Category: ecclesiology
The Sure and Certain Coming Victory
John 16:33 “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
II Cor. 2:14 — “But thanks be to God, who always leads us triumphantly as captives in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.”
The Victory of Christ and His people is inevitable. We will win because He has won. Get over it. There is no barrier that can forestall us. There is no Maginot line that can impede us. We will overcome all resistance. You will be assimilated to the Kingdom of God or you will die outside of it.
Rev. 22:15 But outside (The New Jerusalem) are dogs (sodomites) and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.
The Kingdoms of this world shall become the Kingdoms of our Lord.
He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. Dan. 7:14
Every battle we may lose serves the purpose of the sure certainty of victory in the War. Every one of us you may kill, either by way of reputation or by way of literal death, guarantees the rise of 10 more of us to come after you with the Praise of God on our lips and a double edged sword in our hands.
You cannot stop us. No weapon formed against us shall prosper. You cannot forestall your final defeat, you cannot reverse this certain triumph. Even your very thoughts will be made captive to Christ.
Your children too will rise and bless the name of Jesus. They will curse your name for cutting off their breasts, for pumping them full of toxins, for attempting to create a hell on earth in which they then have to live. Your children will be the finest disciples of the Christ you hate because they lived long enough to see the world that your vile affections created and they will resolve never to go back to that way of living.
Why will you die in your sin when you cannot win?
Why will you die in your sin when eternal life is on the other side of Christ’s command for all men everywhere to repent?
Staring Into A Glass Darkly — How Ends WOKE-ianity.
Jon Harris recently did a “Conversations that Matter” podcast concentrating on the visible Church’s failure in ministering to the young white male. Jon is not as blunt as I am, but his accuracy on this subject is due to the fact that the visible church has become an effeminate institution and as a institution punch drunk on estrogen all it has is condemnation for those who defy the modern version of WOKE-iatinity.
The CREC, which was supposed by many to be the most conservative expression of Christianity, has recently demonstrated that with its version of ecclesiocentrism that it likewise has no room for the anti-WOKE young white man. The Pope of that denomination has spoken from the chair ex-cathedra and no voices that are contrary to his will be allowed to rise to contradict Pope Doug I. And this despite the fact that I know for a fact such voices exist. However, those contrary voices have gone silent for fear of a papal bull coming down from Moscow that would complain about a boar(s) arising in God’s vineyard. The metaphorical Cardinals in the CREC have also lined up behind Pope Doug I to support him by publishing any number of commentaries agreeing with the Papal encyclicals. The die is cast in the CREC and so young white men who dispute WOKE-ism will find no welcome mat in this institution.
The CREC and all other “conservative” denominations giving these young white male American men the left foot of fellowship will not stop these young white men from returning the favor by giving such institutions the twin bird salute. WOKE or WOKE adjacent denominations will not stop these young white men from continuing to realize that the imaginary and so putative pluralism and secularism of liberal modernity supported by these WOKETY WOKE WOKE Churches cannot sustain a Christian polity, a Christian faith, or a Christian people. Many of them know, if only from instinct, that a shared mythos, a shared history, a shared blood, a shared standard, and a shared religion are necessary for shared values. They know that any Church that goes so far as supporting social order pluralism in order to get on the WOKE peace train is not a Church in which they are interested in supporting. Quite to the contrary… they already know that such “churches” must be fought to till the death.
So, the Church in the West is at a cross-roads. The current institutional Church in the West — even in her most conservative expression — has become an old wineskin that can not be filled with new wine. We are at a time, once again, where new institutions are going to have to be built — institutions that will allow for white Christians to be unashamedly white and Christian. These will be not be hostile to peoples of other races/ethnicities/cultures but they will be ethnically and culturally white. They will draw on the ancient traditions of the White Christian West and will be as varied as those ancient traditions. They will be low church and high church. They will come in all historic protestant stripes, but as coming from the best of their varied Western histories. The one thing that they will all have in common in addition to their fealty to Jesus Christ, is an absolute despising of all things WOKE.
If this does not happen — if the WOKE keeps expanding — then the historic West will exit stage left and finally die after decades of being on a morphine drip. We either return to the old paths or we die. If we do not pivot the young white males at that point will turn to the ugly ideologies of the previous centuries. If Western Christianity does not return to its roots then the only path left for these young men is to categorize Christianity with all things effeminate and foreign. The only option left will be to hate Christianity with all their being. They will instead turn to Odin-ism or Aryanism or some other foul ideology. But if that happens, it will be the fault of those who shut the door of Christianity in the face of the young white males searching for a masculine faith. Those who are warring with Biblical Kinism — with the idea of properly ordered affections — will be responsible for the rise of the exact thing they think they are fighting now. Payback indeed is a bitch.
And if and when that day comes, and if I am still alive, I will then be fighting with all my energy against the very opposite of what I am fighting against now with all my energy. I will fight against National Socialism, and Aryanism, and Odin-ism but I will do so all the while saying to myself, “If you idiots had listened to me to begin with instead of thinking you were expanding the WOKE Kingdom we wouldn’t be in this position of having to fight off a new pagan majority that is now kicking your ass from coast to coast.”
‘Kyrie, eleison.’
Explaining the Descent of America’s Clergy Corps
To any part time observer it is clear that America’s clergy corps has a good deal in common with the clergy corps of the West at the time leading up to the Reformation. At that time the clergy were stupid besotted with a incantational-superstitious theology. It is said that we get the phrase “hocus-pocus,” from the rush of the clergy of that time saying the Latin phrase during the Mass; “Hoc est corpus meum.”
Today, the clergy corps in the US is likewise at a low ebb. In this post I hope to explain some of the reason that might account for that.
1.) The clergy, generally speaking, like all others, is saturated for their first 22 years of life in a educational system that is committed to a anti-Christ agenda. In their most formative years, future clergy will learn to not think in a systematic/systemic/organic fashion, be trained instead to think compartmentally. As such those who will become clergy have little to no capacity to see the inter-connectedness of all of life. This, in turn, emasculates the ability to think through the implications of anything.
Further, because of this education, any foundational presuppositions they have will be humanist in principle since that is all they have ever absorbed. Even the way they learn to read the bible, if they are even exposed to that in their homes growing up, is going to be conditioned by a humanist world and life view. It is possible, after all, to know the bible from cover to cover and still be completely clueless as to what it is communicating. Now add that we are so far into this problem that even if they had old men as their ministers when the would be future clergy were young the odds are very small that those old ministers themselves were not also saturated in humanism.
So, the problem with our clergy today stems first and foremost from a lack of training in thinking as starting from first principles in the most formative years. People don’t realize how hard it is to change the original mapping of the mind when that mind has been trained to think one particular way in the first 22 years or so. We are training our children to think in a Revolutionary and subversive manner by putting them in sub-standard humanist schools for the most formative years of their lives (and these schools come in all varieties) and then we expect them to become clergy who can think as Christians. Here the old proverb comes to mind about trying to make silk purses out of the ears of old sows’.
So, here we have these young men who decide to become clergy and they have no capacity to think so as to trace through beginning premises. This lack of epistemological self-consciousness ensures a lack of consistency across fields of study and ensures the presence of one contradiction after another in their thought life. Again, it boils down to the fact that they just can’t think systematically.
Then, all this bad education from kindergarten through college, is expected to be washed away by three years of Seminary. Now, to be sure, if our imaginary clergy member attends a good Seminary he may be able to get a good start, but the bad news here is that most of our Seminaries are terribly compromised with Professors themselves who are merely baptized humanists. Even at the best of Seminary it is atypical to get a emphasis on Worldview thinking or inter-disciplinary studies that is approached from a Reformed/Biblical perspective.
So, three years of Seminary — even at a good Seminary (assuming they are out there) — is not enough of time to undo all the damage that has been done and re-map the mind’s ability to think conceptually and Biblically. The results, at best, are Seminary graduates who are earnest with the best of intentions but woefully unprepared for what he has been called to do.
Keep in mind that the complaint here is not so much that the future clergy have not been taught the proper “what” is their thinking. The complaint is that future clergy are not being taught how to think. The “what” does them little good if the how of their thinking is bumfuzzled.
As a result of this, the clergy are now easy prey to reinterpret Christianity through whatever grid the zeitgeist and their culture is pressing down upon them. Christianity thus is yoked to and becomes in service of an alien world and life view. The outside of the cup is clean but the inside of the cup is filthy.
2.) Denominationalism is structured in such a way that it discourages ministers from thinking. Learning to think biblically means one begins to see the problems with the current Church and its lack of Biblical Christianity. Should some young man start to insist that his fellow members of the clergy corps are not thinking biblically that young man will be immediately told to sit down and shut up. If our young minister refuses to do that and continues to press the crown rights of King Jesus upon the denominational structure he will be brought up on charges and bounced or eliminated in some other way. The modern church will do everything it can to mow down any prophetic voice that God raises up.
Harmonious with the observation about Denominations is the truth that individual congregations do the same. Individual congregations like denominations do not desire to hear from the pulpit a man who is learning to think biblically. Individual congregations are themselves filled with laymen who themselves have no capacity to think biblically and are not interested in continuing to support their minister if all of a sudden their minister starts making hamburger of the favorite cultural cows of the laity he is serving.
I understand that there are exceptions to all this. I am speaking here of what is generally true. I am not speaking of that which is universally true.
3.) Once clergy enter into their new charges they forget their study. Young clergy especially need to be pounding back great books in as many fields of study as they can. This departure from the study and the books may arise because of the demands of the congregation that have to be met. More often however, I suspect that men don’t want to do the work required and prefer the social side of being clergy (visitation, public presence at events, etc.). Spending days and days with the great minds in great books is hardly exciting to most men in the ministry. All of this is complicated by the fact that even should ministers be willing to do the hard work of putting the meat in the seat so as to read till they bleed, because of earlier observations they are going to be reading the wrong material, favoring counseling and psychology books over and above Church History, Systematic theology, Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, History, Sociology, Biblical Philosophy, Apologetics, Great Novels, Biblical Economics, Political Philosophy, Law, Worldview, Education, History of Science, Art, Polemics, etc.
Even when we find good Ministers reading good books, too often they are restricting their reading to formal theology books. The pursuit of that habit will likely lead to a minister excelling at abstractions while sucking terribly at casuistry and/or concrete application.
4.) It is likely true that throughout Church history there has been a type among the minister class who are fixated on climbing the denominational ladder to become movers and shakers. This class of individuals is forever licking their fingers and sticking it in the wind to see which way the wind is blowing before they determine what it is that they are going to say. They are more worried about their careers and status then they are just stating the unvarnished but necessary truth. If they have convictions they will seek to advance their convictions dialectically if needs be. They will become experts at triangulation and at the techniques of Machiavelli. They will develop the ability to cover all their bases in what they say or write so that it is anybody’s guess as to what their true position really is. Beware the minister who is consumed with his career.
Another aspect of this that ought to be mentioned is the “follow the money” principle. I am convinced, just by way of gut feeling, that there is a large contingency in our ministerial leadership corps in America (those reputed to be pillars in the Church) that are being paid off. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and my instincts are telling (quite without any hard proof) that Big Eva has a number of high flyers who are being paid off. Take that for whatever it is worth.
My Time In Purgatory V — Final Installment
I wanted to take one more installment to tie up some loose ends and to give a peek into some of the Clown Reformed Church Characters I knew. I will change the names so that the average reader can see the person without knowing the name.
I.) Loose Ends
A.) In three or four places I’ve used some scatological language. I do not apologize for that because I do believe there is a time and a place for everything under the sun. The malfeasance, malevolence, and mendacity of the Clown Reformed Church deserves stiffer language than I tagged it with. When one considers their disregard for the sheep by ordaining women and by ordaining men who had no business being ordained the outrage over this assault on the Church of Jesus Christ should know no boundaries. When one considers how the CRC destroyed the career of a faithful minister of Jesus Christ for the ecclesiastical equivalent of jaywalking — and then had to bury the exculpatory evidence to get it done — one should be outraged. When one considers the dissembling, the chicanery, and the distortions, (only my inherent easy-going nature keeps me from saying “lies”) that the CRC invoked in order to sling mud at a doctrine (“Natural Relations” sometimes called “Kinism”) that the Church has embraced for 2000 years, as seen in a cursory examination of the historical record, (get the Dow & Achord book) it requires language that would make widow’s cringe and virgin’s blush. I probably haven’t been direct enough in these pieces.
B.) I said I would return to a couple of sentences in the letter recommending my honorable release from the supervising Council. Those sentences were;
“In recent times, however, Rev. McAtee’s writings have been appropriated by a movement within the Reformed community known as “Kinism.” Though Rev. McAtee claims no affiliation among them, because of appropriation of his intellectual property, he has over the past two years been linked by accusations with having common cause.”
a.) I need to say here I do not recall ever making this claim.
b.) If I did claim no affiliation among them it is because, as I said earlier in this piece, there is no organization for me to affiliate with. There are no Kinists who have membership cards that get them a discount on the cost of the next Klan meeting. (That’s a joke for the humor-impaired among us.)
c.) Clearly, if some people were appropriating my intellectual property, it would be because those people believed my ideas had an affiliation with their ideas.
d.) I have common cause with everybody who agrees with me.
C.) Touching the word “Kinism”
Many have opined that we need to dump the word because of how successful the enemy has been in slinging mud at it. For a time, I agreed with that and started using the word “Famialism.” Same content. Different word. One could also use words like, “oikaphilia,” “ethno-nationalists,” and “racial-realist.” However, I have resorted to using the word “Kinism” again because;
a.) it’s easier to spell
b.) I have determined that all because the enemy is successful in prejudicing the language I shouldn’t, therefore, give up on the language. There are many idiotic Christians that I don’t want anything to do with but on that basis, I don’t start using a different word besides “Christian” to self-identify. (But believe me I’ve considered it.) In the same way, there are some Kinists who are way over the top and so bring reproach on what I believe. However, I’m not going to quit using the word “Kinism” either because my enemies are purposefully distorting the meaning, or because there are some dopes out there who are mauling the word.
D.) Why I wrote all this
I probably would have never have returned to this if the Clown Reformed Church had not decided to continue its attack on me. I let it slide after the misrepresentations in their District meeting that dismissed me. I let it slide after the Synod that referred to the situation repeatedly going so far as to pass overtures against a strawmen’s caricature of “kinism.” They essentially crushed something I never believed. They did all this without using my name or the Church’s name and yet one would have had to have been an imbecile to not know who they were going after. Still, I let it slide and did not respond. However, when the Clown Reformed Chruch decided to jump on the Southern Poverty Law Center comical denunciation of myself and the Church I serve I determined I had had enough. It is clear that they are never going to let this go and will trot it out whenever it is convenient for them to virtue signal. As such, I determined that even though I would never have the platform those people had, I had to set the record straight — if only for the people who were getting splashed with mud whom I served.
II.) Clown Reformed World Personalities
Those that I’ve already dealt with in some measure I won’t bring up again.
Brun Hilda — This woman was really the reason for the intensifying of much of what transpired in the last few years. She fancied herself an expert on theology and would even introduce herself in such a matter. “Hello, my name is Brun Hilda, and I’m an expert in theology.” The funny thing was that the woman didn’t even know the meaning of the word “propitiation.” Experts in theology know what “propitation” means. She attended some high brow Liberal University in the Low Countries and it showed. She was a social justice warrior and feminist beyond measure. She even lobbied for “Social Justice” sermons from her Pastor and when the man said “no,” his life soon became severely troubled.
Malcolm Z — Malcolm Z is an African-American and is perhaps the #1 Social Justice Warrior in the Clown Reformed Church. He is convinced that what the White Boer South African Farmers are facing in terms of attempted genocide is all lies. Like all SJW’s he walks around begging people to disturb the chip that is on his shoulder. He once visited the Church I serve and I witnessed many of the people invite him to stay for our fellowship meal. When he finally reported on the service all he could note is that he knew something awful was present because we prayed for the White Boer farmers during the long Pastoral prayer and how we would have accused him of heresy if he had brought his white wife and family to church. The chip on the shoulder doesn’t take much to disturb it.
Percy Blakeney — One of the few good guys in the story. Percy was conservative by way of instinct. Percy did all he could do to help me out when I was on the hot seat but he was in a tough situation himself. Trying to help out someone seen by everyone else as a dirty racist is not a good position to be in. However, he did the best he could in a tough situation short of sacrificing himself and his career. I counted him a friend though I have not seen him since the whole thing mercifully ended. He was a kind and jovial man. Quick with laughter and always ready for a good conversation. I owe him a debt of gratitude for alone fighting for me in a Kangaroo court situation.
Thomas Beckett — Thomas was another of the guys in a white hat. He is the minister who was executed for ecclesiastical jaywalking. Brun Hilda asked the question, “Who will deliver me of this meddlesome Priest?,” — and the Elder board and the District did the deed. Thomas spent some time in a Communist country as a missionary before going into the ministry and as such Thomas was one of the few guys who understood the dangers of Marxism in the Church. This is one reason why he refused to start preaching Social Justice sermons contra Brun Hilda’s demand. The main reason however was that Thomas understood that the pulpit needs to be reserved for the Gospel and he wasn’t going to muddle up the pulpit or the Gospel with Social Justice bilge. Thomas was in a difficult spot the moment he arrived at the flagship church because he was an orthodox man coming to serve a congregation that had been fed on Liberal Barthian Higher Critical preaching for decades by Dr. Rev. Dusty Lugnut.
A funny story here. Not long after Thomas arrived on the scene he asked me to serve as his mentor. I refused for several months reasoning that there was no way in Hades that a minister serving at that Liberal Church genuinely wanted me to mentor him. I mean would Karl Barth ask J. Gresham Machen to mentor him? I figured it was just not possible that Thomas could be anything but a raging liberal and I had had my belly full of them. Thomas finally won me over when at a meeting he mentioned something derisive about the Liberal nature of the Bannaner. Shortly, thereafter we started meeting. I can say in all honesty that Thomas was the only epistemologically self-conscious conservative minister that I met during my almost 25 years in the CRC. I still count him as a friend and we talk often. We’ve both been through the fires.
P. T. Barnum — P. T. was a very likable man who was conservative by impulse but woefully unable to defend his conservatism when pushed to the wall by even the most hackneyed liberal. P. T. was a businessman/salesman before he was anything else (like a minister) and he had the ability to put the meat in the seats. (Put people in pews.) And to be honest, he probably was able to give his people all they could handle in terms of food for their souls. I remember P. T. if only because I cringed when he reported he was going to have a traveling strongman troupe in to give the Gospel and they would do so while tearing in half, thick phone books and bending thick bars of steel around their necks.
P. T. provided a funny memory for me as one time his Church was responsible to host a District meeting. The host at these meetings was responsible to provide worship leaders. Well, P. T. on that Saturday provided an Evangelical lounge singer’s version of “Tony Orlando & Dawn.” I think it was the only time in 20 years that the liberal clowns and I shared a conviction and it was on not caring for the Evangelical version of “Tony Orlando & Dawn,” as worship leader. The libs would have preferred Meagan Thee Stallion and I would have preferred the Three Tenors.
Cyrano de Bergerac — Cyrano was a fresh Seminary grad who was unmarried. He got engaged after meeting a girl in an online chat room. I tried to warn him off said girl because she was not Reformed and had never heard of things like the Heidelberg catechism and other Reformed staples. He, of course, ignored me and was married. Only a few years later he was asking different ministers for counseling advice for a troubled marriage. I liked Cyrano. He had an inquisitive mind, even if he staked out some strange positions. He genuinely wanted to be God’s instrument in helping people in the Kingdom. I admired him because of his willingness to continue to work in a place that was small. Speaking from experience I knew those charges were sometimes discouraging.
There were more. Many more enemies but it would do little good to regale you will all the stories about their oddities and villainy. It was a terrible place to be in for over 20 years but I guess that is what purgatory is all about.