Sanitation Prayer For Plantation Mayor

In light of this,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtE7MvsH7Zw

Wherein this is part of what is publicly prayed,

“Free us from the shackles of partisan politics, political correctness and personal egos and agendas. Let the plantation called New York City be the city of God, a city set upon the hill, a light shining in darkness.”

The prevailing view of this prayer is that slavery is still a condition that exists in New York city. Words like “Plantation,” “Reconstruction Era,” “Auction Block,” “Shackles,” “Emancipation Proclamation,” “Bondage,” “Master,” “Civil Wars,” and “Chain,” characterize the Prayer. Clearly the minister praying has a kind of Liberation Theology and believes that oppression is widespread.

I thought I would offer some counter views by two other Black men and one white man.

http://manningjohnson.org/speech/transcript.html

This one is excellent and was Manning Johnson’s final speech before his death. Given what Manning says here it is not a wonder that he has been dropped down the memory hole. Manning Johnson was a black man who was a Communist at one point in his life but who eventually awakened to the fact that the Communists were only interested in using the black man and that the end result would be even more misery for his people.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362030/early-skirmishes-race-war-thomas-sowell // This one by T. Sowell

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/fred-reed/the-pursuit-of-forced-amity/ // This one by Fred Reed

Generations #1

Dear Ella and Lee

Except for the Triune God of the Bible, and one’s integrity in relation to Him, I’ve concluded that there is nothing more important than family. The macro culture that you will grow up in will tell you otherwise at every turn. The culture will tell you that your lineage, heritage and patrimony are insignificant. The culture will push you to despise your past and whisper constantly that you are wiser then your forebears. Don’t you believe them. While it is true that Family can become absolutized and so become an idol, it is also true that when family finds it’s proper place, under the Triune God of the Bible’s authority, there is nothing else that exceeds it in import. The importance of the heritage of a godly family is seen in something that John Calvin observes in his commentary on I Timothy,

“Accordingly, he (Paul) sets before him his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, by whom he had been educated from his infancy in such a manner that he might have sucked godliness along with his milk. By this godly education, therefore, Timothy is admonished not to degenerate from himself and from his ancestors.”

Grandchildren, when one is blessed to have been raised in Christian homes one can not abandon his Kin without abandoning their God.

Because God trumps all, in terms of our allegiance, there may be times when you will have to turn your back on family. This should almost be unheard of when raised in the context of a Christian people but love of God must rise above even the tenderest of family affections if it comes to having to choose between the two.

Having given this slight introduction, I would like to tell you something about your family. One of my chief regrets (and I have my share of regrets) is that I didn’t discover more about my generations while they were still alive. So, I am writing to you to leave you at least a glimpse into some of your forebears. I won’t suggest to you that you are the scions of some great line. You’re not. Still, this family, is the family that God has been pleased to have ordained to make us part of, and so, for good or for ill I welcome you to your people. It is my prayer that you will rise above all the previous generations in terms of understanding God’s character and so having a corresponding zeal for the God of the Bible who has made us who we are, via faith and blood and who has set us in our families.

I would like to tell you a very little bit about your Great-Great-Great Grandparents. I have only the barest of memories of your Great x 3 Grandmother and no memories at all of her husband. Eva Lorraine was born in 1878. Her maiden name was Reid, but any knowledge of the Reid family is completely lost to me. I can tell you that both Reid and McAtee are fairly popular Scottish surnames and so it is not surprising to see someone from Clan Reid marry into McAtee Clan.

She, like most of your people, came from Agrarian stock. Lee and Ella your people were Farmers in these origins. Of course my memories of my Great Grandmother are sketchy as she died in 1963 when I was only 4. She lived right across a dirt road from my Grandparents and I remember going to visit her when we went to visit my Grandma McAtee (her daughter-in-law).

I have been told that when, as a toddler, I had ear aches that Grandma Great would blow smoke in my ear from her pipe in order to alleviate the pain. I was also told that Grandma Great was a bit superstitious as she would prohibit anyone from disturbing a rocking chair that was in motion from the wind, believing that it was rocking to the sway of some supernatural presence of someone gone but now visiting. We should not make too much of this kind of matter because these kinds of superstitions were not that uncommon among some rural folk. I saw a similar kind of superstition again some 35 years later in the first Church I served in South Carolina.

The only other story I have to offer from this generation is what was found when Grandma Great’s belongings were cleaned out. It seems that her husband, Murl, your Great x3 Grandfather, (who had died in 1929) was affiliated with the Klu Klux Klan. We surmise this because a Klan outfit was found in one of the closets when the house was cleaned out in 1963. It is believable, because historically we know that the Klan had a presence in that area of the State at about that time. I’ll let you do your own research on what the KKK was. Keep in mind though that the Klan had several incarnations and you’ll want to keep your eye on which incarnation of the Klan existed in the North in the 1920’s. The Klan of Nathan Bedford Forest was not the Klan of later incarnations.

Grandma Great was 85 when she passed away. She lived to see her husband and two of her children and one daughter-in-law precede her in death. Even in the early 20th century death was much closer to men then it is today and she, doubtless, knew well the pain that death creates. It is interesting to think that she died just about a month before President Kennedy was assassinated even though their worlds were far far apart. She grew up in a world where the biggest innovation was the Railroad Train and she lived to see the advent of the automobile, telephone, light bulb, electricity, record player, and the atomic bomb. As such, most of her life would have been lived without running water in the house, without a telephone, without a bathroom in the house, and she cooked most of her life with a wood stove. When she was born Railroads were the big thing. When she died men were probing space.

My Father (your Great-Grandfather) loved her dearly. To this day his Bible has a pressed rose in it he kept from her funeral.

I don’t know a thing about your Great x3 Grandparents confession of faith in Christ alone or a lack thereof. The Christian faith is typically more consistent with the Farmer then with other occupations as the people who live off the land, generally speaking, have the opportunity to have a greater sense of awareness of Providence as they are so dependent upon the seasons and the weather. Certainly your Great x3 Grandmother had a Christian burial and that says a little bit.

This is all I know or remember about this generation on the McAtee side of the family. It is very little but it is something that you would not have had if I had not given you this little snippet.

By the way … here is a link that tells about where they are buried in Colon, Michigan and gives some bare facts.

http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/stjoseph/cemeteries/l20002.txt

Augustine’s Postmillennialism

“Turning to Augustine, Wendy Zoba notes, Augustine teaches that history “would be marked by the ever-increasing influence of the church in overturning evil in the world before the Lord’s return” (Zoba, “Future Tense” Christianity Today [October 2, 1995]: 20). This would eventually issue forth in a “future rest of the saints on earth” (Augustine, Sermon 259:2) “when the Church will be purged of all the wicked elements now mixed among its members and Christ will rule peacefully in its midst.” (Cited in Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology [Cambridge: University Press, 1991], 133). This early incipient postmillennialism contains the most basic element of the later developed system: a confident hope in gospel victory in history prior to Christ’s return.

We may also reference Augustine’s comments on Psalm 2. Regarding the Lord laughing at the nations (Ps 2:4) he writes: “it is to be understood of that power which he giveth to His saints, that they seeing things to come, namely, that the Name and rule of Christ is to pervade posterity and possess all nations.” At v. 7 he writes: “‘Ask of Me,’ may be referred to all this temporal dispensation, which has been instituted for mankind, namely, that the ‘nations’ should be joined to the Name of Christ, and so be redeemed from death, and possessed by God. ‘I shall give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,’ which so possess them for their salvation, and to bear unto Thee spiritual fruit.” (Augustine in The Post-Nicene Fathers, 8:3)”

Calhoun & McAtee On Government

“For just in proportion as a people are ignorant, stupid, debased, corrupt, exposed to violence within and danger from without, the power necessary for government to possess, in order to preserve society against anarchy and destruction becomes greater and greater, and individual liberty less and less, until the lowest condition is reached, when absolute and despotic power becomes necessary on the part of government, and individual liberty extinct. So, on the contrary, just as a people rise in the scale of intelligence, virtue, and patriotism, and the more perfectly they become acquainted with the nature of government, the ends for which it was ordered, and how it ought to be administered, and the less the tendency to violence and disorder within, and danger from abroad, the power necessary for government becomes less and less, and individual liberty greater and greater. Instead, then, of all men having the same right to liberty and equality, as is claimed by those who hold that they are all born free and equal, liberty is the noble and highest reward bestowed on mental and moral development, combined with favorable circumstances. Instead, then, of liberty and equality being born with man; instead of all men and all classes and descriptions being equally entitled to them, they are prizes to be won, and are in their most perfect state, not only the highest reward that can be bestowed on our race, but the most difficult to be won—and when won, the most difficult to be preserved.”

John C. Calhoun

Apart from Christ people, at least on a civilizational wide scale, will be ignorant, stupid, debased, corrupt and exposed to violence. He could have lifted those descriptors right out of Ephesians 4,

17 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, [m]excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality [n]for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

Of course the simple idea contained in the Calhoun quote is that people can only have liberty to the extent that they are Biblical Christians. Apart from Biblical Christianity, where self-government, in keeping with God’s law word, is the foundational block for all other government (Civil, Church, Family, etc.), what must be introduced to keep a people in line is force. And all civil Government is, in a pagan context, is organized force.

There is no liberty for social orders where Christ is hated. In such social orders the organizing principle will always be slavery as a people enslaved to their own sin and to the devil will not be a people who can create cultural Institutions that are characterized by liberty. People who are in bondage to their sin create social orders where the theme is bondage and slavery.

This is true regardless of their political organization be it Libertarian, Democratic Socialist, Labor, Whig, Republican, or Democrat. People enslaved to sin can not create social orders that are characterized by Liberty.

Slightly disagreeing with Calhoun, I would say that Liberty is not only a prize to be won but a grace to be given. Sure enough that Liberty must be protected once obtained but I would insist that Liberty is a grace given because it always begins with men set free from the dominion of darkness.

Thus, in the end, this quote reminds us that political or economic liberty can never be obtained apart from a people who are spiritually free. We, as Americans, have lost our political and economic liberty and those will never be re-claimed until we rediscover the truths of God’s majesty and our sin and His provision of Christ to release us from our spiritual bondage. Only a people set free from themselves can build a civilization that is characterized by Governments with boundaries and social orders characterized by Liberty.

As long as we are given over to our sin we will have powerful enslaving Governments.

Seminary Course — Multiculturalism And The Displacement Of Biblical Culture

The purpose of this course if to make you familiar with what Multiculturalism is, how it has come about, and the methodologies that it uses to advance its agenda.

Main Texts

The Calvinistic Concept of Culture — Henry Van Til
The Gagging of God — D. A. Carson
The Politics of Guilt & Pity — R. J. Rushdoony

These three main texts will tell you

1.) What Biblical Culture is and where it comes from (Van Til)
2.) How it is that Biblical Culture is being displaced by multiculturalism (Carson)
3.) The concrete methodologies that are being pursued in order to implement multiculturalism (Rushdoony)

On line documentary

Agenda; The Grinding Down Of America — http://vimeo.com/63749370
CULTURAL MARXISM: The Corruption of America — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIdBuK7_g3M

In this course I am recommending watching the documentaries first because they do a good job over-viewing and highlighting what Multiculturalism is, and where its threat lies.

Supplemental Required Reading

The Supplemental reading will require an ability to read critically. Most of what is said in the bibliography provided is quite good but there are also some strains that need to be set aside. At the very least the list will provide the tools necessary to see what multiculturalism is doing.

The following books should be read in the order suggested.

1.) Cry Havoc — Ralph de Toledano
2.) The Poverty of Multiculturalism — Patrick West, Kenneth Minoque
3.) The Vision of the Anointed — Thomas Sowell
4.) Alien Nation — Peter Brimelow
5.) Suicide Of A Superpower — Patrick Buchanan
6.) Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends — Kevin J. Vanhoozer
7.) Hollywood vs. America — Michael Medved
8.) The Menace of Multiculturalism; Trojan Horse In America — Alvin J. Schmidt
9.) Christ & Culture — H. Richard Neibuhr
10.)Christ and Culture Revisited — D. A. Carson

If the order is followed sequentially as suggested the weaknesses in the later books will be more easily recognizable. The later books still have a treasure trove of necessary information but they also are afflicted with weaknesses as well.

Books #1-3, along with the main texts and documentaries, give a good foundation for what multiculturalism is and why it should be despised by all right thinking Christians. Book #4 deals with how Immigration patterns contribute to multiculturalism. Book #5 gives a plethora of concrete examples of multiculturalism in the works. Book #6 provides more Theological grounding along with that provided by the main texts. Book #7 reveals how Hollywood and the movie industry advances the agenda of multiculturalism. Book #8 has some presuppositional weakness but still provides some good information. Books #9 and #10 are important. Neibuhr gives a template for understanding the relationship between Christ and Culture. Carson challenges Niebuhr on some matters. Carson’s Baptist background shows through. The reader needs to be aware of that. As long as books 8-10 are read in light of all that went before the student will be able to strain out the errors in those books.

The Student will write 15 page book reviews on the three main texts.

The Student will make chapter notes at the end of each Chapter and summarize the thrust of each book in their supplemental reading.

The Student will mark down 15 time sections of each of the Documentaries that they view and discuss the importance of that time section with the Teacher.