The Rise of Dominionism and the Christian Right

The Rise of Dominionism and the Christian Right

God does not call Christians to "Suppress the Rights of Others" but to

"Express the Rights of Others." No, my friends, Christianity isn't being

persecuted; it is persecuting those around it for not being Christian.

- re slater

I give Tripp Fuller a lot of credit for speaking kindly to the radicalized far right church while trying to draw it back to its lost faith. But yesterday's Capital demonstration in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, showed the nation all too clearly what toxic "Christian" Dominionism really is all about. It's the old idea of creating Old Testament governance into postmodern societies. It enforces religious ("biblical") prejudice and principles that are uncivil and undemocratic upon complex polyplural public societies.

Let me say it again, the American society is not a Kingdom society. Nor are its democratic institutions in want of Kingdom-like Reconstructions. Like Christian Zionism, Christian Dominionism is extreme in its attitudes towards others; is oppressively unhealthy in all aspects of its outlooks to others (including those of its members within); and leads to greater societal division and hatred as exampled by Trumpism's injustice and oppression, circa 2016-2020, in the United States. In fact, I'll go farther and state that the belief system held by the radical Christian far right is unGodly, unBiblical, and unJesus like.

As example, look at the Washington D.C. Rally held earlier this past summer of 2020 which intentionally sought to bring far right Christians together "to repent of sin and pray for the nation." What I had hoped would come of it did not come to pass. I had hoped that Christians would recommit themselves to loving the world around them. Instead, it focused on their rights and civilities as they saw them, denied the pandemic virus, and became more strident in their convictions that what they were doing was God-sent and judged worthy.

And yet, by their continual actions of suppressing democratic votes throughout the year of 2020 and by storming the Capital on January 6, 2021, we can see that it's efforts of repenting were a big fail. The rally had only served to gin-up more strident voices and unrepentful spirits.

Essentially, the DC Rally provided more self-justification among radicalized Christians to conduct unholy/unloving actions against its American brothers and sisters of all colors and faiths, and to create a roiling stridency of temperament, attitude, and deeds against America's civil democracy. Which, among other things, included deep voter racial suppression and extortion of the truth supporting radical Q’anon conspiracies and lies.

What the fake-Christian DC Rally really created was an unholy baptism and avowal of permission by radical Christians to commit religious tyranny against a civil society. Thus I speak to its efforts as Dominionist in perspective. Or, as a secular effort at Christian reconstruction of God's Kingdom here on earth. Most certainly, the far right has given itself permission to any future acts of violence, hate, and exclusion, by condoning or conscreting itself to these tasks because of their surreptitious DC Rally. Which is highly unfortunate and exactly opposite the direction the God I declare would have them pursue.

Folks, this isn't Christianity. Christianity is a radical faith by its demand for personal transformation into the loving image of Christ Jesus. But not as a radicalized faith demanding an overall of civil democracy designed for all religious faiths and beliefs. Nor do we live in the Old Testament any longer. Its dead and gone. We live in the present. Not the past.

And importantly, Christianity is a trans-national, trans-generational, trans-geographic, trans-religious, and trans-temporal faith. When God comes in everything we think and believe must be conformed to Jesus' love and faith in people. It embraces our wills while also deconstructing our wills. The Christian faith is a faith of charity, forgiveness, and wellbeing.

The Christian faith is meant by God to be pliable, flexible, and adaptable to any economy, culture, religion, or society. It isn't meant to be all one thing. Just because ancient bible cultures were used to kingdom-based governments in the Near East doesn't mean kingdom-based government is the preferred vehicle of government by God. No. If anything, kingdoms were oppressive and dominating over other cultures and societies. They did not recognize the polyplural rights and liberties of others.

In contrast, democratic institution goals are to recognize and support the polyplural rights and liberties of its citizen-based societies. Democracies are designed to be less oppressive of its people, more entertaining to everyone's equality and rights, and interwoven in layered complexities of social networking, work, and play.

Christianity is a peaceable religion and not meant for violence however much one reads of it in the Old Testament or thinks about the end times of Christ coming again by world tribulation or armageddon. And though we might dispute the future, a loving God is always a loving God in any future. The trials and tribulations we bring upon ourselves is our own judgment for not obeying God to love and respect one another. God doesn't come back to reap havoc and calamity upon the world, but is here presently intending to prevent us from doing the same to ourselves. The lesson of Revelation is to repent and love. To forget and show mercy even as our Lord Jesus had done.

What was done by "bible" people back then in the past isn't what's to be done today. Process Theology says we are to grow and expand from our present wickedness and learn to love and accept one another. "Love God, Love One Another." This commandment is what makes Christianity r-a-d-i-c-a-l. The Sermon on the Mount is our new "Torah" Commandments by God to share His love with all the world... AND each other.

Jesus and guns are wrong. The bible and hypocrisy doesn't work. And faith must be seen apart from lying lips and injurious deeds. The proof? Look at what President Trump has done and continues to do. Look at his elected officials who voted against State Rights on January 6, 2021, this week. And look at that same day's seditious "Christian" mobs as they tried to prevent the People's vote for a more just president and society be actualized against all the horrors it saw under the Trump administration.

And yet, a day later, radical Christians and their elected officials are continuing to speak smooth lies, gaslighting each other with more deceitfulness, blaming societal failures on liberals, and generally unrepentful and unloving.

"What ye sow so shall ye reap," my brothers. If radical Christians want anarchy and fascism it will come with the same violence it is being birthed with by its own hands. And it will fall hard upon it's head.Shutting mouths at the horrors it has created. Let's not go this far. Let's truly repent and call upon the God of Salvation to truly redeem our black hearts.

But whether you call today's far right "Christian" oppressions Godly judgment or not, its source is a direct corollary showing to us a defunct radicalized religion masquerading as Christianity while being embraced by its unholy faithful and disruptable leaders.

R.E. Slater

January 8, 2021

2 Peter 2 (NIV)

False Teachers and Their Destruction

2 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell,[a] putting them in chains of darkness[b] to be held for judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. 10 This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh[c] and despise authority.

Bold and arrogant, they are not afraid to heap abuse on celestial beings; 11 yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not heap abuse on such beings when bringing judgment on them from[d] the Lord. 12 But these people blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish.

13 They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.[e] 14 With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed—an accursed brood! 15 They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bezer,[f] who loved the wages of wickedness. 16 But he was rebuked for his wrongdoing by a donkey—an animal without speech—who spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

17 These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18 For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22 Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”[g] and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”

Footnotes

2 Peter 2:4 Greek Tartarus

2 Peter 2:4 Some manuscripts in gloomy dungeons

2 Peter 2:10 In contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh (sarx) refers to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the Spirit; also in verse 18.

2 Peter 2:11 Many manuscripts beings in the presence of

2 Peter 2:13 Some manuscripts in their love feasts

2 Peter 2:15 Greek Bosor

2 Peter 2:22 Prov. 26:11

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We need to call Trump Christians back

to the faith they left

Article link

SUSAN M. SHAW, SENIOR COLUMNIST  |  JANUARY 7, 2021

i

"The Father's Forgiveness," Daniel Bonnell.

Joe Biden is the next president of the United States. Despite allegations, falsehoods and lies, no election fraud affected the outcome of the race. That’s simply a fact.

I’m not sure what will become of evangelical Trump supporters now that their expectation of God’s intervention to give Trump the election has not been fulfilled and now that we won’t have outrageous, false and divisive tweets emanating from the White House all through the day and night. I imagine some will continue down the rabbit hole of QAnon and apocalyptic fanaticism, but I am hoping many will decide to make their way back to the central tenets of Christian faith — love, truth, justice, peace, hope and welcome.

Susan Shaw

As we move into the Biden-Harris era, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we invite Trump-supporting evangelicals back into the fold of the church.

Not so long ago, I was introduced to a song, “Hymn for the 81%.” It’s a song for evangelical Trump supporters from someone raised by them in the church. These lyrics stopped me in my tracks: “You said to love the lost, so I’m loving you now.”

Much to my surprise, that image immediately evoked incredible compassion for Trump-supporting evangelicals: They are lost.

I felt the impact of that word. In a single moment, all the feelings of my evangelical upbringing rushed upon me. I felt the emotions of a little 6-year-old girl walking the aisle while the congregation sang “Just as I Am.” I recalled all those Sunday school teachers and GA leaders and pastors and ministers of music teaching me that we were to love the lost, and I remember the mix of relief and joy and release of knowing “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

All those memories and emotions swept over me like an avalanche as I realized that Trump-supporting evangelicals got lost somewhere along the way. They are lost. And that changes my responsibility toward them.

Feminist activist Loretta Ross says that rather than calling people out, we should be calling them in. Calling in, Ross says, is “a call out done with love.” Calling in “means you always keep a seat at the table for them if they come back.”

We have to leave a light on for them.

“At the core of the Christian story is the possibility of redemption.”

At the core of the Christian story is the possibility of redemption. No matter what we do, the Gospels tell us, we can repent and change our ways. No one is too far gone for the love of God to reach, to convict, to receive, to transform.

I think about what we heard in all those invitation hymns:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling

Calling for you and for me.

See, on the portals he’s waiting and watching,

Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home,

Ye who are weary, come home.

Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home.

Just as I am without one plea,

But that thy blood was shed for me,

And that thou bidd’st me come to thee,

O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

I’ve wandered far away from God.

Now I’m coming home.

The paths of sin too long I’ve trod.

Lord, I’m coming home.

Coming home, coming home,

Never more to roam.

Open wide thine arms of love.

Lord, I’m coming home.

Come home. That is the invitation we must offer evangelicals who supported Trump and who became lost in the mixture of Christian nationalism, white supremacy and authoritarianism that promised them it would bring in God’s community through the exercise of raw power.

“Our evangelistic task is to call people home, to call them in.”

Our prophetic task is to speak truth, denounce injustice and advocate for justice for all people. And, at the same time, our evangelistic task is to call people home, to call them in.

This story gets passed around a lot. I can’t find any verification that it’s true, but I think, true or not, it points to something important about calling people in. As the story goes, in a people group in Africa, when someone commits an unjust or illegal act, the community brings the perpetrator to the center of the village, and then all the community members come and tell this person all the good things this person has done. The community believes, as the story goes, that people are good but makes mistakes and forget who they really are. By telling them all the good they’ve done, the community seeks to remind them of who they are and reconcile them to the group.

Let’s call evangelical Trump supporters in. I’ll start:

• You taught me to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as myself.
• You introduced me to a world that was much bigger than my hometown and told me to love them too.
• You told me to love my enemies.
• You taught me to love the Bible and read it because God could speak to me through its words.
• You told me I could be anything God called me to be.
• You taught me to give generously, without thought of return or reciprocation.
• You taught me to tell the truth.
• You found a way to accommodate difference when it was up close and personal and love people who were unlike you — the lesbian aunt, the agnostic friend, the weird kid, the deaf neighbor, the immigrant co-worker.
• You stopped to change a tire for a stranger; you took a meal to a bereaved family; you volunteered at a local shelter; you drove an older person of a different political party to vote; you served as a conversation partner in a language program for refugees; you visited sick people in the hospital; you helped Habitat for Humanity build a house; you started a clothes closet in the church basement.

People are much more than the worst thing they ever did. We have to make a way back for evangelical Trump supporters who may want to come home. I know that’s hard after everything we’ve witnessed the past four years.

“We have to make a way back for evangelical Trump supporters who may want to come home.”

If nothing else, though, the gospel is a story of lavish grace and welcome, a banquet set for a prodigal son, workers who came late to the field, a thief on a cross, all of those in the highways and hedges. In fact, we ourselves are recipients of this lavish grace, this love without limit, and, as my friend Paula Sheridan once said, “We are not the maître d at God’s table. We don’t get to decide who gets seated and who doesn’t.”

My Southern Baptist church did indeed tell me to love the lost. Our Trump-supporting evangelical siblings are lost. They followed a demagogue and lost sight of Jesus. If we want to follow Jesus, we have to make a way back for them; we have to seek them out like a lost coin or a lost sheep and call them in, “out of shameful failure and loss, into the glorious gain of (the) cross; out of unrest and arrogant pride, into (Christ’s) blessed will to abide; out of the depths of ruin untold, into the peace of (Christ’s) sheltering fold.”

This must be our response to the past four years: Come home. Come home.

Susan M. Shaw is professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. She also is an ordained Baptist minister and holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her most recent book is Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guide, co-authored with Grace Ji-Sun Kim.

Ghost Sightings of the Third Kind - Are They Real Or Unreal?

Even though its fun to write and talk about the paranormal (which I occasionally have done) there are many reasons why its a created fabrication dependent upon our physical surroundings. In Gettysburg last year as evening stole into the depths of the once torn Civil War town and outlying battlegrounds run red in sadness and despair, I witnessed long lines forming by the hundreds as tourists gathered together to go on ghostly walking tours. Yes it can be fun, and spooky, and eerie, and even educational, to consider the realm of the dead. But caution is always advised.

Now lest Christians think they are immune because of the residency of the Holy GHOST (Spirit) in their lives let us also consider that to the standard, run-of-the-mill, ghostly sightings should be included any "angel or demon sightings," conversations with "dead saints," the devil, or even "sightings" of God Himself beyond the spiritual sense of conviction, worship, praise or thanksgiving.

The ancient cultures of the bible believed no less in the supernatural than our contemporary cultures do today. This phenomena can also be found in literature both old and new lending itself to the idea that our physical being is remarkably created in such a way as to be sympathetic to, or to sense in a "sixth sense" sort of way, our surroundings - both in what we see and what we don't see but feel or sense.

The reality is, though the human body is like a cosmic tuning fork sensing the unseen, it is well to remember that we are also susceptible to manipulation by our physical surroundings through invisible chemicals in the air, ultrasonic sound waves, "waking states" of sleep, and powers of suggestion by ourselves or others. What we think is there is really not - however strong its urge. And despite similar encounters by other people experiencing similar "unrealities" they too are more probably influenced by the invisible affects of our surroundings without realizing it.

To be fair, I believe God understands how finely-balanced our bodies, minds, and spirits have become over the many years of its long evolutionary development. We see God work time-and-again with all sorts of afflicted people through their stories in the bible. Even with the saints throughout the history of the church (the biblical prophets come to mind). It doesn't mean that our "ghostly sense perceptions" are any more real by default - it simply means we have an amazing constitution that differs little with our more recent historical/biological past and that our Creator God is intimately acquainted with us.

As the Psalmist would say,

"He hears the cries of the afflicted and grants heaven's peace; He attends to those broken in soul comforting their hurts and drying their tears; to the weak, the destitute, the overwhelmed He comes by night to minister to the broken heart; God is the Great Healer of mind, body, soul, and spirit."

Of course science fictions movies have taken this idea of the supernatural sense within our beings to a whole new level of perception when portraying storylines that allow us to "transcend" our earthly bodies into the heavenlies (consider movies like Phenomena, Transcendent with Johnny Depp, or Morgan Freeman's series Down the Rabbit Hole). These are pseudo-fictional movies and documentaries expressing the possibility of greater "there-ness" found in our human makeup. Its fun to imagine, and possibly even true (everything and everyone is connected in some sense), but it can also function as an escape-mechanism by transferring all our hurts and needs into an imaginary realm where we might find a kind of "spiritual" healing rather than to deal with the realities of our suffering in a real world which has so deeply harmed our souls.

And though its fun to imagine and believe (I certainly like to think about these possibilities myself), for some, its an invitation to explore what usually amounts to a fearful state of black darkness descending into the realm of the imagined "spiritual" or "ghostly/demonic/angelic encounters". Like the "demonics" of the bible, these sad souls were physiologically under the influence of suggestion, disease, or abuse. But when encountered by our gracious Lord and Redeemer their souls were miraculously healed of the causes of their affliction, grief, or madness.

In short, this is my armchair discussion of some of the many physical factors which can influence the human psyche to believe something that really isn't there, never was there, and yet seems to be real and present. I apologize ahead of time for my skepticism of the supernatural. Even though I sometimes write about it in my stories and poems it is but an attempt to communicate to those caught up in this "other worldliness" thoughts and convictions that might heal deeply held wounds. As such, I would use this kind of literary medium for that intended purpose while exploring my own consciousness of the "other worldly."

Certainly my Pentecostal friends would think me a poorer sort of Christian than if I were to join their circles preaching dreams, interpretations of dreams, sightings of the supernatural, and so forth. And without discounting their experiences I do question many of them and would urge greater caution to be careful to what you listen too. Not all of it is of God but illusions brought on by our exhausted spirits worn by life, tragedy, sorrow, and hardship. And so, in another "sense", our great God comes to us knowing all our constitutional frailties. He comes to minister as we are, where we are, and even how we are. Thank you Jesus for your grace and mercy.

R.E. Slater

July 21, 2017

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The Science of Ghosts: What's Really Happening When Your Brain Detects a Ghoul?
http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/theres-no-such-thing-as-ghosts-instead-one-of-these-phenomena-is-at-play

by Philip Perry
July 18, 2017

Once, in middle school, a gang of boys and I were lured to a spot behind the Dunkin' Donuts in our town. We went after dark, to a place where a kid from school witnessed a paranormal experience. Once there, we saw nothing. We chided our classmate until suddenly, a column of white light appeared out of nowhere. We scattered.

It sustained itself for a few minutes. Then suddenly, it cut off. A few moments later, just as mysteriously, it went on again. We stayed there quietly studying it, scared out of our minds. Until someone in our group finally pointed out a streetlight overhead. The bulb was getting old. That was the last time I believed in ghosts.

Do you? If so, you’re in good company. 45% of Americans do. In one poll, 28% of them admitted they’d had contact with one, personally. Senior research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Joe Nickell is the world’s sole, full-time, scientific paranormal investigator. After five decades of research, he hasn’t turned up a shred of evidence that points to the existence of ghosts. Magicians Harry Houdini and James Randi arrived at a similar place.

It’s not for lack of trying. In a video for Vox, Nickell says he’s employed blood pattern analysis, linguistic analysis, aspects of psychology, and more. It isn’t just him. Not one haunting or ghost sighting has ever rendered any evidence.

One of the problems is, it’s hard to grab raw data. All we usually have is a personal account. And these vary widely. One person will interact with an actual human figure, while another will observe mere objects flying across the room. There are a few grainy, blurs in some photos. But it’s hard to extrapolate from that.

Photographic evidence such as this isn’t enough to go on. Getty Images.

Though electromagnetic field (EMF) meters have been made popular by movies like Ghostbusters and TV shows such as Paranormal Lockdown and Ghost Hunters, there’s no scientific proof of any link between supernatural phenomenon and the magnetic field. Despite a general lack of evidence, such experiences feel poignant and real.

In a recent TED talk, Carrie Poppy explains her brush with the paranormal, how it made her feel, and later on, what she came to realize about it. She’s the co-host of the popular podcast Oh No Ross and Carrie, which explores and demystifies spiritual, religious, and paranormal topics, among others, through a scientific lens.

At the time her ghost sighting occurred, she was alone in her house. Suddenly, she felt a presence. Poppy felt like she was being watched. The feeling grew and grew and as it did, a pressure began to build inside her chest. The feeling increased slowly over the course of a week and rose to a fever pitch. She started to hear whispering sounds and became convinced that her house was haunted. Poppy tried to do a cleansing by burning a sage stick and other things. But no matter what she tried, the pressure on her chest got worse. It was also growing painful.

Finally, she took to the internet and arrived on a ghost forum for skeptics. She told them what she was experiencing and one of them said she had the symptoms for carbon monoxide poisoning. These include pressure on the chest and auditory hallucinations. The utility worker who rectified the problem, told her that if she hadn’t of gotten it fixed when she did, she wouldn’t have been alive the next morning.

There are many scientific explanations for ghost sightings. Ghost. By: Jordi Carrasco. Flickr.

The process by which one experiences something that isn’t there is called misperceived self-representation. So what else might induce this, besides carbon monoxide poisoning, brain damage, or an episode related to mental illness? Well, several things actually. There is a condition called sleep paralysis for one, also known as waking dreams.

This affects around 8% of the population. It usually occurs in the twilight hours of the morning, when one is between a waking and dreaming state. You can’t move your body and sometimes experience visual hallucinations. Grief also tends to increase the chances of a ghostly encounter. Psychologists say it might be a way for the mind to process and deal with loss. Usually, the person they see is a comforting figure who appears serene.

Another ghost-inducing phenomenon is called infrasound. This is a vibration that occurs below our normal range of hearing. That’s below 20 hertz (Hz). Certain machinery (like engines), whales, and extreme weather can all cause infrasound.

Some studies suggest that it can result in symptoms including feelings of depression, the chills, and the sneaking suspicion that someone is watching you. According to Hayden Planetarium director and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, infrasound at 18 Hz vibrates at such a rate that the eye can pick it up, which might cause visual hallucinations.

So if you or someone you know claims to have seen a ghost, believe them. But also, look for what evidence or phenomenon might be behind the sighting. You could end up finding a faulty lightbulb was the culprit all along.

David Congdon - No, The American Church is Not in Exile

No, The American Church is Not in Exile

https://sojo.net/articles/no-american-church-isn-t-exile

By David Congdon

April 19, 2017

In the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex marriage, conservative Christian leaders sounded a dire word: Christians are no longer at home in the United States.

Rod Dreher, a senior editor at The American Conservative, wrote an article for TIME following the decision with the headline, “Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn To Live as Exiles in Our Own Country.” In his long-anticipated book, The Benedict Option, Dreher tells Christians to “embrace exile.” He alludes to the oft-used Jeremiah 29:7 in his conclusion when he says that “though in exile, we work for the peace of the city.” In a response to Jacob Lupfer, who penned an essay saying Dreher suffers from a “delusional persecution complex,” Dreher claims that Christians are “called by God to be faithfully present here in Babylon ... like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.”

In a similar vein, Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, published a response to the Supreme Court decision in the Washington Post that concluded by calling Christians to “joyfully march to Zion” as “strangers and exiles in American culture.”

Moore is drawing here on the language of Hebrews 11, which describes believers as “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb 11:13, ESV). The idea of the follower of God as an exile has deep roots in the faith, originating in Israel’s history of exile in Assyria and Babylon.

But instead of “exiles on the earth,” Moore writes “exiles in American culture.” And Dreher speaks of being “exiles in our own country.” Everything hangs on this change.

Christians today who adopt an exilic identity have

abandoned this dimension of Christianity.

Why Exile?

The idea of the church in exile is once again popular in American Christian circles. Missiologist Michael Frost wrote Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture in 2006. In 2008, before his own exile from the evangelical community, Rob Bell coauthored Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile. New Testament professor James Thompson wrote The Church in Exile: God’s Counterculture in a Non-Christian World in 2011. And in 2015, Lee Beach of McMaster Divinity College published The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom.

Why the attraction to exile? For many of those in the missional church movement, exile language offers an alternative to the “culture war” rhetoric of the religious right. Instead of a church at war with surrounding culture, a church in exile presents a vision of God’s people living peacefully within foreign territory.

Seeking the welfare of a foreign city (Jeremiah 29:7) is certainly an improvement over waging constant battle against it. But what does the idea of exile imply about the church? And is it consistent with Christian faith?

Exile means that one is barred from one’s native land. The people of Israel, for instance, were prevented from living in the land promised to them by God. Followers of Jesus, however, have no native land. The Great Commission at the end of Matthew finds Jesus telling his followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). In the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus tells them “you will be my witnesses ... to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

READ: Where Do You Find Church?

If the message of Christian faith is for all peoples and nations, then how can the New Testament writers speak of believers as exiles? The answer is that, for Christianity, the whole earth is a foreign land.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus prays: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world” (John 17:14). If the world is a foreign land, then the church is by definition in exile. But so the adage: If everything is exile, nothing is exile. Because the whole world is alien territory, no culture has a privileged position in relationship to God. Every culture is equally close and equally distant from the new creation. For those who follow Jesus, every person is a neighbor and every place is a home.

Talking about the church in exile is redundant, unless there is a change in the definition.

Exile and Christendom

Notice the book titles mentioned above. They describe the church in exile within “a post-Christian culture,” “a non-Christian world,” and a society “after Christendom.”

To be sure, many of these authors would view the experience of exile as a good thing. They do not necessarily think “Christendom” was a golden age to which we ought to return — and yet the decision to define the church as exilic allows Christendom to set the terms for the conversation.

Speaking of the church in exile within American culture suggests there is some ideal culture — according to Dreher, “the Judeo-Christian culture of the West” — in which the church would not be in exile. Once we make that move, we have abandoned the early church’s insight that the church is exiled from every culture.

We end up pining for the Christendom of earlier history, when in fact the only true Christian world exists beyond the end of history.

But the problem goes deeper. Thinking of the church as exiled from a particular culture further implies the church has its own. Dreher compares the evangelical church to the monastic communities of St. Benedict, while Moore views the church as a new Israel marching to Zion. This idea of church as a specific culture has implications for mission. Moore makes this explicit when he calls American culture “our mission field."

Imperialism or Separatism — or Something Else?

There are only two options at this point: Either the church spreads its culture to others or it assimilates its own into distinct community. The former is the way of imperialism, while the latter is the way of separatism.

Israel’s mission is of the separatist variety, as defined especially by the book of Deuteronomy, whose message can be summarized as a warning to Israel to remain distinct from the other nations. The prophetic tradition interprets the Babylonian exile as God’s judgment on Israel’s failure to remain separate from other cultures.

Yet the overall message of the New Testament, especially the book of Acts, is that the church is not a separate community with its own culture. The power of Christianity is found in what scholars of mission call its capacity for contextualization, which means that the message of Christ can be translated into different languages, cultures, and contexts.

READ: Religious Freedom or Culture War? 

According to Lamin Sanneh, the Gambian missiologist and professor at Yale Divinity School, the Gospel comes “without a revealed language or a founding original culture,” and therefore “all cultural forms ... are in principle worthy of bearing the truth of Christianity.”

Christians today who adopt an exilic identity have abandoned this dimension of Christianity. They are giving up on the contextualization principle. For them, contemporary American culture is enemy territory, and the only recourse is to retreat into a separate cultural community.

Talking about the church in exile is redundant,

unless there is a change in the definition.

This does not mean, of course, that a church contextualized within the United States would uncritically affirm the culture. But it does mean we need to consider more thoughtfully what exactly constitutes the truth of Christianity and how this truth might relate to its given context.

Returning Home After Exile

The Barna Group’s “Faith That Lasts” project, conducted over five years between 2007 and 2011, revealed that nearly a quarter of 18- to 29-year-olds (23 percent) said that “Christians demonize everything outside of the church” was a statement that “completely” or “mostly” described their experience.

Christians have largely left behind the days when their faith was defined by prohibitions against drinking, dancing, and movies. But the exile mentality remains: Today, Christian culture may be more ideological than moral, the us-versus-them logic more pervasive and more subtle.

The church communicates an exilic message when it speaks about the need to evangelize “the West” as if this need is greater now than in the past, when it associates “the world” specifically with American culture, or when it waxes longingly about how much better things were “back then” or are “over there.”

READ: Christ, Not America, First

The church needs to abandon talk of exile, and reclaim the possibility of being at home. Home is the cultural context within which the church already exists. Reclaiming home does not mean uncritically adopting whatever seems fashionable at the time. It means approaching cultural changes and developments with an attitude of openness and hospitality, with a readiness to embrace rather than exclude. Reclaiming home means obeying the biblical injunction to live wholly without fear or anxiety.

Many Christians have already put down their weapons to fight the culture. It is time now to put down the walls of defense that keep them separated from the culture. Perhaps a future generation will yet say that “Christians love everything outside of the church.”

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David Congdon

David Congdon has a PhD in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of three books, including most recently The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch.

Answering Charges of Impropriety. Part 1 - Undermining the Bible

Answering Charges of Impropriety

Today's post presents the problem of libel amongst over-eager, judgmental Christians to slap names and labels upon people and movements that can be mis-representative of that individual or movement in endeavors to create (or foment) public mis-information that is demeaning and personally destructive.

Any astute observer of the Press or social media sees this all the time - from Wall Street to Congress, from public officials to well-spoken religious leaders and teachers. Usually this is done by well-meaning people who hold an imperfect knowledge of what they are charging linking one event with another that is actually specious and untrue. At other times the charge is true and valid and requires both parties to work out what it would mean for any future relationship (family squabbles are usually of this nature between husband and wife, or child and parent). During this time love and commitment will be tested and perhaps either healed and deepened, or broken and left in disrepair. But the risk is ever towards personal separation and dis-connection when argumentation unfolds and libelous charges are carelessly thrown back-and-forth. This is not of God, nor of the Spirit, as the church of God.

The process of accusation can be seen time-and-again in the Bible from its earliest Old Testament pages when Moses was charged by the people for misconduct to Jesus' day at the hands of the Pharisees. Even in the New Testament church there was the problem of false prophets, teachers, and shepherds. This is not a new problem but an old problem that often is be bounded by ignorance, well-meaning but errant loyalty, or desires to protect and save. At other times disruption is driven by hatred, envy, and jealousy. The motives vary by its audience. And the charges as old as humanity itself.

Some charges may be true. Some may not be true. Essentially, the accused and the accuser must come to a resolution with each other in order to move on in relational affiliation. In the case of religion, this can be of a very personal nature involving the deepest passions of man. Inquisitions and crusades have been created on the backs of religion. Families have lost loved ones over religion (a Protestant child leaving his/her Catholic family; a brainwashed family member to the cults; or even over so slight a difference as to whether one sings hymns in church or listens to worship bands on a Sunday's venue).

Essentially, the accused person or religious body must determine the charge's source: is it one of simple mis-understanding and mis-information? Perhaps a cultural or generational disagreement? Or is it one of a more personal nature stemming in attacks of vindictiveness. Charges that bear validity need to be resolved on the part of the accused, forgiven, and ended. But charges that are not true must likewise be resolved on the part of the accuser, forgiven, and ended.

Realizedly, some personalities can be business-like and do this quite nicely with one another. Other personalities deeply struggle with this process and compound the problem unnecessarily a thousand-fold. A wise person, or body of governance, will determine the nature of the working environment as they move forward in the process, deciding perhaps to work with a mediator (or mediating body) who/which may help heal a torn relationship. The process of remediation can be a difficult one. For a wise person, the initial charges brought forth must always be with the attitude of reconciliation should it come to that, and rapidly so, if it can be done.

But if untrue, charges of libel or heresy tend to "stick" to the person, event, or movement, once a charge has been made, and is never so simply removed or resolved, persisting on the willingness of its accusers to believe untruths, falseness, rumor, or innuendo. And once tainted, a ministry, or minister, can never quite shake off the charge(s) of mis-appropriation, mis-conduct, or mis-information. It becomes a life-long combat that can hinder an otherwise good ministry. Or in many cases redirect that ministry's efforts towards areas of compromise and injustice (a recent example of this is the evangelic furor over World Vision).

In some instances, highly influential church leaders that have fallen can be Teflon-like and are able to bounce back from disaster, somehow side-stepping accusations without having deeply addressed those charges of impropriety. But more often than not, charges that are valid must be addressed (unless tempered with extreme prejudice and hostile intent). In those cases, a court of public opinion (in the case of religion, a synod or council, for instance) must be held to determine the veracity of the charges whether true or not. In many cases, differences in religious doctrine may only lead to splits and disunity. Religious creeds, confessions, and church doctrinal bodies have been birthed upon this process until we now have, 500 years after the Protestant Reformation, as many differing kinds of faith as we do people holding them.

In a postmodern church, or an emerging assembly of believers, these differences are being lowered as today's 21st Century Christians seek a greater spirit of unity over disunity. They are more willing to irenically discuss doctrinal differences within the greater center of Christ's healing atonement and fellowship rather than focusing upon the many dividers and dissemblers of the Christian faith. Others have taken it upon themselves to point out the historical background of dogmatic and doctrinal disagreements in hopes of providing an expanded biblical basis for sound judgment, understanding, and reconciliation, without jettisoning the faith altogether based upon premise and suspicion.

More often now than ever, the Bible's earlier faiths were built in a time without today's greater hindsight of church history, science, technology, and the arts, and pervasive global communications amongst world religions and cultures. As such, theology today is rapidly, if not expediently, working towards more enlightened definitions and expanded religious categories not previous thought in light of postmodern theological movements and cultural resettlement forced upon despised unfortunates (think of the many refugee populations that have shifted under threat of death and torture). As a result, faith has tended towards despair as much as towards the spiritual. Towards nothingness as much as towards a God-ness. And a deep response of love and acceptance is needed, especially of the church of God, if not very humanity itself.

For the church today the charge is to make the gospel relevant, meaningful, personal, and healing. To adjudicate Christ and His Word is now being re-contextualized towards less judgmentalism and more openness and acceptance. Even the word "adjudication" itself is wrong, communicating attitudes of "rightness and wrongness," of "black-and-white" thinking, against a postmodern world that sees life's categories in terms of non-binary, non-dualistic hyperbole, paradox, mystery, pattern-and-flow.

What this means is that yesteryear's doctrines and dogmas must come under a re-evaluation so that the postmodern Christian church might move forward in missional witness that is more open, receptive, and reconciling than ever before. Showing by love and good works the majesty of Christ and not simply the austerity of church politics and polities. To speak to a post-Christian world of the love of God and the power of His Holy Spirit in the action-words of redemption, resurrection, renewal, reclamation, reformation, and rebirth. As any good parent will know, good words vastly outweigh harsh words of duty and honor. So too has the Lord called us by the same in this day and age. To reach out to those different from ourselves in respect and goodwill to share a faith that has the power to heal the sin-sick soul and broken spirit. To bring justice to oppressive lands and households of discord and abuse. To share in the labor of life with others - both in its sufferings and toils, as well as its joys and laughters - as with a fellow souls traversing this world of reclaim and shalom. Amen.

R.E. Slater

September 15, 2014

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What is Marcionism?

Wikipedia - 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism

Marcionism was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144.[1]

Marcion believed Jesus was the savior sent by God, and Paul the Apostle was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament. This belief was in some ways similar to Gnostic Christian theology; notably, both are dualistic, that is, they posit opposing gods, forces, or principles: one higher, spiritual, and "good", and the other lower, material, and "evil" (compare Manichaeism), in contrast to other Christian views that "evil" has no independent existence, but is a privation or lack of "good",[2] a view shared by the Jewish theologianMoses Maimonides.[3]

Marcionism, similar to Gnosticism, depicted the God of the Old Testament as a tyrant or demiurge (see also God as the Devil). Marcion was labeled a gnostic by Philip Schaff,[4] while other scholars have rejected that categorization.Marcion's canon consisted of eleven books: A gospel consisting of ten sections that also appear later in the Gospel of Luke; and ten Pauline epistles. All other epistles and gospels of the 27 book New Testament canon are not yet present in Marcion's canon.[5] Paul's epistles enjoy a prominent position in the Marcionite canon, since Paul is credited with correctly transmitting the universality of Jesus' message.

Marcionism was denounced by its opponents as heresy, and written against, notably by Tertullian, in a five-book treatise Adversus Marcionem, written about 208. Marcion's writings are lost, though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed. Even so, many scholars (including Henry Wace) claim it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning Marcion.

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The Apostle John and Marcion of Sinope,
from the JPM LIbrary, MS 748, 11th_century

What Is “Marcionism?” My Response to a Ludicrous Accusation

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/09/what-is-marcionism-my-response-to-a-ludicrous-accusation/

by Roger Olson

September 9, 2014

Comments

It has recently come to my attention that some critics are accusing me of “Marcionism.” A few commenters here have thrown that wild accusation at me—based on my questioning the literal interpretation of some Old Testament “texts of terror.”

Anyone who throws that accusation at me is either ignorant of what I have said or ignorant of the meaning of Marcionism or both.

By all credible accounts, Marcion, the second century Christian heretic after whom the heresy Marcionism is named, did two things that define his heresy.

First, he proposed a Christian canon of Scriptures that excluded all of the Hebrew scriptures (our Old Testament) and many of the apostles’ writings. His truncated canon included only portions of what we now call the New Testament that he considered purely gentile and not Hebrew.

Second, he denied that the Hebrew God, Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, was the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead, he argued that the god (as he would put it) of the Hebrews was a demiurge, a demented or evil demi-deity.

“Marcionism” is by all credible accounts:

1) a denial of the inspired status of the Old Testament, and
2) a denial of belief in the true deity of the Yahweh of the Hebrew religion.

However, in popular usage, the term has come to be applied to any denial of the Old Testament as not equally inspired with the New Testament. In other words, the “German Christians” of the 1930s were Marcionites (whether they knew it or not) insofar as they rejected the Old Testament as inspired.

The issue here, that I have raised for consideration and discussion, has never been whether the Old Testament or any portion of it is inspired. The issue is, and has always and only been, hermeneutics—how best to interpret portions of the Old Testament.

Christians have always disagreed about that—going back to the early church fathers themselves (not including Marcion who was not a church father [but named by the church fathers as a heretic - r.e. slater]). Origen and Tertullian [who were church fathers] both wrote against Marcion, but neither interpreted the whole Old Testament literally. Especially Origen interpreted much of it allegorically (as did the unknown Apostolic Father who wrote the “Epistle of Barnabus”). [That is, Origen (c.184-254), if anything, was guilty of adding to the NT Canon that was generally accepted by then - with debateable questions about the antilegomena, or disputed NT writings - but not standardized until around the mid-300's a hundred years later (cf., the Development of the New Testament Canon for further information) - r.e. slater]

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Wikipedia - 

Antilegomena, a direct transliteration from the Greek αντιλεγόμενα, refers to written texts whose authenticity or value is disputed.[1] Eusebius in his Church History written c. 325 used the term for those Christian scriptures that were "disputed" or literally those works which were "spoken against" in Early Christianity, before the closure of the New Testament canon.

It is disputed whether or not Eusebius divides his books into three groups of homologoumena (or, accepted), antilegomena, and heretical. Or four, by adding a notha/spurious group. These antilegomena or "disputed writings" were widely read in the Early Church and included the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, 2 Peter, 2and 3 John, the Apocalypse of John, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Apocalypse of Peter (unique in being the only book never accepted as canonical which was commentated upon by a Church Father), the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache.[2][3]

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Would the critics who accuse me of “Marcionism” apply that epithet to all the church fathers who interpreted portions of the Hebrew scriptures allegorically? I doubt it. In fact, in my opinion, insofar as they are knowledgeable about church history and theology at all, that accusation aimed at me not only misses the mark but is sheer demagoguery [broadly, the shaping of public misinformation about a person who is popularly esteemed. Examples abound: Past and current presidents, church pastors and leaders, even newsworthy individuals who hold a great sway to the public imagination. - r.e. slater].

I have never advocated expelling any part of the Old Testament from the Christian canon. Nor have I denied the inspiration of any portions of the Old Testament. And I will say it again: Nobody takes every part of the Old Testament literally.

In fact, in my view, taking the Old Testament texts of terror literally contributes to the problem of implicit, practical Marcionism. Why did Marcion deny the inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures? Well, there were almost certainly several reasons, but one was the Old Testament 

texts of terror taken literally.

In my opinion, for whatever it’s worth, the only worthwhile reason even to respond to such a ludicrous accusation is the “teachable moment”—for those open to facts.

- Roger

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Answering Charges of Impropriety. Part 1 - Undermining the Bible

Answering Charges of Impropriety. Part 2 - Underminining Inerrancy

Answering Charges of Impropriety. Part 3 - Underminining Tradition