Marriage as Mirroring Partners

Dr. Anthony Flood explains in a very simple fashion why marriage across religions, race, culture, or even class is not a good idea;

“Aquinas’s principle states that the greater the similitude, the greater the stability and permanency of the love. The greater the permanency of the love, the greater the real union the lovers seek and likely obtain. Thus, a greater similitude prima facie affects a greater real union between friends. The ultimate rationale for this principle draws from the relation between unity and union. As unity is the principle of union, the closer two things are naturally, the closer they can be through love. At the level of persons, the closer a relationship with another person comes to unity the stronger it will be. Since self-love arises immediately from substantial union, we can say that the more of a lover’s love for the beloved approaches one’s own self-love (and vice versa), the greater the loving union between them will be. In other words, the most stable and permanent love relationship will be the one that approximates most each person’s love of self. “

Anthony Flood
The Metaphysical Foundations of Love — p. 35

Kinists do not discourage marriages across racial lines because they hate people. They discourage marriages across racial lines because they love people. They know the lack of racial similitude between bride and groom will likely be a future friction point and so fracturing point of the marriage. The goal of entering into marriage is for each partner to have a partner who is in a multitude of respects a reflection of themselves. The more harmony of interests between the one male and one female marriage candidates the more likely that the marriage will be a success. Introducing vast differences in race, or class, or religion, or culture, or values as in each party coming to the marriage altar is a sure-fire means to guaranteeing that the marriage will fail or at the very least not be as happy as it otherwise would have been if those differences had been taken into account before the marriage was entered via covenant.

Now let me anticipate an objection to the quote as coming from earnest Christians. I can hear many protesting at Dr. Flood’s recommendation of the necessity of self-love. I will only say here that if you want a guarantee that a marriage will fail marry somebody who doesn’t have a healthy and Christian love of themselves. When Dr. Flood talks about “self-love” he is not talking about narcissism. He is merely saying by way of metaphor that people who are comfortable in their own skin should marry people who would likewise be comfortable in their skin if they had to be.

Doubtless, there are inter-racial marriages that work, as well as marriages across class lines and culture lines and religious lines that work. Praise be to God for those marriages. However, I’ve also seen healthy three-legged dogs who run well, but that doesn’t mean that we should promote either inter-racial, inter-religious, or inter-class marriages or the cutting off of the legs of dogs. The fact that something odd or unusual works isn’t a recommendation for continuing to pursue the odd and unusual.

My Time In Purgatory IV

So mendacious and malevolent were my crimes against the Cultural Marxist norm that the Clown Reformed Church felt it necessary to pass overtures at their annual Clown World Synod (CWS) in 2019 shadow boxing against Kinism. In this entry of my “Time in Purgatory,” I take a look at the results as well as some of the quotes that were provided by Dr. Rev. Dusty Lugnut who served at CWS 2019 as something like a roving reporter.

I.) Synod Example “A”

1.) A delegate presents the following motion:

That synod, given the recent history of Kinist teaching in a particular church of the CRCNA, admonish councils and classes to promote confessional fidelity and mutually to pursue special discipline of an officebearer who is found to hold views contrary to our standards.

Grounds:

a. The pastor who was teaching Kinist views was able to do so for

several years without special discipline being successful.

b. By admonishing councils and classes to encourage confessional
fidelity and special discipline when applicable, it sends a strong
message from the broadest body of our denomination that Kinist

teaching will not be tolerated in our churches.

—Adopted

1.) The Church I serve was never a particular Church in the CRC. This Church was started by the Clown Reformed Church back in 1965 when I was 5 years old. By the time I arrived in 1995 those original Churches had long cut ties with their “daughter” Church. The Church was operating essentially as an independent church that was dating the CRC trying to determine if it ever wanted to get married and jump in bed. From the very beginning of my time here we had our own counsel, we set our own budgets, we took in our own members, and we distributed the Sacraments with officers unordained by the Clown Reformed Church. We were a defacto Independent Church who was still dating the CRC trying to determine if we would become a particular Church.

a.) Special Discipline was NEVER successful because special discipline was NEVER attempted. They certainly had every opportunity in the world to enact special discipline if they wanted but they didn’t do that and they didn’t do that because they knew that their own Cultural Marxism would be exposed if they went after me in the Church courts.

Not once was there ever a substantive conversation with anybody in the Classis about what I understood Kinism to mean. Not once did anybody refer to anything I had written (and I had written tons) as somehow proving that my views were out of bounds. Indeed, the Church council that was assigned the task of overseeing us and was largely in name only (something that only took place after nearly 20 years of being completely independent) explicitly praised me to the Denominational District and recommended my being given an “honorable release.” Something that the vindicative Cultural Marxist feminists and churchmen of the District could in no way allow. The letter from the supervising counsel stated in part,

“Rev. Bret McAtee has served in ministry in the Charlotte Clown Reformed Church, Charlotte, MI for the past 2o years (?), faithfully serving the flock committed to his care. He has labored tirelessly among them, offering the comfort with which Christ has comforted us, providing godly council and expounding on the Word of God. He has also provided direction for their homeschooling efforts, often teaching World History, History of philosophy, and Worldview Formation.

Rev. McAtee also has developed a significant web presence through his years of ministry at Charlotte CRC, including his personal blog, ironink.org. Through his writings, he has gained a following online and has expanded his influence by writing articles for ezines….

His involvement with groups promoting Christian Reconstruction has caused some consternation for colleagues in the denomination and some peers outside the denomination. Rev. McAtee has engaged in the rigorous defense of his beliefs, but always with a spirit of Christian unity — as evidence by his long participation in a peer group among the Classis Lake Eerie pastors in Michigan. It (spirit of Christian unity) is also evidenced by his willingness to change his rhetorical methods when some in the classis felt he crossed a line of collegiality with his comments. (i.e. — The earlier mentioned meeting where a fellow Pastor was raped and destroyed by their Kangaroo court.)…

The Council of _____ _____ ______  (the supervising council) proposes that Classis Lake Eerie grant the request of Rev. Bret McAtee to be released from his calling as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament in the Clown Reformed Church, in accordance with article 14-b of the Church Order. We also propose that his release be declared honorable.

Grounds

1.) Rev. McAtee’s long service at Charlotte CRC should be commended 
2.) His request comes as a result of his own reflection and understanding that his theological commitments will continue to disturb the peace within the Clown Reformed Church.”

Except for two sentences which I will return to later this is what the supervising council recommended. You will notice that they saw no danger. They saw zero need for any “special discipline.” They understood that any problematic Kinism they saw was by others wrongly attaching my name to what other people had written under the rubric of Kinism — material that I had and would now disavow. Just as there is a great deal of what passes as Christianity today that high-profile Christians write that I would vehemently disavow. My supervising council gave me the ecclesiastical version of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. However, unlike the District as a whole, and the Synod as a whole, this Church was not a den of raging Cultural Marxists and the minister of the supervising Church was a Conservative by impulse.

Now at one point, before the above letter was written, there was an occasion when the Classis start bandying about charges of “racism” (whatever the hell that means) against me but all of that was done completely contrary to their own book of Church order yet even then all they did was wag their fingers arriving at no-decision though their virtue signaling had them all clapping each other on the back.

b.) The Classis I was located in had multiple opportunities to pursue “special discipline” but instead of bringing charges simply allowed me to go my own way consistent with my request. The reason for that is those clowns knew they did not have a leg to stand on. There was never, at any time, any teaching on my part, that was not consistent with both the Scriptures and 2000 years of Church History.

II.) Synod Example “B”

That 2019 Clown Reformed (CRC) synod accede to Overture 7, section XI, A-D.

Ground: Kinist theology and practice is neither biblical nor Reformed.

Rather, Kinism is a twisting of Reformed doctrine. The Bible makes

clear that God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in every way. Kinist principles and praxis distort this truth.

—Adopted

Bret responds,

God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in EVERY way?

Really … God’s ideal is all families are equal in beauty? In intelligence? In height? In achievement? Clan McAtee is equal in every way to the House of Windsor in wealth and influence? All families are equal in artistic gifting? All families are equal in athletic ability? All families equal in income? In opportunity?

The ability to pile shit this high without realizing that one is doing so is truly breath-taking.

Might one be allowed to ask; “Where in the Bible does it make clear that God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in every way?” Chapter and verse, please. I want to read this with my own eyes.

Can you imagine hundreds of Reformed synodical delegates voting to confirm such an obviously dumbass statement and all that in the name of Jesus Christ? And yet that is what was done by the CRC in 2019. This statement is Marxism on steroids. God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in every way?

Karl Marx… call your office.

And our roving reporter Dr. Rev. Dusty Lugnut provided these quotes from some of the delegates;

Joey Reckoma, Classis Central California, said, “Kinism says that people of color are less than human.”

Bret Responds,

Actually Joey if you didn’t have your head so far up your most southerly aperture that you had to unzip your zipper to have a conversation you would realize that no Kinist has ever said that people of color are less than human. That is a Christian Identity conviction among only the more extreme CI types.

Jake Boring, Classis Alberta North, said what makes Kinism a heresy is that it distorts the central Christian teaching that all humans are created in the image of God. Some wondered how kinism could have been tolerated for so long in the CRC.

Bret responds,

Again … this is a confusion with the most extreme version of Christian Identity. Kinism is NOT CI. All kinists affirm that all humans are the Imago Dei.

Something that should be added here just as way of information is that kinists come in all colors. I have good friends who are black who are kinist. I have good friends who are Asian who are kinist. I have good friends who are from the sub-continent of India who are kinist. And this because we are each and all Christian and understand that what is called Kinism today is merely vanilla historic Christianity, believed in all times, and in all places, among all Christian people until 1950 or so.

Tigh Wagontrain asked, “How does a pastor like this not get disciplined?” He presented a motion passed by synod that “councils and classes be admonished to promote confessional fidelity.” The language of the synod declaration on kinism calls it a “twisting” of Reformed teaching.

Bret responds,

A.) A pastor like this does not get disciplined because he didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe Tigh you think Kuyper should have been disciplined? Have you read what he wrote on different races? Or maybe Guillaume Von Prinisterer likewise should have been disciplined for holding views very similar to mine.

B.) If you read Achord & Dow’s Anthology Tigh you will see that Kinism is in no way a twisting of Reformed teaching. But maybe reading isn’t your strength?

C.) Confessional fidelity? LOL … this coming from a man who is in a denomination that long ago embraced women in office and now is toying with accepting sodomy. Sorry, Tigh, you passed the Confessional fidelity exit decades ago Bro.

Randy Rancid, Classis California South: “Kinism is the Americanization of apartheid.”

Bret responds,

Apartheid cannot be successful apart from force. I have written and taught in the past that I am opposed to the use of force believing instead in the freedom of assembly. We are seeing now that force isn’t necessary to achieve segregation. In the past week, I’ve read articles reporting how universities are having segregated graduation ceremonies as demanded by the students. It seems minorities want to graduate with their own people and I don’t blame them in the least.

I wonder if Randy Rancid believes that Korean Churches in the CRC or Hmong Churches in the CRC when they worship on Sundays are examples of “The Americanization of apartheid.”

Just another doltish thing to say by another chap who has repeatedly demonstrated his doltishness. (I know Randy.)

My Time In Purgatory — III

In this segment of “My Time In Purgatory,” I’m going to go ahead a wee bit to look at recent developments. However, I am not done with examining the Clown Reformed Church and my time when they had to survive my presence for nearly 25 years.

Following the labeling by the Southern Poverty Law Center (the mother of all euphemisms) of Charlotte Christ the King Reformed as an extremist hate group, the Clown Reformed Church rushed out with their own press release touching all that had happened in 2018. Clearly, the CRC was trying to get out in front of the SPLC story so it wouldn’t splash back on them if it was discovered that at one time the congregation I served for 50 years thought about actually joining the CRC. The Clown Reformed Church press release was filled with the same slander and libel we have come to love and expect from the CRC.

The first error in a cascade of errors ranging from lies to stupidity as from the Press Spokesman – Rev. Smythe Raginwald – was his statement that it was only after the denomination cut me loose as a minister that the congregation I serve itself left the denomination. In point of fact, the Congregation left the Clown Reformed Church in November of 2018. The Denomination did not cut me loose officially until June of 2019. The Church’s leaving the CRC falls in the category of “A better decision has never been made.” My only regret, as the Pastor, is that the congregation didn’t leave in 1995 when I showed up but the congregation that finally left in 2018 was a very different congregation that existed in 1995.

Next in our lineup of dissemblers, the disingenuous, and fabricators is one Rev. Ben Kieber. Rev. Kieber was a chap brought in as an assistant to work in the flagship church of the District. In no short time, Kieber demonstrated his unfamiliarity with loyalty as he connived with another female staff member to have their Senior Pastor tossed for the equivalent of jaywalking.

In the Press Release, Rev. Ben Kieber misrepresents the meaning of “Kinism,” which is commonly done by the enemies of Kinism so that the Cultural Marxists like Kieber may continue to smear the one school of thought which is opposing its Cultural Marxist goal of egalitarianism. Kinism is not a movement. You cannot write a letter and send it to the Kinism Headquarters. Because Kinism is not a movement it is instead a constellation of varying beliefs that are held in different combinations by different “kinists.” As such before one can pontificate on what Kinism is and is not one needs to be specific as to which Kinist he is talking about. There are many individuals who self-identify as “Kinists” who someone as myself, who is Kinist sympathetic, given my own definition, that I would want to distance myself from. What Rev. Kieber seeks to do is to speak in unseemly generalities that do not fit a great number of people who are kinist sympathetic or who might self-identify as Kinist.

Per Kieber my great Kinist crime per his exhaustive in-depth research that was reported to the District Denominational meeting, as reported by the regional and subscription starved Newspaper was that;

“According to his (Kieber’s) research, which Kieber shared with the State Journal, Rachel Simone spoke at the Charlotte church in July 2017. Simone is the founder, promoter, and fundraiser for the white nationalist group Suidlanders of the Republic of South Africa.”

That’s it. I was hounded by these piss ant Cultural Marxist Social Justice Warriors because we had a person in the Pulpit reporting on the crimes of the Marxist African National Congress party in South Africa perpetrated against the South African Boers. We sat for 30 minutes listening to this person pleading for help against the atrocities being committed against White farmers in S. Africa and Rev. Ben Kieber presented this as evidence that I was a heretical kinist? Can you say, idiot? I also think it was evil for the Communists to have murdered the Polish Officer Corps in the Katyn forest. By Ben Kieber’s standard that makes me guilty of being a Nazi. Can you say, idiot?

Secondly, Kieber identifies as “Kinist” what until just a few generations ago was considered just standard Christianity.

Kieber offered.

“McAtee taught and wrote about Kinism, a theology that holds to a belief that races should be kept separate and that people should not marry outside their race.”

Allow me to plead here for people to purchase the Achord & Dow Anthology, “Who is my Neighbor; An Anthology In Natural Relations,” so they can see for themselves what an idiotic thing Kieber offered above. In the Achord & Dow book, the Cultural Marxism that Kieber and the CRC are trying to sell as normative Christian theology is forever seen as jejune. Christians have always believed that people have a natural and entirely normal love for their own people that results in people groups naturally associating with their own people groups. McAtee’s belief has not so much been that “races should be kept separate,” as it has been that the Cultural Marxists should not be successful in putting all races in a racial blender and hitting the high button. The kind of Marxism that Kieber and the CRC are advocating by attacking my beliefs is as old as Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the boys.

“The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together, but to merge them….”

Vladimir Lenin
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76

1.) ”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

4.) “… Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their right to secede. “

Vladimir Lenin 
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination 

5.) “Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.”

 K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: AStudy of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

For those like Kieber whose reading comprehension skills are challenged allow me to give you the easy version of these quotes. “Marxism has always advocated for the destruction of nations and races by means of amalgamation.”

My real offense against the Clown Reformed Church was that I was and remain opposed to this doctrine of demons that Kieber and the CRC is pushing. That doctrine of demons is the doctrine that would forever sink God’s racial diversity in a sea of monism in the name of “diversity.”

Now as to the accusation that I don’t believe people from other races should marry I again appeal to Church history to demonstrate that if I am guilty of that then I am guilty along with the Church fathers.

“Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

Dr. Clarence MacCartney
20th Century Conservative Presbyterian Minister

Causes of Separation in 1973 (PCA separates from PCUS) by Dr. John Edwards Richards

  • The Socialist, who declares all men are equal.  Therefore there must be a great leveling of humanity and oneness of privilege and possession.
  • The Racial Amalgamationist, who preaches that the various races should be merged into one race and differences erased in oneness.
  • The Communist, who would have one mass of humanity coerced into oneness by a totalitarian state and guided exclusively by Marxist philosophy.
  • The Internationalist, who insists on co-existence between all peoples and nations that they be as one regardless of ideology or history.John Edwards Richards

    One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

  • “The vast majority of good thinking people prefer to associate with, and intermarry with, people of their respective race; this is part of the God-given inclination to honor and uphold the distinctiveness of separate races. But there are many false prophets of oneness, and many shallow stooges, who seek to force the amalgamation of the races.”

    Dr. John E. Richards
    The Racial Problem Facing America (1964)

    The casual reader should not be so foolish as to think that I only have a few quotes to support my position. I have so many quotes from the Church fathers going back thousands of years that it would make Ben Keiber weary just considering having to read all the quotes I have.

    So, Rev. Kieber misses the mark on his criticism of me. I have always believed that while it is not a good idea for people of different races to marry, I have also expressly taught that once such an unwise marriage covenant is entered into the Church should do all it can to support that marriage covenant.

    We are not done with Kieber yet. The man put his foot in it when he volunteered quotes for the regional newspaper hit piece and now Kieber is going to be made to eat both his feet.

    Kieber was quoted in the regional newspaper hit piece that “the denomination’s pastors knew what McAtee was teaching in 2016 and made efforts to address it.”

    This one gives me a belly laugh. Nobody from that god-forsaken denomination ever had one substantive conversation with me about what I had been writing for 20 years. Second, what kind of denomination is it that takes 20 years before it realizes that it has a minister who is putatively teaching rank heresy? I was 20 years in a pulpit they mistakenly thought was theirs and only caught up with my transgressions 2o years later? Talk about incompetence.

As we finish off this installment we look at more statements made by Rev. Smythe Raginwald. Rev. Smythe Raginwald is an Afro-American and leading Social Justice Warrior in the Clown Reformed Church.

Rev. Raginwald said that my beliefs (which to this day have not been given an examination by someone other than Cultural Marxist Social Justice Warriors) were a wake-up call for the CRC. I understand why he would say such a thing. All Cultural Marxists should fear those who are articulating Biblical Christianity. Rev. Raginwald bemoaned the environment where kinism could grow unimpeded. This is the complaint of a Cultural Marxist who believes that God wants all colors to bleed into one. As I’ve demonstrated the Church throughout history has always been conscious about the goodness of God in creating different races.

Here is a quote from a leading Presbyterian of his time. It is typical Reformed thinking;

“If from this we may conclude that ethnic pluriformity is the revealed will of God for the human race in its present situation, it is highly questionable whether the Christian can have part in any program that would seek to erase all ethnic distinctions. That such distinctions may be crossed over by individuals may be granted, but it is at least questionable whether a program designed to wipe out such differences on a mass scale should be endorsed by the Christian. It is this line of argument that the average Christian segregationist uses to back his view. He fears that the real goal of the integrationist is the intermarriage of the races, and therefore the breakdown of the distinctions between them. Many who would be willing to integrate at various lesser levels refuse to do so, simply because they feel that such will inevitably lead to intermarriage of the races, which they consider to be morally wrong. . . .

The mass mixing of the races with the intent to erase racial boundaries he does consider to be wrong, and on the basis of this, he would oppose the mixing of the two races in this way. Let it be acknowledged that a sin in this area against the Negro race has been perpetrated by godless white men, both past and present, but this does not justify the adoption of a policy of mass mixing of the races. Rather, the Bible seems to teach that God has established and thus revealed his will for the human race now to be that of ethnic pluriformity, and thus any scheme of mass integration leading to mass mixing of the races is decidedly unscriptural.

Dr. Morton H. Smith 1923 – 2018
Presbyterian Minister

Rev. Smythe Raginwald managed to complain to the Cultural Marxist newspaper rag that when he came to visit our small church he was “the only Black person there.” This is another knee slapper. Rev. Raginwald could have visited nearly all the Churches in Charlotte and he would have discovered the same thing given that 95.1% of Charlotte’s population is white. Now combine that with the fact that somehow Rev. Raginwald managed to miss observing the other non-Caucasian person who was in attendance at the Church I serve on that morning.

We’ve already dealt, in past entries with Raginwald’s misinformation about the crimes being committed in S. Africa so there is no need to pick that up again. Suffice it to say that there is tons of information out there demonstrating the problem that White Boer farmers are having in avoiding being murdered in S. Africa.

Finally, Rev. Raginwald said Per the regional Newspaper;

“Smythe went alone to the service but, he said, ‘if I had taken my wife Karen, who is white, we would have been heretical in the eyes of this pastor.”

Actually, at the time Smith attended the Church already had a mixed-race couple regularly attending for quite some time and neither myself nor anybody in the congregation screamed “heresy.” We have also had, in the past, families attend who were mixed-race and neither I nor anybody else objected to their presence. It is just an ignorance of epic proportions for  Raganwald to claim that I would have thought he was heretical merely for having a white wife when in point of fact I think him heretical for embracing Cultural Marxist tenets.

In the end, it is not Rev. McAtee who is in error here, but to the contrary, it is Rev. Kieber, Rev. Raginwald, and others from the Clown Reformed Church who have embraced the heresy of Cultural Marxism. If I reject them, I reject them not because of who they are married to nor even because of how torpid they are, but rather because – either self-consciously or not – they have embraced the doctrine of Cultural Marxism. This is unequivocally wrong.

My Time In Purgatory II

“I was there for some of those Classis of the Asses and they were little more than a gathering of effeminate social justice warriors speaking of all those things important to what could have well passed for a socially relevant meeting of the Democratic Club. And when I say effeminate that is reserved for the men. The women had more testosterone.”

Alan Chamberlain — Psuedonymn
Former Elder Who Attended Several Classis Meetings With Me

I’ve already mentioned a few of the incidents that occurred in the District meetings, but since Alan mentioned the effeminate social justice warrior aspect of it all I thought I would go with more examples.

You will remember from the past entry the chap I spoke of who, while undergoing an Ordination Exam froze up and literally could not answer one question put to him from the floor. From that point forward in my life that chap became the living embodiment of the maxim, “Like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car.” Certainly, you have been part of something where what you were witnessing was so bad you could barely endure being embarrassed for the person who was being embarrassed. This was that. However, the humor in this situation was found in the fact that while the ordination candidate was unsure of anything theological he sang like a bird when it came to how terrible “racism” was. He didn’t know Jack Shinola when it came to anything theological but he damn sure knew that racism was bad. I was confident that those who trained him were proud and indeed the whole District closed ranks around him and voted for him to pass his ordination exam with the provision that said candidate would continue to do theological training with two other Ministers in the District — two other Ministers who in the past had shown themselvesd in previous meetings to be just as jejune in theology as the candidate had revealed himself to be. It was the only time that one of the synodical delegates later privately pulled me aside and thanked me for drawing a line in the sand and standing. That delegate asked me to “keep the faith.” I told him that I had long ago had lost “the faith” when it came to this district and at this point, I was just going down with the ship.

Another time with another candidate in another ordination exam I asked from the floor if the Seminary graduate who was up for ordination could name the three great Imputations held by the Reformed faith. Now, I understand for the average reader such a question sounds rather abstruse but for a Reformed minister candidate, this is theology 101. You simply cannot get through Seminary without knowing the three great imputations.

1.) Adam’s Sin to his posterity
2.) The sins of the Elect to Christ
3.) The righteousness of Christ to His People

The very second the question had finally fallen from my lips Dr. Rev. Rusty Lugnut — my long-time foil and Simon Bar-Sinister — rose to object at the question and was in high dudgeon. The reader has to understand that the ordination candidate was going to go from ordination to work in Dr. Lugnut’s Church as some kind of assistant. Dr. Rev. Lugnut was instantly in a lather and tried to turn things on me. Dr. Rev. Lugnut shouted at me asking if I realized that “75% of the ministers in the building could not answer my question,” thus insinuating that I was being overly exacting. I calmly but with gusto replied that “I find that completely believable given the track record of the years of ordination exams I have witnessed.”  Dr. Rev. Lugnut was not amused, though this day I consider that to have been one of my more witty comebacks at just the right moment. Dr. Rev. Lugnut was decidedly not amused and my answer only sent him further into orbit. He began a diatribe that had something to do with me and my ancestors but he was mercifully cut off by another minister with the demand to vote on the candidate. To this day I am glad for the interjection of this other minister at that point because if he had not stepped in there was fixing to be blood on the floor between myself and Dr. Rev. Lugnut. Of course, the candidate passed with flying colors. I was a pebble in the shoe of the District chieftains but I had absolutely zero influence.

In yet another exam of yet another ordinate candidate in the area of “knowing one’s Bible,” the candidate was asked a series of questions of where in the Bible fairly well-known passages were located. Over 25 years in my time in the Denomination I met one fellow Minister who shared my convictions and it was this minister who was responsible for examining the candidate with this portion of their exam. For 20-30 minutes he peppered the Candidate with different passages asking for the candidate to provide the book of the Bible they were found in and if possible what chapter. The Candidate got something like 20% correct. A dismal performance by any standard. But you guessed it … he was ordained by a nearly unanimous count. (They always counted on me voting “no.” Indeed, I don’t think in all the time I was loosely connected with these meetings I ever voted for a candidate to be ordained.)

In another famous case, the candidate was asked “Was it possible for Jesus to have sinned.” Now, to be honest I was a bit shocked by this question because it was way out of the norm for the ministers of this District. Usually what one got from these ministers was questions like, “What is your favorite recipe,” or “If you were a piece of clothing, what piece of clothing would you be.” (OK… so I’m exaggerating, but only by a little bit.) The candidate answered the question about Jesus and his possible ability to sin with an “affirmative.” Now, I wanted to jump out of my seat but by this point, I was finally learning there was no upside to being the turd in the punchbowl and kept my place as I enjoyed the amusement by the subsequent discussion that these theological titans entered into on the question “Could Jesus have sinned.” Oh… and he passed almost unanimously.

In another case, the District decided that they were going to have a “listening session” on the issue of sodomy. There were those who were pushing to mainstream the acceptance of sodomy in the Denomination and near my end in the Denomination the wizards of smart decided that they were going to have breakout sessions and discussions on this issue. The wizards of smart found a large auditorium and placed us in groups of 6-8 in order to discuss the issue. At this particular meeting, I had a Deacon with me and he was more adamantly opposed to sodomy than even I am. Poor Bob. By the time these discussions were finished, he was apoplectic. I thought the poor guy was going to stroke out on me.

Before the discussions even began I lodged a protest saying that the mere “conversation” on the matter by itself was part of the process of mainstreaming the vile idea of the Church accepting sodomy as a matter of course. The moderator couldn’t believe his ears. How could anyone object to “a conversation.” However, I knew and know that when these conversations begin it is with the purpose of desensitizing people to the awfulness of what is going to be discussed. The best way to mainstream any perversion is to first start having conversations about it as if there is any possibility said perversion could ever be mainstreamed. The first step of perversion coming out of the closet are conversations about perversions possibly coming out of the closet. They weren’t fooling me with this “conversation” nonsense.

Bob (the deacon from the Church I serve who attended) and I were at different tables. Later I learned that one of the chaps who was part of my discussion table stood in the background and waited to see where I was going to sit so that he could sit at that table. I had crossed swords before with this pro-sodomite chap on the issue and he was bound and determined to be part of any discussion group I was part of so as to cut my influence. And so the two of us – he, the pro acceptance of sodomy in the Church and me, a generation younger than him, defending the quaint notion that the Scripture says that sodomy is a sin. Hammer and tong the two of us went at it while the rest at the table faded into the background. I was quoting Scripture and he was pleading for the experience of those who had been so ostracized and so “hurt” by the Church.  He was making an appeal to emotion and I was making an appeal to the authority of God’s Word. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead and I was fearful that he was going to start slapping me any second. Meanwhile, I could hear Bob’s voice rising in the background as he was heating up his table in the discussion. It was surreal.

The discussion roundtables ended and the main group as a whole gathered together and once again Bob and I heated up the place in the main discussion. I have only occasionally been as proud of one of my Church officers as I was proud of Bob in this discussion. He raised the black flag and asked for no quarter while giving no quarter.

Our final instance for this entry was how I witnessed a conservative minister destroyed by a Cultural Marxist Church and Disctrict. I still can’t go into all the details of this episode but I can say that I witnessed the district try to bury exculpatory evidence that would have gone a long way towards restoring this minister to his post.

To this day I don’t know the full details of the charges. I do know the charges were not of a nature that required the minister to lose his job. However, as I said, he was a conservative man in a liberal denomination and in an important liberal church and he was succeeding in moving the Church in a conservative direction having only been serving there a few short years. (He took over for Dr. Rev. Dusty Lugnut when he retired.) He was dealing with a revolt from his staff as his postmodern female campus minister was insisting that the minister under question was being far too declamatory from the pulpit. I heard this same woman in minister gatherings try to run this minister down in the presence of other ministers in the district clearly seeking to ruin his reputation. As I said, I did not know and have never learned the details of what amounted to the crime of “jaywalking” which was visited with the punishment of the electric chair by the Church and denomination.

At the District meeting where the minister was finally thrown under the bus and removed from his position, I had in my possession something that nobody else knew I had. I had the exculpatory evidence that stated that the minister was ready to take up again his office. The denomination had required that my minister friend go see a counselor of their choosing. This he did, thus showing the virtue of submission to the denominational “authorities.” The professional and degreed Counselor had given the minister a clean bill of health and had recommended that he be allowed to return to his responsibilities as minister of the Church he was put on leave from. Clearly, this Counselor — a Counselor assigned by the denomination itself — believed that this chap should not be tossed. Yet, in the District denominational meeting dealing with this issue, the wizards of smart decided to bury this report. They had intended not to make known this piece of information which had bearing on the decision making of whether this Pastor should be essentially be removed from his job. They intended to bury this evidence. Except, as I said, I had this evidence.

Up to this point, I had made a stirring defense of this minister but was told in no uncertain terms that I should not be calling into question the work of the Church and district in this matter as they had been very punctilious in their going over the evidence. That is when I snapped and started waving around the document that I had that demonstrated that the very Counselor that they had required the minister in question to go see had signed off a document saying he was fit and ready to go back to work. I started pointedly asking why this document had been conveniently not mentioned. At this point, the red-faced embarrassment was in full glow. They had been caught in their guilt of trying to bury exculpatory evidence. They had been caught red-handed in seeking to put their thumbs on the scale of justice. I was in a full-throated rage and everybody in the building knew it. How could they dare seek to destroy a man’s career by withholding exculpatory evidence? They sought to make flimsy excuses but they knew they were busted.

Despite being caught redhanded in what can only be called a Kangaroo court stunt all that the dirty denominational chieftains wanted to have stamped with approval was stamped with approval and the minister in question effectively had his career ended.

Later one of the delegates pulled me aside and said, “If I’m ever in a tight place, I want someone like you as a friend defending me.” I responded by saying it did precious little good today. And so the most qualified minister I ever met in the Clown Reformed Chruch (CRC) was cashiered but I still have the privilege of calling him a friend yet today.

And do keep in mind these are only the most excessive of things I witnessed.

 

 

My Time In Purgatory — Part I

The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.  Proverbs 18:17

For 25 years I have turned the other cheek while I’ve been slandered and libeled by the Clown Reformed Church (hereinafter referred to as “CRC”) but in this document, I am telling, in the words of Paul Harvey, the rest of the story.

We showed up in 1995 after United Airlines (UA) decided to close operations in Columbia South Carolina. From 1989-1995 I Pastored the first Church I served while at the same time working part-time for the Airlines. With UA’s decision, there was no way that I could support my family on the small rural Church’s salary alone and so my wife and I decided we would take UA up on its offer to pay for our move to one of six cities of our choosing. Our #1 bid was Grand Rapids Michigan, primarily because my kin lived in and surrounding that area and also because there was a Seminary there where I could do my next level of degree work if we decided that was possible.

In our visits to Grand Rapids to set up shop one of the first things we did was to check out with the local Seminary if there were any area churches that needed pulpit supply. I had been preaching on Sundays for nearly 7 years and it seemed like a good idea to at least investigate the possibility of pulpit supply while living in Michigan. We contacted the appropriate person in the bowels of the bureaucracy of the CRC and he told us that there was indeed a Church that routinely needed pulpit supply and that it would be good for them to have someone who would be a constant for them in this regard. He went on to say, however, that we would have to talk to another person as well about this opportunity and immediately ushered down to another office to talk to yet another bureaucrat but not without first giving us a contact name for the small Church that needed the pulpit supply.

We waited in the waiting room of the office and soon an older rounded man asked us into his office. The first chap we spoke to popped in again and explained what was going on. Having explained the situation the first chap promptly left. The second chap just stared at the door that the first chap departed out of. He then stared at us for a moment and returned again to his staring at the door. This happened for some little while the 2nd chap caught his bearings. Finally, in the first words he spoke to us, he said, “You can’t do this.” I simply responded by saying “OK.” For 5 minutes he kept repeating over and over in different ways, “You can’t do this,” and for 5 minutes I kept saying “OK.” I already had the local contact name and so I knew that once I finally was finished with the 2nd chap saying, “You can’t do this,” I would make a beeline for the phone to call the contact number. I never saw the older rounded man again.

I contacted the number given to me by the first chap and the man on the other end of the line seemed genuinely excited to know that I was interested in not only filling their pulpit but also quite possibly living in their parsonage. They were a small congregation that could not, like the congregation I had been serving in South Carolina, afford a full-time man, though they could afford a “tentmaker.” That is what I was offering them. Long story short here, we met several times with the contact man and within a month I was filling the pulpit and within a month of that, the small Church received approval from the District denominational authorities that I would be allowed to be pulpit supply for this small struggling Church. The district authorities were gleeful for me likewise because I solved a problem that they had in trying to figure out what to do with this congregation For years the District was allotting a small percentage of their budget to keep the Church afloat but with my presence, the District no longer had to cut checks for this Church because the Church could make it by paying me a small salary ($ 300.00 a week) while I continued tent-making working for UA in Grand Rapids. Indeed, there had even been discussion among the District Denomination to close this Church before I arrived. I was a solution for many parties. I was a solution for the congregation itself. I was a solution for the Seminary guy always having to find pulpit supply for this Church every week. I was a solution to the District’s problem of spending money on a mission Church that they were convinced would never be self-supporting.

This worked for three years before my health began to burnout. I was working nearly full-time for UA while working full-time for the Church. At the end of 1998 UA made it nearly impossible, by their purposeful scheduling of me to work on Sundays, (Station Politics) for me to keep tent-making at UA in Grand Rapids while pastoring. At that point, Jane and I made a proposal to the local Church that if they could meet a very modest salary we would step out in faith and quit UA and pastor full time in Charlotte. The Church, to their credit, resolved to meet that modest salary and I quit UA and the tent-making I had done for nearly a decade.

One result was that I got to know my children who I had seen comparatively little of for those ten years. Eventually, another result was that I had to, once again, deal with denominational politics. For the most part, the Denomination left me and the Church alone. However, they had assigned me a “mentor,” by the name of Dr. Dusty Lugnut. Dr. Lugnut was the Pastor of the flagship Church in the District 40 miles up the road and had the endearing virtue of always thinking very well of himself as combined with letting you know that he thought very well of himself. The problem with Dr. Lugnut and me is that Dr. Lugnut was a full-on Barthian (Neo-Orthodox) while I had sworn my life to extinguishing Barthians. Putting the two of us together in a mentor-mentee relationship was like tying two polecats together at the tail and slinging them over a clothesline. I think we met twice before we both realized that we were not going to be best pals.

At that point, the condescending Dr. Lugnut just decided to ignore me and ignore the Church. Now, keep in mind he had been assigned by the District to shepherd me into an official capacity in the Denomination while at the same time working to make sure that the Church I was serving moved from a “mission church” to an “organized” church. However, Dr. Lugnut determined he was going to show me and us that he was in charge and so he just ignored us for nearly 14 years. Just try to imagine how disappointed I was.

Every so often during those 14 years (maybe three times), we would be contacted by either Dr. Lugnut or by some other District chieftain. I remember one time there was a Minister from Toledo who phoned me and told me about his big plans for the District now that he had been elected moderator and that he wanted me to be part of that and so he was going to bring me in. I just grunted agreement suspecting that like so many times before this was just so much talk. I was right. In six months he transferred to another Church and that was the end of his maniacal plan to shape the District in his image.

I would occasionally attend District denominational meetings of the Clown Reformed Church (CRC), and would inevitably return home in a rage with my blood pressure in the stratosphere. These meetings were held twice annually. At one of the meetings, I remember the Anabaptist and so Pacificst John Howard Yoder being invoked as a guru on war theory with the whole floor adding their Amens. I finally couldn’t bear it any longer and stood up and said, “It is amazing to me that a room full of putatively Reformed people are kissing the arse of an Anabaptist and Pacifist. I get not agreeing with this war, but invoking an Anabaptist intellectual? What is wrong with you people. I thought you were Reformed.” A deep and spooky silence blanketed the floor.

Another time at the District Denominational meeting a discussion was had on the floor about the necessity to extend to homosexual ministers insurance benefits. I sat there with my mouth agape because I had been persuaded that there was no such thing as homosexual ministers. I arose to object and that created its own fun firestorm until one of the tenured Ministers realized that this discussion was not going well and was able to table it.

Over the years I witnessed many amazing things at these District meetings and I will return to more of these shocking things in subsequent installments. Most commonly what shell-shocked me was the low snake-shit standard for ordination. I saw a man ordained who couldn’t answer one question put to them. (I kid you not –not one.) I witnessed another chap get ordained who had no answer to the question; “What is Original Sin.” Another chap, when asked “what books he enjoyed reading,” responded with, “I don’t really like reading books.” Another chap I saw ordained explicitly denied “Justification by Faith Alone.” More than one chap could not explain the meaning of infant-Baptism. I saw one woman ordained who told us that as a chaplain she was not allowed to be explicit about the necessity of Jesus Christ for salvation with the dying patients she ministered to in the hospital per hospital policy and that she abided by that rule. I saw another woman ordained whose husband was a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. It was so bad that I finally got to the point where I just checked out of the meetings. If I went I would sit in the back by myself and listen to lectures on my Zune or read a book. I can honestly say these were some of the most enraging, depressing, and discouraging moments in my life. To see the Church of Jesus Christ be staffed with such people and to see the Church of Jesus Christ not care about who they were staffing the Church with just ripped my heart out.

Finally, in 2009, fourteen years after serving as “stated supply” for this mission Church the denomination decided that they better push hard to make me official. After a great deal of wrangling characterized by my previous foot-dragging on these issues, the District finally corralled me into agreeing to take a one-week hermeneutics class at their Grand Rapids Seminary. I had angled for a Church history class dealing with the Continental Dutch Church but they insisted on hermeneutics.

And so I suffered through a week of hermeneutics as taught by someone who embraced higher criticism and subsequently stood for an ordination exam. The only person who gave me a hard time was Dr. Lugnut but it should be known that I gave as good as I got from Dr. Lugnut during his attempt at grilling me. I passed the ordination exam despite Dr. Lugnut’s fury with my position on women in office (I opposed it) without any problems though according to the denominations Book of Church Order it was not a legitimate ordination exam since there were only two representatives from Synod present as opposed to the required three. (The BCO used the language; “There shall be three officers from synod present.”) So, I passed the exam but not by the Denomination’s own standards.

Further, by the denomination’s own standards I was never finally ordained in the Denomination. I really wasn’t conversant with the Book of Church Order and only later had to become conversant with it and so I did not know that the BCO required ordained men in the denomination to be present at Ordination/Installation services in order to ordain and install me. I did not have any denominationally ordained men at my ordination/installation service and so according to the denomination’s own book of church order I was never officially ordained in the denomination. In point of fact, I did not have any ordained men from any denomination present at my ordination/installation service. So, per their own book of Church order, I never sustained a legitimate ordination exam and I was never legitimately ordained in their denomination. I learned this only when I was seeking to leave the denomination – which according to their own BCO I did not have to do since I was never in their denomination per their own standards, to begin with. It was the oddest thing. Here I was resigning from a denomination I was never a part of and requesting a release from a denomination in which I had never been accepted.

Jerry Seinfeld captured this situation perfectly,