Religious wars of the 16th and 17th century” to warn against Constantinianism. Later in history the Enlightenment codified this victory of the Modern Nation state over the Church and pressed ever more, over the ensuing centuries, the idea of “separation of Church and State.”

By relegating the Church to the “private realm,” in the repeated telling of the dreaded tale of the “religious wars” of the 16th and 17th century, the State is able to practice its ideology (which amounts to a masked religion) in order to conform the citizenry according to its anti-Christ ideology in as much as it owns the public square in an uncontested manner. By this method the modern Nation State has conceded to the Church the souls of the citizenry as long as they could have their bodies and minds.

Of course what we are seeing as this myth of religious wars is exposed is that the modern pagan Nation State dwarfs the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century,” in terms of the deadly, the destructive and the life-taking. One has only to consider all the blood of the 20th century in putatively non-religious wars. Why should we be afraid of the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century” — wars that found the burgeoning Nation State as being contributory — when one considers the piles of dead bodies in the Holdomar, of the Armenians by the Turks and of the tens of millions murdered by Mao?

Obama and the “Morning After Pill.”

“Exquisite little creature!” said the Director, looking after her. Then, turning to his students, “What I’m going to tell you now,” he said, “may sound incredible. But then, when you’re not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible.”

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.

A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it.

“Even adolescents,” the D.H.C. was saying, “even adolescents like yourselves …”

“Not possible!”

“Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality–absolutely nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“In most cases, till they were over twenty years old.”

“Twenty years old?” echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief.

“Twenty,” the Director repeated. “I told you that you’d find it incredible.”

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
Chapter 3

With Obama’s decision to allow the “morning after pill” to be available over the counter for all ages without question or Identification we find ourselves pushed one step closer to Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where sex is a indiscriminate past-time and casual recreation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/plan-b-morning-after-pill?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position1

Random thoughts on the Obama administration allowing children to access the “morning after” pill.

1.) The State pushes indiscriminate sex because such sex destroys the ability of young people to properly bond and form familial loyalties. It is in the interest of the Totalitarian State to destroy all loyalties that might compete with loyalty to the State. By pushing casual sex the Progressive Marxists ensure that no interpersonal loyalties will be formed that will challenge their ability to rule.

2.) The end effect of encouraging meaningless sex is to destroys the whole idea of attached intimacy and dehumanizes the participants by reducing sex to a physical and animal act. The spiritual component of sex being destroyed, the destruction of man’s spirituality is significantly advanced. Man himself begins to think of himself only in terms of his physical lusts and desires. Men who have lost the sense of their spiritual significance are men who think of themselves as no more than cattle. Cattle are easily herded and controlled by the Elite Farmers.

3.) When sex becomes meaningless, and emotion drained out of the act by virtue of the impersonal nature and randomness of the sex act the sense of moral oughtness is seared so that the State can advance other immoralities that will go un-protested by those whose emotional life is barren. It does not take much to convince those, for whom unattached serial sex is morally inconsequential, that any number of other moral outrages as endorsed by the State are acceptable.

4.) The casualness of sex that is being pushed communicates the idea that everyone belongs to everyone. There is a strong strain of communalism in all this. But of course if everybody belongs to everybody then nobody belongs uniquely to anybody. The sense of belongingness is not accentuated but is diminished in the pursuit of sex as a meaningless function of reductionistic human physicality.

5.) Keep your eyes peeled for an increase of rape in our culture because of these kinds of actions. We are already seeing rape on the rise in our military,

http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/16823-rape-culture-at-the-us-naval-academy

If it really is the case that everybody belongs to everybody then it can hardly be considered a crime or even unusual if some begin to take that idea seriously.

6.) The advocacy of normalizing random, regular, and routine sex has the advantage of keeping the Goyim’s mind preoccupied with where he or she will find their next sex opportunity. Minds that are preoccupied with sex are minds that are not preoccupied with thought that is not approved by the State. Fixating the minds of the citizenry on sex is part of the bread and circuses routine that insure independent thought does not arise.

7.) Of course this is all about the Transvaluation of values. The time is coming when being monogamous or perhaps even heterosexual will be seen as pornographic and obscene. Taboos will be reversed so that a young lady who holds her virtue will be mocked and a man who respects women will be lampooned.

8.) A significant part of what makes for Christian categories of Male and Female gender roles is the idea that men are to respect women and women are to be protected by men. When sex is a random commodity men have no incentive to either respect or protect women. Protect them from what? Respect them for what reason? Indiscriminate sex thus goes a long way towards destroying gender roles thus again ensuring the destruction of Christian culture in favor of the unitary Marxist God State.

9.) All of this is suggestive of the anarcho-tyranny that Samuel Francis warned about years ago. In anarcho-tyranny states the FEDS encourage anarchy for libertine and criminal behavior while punishing the law abiding for non-criminal actions. As such we live under the rule of an anarcho-tyrannical Government that desires to, and in some cases has successfully criminalize(d) the ownership of guns, hemp, raw milk, and eggs, while at the same time encouraging and making provision for Mothers killing their babies by a pill and a glass of water.

Of course if your religion is R2K you can’t speak to this as a minister because these kinds of matters are not within the bailiwick of the ministers calling. Instead, you must tell your people that the Christian faith was never intended to transform or impact culture.