McAtee Contra Pattengale on the Legacy of Dr. Glenn Martin on Tyranny

You can read the whole article I’m interacting with over at

The Capitol offense: A Christian professor’s warning 50 years ago

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It seems today is a day to go after the Wesleyans. I didn’t plan it that way. As many readers of Iron Ink know Dr. Glenn Martin of Marion College was the closest thing I ever had to a mentor. As such you can understand my desire to see that the man is not misrepresented in the media. Unfortunately, that is what happened back on 27 January Religious News Service ran an article by an old friend, Dr. Jerry Pattengale, who was trying to tell us what Dr. Martin would have thought about the protest at the Capitol on 06 January 2021. I went to Marion College with Jerry. He was two or three years ahead of me. We were acquaintances — neither friends nor enemies. We both ran in the same circles sharing a common major.

Jerry did a fantastic job giving Dr. Martin’s eulogy in 2004. I was there and I wept as Jerry recounted the life of Dr. Martin. I was glad for Jerry’s words that day.

However, I am not glad for this piece that Jerry wrote in January. It mischaracterized Dr. Martin’s teachings on Government.

Jerry starts the article by reminding us of Martin’s conviction that the US Capitol was not impregnable. Martin was consistent on this score. He did not think that any institution was necessarily permanent. Martin taught repeatedly that only God is eternal.

Next Jerry quotes from Martin’s 2004 book, “Prevailing Worldviews of Western Society Since 1500,” where Martin wrote,  that American Christians should “reverence government as a gift of God for the orderly procedure of man in a fallen world.” Martin went on to note that the reason is that “to deny government leads first to anarchy, but ultimately back to tyranny. Out of anarchy must necessarily come authoritarianism, because anarchy produces nothing but a vacuum, and a vacuum must and will be filled.”

This is all true but Jerry has absolutized Martin’s words in a way that Dr. Martin would not have countenanced. Actually, Jerry Pattengale in this article has not given us the whole Martin here. Having been a student myself of Martin and having sat under every course the man taught save one and having taken one on one projects for credit with Martin I would remind Jerry that Martin clearly articulated his support for the Southern uprising in 1861 against the Jacobins and the proto-Marxist Lincoln.

Jerry thus is cherry-picking from Martin and giving a twisted account of the Man’s convictions. I am not convinced that Martin would have said that there is never a time and a place for Godly revolt against ungodly government. Jerry’s words in this article suggest that is exactly what Martin thought.

Jerry is in error to state categorically that Dr. Martin believed categorically that all government should be reverenced. I don’t believe that Martin believed that. Certainly, a godly government should be reverenced but would Jerry have us believe that an ungodly government of the stripe of a Stalin or a Lenin or a Trotsky should be reverenced? How about Mussolini, or Mao? Jerry has to deal with the reality that at some point a biblical Christian has to draw a line to remind wicked magistrates that they are not in the seat of God. John Knox understood this principle. Oliver Cromwell understood this principle. The Huguenot Admiral Coligny understood this principle.  I believe Dr. Glenn Martin understood this as well as evidenced by his refusal to condemn the antebellum South.

There are many other things wrong with Jerry’s article. There are things we know now that we did not know when Jerry wrote this. One example is that we now know that LEO Brian Sicknick was NOT murdered at the rally on 06 January in DC. Jerry should have waited before drinking the Media kool-aid.

Jerry also suggests that Martin only feared that the liberal view would exalt the state. Martin repeatedly said that the liberal view had exalted the state and that we were living in times where the State had taken the place of “God walking on the earth.” Martin did not merely fear that the liberal view would exalt the state. The man directly said repeatedly that modern man had come to see himself as “living and moving and having his being in the State.”

Also, Dr. Pattengale suggests that Martin would have been squeamish about the vitriolic exchanges during the Trump impeachment hearings. Certainly, no Biblical Christian is happy about that but Martin no less than any other Biblical Christian would have been a realist about the nature of politics. He knew that politics did not follow the queen of marquess boxing rules. Martin knew that politics was a dirty game that included “any means necessary,” when pursued by the pagan. Martin did not live in some kind of idealistic world.

Pattengale goes on to say,

“The attack on city, state and federal property and the killing of innocent people in the process — including civil servant defenders such as Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick — is always criminal. Somehow, many Americans have digressed into calling the same criminal actions by different names.”

The simple fact of the matter is that we really do not know yet what happened on 06 January and it is unlikely we ever will. Many accounts tell us that Police Officers opened doors for the protesters. Other accounts insist that many of those pursuing the mayhem were not Trump supporters but were Antifa as imposter Trump supporters playing the devil’s game. Next, in the above-italicized paragraph, Jerry speaks of the killing of Brian Sicknick — a Capitol police officer. We now know that Officer Sicknick’s death had absolutely nothing to do with what happened on 06 January 2021. We now know that the whole narrative about Sicknick was a Marxist Media dog and pony show in order to increase the putative guilt of Trump supporters. The Marxists created that narrative to shame Trump and His supporters. Jerry should have waited before swallowing that torpid media narrative.

Next Jerry takes a swipe at those who have not yet been convicted of killing Ahmaud Aubrey. Clearly, Jerry is writing this piece from a left-of-center mindset. I promise you … Martin was anything but left-of-center. Jerry’s left-of-center mindset shows through again where he supports Peter Berger’s pluralism. Jerry, along with Berger, has not yet realized that the classical liberal worldview that birthed pluralism is dead dead dead. It only continues to exist as a Zombie now. Pluralism was never a particularly Christian idea — at least not as it has come down to us from its Endarkenment origins.

Jerry goes on to say how “Martin called biblical Christians to look first to Jesus to repair our society.” This is true. However, this looking to Jesus to repair our society doesn’t happen apart from the context of Biblical Christians pressing the crown rights of Jesus Christ in every area of life. A wicked government will stand against Biblical Christians who are looking first to Jesus to repair our society.

So, following one of Martin’s heroes Biblical Christians have to understand there comes a time when we reverence God by not reverencing the government.

The bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty, to disobey the state.

(A Christian Manifesto, in The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, 5:468–69)

If Jerry disagrees with this he is falling into the same sacred/secular mindset that Martin warned against and that by making the government sacred and so not to be touched under any circumstances.

My old acquaintance Jerry ends by quoting Martin again as saying,

“All should reverence government as a gift of God for our orderly procedure in a fallen world.”

I think that Jerry is trying to rescue the tattered remains of the social compact that has glued Americans together for decades now by repeatedly invoking this mantra. We noted earlier that Jerry is misrepresenting Martin here. We would only offer here that our government is pressing down upon our brows chaos and not orderly procedure and as such Biblical Christians have a responsibility to start asking the question that the Southerners that Martin supported asked. That question is, “How long do we keep reverencing a government that is trying to kill us and our posterity.” If Jerry can’t see that our current government has been pursuing that for decades and now is pursuing it in spades, well, he’ll just have to read back entries to Iron Ink.

Dr. Glenn Martin is no icon for tyranny and I resent more than a wee bit Jerry trying to turn him into that kind of icon.

Postscript: I can see all kinds of people accusing me of writing this as a Trump supporter. I was not and am not a Trump supporter as many articles on IronInk will attest. I preached, from the pulpit, that Christians had no business voting for Trump. I thought, and still think, that Trump talked a great game but legislated as a 1960’s liberal. In brief, I did not support Trump because as a Biblical Christian I am a genuine conservative. Trump was and is no conservative.

It’s ok… not many people are.

 

 
 
 

Hey Indiana Wesleyan University Bureaucrats … Leave Those Kids Alone

I grew up Wesleyan and so there will always be a place in my heart for Wesleyans. When I say I grew up Wesleyan, I don’t mean merely that I attended a Wesleyan Church. I mean that Wesleyans were my best friends. I mean Wesleyans shepherded me through some pretty tough adolescent times. I mean Wesleyans took me in as a foster child at age 17 and helped me finish high school. I mean Wesleyans educated me on the first leg of the higher education journey.  I mean the first sermon I preached was in a Wesleyan pulpit. I attended their summer camps, I dated their daughters, and I studied their theology.   Because of all this and more, I will never cease being grateful to God for the Wesleyans.

I think (at least I hope) that it is this gratitude that every once in a while finds me dipping into their culture to see what is going on as well as prompting me to go after the same kind of stupidity they are pursuing as you find in spades in the “Reformed” world. Recently, that stupidity was brought before me as my wife directed my attention to the Alumni magazine that we receive (and which I almost never look at).

The stupidity of this June 2020 edition of “Triangle” is so jejune that I just had to write something here on Iron Ink. Below find III Roman numerals and my engagement with them.

I.) “Under Vice President Diane McDaniel’s leadership within the Office of Diversity & Inclusion, many important initiatives began or have strengthened in the last six years.”

BLMc responds,

I comment here in order to put into the absolutely ridiculous nature of the titles these people are holding. We are looking at three people here and here are the offices/titles they are associated with putting back to back;

1.) Office of Diversity and Inclusion
2.) Intercultural and Global Office
3.) Executive Director for Inclusive Excellence and International Education
4.) Executive Director of Multicultural Learning & Engagement

The least egregious sin of #1 is that it is redundant. If you have an office of Diversity doesn’t that automatically mean you’re chasing down Inclusion? I mean, how can an Office of Diversity be exclusive at the same time?

All of these offices and Titles are sucking off the Worldview teat of Cultural Marxism and Critical Race Theory. Having an Office of Diversity and Inclusion is just another way of saying, “Office of We Need Fewer White People.” Think about it … How many Universities in Peking, China have an “Office of Diversity and Inclusion?”  No… it is only stupid white people swigging away at Marxist hooch who create an “Office of Diversity and Inclusion.”

All of these Offices/Titles suffer from Job Title Inflation. What a resume enhancer it must be to have once been the Executive Director of Multicultural Learning & Engagement of some backwater Wesleyan University who was a Critical Race Theory wannabee.

Next, consider the money that is being bored into the budgets of these nonsensical (make-work) offices and positions. Every year I have my Alma Mater — Indiana Wesleyan University — calling me or sending me junk mail begging me for money. Never once have I called them or sent them junk mail asking them to support the Church I serve. Yet, were I to send them money they would pour it down the rat-hole that is “The Office of Diversity & Inclusion,” or give it to some feminists working in the “Intercultural and Global” Office. You know these people with the titles of “Executive Director” are making 6 figures easy. And yet despite the fact that Indiana Wesleyan University is pursuing an anti-Christian Worldview as part of their University culture (Critical Race Theory), they want the working blue-collar people of the Denomination to send them money to fill their blood money coffers. This goes beyond being criminal to become sacrilege since it is all being done in the name of Jesus.

If you’re a Wesleyan, and you’re sending money to support Indiana Wesleyan University you’re doing the Devil’s work.

II.) “Dr. Joel Olufowote joined IWU Marion’s Intercultural and Global Office in 2018. He serves as the executive director for inclusive excellence and international education.” During his first two years, Dr. Olufowote laid a conceptual foundation for inclusive work that is Kingdom-focused. He helped to systematize aspects of our protocols and culture that reflect the Lord’s color-blind love.

BLMc

The “Lord” is color blind? The “Lord” doesn’t know the color of the people He calls to Himself? Certainly, when it comes to salvation, the “Lord” is no respecter of persons, but to suggest that he’s color blind would suggest some imperfection in the “Lord,” and that I find quite curious.

Alternately, maybe they are saying that God doesn’t care about the color of one’s skin when building the Kingdom. But if God is color blind on these matters shouldn’t His people be as well and so not emphasize color by having an Executive Director of Inclusive Excellence? I mean, what else is the University doing but emphasizing that God does see color by having an office that is all about seeing color and making sure that the color quota on campus is met every year? It seems to me that God indeed is color blind but all the University is seeing is color everywhere.

I mean … understand that Olufowote’s work is to make sure the Campus is not too White. The man was hired to see color … to be “Inclusive.” God may not see color but I guaran-damn-tee you that Olufowote does. If nobody was seeing color nobody would notice that color was lacking and needed to be pursued.

II. B) With the events of this past summer, Joel’s work quickly moved to action. “Because of COVID-19, our students were not here [on campus],” said Dr. Olufowote. “Still, we wanted them to know that we are always here for them. We knew our students were being impacted but they did not have a community to process with, to lament with. At the same time, they were being overwhelmed by the media. We thought ‘we should reach out and listen.’” Through “I Can’t Breathe” forums for students and employees, Dr. Olufowote fostered an opportunity for the residential community to lament, to listen, and to learn. It gave him the chance to arm IWU’s commitment to move along the spectrum of inclusion…. The outflow of these conversations will manifest themselves during this 2020-2021 academic year; one of note is the formation of the Black Student Union.

BLMc responds,

a.) Let me get this straight … students were doing school online at home because of COVID and so not on campus but the poor tender darlings couldn’t cope with the stress of it all?  The students — now off-campus — needed some “lament outlet” because the media was bruising them so badly and Joel was there to rescue them by providing a “I Can’t Breath” forum? This is the stuff of a stand-up comedy routine. Who comes up with this drivel? Indiana Wesleyan University is paying this guy six figures to be a hand-holder and wet nurse for adults who can’t find the intestinal fortitude to go on with life because of the pain coming from TV media anchors?

I can only speak for myself but I found myself constantly thinking when I was a student at IWU, “I wish the bureaucrats would just leave me the hell alone.” Apparently, now the students need bureaucrats to help them get through life even when the students are not on campus.

b.) I’m sure it is just coincidental that Dr. Olufowote, who is black, is forming a Black Student Union. I’m wondering which Latino IWU is going to hire now so that he can justify his salary by forming a “Hispanic Student Union.”

III.) Dr. Karen A. Dowling, executive director of multicultural learning &
engagement, collaborated with IWU National & Global leaders to address these same missional interests. As a team, they organized two “Hoping Together” forums for online students and another ten “Growing Together” sessions for employees as a response to the “Sharing Our Hearts” employee forum….move forward in this important work. One faculty member took the initiative to form a task force to evaluate program curricula for more integration of inclusion and equity content.

When is the work done? When Biblical justice and equity is the common culture of our communities, and specifically IWU…

BLMc

a.) I’d bet my retirement that Dr. Karen A. Dowling is a full-blown feminist.

b.) Hoping Together/Growing Together/Sharing Our Hearts? Is this University or is this pre-school? Did she put on her sweater and tennis shoes before getting started like Mr. Rogers used to do?

Honestly, if students really do need this kind of stuff we are in more troubled waters than I even thought we were.

C.) Twice in #3 the word “equity” is used. This is the main tip that we are talking about Critical Race Theory in this whole agenda. Keep in mind that equity is a step beyond equality. (And equality the way Progressives define it is already a step too far.) Equity is about redressing past grievances. Equity says that since perverts, women, and minorities were (allegedly) discriminated against in the past, therefore, it is fitting, proper, and necessary for white people (especially white males) to be discriminated against today. Equity is about settling old scores against the putative way white people treated minorities, perverts, and feminists. When the word “equity” is used it means payback.

Indiana Wesleyan University has now become an arm of the Cultural Marxist movement to marginalize white Christians by reinterpreting Christianity through the prism of Critical Race Theory. I would guess that many of the Professors there who are contributing to this worldview shift are just useful idiots who don’t know what they are doing. I suspect even President David Wright falls into this category. However, you can be sure that there are some people on that campus who know exactly what they are doing. You can also be sure that some people are on campus who are against this but who are too fearful for their professional careers to speak out against this nonsense.

All of this is ubiquitous on Christian campuses of every Denominational stripe.

 

Michigan Gov. Whitmer says to Michigan Peasant Class; “Rules for Thee, but not for Me.”

I.) Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, came under fire in May/2020 as allegations popped up that her own husband had been trying to flout her strict COVID shutdown rule by cutting in line to launch his boat in Northern Michigan. Whitmer’s husband apparently forgot Whitmer’s request to Michiganians “not to descend on to the waterfront in crowds over the weekend.”

When Gov. Whitmer found out about her husband’s actions she said,

“I wish it wouldn’t have happened, And that’s all we really have to say about it.”

II.) Last month, it was revealed Whitmer took an out-of-state trip in March to Florida, while at the same time urging people to stay home, as COVID-19 cases surged in the state. She had missed her Daddy and wanted to spend some Daddy-Daughter time. When asked about the inconsistency of telling Michiganders to stay at home while she galloped across the country Whitmer said,

“When a family member of mine needs a little help, though, I’m going to show up” even if I have to defy the orders I place on Michigan peasants.

III.) This weekend photographic evidence came to light of Michigan Gov. Whitmer violating her own Covid policies for the Citizens of Michigan as she was photographed yucking it up at a bar in Lansing Mich. with approximately 10 friends… all unmasked and all nearly sitting on top of one another. When queried about this action the Governor said… YET AGAIN…,

“I am human. I made a mistake, and I apologize.”

Coup Leader Biden’s War on WASP’s

Coup leader Joe Biden signed into law on Thursday a bill that is aimed at countering a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic, saying the legislation is part of the nation’s first step toward unity.

“I believe, with every fiber of my being, that there are simple, core values and beliefs that should bring us together as Americans. One of them is standing together against hate, against racism — an ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation.”

Joe Biden

Coup Leader

Do not miss what is going on in the quote above. Biden speaks of an ‘ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation.” Now which people group has been around long enough to qualify as contenders for the trophy presented to those who have long haunted and plagued our nation with the ugly poison of racism? It sure as Hades isn’t the black man.  Coup Leader Biden is never going to suggest that the black man is guilty of this ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation. And you know that Ole Joe isn’t referring to the Hispanic or the Asian. Pacific Islanders? People from the Indian sub-continent? Intuits from Alaska?

No, Joe has in mind White Anglo-Saxon Christians when he talks about those who have perpetrated racism as “an ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation.” In doing so Coup Leader Biden is reading right out of the Critical Race Theory handbook. White man guilty of being oppressors to the oppressed Asians… to the oppressed Hispanics … to the oppressed blacks. White man guilty for being Christian.

The Government, led by the man who led the 2020 coup is legislating against the majority people group of this nation. This ruling and legislating against the majority people group in America has become a common practice. Consistent with a policy that has been going on for quite some time, we learn from furious lawmakers in Tennessee that Biden has been shipping thousands of illegal aliens into their state using the overnight hours as cover to hide his actions.  It seems that coup leader Biden has been flying and busing tens of thousands of illegals into these united States interior from his border facilities since February. He is dropping them off inside many of our cities and towns without notice or explanation.

One person who has been on top of this story for years now is Barbara Corcoran. You can find her website at refugeeresettlement.com She also has a small book that you can order and so learn what a scam the refugee resettlement program has become.

When you take just these two stories together,

1.) Biden covertly guilting of WASPs in signing Asian anti-racist legislation
2.) Biden using subversion to relocate illegals in the American heartland

and combine it with the reality that Executive Order 1395 was signed by Coup leader Biden serving to make equity mandated across the Federal Government what you find is that the Federal Government is now an agency that is doing all it can to enslave, marginalize, impoverish and even destroy the people group (White Anglo-Saxon Christians) who created this nation. Keep in mind that the political principle of equity in the Critical Race Theory lexicon is based upon the idea that white people can and should be legally discriminated against. Biden’s Executive Order 1395 means that white people can not be hired only because they are white. No other reason needed.

White people are under attack from our own Federal Government.

And when war is being waged upon you, you might consider waging war back.

Metaphorically speaking… of course.

Kinism Has Always Been Christian Orthodoxy 101

I have become convinced that one reason the modern Church hates Kinism is that it is everywhere in Scripture and in Church History. Indeed, Kinism up until 1950 or so in this country was stock in trade in the Church and followed the maxim of Vincent of Lérins inasmuch as that it has been believed everywhere, always, by all.

I am convinced this one reason why the modern Marxist church clutches at its ears and screams irrationally whenever someone stands up and says all neighbor love was never intended to be egalitarian. Below we find yet another example from a Bishop in the 17th Century Anglican Church in England.

Alienists Churchmen hate this stuff because like Poe’s “Tale of the Tell-tale heart,” they keep hearing the pounding of the heart of the Biblical Christianity that they think they have killed. However, every time someone makes a cogent case for Kinism, or every time someone demonstrates kinism from the scripture, or every time someone quotes from Church history the Alienist-Marxist goes even further mad hearing the pounding the tell-tale heart.

Enjoy the quote below from Bishop White Kennett;

“But secondly, the same Native Country is another cement of Christian Charity. It must be some instinct in Nature, because the consent of all Mankind to love their own Nation, to value their birthright and the inheritance of their Fathers. When Moses spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew one of his Brethren, i.e., his own countrymen; in his tenderness, he delivered the one, and out of too great indignation, he slew the other. And when he went a second time and saw two men of the Hebrews strive together, he said to him who began the assault, ‘Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? Is he thy brother an Israelite? This may provoke God to make you longer slaves in a strange land.’ Our Blessed Savior seems to have had particular regard to the good estate of his own Nation, while he declared, that he was not sent, save to the ‘Lost Sheep of the House of Israel’; while he wept over Jerusalem, and often visited Nazareth and Bethlehem, tho one would think, nothing could draw him thither but an impulse of natural affection; for he himself was sensible that the ‘Prophet had least Honor in his own Country’. St. Paul was another great example of inbred Love and Zeal for his Native Land, the goodly Heritage of his Ancestors. He was by Birth a true old Hebrew of the Hebrews, i.e., for many generations. He had indeed but little reason to be fond of that Birthright; for he was brought into great Perils by his own countrymen, and he had least to do with them, for his Mission was to be an Apostle to the Gentiles; yet Nature must break through all discouragements; wherefore, Act xxviii.19 tho’ plagued and oppressed by his fellow Jews, he had still a loving eye upon his dear Country, ‘I was constrained (says he) to appeal unto Ceasar, not that I had ought to accuse my Nation of’; and how much less would he have betrayed his Nation? Nay, what a rapture of zeal had he, Rom ix.3 ‘I could wish myself accursed or separated from Christ for my Brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites.’”

Bishop White Kennet (1660-1728)
On Christian Charity — p. 20-21