According to Douglas Wilson on his website, Blog and Mablog, the Federal Bureau of Investigations sent two agents to question him regarding what apparently someone felt was suspicious and possibly inciting of violence.

Wilson explained that an FBI agent called him several weeks ago and requested a visit in his office, to which Wilson agreed. The agent came with another agent, apparently to question Wilson regarding a particular line in a recent blog post that could be misconstrued as inciting violence. They also took note of the church and facilities, observing it all as “normal.”

Wilson writes:

I asked them if I should have a colleague sit in, and they said that would not be necessary. So then, we sat down, and though I may not have looked like I was all agog, I was all agog on the inside. Imagine my delight when it turned out that our topic was “No Quarter November,” specifically the first post in that series, and more specifically than that, the first paragraph in that post. As you may recall, the title of that post was “Burn All the Schools.”

The offending paragraph was as follows:

H.L. Mencken once suggested a shrewd educational reform that has somehow not caught on. He said that there was nothing wrong with our current education establishment that could not be fixed by burning all the schools, and hanging all the teachers. Now some might want to dismiss this as an extreme measure, but visionaries are often dismissed in their own day. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one . . .”

Apparently, someone had leveled a complaint against Wilson to the FBI. Either that or the FBI just happen to be avid readers of Blog and Mablog.

Wilson reports that the agents were polite and professional. I have also had the pleasure of having FBI agents in my office, and I can attest that they also seemed like reasonable people.

Wilson surmises that “low budget adversaries” probably reported him for thought-crimes to the authorities, who had to do their due dilligence to follow up on the complaint.

You can read about this directly from Wilson’s site, here.

[Contributed by JD Hall]

With more than ten thousand young people gathered at a conference sponsored by InterVarsity, true Christianity was replaced with the Social Gospel and an apology video was given on behalf of Christianity for all the world’s ills.

Lauding the secularist #MeToo movement and its pseudo-religious version, the #ChurchToo movement, the narrator goes on to attack other historic Christians, claiming “we have silenced their hopes for justice.”

The video blames Martin Luther King for the Holocaust (seriously) and Christian theologians for apartheid in South Africa.

“We cloaked evil in spiritual language. Our theology helped birth segregation, subjegation and genocide,” the author claimed.

She goes on to blame Christians for the Rwandan genocide.

The narrator then blames Christians for the persecution of indigenous peoples (who shed blood and died to evangelize them, like David Brainerd).

She also complains about Canadian Christians educating Native populations (how dare they), before blaming Christian churches for geonocide in Uganda.

You can watch the video below.

Of course, in reality, Christians freed the slaves. Christians evangelized the heathen. Christians in the First World stopped the genocide in the Third World Africa. Christians defeated Hitler and emptied the concentration camps. Christians empowered women by honoring and protecting them in the home rather than forcing them out into the jobplace to be mistreated as sex-objects (thanks a lot, feminism).

Western Christianity brought the world the Lockean concept of individual liberty and civil rights. So you’re welcome, haters.

[Editor’s Note: All of these major conferences have one thing in common; social justice and demolishing the “power structure.” If you don’t think these groups are all financially motivated by the same globalist and leftist donors, you are out of your mind. This is coordinated. Pay attention.]

[Life News] New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed to protect and expand abortion access for women in the state, promising Monday to nix a state budget that doesn’t include looser abortion laws.

Cuomo, a Democrat, promised to add abortion protections to the state constitution and vowed to reject a budget that doesn’t include expanded abortion access while speaking at Barnard College in New York City. Members of the state legislature and abortion advocates attended the event, CBS News reported.

“We have led the way on women’s rights like no other state, period,” Cuomo said, according to CBS.

Abortion is legal up until 24 weeks in pregnancy in the state. Cuomo seeks to pass the Reproductive Health Act, which will provide exceptions for circumstances where a woman’s health is at risk or where a baby will be born with a fatal fetal abnormality. The legislation also seeks to allow nurse practitioners, physicians’ assistants and qualified health care professionals to provide abortions.

The governor is also looking to pass a bill requiring insurance companies to provide free contraceptive care, The New York Times reported Monday.

Cuomo vowed Monday not to sign the state’s budget plan in April unless both bills are included. He also demanded that the bills’ provisions be codified into the state constitution, according to The NYT.

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton also spoke at the event.

“Advancing the rights of women and girls is the great unfinished business of the 21st century,” Clinton said, The NYT reported. “It continues to be the fight of our lifetime.”

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Grace Carr and originally published at Life News]

Lauren Daigle writhes seductively with her midriff exposed in her Christian music videos, while singing about Jesus in tones that make you wonder if he’s her boyfriend. The Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) industry and its fans love it, as they look for a genre as close to godlessness as possible while still occasionally alluding to Jesus. It sells.

However, when CCM artists hit “the big time” they go secular. It happens over and over and over again. Jessica Simpson started out as an aspiring CCM star, before becoming a serial marrier whose fornicative sexual exploits were detailed by an ex-lover in Playboy Magazine. Bands like Jars of Clay, Switchfoot, Skillet, POD, and Amy Grant all tried crossover careers. Lecrae found mainstream success and has moved on to rap thuggery with some pretty ungodly secular artists, calling himself an “artist who is a Christian, rather than a Christian artist.”

The opposite is also true. Burned out secular stars go CCM (or Southern Gospel). The reason for this is simple; CCM is a “softer market” and it’s easier to become a star in that genre than in the public at large. It serves for many as an express lane to wider popularity, and most CCM artists – at least according to former CCM artists – aren’t even Christians.

There’s been no shortage of former CCM artists who have admitted that they aren’t believers and most of their peers in CCM aren’t believers. The industry is about making music and money, not glorifying God. This is something Steve Camp pointed out in his 1997 107 Theses.

Daigle recently writhed seductively on Ellen’s program, and then claimed she didn’t know enough about the Bible to say whether or not homosexuality was a sin (Andy Stanley is her pastor, so that makes sense). In spite of that, Charisma News, comedian John Crist, and many others have come out to support her as a well-meaning but innocently ignorant believer.

Now, Daigle says that she’s not really a Christian star after all. She is repositioning herself as a mainstream star, predictibly.

According to Reformation Charlotte, “Amid the controversy in her celebrity life, she’s now facing the reality of the consequences of her influence. She was recently interviewed on 104.3 MYFM where she was asked if she considered herself to be a “Christian artist.”

I feel like those labels get put on you by other people…I was reading articles, I read them here in there, and one of them said Christian artist and the other ones said just artist. But I think part of me is just an artist because it encompasses everything. That’s kind of how I see myself.

You can watch the video below.

Christians, stop falling for the CCM industry.

[Reformation Charlotte] The Reformation was our defining moment as Protestants. It’s who we are, it’s our history. It was the moment the gospel was recovered from the grips of the apostasy of the Roman Catholic religion and made available to the common man. It was the wellspring of good theology of which we rest our knowledge of God on. Apart from the Scriptures itself, the Reformation gave birth to the greatest understanding of Jesus Christ and his saving gospel of grace that history has ever seen.

⁷ Remember the days of old;
    consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
    your elders, and they will tell you.
⁸ When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.

Deuteronomy 32:7-8

However, at the Cross Conference a few days ago, JD Greear, president of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of the multi-campus Summit megachurch in North Carolina, declares that God says we need to “shut up about the Reformation” because He is “not a God of the past.”

Basically what God says through Amos is if you’ll let me put it in colloquial language, “will you shut up about Gilgal and Beersheba?” I’m sick and tired of hearing about those places because I’m not a God who moved in the past. I’m a God who wants to move today in your present. I almost think, I’m on dangerous ground here…I almost think that God is saying to us “shut up about the Reformation.”

However, at the Cross Conference a few days ago, JD Greear, president of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of the multi-campus Summit megachurch in North Carolina, declares that God says we need to “shut up about the Reformation” because He is “not a God of the past.”

Basically what God says through Amos is if you’ll let me put it in colloquial language, “will you shut up about Gilgal and Beersheba?” I’m sick and tired of hearing about those places because I’m not a God who moved in the past. I’m a God who wants to move today in your present. I almost think, I’m on dangerous ground here…I almost think that God is saying to us “shut up about the Reformation.”

For your viewing pleasure, here is a link to the entire sermon.

[Editor’s Note: Over-all, this reeks of the Acts 29-ism of Greear’s homeboys. By the way, Greear is wrong on God’s name being defined simply as “I am.” יהוה, or Yahweh, is an omni tempered verb meaning that it could be rendered, I was that I was, I was that I am, I was that I will be, etc as well as the more traditional I am that I am or I will be what I will be. Also, I would remind Greear that God is the “One who was, and is, and is to come” (Revelation 1:8). Either way, it is safe to say – as we’ve reported before – Greear is definitely not Reformed and not a Calvinist]

On Monday, Pulpit & Pen reported that Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church, outside a Northern California town named Weed, posted a phrase on its marquee sign that reads, “Bruce Jenner is still a man. Homosexuality is still sin. The culture may change. The Bible does not.” In response, a mob of LGBT protestors met them outside the facility on Sunday morning. The church responded in love and rational explanation. The sign now, however, has been destroyed by LGBT activists.

The organizers of the LGBT protest – who didn’t bother refuting the facts presented on the sign, but argued that it was nonetheless “unloving” – claimed that the purpose of their protest was to let people know the community isn’t “like that,” but is filled with love and good vibes.

One organizer said, “But really what we’re trying to do is make sure that everybody else in the community knows that we’re here and we love them.”

Yet another claimed, “This sign across the street does not encompass what our community is about at all. We’re all born with the right to be who we are without hate, judgment or ridicule … Loving your neighbor means your gay, straight, Christian or atheist neighbor.”

The LGBT activists showed their love and tolerance by destroying the church sign. The church’s pastor, Justin Hoke, showed photos of the broken sign on Facebook yesterday.

People who suffer gender dysphoria (no one has successfully changed their gender in the history of the world) have all the rights as anyone else under American jurisprudence, as do practitioners of sodomy. But in the name of “rights,” the LGBT community has attacked the property rights and speech rights of the religious community. Not allowing speech or thought, of course, is the definition of fascism.

What the LGBT group has demonstrated is that they are a hateful group of people, actually physically attacking and vandalizing the property of those with whom they disagree.

The leaders of the LGBT mob are Amelia Mallory, Charolette Kalayjian, and Mishelle Le Guellec. They are guilty of inciting violence and should be prosecuted by law enforcement.

The LGBT repeatedly make communities feel unsafe, and go so far as to attack the safe-spaces of the people who disagree with them.

Joyce Meyer is a lady pastor (1 Timothy 3:2, 1 Timothy 2:12) who holds to Little God Theology – or Kenyonism – and is also known as Word-Faith Theology. All of these are subsets of the so-called Prosperity Gospel, which teaches that Jesus’ atonement provides health, wealth, and prosperity to the believer. In a recent sermon from Meyer, she claims to have at one time let her prosperity teaching “get out of hand” but now has a much more balanced view of prosperity and suffering.

Charismatics are currently promoting the clip as evidence that Joyce Meyer is not a prosperity teacher. You can watch it below, or read the excerpts below that.

“[In] the Word and Faith movement back in the ’60s and the ’70s, [there was] lot of teaching in that about prosperity…I thank God for it. God touched my life back then in a powerful way because I knew I was saved by grace, but I didn’t know anything about using my faith for anything other than just salvation. Faith is something God gives you that you need to use and release in your life. It’s a powerful force, but it’s not just automatic. You put your trust in God. You put your faith in Him.”

Meyer continues…

“I’m glad for what I learned about prosperity, but it got out of balance. I’m glad for what I learned about faith, but it got out of balance. So every time somebody had a problem in their life, it was because they didn’t have enough faith. If you got sick, you didn’t have enough faith. If your child died, you didn’t have enough faith. Well, that’s not right. There’s nowhere in the Bible where we’re promised that we’ll never have any trouble. I don’t care how much faith you’ve got. You’re not going to avoid ever having trouble in your life.”

While charismatics are claiming that Joyce has repented of prosperity teaching, she seems to be referring to her teaching in the 60s or perhaps decades ago, and doesn’t seem to be distancing herself from her most recent prosperity teachings that characterize her career in motivational speaking or the vast income, mansions, and the 23 thousand-dollar gold toilet her prosperity teaching has afforded her..

[HT Charisma Mag]

[Self Wire] We don’t often like to think about the human aspect of dating within the walls of evangelicalism. We want to over-spiritualize the process of selecting a spouse as if there were no legitimate physical or psychological variables with significant gravity in the process. But there are significant variables. And these variables create problems for single evangelical men who desire to marry a girl to whom they are physically attracted. Here, we will detail the psychological, sociological, and neuroeconomic causes for a particular phenomenon within evangelicalism—the preference among beautiful women for men who aren’t bought and paid for by the evangelical institution.

1. Why Men are Less Religious Than Women

It is important to understand why women are statistically more religious while men are statistically more religiously unaffiliated.[1] The cause for this is both physiological and cultural—men are more inclined to take risks due to higher testosterone levels; they are more aggressive, more combatant, and more straightforward. This didn’t conflict at all with the cultural form of religion in the middle ages, other than that Christianity called men to live virtuous lives, which was enough of a challenge. But the medieval conception of masculinity which included chivalry, duty, responsibility, and nationalism coalesced with the physiological impetus that constitutes male neuropsychology.

In the 21st century Western world, evangelical culture in particular has become feminized, and therefore unattractive to men. It is so orderly, neat, clean, and well-behaved that the only men who stay in the evangelical world are those who are willing to play the part of the good little boy. Behind every pastor in pleated khakis is a Dolores Umbridge cracking the whip of feminized order.

Men ought to be orderly. This was the problem of the Barbarians in the 5th century—they were pure, masculine chaos, and their religious participation was distinctively male, and distinctively pagan. This is also true of radical Islam, which is particularly attractive to young men. The problem is that evangelical culture hasn’t balanced this. There is no room for the chaos of masculinity from which man draws his power—the brute, unchanneled strength into which he taps to become his own man. This is vilified in evangelicalism.  

Women are more religious than men in the West because it is culturally effeminate. Men don’t want to be there. The men who are there don’t represent a promising prospect for the culture. So men must be dragged to church by their wives, while their pastors explain away their disinterest in church as spiritual immaturity. To do well in evangelical culture, you must publicly and consistently practice a code of orderliness which forbids mutual participation among men in practices which facilitate masculine bonding—practices like swearing, drinking, smoking, untucking your shirt. 

Is the solution to this problem that pastors should start cursing in the pulpit while drinking a flask of whiskey and smoking a cigar? No. Orderliness has its place. Real masculinity respects a balanced propriety with regard to sacred practices. Men are willing to revere that which is reverent. But objects of reverence have been coopted by tyrannies of female order. It must be publicly known, accepted, and celebrated that men do male things like make money, work hard, work out, want to look good, want to live healthy lives, want to have sex, and want to lead their households well.

One of the manifestations of the church’s inability to do this is the concept of church discipline. Should a church be able to discipline its members? Yes. But it should have enough relational capital with its members to be able to work it out without punitive measures. When a church resorts to church discipline, this is often just as much a failure of the church to have built relational credibility with its members as it is a failure of the member who sinned.

Effeminate and pansy male pastors use church discipline as their one chance to exercise control over men whom in any other context would kick their [redacted]. For many pastors, the church is their little spider’s nest of working out their own mommy issues by exacting punishment and moral self-hatred on its congregants. And men see this for what it is. Men know that these men wouldn’t be accepted by other men where men are accepted as men. So they leave evangelical churches, which is the cause of the gender disparity in religious affiliation. 

2. Women Prefer Real Men (i.e., Not Male Feminists)

This gender difference supplies the rationale for mating preference. Men prefer youthfulness and attractiveness, and women prefer high earning potential.[2] Some women may say that they prefer to marry a nice man over a rich man, which may functionally be true in terms of tracing the multiple variables which play into mate selection. For this reason, it may be helpful to state it negatively—the greatest predictor of a man’s disinterest is female unattractiveness, and the greatest predictor of a woman’s disinterest is a male’s lacking earning potential.

One study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that peoples’ real life romantic choices often did not reflect their stated romantic preferences, indicating that what people think they want (perhaps due to an ideology) does not bear itself out in their choices, which the study authors suggest likely indicates a lack of introspective awareness of what influences romantic judgments.[3]

Of course, a man would be foolish to marry a terrible woman whose only advantage is physical attractiveness. Likewise, a woman would be foolish to marry a man whose only advantage is earning potential. That’s the story male feminists want to spin—“I may not make a lot of money, but I’m a really nice guy.” Guess what? That guy next door—he’s a nice guy, too. And he’s in law school, not a barista. You lose. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re the only person with the strengths you have. You aren’t.

Many people have your strengths and more. Dating is a capitalist enterprise, and when beautiful women have the choice between a good man with no money and a good man with lots of earning potential (and beautiful women always have this choice), they will always choose the earning potential. And they should. The same goes for men. Many women say to themselves, “I’m a nice girl. Why can’t I find a good guy?” Because when it comes down to it, good guys are going to choose nice girls who are attractive over nice girls who aren’t.

These are universal anthropological realities. There are exceptions, but they explain the consistencies which reliably indicate how populations work.   

3. Male-Dominant Traits Predict Earning Potential  

The very same reality that catalyzes gender disparity with regard to religiosity also catalyzes gender disparity in mate criteria. Psychologists call the interdisciplinary study of the effect of psychology on financial realities neuroeconomics. The recent literature suggests that risk-taking behavior in contexts which are maximally quantifiable and emotionally engaging predict economic success. Psychologists distinguish between a risk-taking disposition and impulsivity—the latter of which is minimally quantifiable and highly emotionally engaging.

One study used a Myers Briggs personality metric to measure how different psychological types relate to personal earnings.[4] The two highest-earning personality types, which were greater than the others by a factor of more than 25%, were ENTJ and ESTJ. What does that mean? These two personality types are majority male, and represent proactive, leader-oriented capabilities. These types are thick-skinned, competitive, creative, disciplined, decisive, and direct. Weaknesses include appearing angry, impulsive, intimidating, or blunt.

This doesn’t mean that women want a man who is a risk. In adolescence, women are less able to distinguish between industrious, risk-oriented behavior and impulsivity, which is why high school girls tend to date troublemaking boys who are not good for them. They are following an accurate signal, but are not yet able to distinguish how to wisely follow that signal.

A man who is willing to earn more by risking more is less of a risk for a woman—who is likely more risk-averse. In other words, a man who will more likely produce economic stability for a household will be risk-oriented. 

4. Evangelical men must choose between masculinity and belonging.

Evangelicalism tends to be culturally Marxist. What do I mean by this? It holds a disdain for capital, so that the desire to accrue capital is perceived as morally evil (or at least undesirable). For this reason, the neuroeconomics of evangelical culture incentivize men who want to do well within evangelicalism to become the sort of men which women distinctively and generally find unattractive.

Evangelical culture requires men who desire to be successful within the constraints of this culture to be unquestionably compliant, deferential, soft-spoken, unopinionated yes-men. Individuality must be erased. Typical male qualities must be erased. The sort of personalities who statistically earn more and are more attractive to women are categorically proscribed from belonging in the evangelical community.

5. Beautiful women are able to marry men who have the financial security to freely be evangelicals.

Men who make a career out of being evangelical make themselves a slave to a system. If they ever find themselves disagreeing with the institution by which they are employed, the cost of voicing disagreement is one’s paycheck. Moreover, since evangelical institutions more easily fire employees and have looser Human Resources policies than secular institutions, being fired because of informal infractions or political misfortune in the workplace is much higher for evangelical men. Therefore, there is a far greater incentive for men employed in professional evangelical contexts not to make any waves—that is, to be submissive, compliant, silent, agreeable, and soft.

Women who have options often don’t marry men like this, because they are able to choose men who have biblical convictions but aren’t in the awkward place of needing, for financial reasons, to remain within the good graces of the higher-ups who need their subordinates to drink a certain evangelical cultural Kool-Aid in order to continue to provide for one’s family. Women with options will marry men who will be men on their own terms.

6. Evangelical company men are incentivized not to understand masculinity.

I have had men consistently critique my perspective on masculinity, and others voice profound agreement. Without fail, those who disagree are white collar men who look and talk like pansies, and those who agree with me have been professional weight lifters, hunters, police officers, and working salesmen. This basically proves my point.

When some highbrow British pastor says that my perspective on masculinity is “simply ridiculous,” and a hunting blogger in Alaska writes a post about how refreshing my perspective is, I feel vindicated. I don’t even need to respond to critics, because their effeminacy proves my point. They don’t get it, because if they got it, that would mean they would have to see how far down they are on the chain of important masculine competencies that make men desirable, successful, and trustworthy to other men. They are psychologically incentivized not to look at the ugliness in the mirror. It’s hard to look at shortcomings, so as long as the evangelical church is populated with men like this, they will only fortify a culture which insists on missing out on the essential qualities which make men masculine, and which help boys to grow into masculine men.

There is also another side to this same coin, which is that when the beautiful women have married out of the church, women who are less attractive coerce men to marry them through guilt. They persuade them to believe that choosing a woman—or choosing not to be with a woman—for issues related to physical attraction is shallow, selfish, and immoral. This is the view that dominates a culture when real men have left it completely, and the remaining men accept the indoctrination of self-hatred which persuades them to hate their own preference for beautiful women—the very preference which incentivizes them to become more competent, masculine men.

To continue reading, click here.

[Publisher’s Note: This article was written by Paul Maxwell and first posted at Self Wire. While this is not ordinarily the type of material I’d publish at P&P, I found this article to be absolutely brilliant and wanted to share it. Brilliant.]

Steven Anderson is not a Christian who I would, in any way, endorse. I told him that to his virtual face when he once joined me on my podcast (he was invited so I could make a point about assuming orthodoxy by litmus test). Anderson returned in kind, and said I was not a Christian he would endorse in any way. Anderson would, most likely, call me “a devil” (or something like that) for being a Calvinist, and probably on a host of other issues.

Chiefly, Anderson and I differ on what he would call Lordship Salvation and other soteriological issues like election, the hopeless reprobation of homosexuals (he believes in that, I do not), praying public imprecatory prayers against the president, and whether or not we should stand on the pulpit when we preach.

However, I want to – as I’ve done before – use Anderson and his curious (and always-interesting) ministry antics to make a point and shame the rest of us. After all, if Anderson is generally agreed-upon in wider evangelicalism as being the most extreme and misguided zealot with a Youtube pulpit, then if what he does that’s right is better than what most evangelicals typically do that’s wrong, then it should shame all of us.

As you’ve probably seen in reports, Anderson’s colleague and compatriot, Donnie Romero, recently resigned after admitting to being with prostitutes and using marijuana and gambling. Romero was the pastor of Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth Texas, which is affiliated loosely with Anderon’s Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Both are a part of what some call the New Independent Fundamental Baptist (NIFB) movement, which is an in-your-face version of fundamentalism for a younger generation.

The press, of course, had a field day with this primarily for two reasons. First, Anderson has made every media hit list known to man, and the press has an axe to grind (whether or not he’s asked for it is an altogether different matter, but an axe they have, nonetheless). Second, Romero made the news for praying that God would “finish the job” of the tragic Orlando gay nightclub shooting.

So then, you have the scandal of an anti-LGBT preacher being caught with prostitutes. Of course, a worldview that approves of homosexuality can’t really condemn promiscuity or adultery, but the issue isn’t that the media is hypocritical; that we’ve come to expect. The issue is that the preacher was hypocritical, hence the field day.

Let’s forcefully condemn Romero for the sake of public record. We can condemn him for being a whoremonger, a hateful person, and a hypocrite. We pray he repents and is forgiven.

Now that the condemnation is obligatorily applied, is Anderson – or the NIFB – responsible for the sins of Romero? Some might argue that fundamentalism attracts perverts and hypocrites, and would point to Jack Schapp or Bill Gothard as an example of a pandemic problem in the movement. I highly doubt, despite a recent report originating in Great Britain, that fundamentalism has a higher dose of perverts than any other religious sphere of influence. Charismaticism has its Jim Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggarts. Mainline denominations like the UMC, UCC, and ELCA have just chosen to ordain their rainbow-bedazzled perverts and so they aren’t subject to the charge of hypocrisy because they’re not subject to the charge of having any moral standards at all. Roman Catholics have their, well, just throw a rock into a crowd of priests and you’ll hit a pedophile. Calvinists have their Tom Chantrys, Art Azurdias, and RW Glenns. Antinomians have Tullian Tchvidjian, you get the point. It would make no more sense to blame sexual sin on the theology of the NFIB than it would to blame any of the other aforementioned groups for their own black sheep.

Apparently acting in voluntary cooperation, as Baptists are prone to do, Anderson was asked to help handle the matter in Fort Worth (or butted in, I’m not sure which).

Romero was given the opportunity to speak, saying, “I’m very sorry for the hurt this may cause people, the discouragement. I’m so sorry. I love you guys. I wish I wouldn’t have let it get to this point.”

Although he did not confess to the seedy details at that time, Anderson claims that this was because his wife and children were in the room. Anderson then went on to divulge the details himself, without hesitation, on his Youtube channel (which is not necessarily the venue I would have chosen, but I digress). Anderson was candid about Romero and what he did.

Anderson said, “I found out about it on Monday, and I confronted him and intervened and then basically stepped in and tried to help the church get through this. Churches frequently just cover things up. That is wrong. It’s sad how it makes Christianity look bad and Baptists look bad, but it’s not right to cover this up.”

It appears that Anderson did exactly as he said. He found out about the matter, had the man step forward and confess to disqualifying sin, let people process the initial bombshell, and then was candid about what he had done while sparing the lascivious details.

Side note: Ironically, one of Romero’s last preaching clips publicly posted was entitled, “Who will be thrown out of the church?”

When scandal from grossly hypocritical pastors hits a denomination or church (and it will), the question is how is it dealt with? Was it covered up? Was it brushed under the rug? Or was it acknowledged and was the pastor placed under discipline that includes removal from the pulpit?

To their credit, Calvinists seem to have a tendency to own up to their sins and publicize their own disqualification. This has been in seen in recent years with both Art Azurdia and RW Glenn. However, Tom Chantry and the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches in America (ARBCA) provide an exception to this rule, and their rug-sweeping has created a major crisis for the already-small denomination. Sovereign Grace Ministries is another example of Calvinists failing to be open and transparent about sin in their midst.

Other denominations, like the Southern Baptist Convention, are infamous rug-sweepers and their scoundrels are often not expunged from the pulpit until (to quote David Hankins) “they are caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.” When pastors or denomination offficials are forced to resign, they are often given a golden parachute package to compensate them for keeping it quiet (like Joe Aguillard or Bob Reccord).

Charismatics have an even more atrocious track record, usually involving “Apostles” coming in to lay hands on the offender and pronounce them changed (as TD Jakes just did for adulterous pastor, John Gray).

Catholics just move their priests to Indian reservations or pass them around like a hot potato.

Ultimately, Anderson’s behavior regarding this controversy seems to be commendable. And that might not be a popular statement for those who loathe his theology.

At the end of the day, all of his theology is still there to criticize. But it should be a sufficient criticism all unto itself.

My point of this little commentary is simple: If Steven Anderson – who you all detest – can act with a modicum of integrity in the midst of scandal, this just leads to a broader condemnation of the rest of evangelicalism who have a tendency to just make problems disappear quietly.

I. Overview of Dr. Bass’ Dismissal

Clint Bass served as a professor of church history in the Redford College of Theology and Ministry at Southwest Baptist University from 2009-2018. Prior to November 28, 2018, he never had a negative review nor had disciplinary action ever been taken against him.

Early on in his teaching career at SBU, Bass observed certain signs suggesting that the Redford College in which he taught was not well aligned with the supporting churches of the Missouri Baptist Convention. Every now and then he logged examples to substantiate this view.

By 2015, pastors in the Missouri Baptist Convention suspected that there were doctrinal deficiencies in the Redford College. Without solicitation from Bass, Dr. Spencer Plumlee initiated contact and asked for a meeting. Bass agreed assuming that the subject of discussion would be historical theology. He was surprised when Plumlee began to raise questions about the doctrinal positions of faculty members within the Redford College. Bass spoke candidly. Plumlee, a member of the Executive Board of Missouri Baptist Convention, shared some of the information with Bass’ consent.

Under Plumlee’s leadership, a group of concerned pastors and alum met with Bass at the Southern Baptist Convention in 2016. Those who attended knew of problems within the Redford College through their own personal experience and shared their concerns with Bass. The hope and prayer was that action would be taken to begin to nominate trustees at SBU who would be both willing and able to engage in the doctrinal issues at SBU. 

In January, 2018, the father of a prospective student emailed the dean of the Redford College in an attempt to doctrinally place the department in which his son was to study. The dean then sought the advice of his faculty. 

Bass was curious about how others would respond because the concerned father asked rather specific questions about inerrancy, creation, and confessionalism. Ultimately the dean’s response to the father was evasive. The father was told that the institution was conservative but that the Baptist tradition is “no creed!” To Bass, this appeared to be an attempt to assuage the father’s concerns and gain a student; this was not an honest answer to the father’s questions.

Bass sent a response to the dean and the other Redford faculty critiquing the college’s handling of the situation, with particular focus on the exactness of the father’s questions: “He [the father] raised a question about the specific doctrine of inerrancy. Would it be wrong to reveal to him that, while some faculty (such as myself), affirm the doctrine, other Redford faculty are uncomfortable with it?” The following day, the dean of the Redford College accused Bass of sabotage.

In March, 2018, Bass’s pastor (a member of the nominating committee) asked Bass to join him in Jefferson City for a meeting with Executive Director Dr. John Yeats. Dr. Yeats had previously been informed of Southwest Baptist University’s doctrinal instability and was working with the nominating committee to appoint additional trustees who were both willing and able to engage in the systemic doctrinal issues at SBU. Dr. Yeats’s was thankful for Bass’s faithfulness and prayed to God on behalf of Bass, asking God to drive errant teachers away from Southwest Baptist University. Bass returned and continued to faithfully proclaim the Word of God in his classes. 

In June, 2018, the dean of the Redford College informed Bass that SBU administration knew that members of his congregation had been reporting the doctrinal positions of Redford faculty to the Missouri Baptist Convention. Dr. Bass admitted that he had spoken with pastors who raised questions about the Redford College’s doctrinal soundness.

In August 2018, the dean of the Redford College held a meeting with the theology and ministry faculty. He revealed to them that a SBU faculty member had been in contact with the Missouri Baptist Convention informing the MBC that some Redford faculty do not believe in hell. He explained that this was part of an attempt to replace some of the trustees. 

According to the dean, this plan had been “nipped in the bud.” Bass, knowing that the MBC has a fiduciary responsibility over SBU, was perplexed at the dean’s confidence that SBU could stop the MBC from appointing appropriate trustees.

On October 12, 2018, the dean of the Redford College informed Dr. Bass that administration had decided to deny his application for promotion. 

The dean acknowledged that Bass satisfied the ordinary criteria for promotion (student evaluations, faculty evaluations, credentials, scholarship, service to the university, academic advising, church involvement, community involvement), but argued that Bass had compromised the integrity of the Redford College, citing three grounds: (1) Bass had attempted sabotage by critiquing the dean’s letter to the concerned father, (2) Bass had been in contact with the Missouri Baptist Convention, (3) Bass belonged to a meddlesome congregation (Southern Hills Baptist Church). The dean left Bass with one of two options: Bass could withdraw the letter and show greater support for the Redford College or Bass could leave his application in play and face denial. Bass chose the latter. 

On October 30, 2018, Bass met with the president of the university and the provost. He raised questions about whether or not administration had violated procedural due process for promotion as outlined in the institution’s faculty handbook. He then suggested that the denial of promotion was actually rooted in doctrinal differences between himself and other colleagues within the Redford College. 

Administration requested his notes but Bass, having the names of numerous sympathizers in his papers, was not comfortable with turning them over. 

On November 7, 2018, the provost demanded Bass’ notes un-redacted by 9am the next morning. Bass did not see the email until almost 9am, November 8. Bass made it to the office of the provost by 9am but he was not in. Bass then scheduled a meeting at the provost’s earliest opening. At 3pm Bass once again described the theological positions of some faculty in the Redford College who were out of step with the Southern Baptists of Missouri. 

On November 9, the provost demanded that Bass submit all of his personal notes related to the doctrinal status of the Redford College or he would face dismissal. Bass complied submitting his personal log as well as seven letters of testimony from graduates and pastors and the names and phone numbers of other pastors who could testify about the doctrinal deficiencies of the Redford College. 

On November 15, 2018, the provost interviewed Bass for three hours. It was suggested that Bass had simply misunderstood his colleagues. The provost reported that the faculty who had been accused of theological aberration had denied the allegations.

On November 28, 2018, Bass was fired. The president and provost cited five grounds for dismissal:

1. Deliberate and serious violation of the rights and freedoms of fellow faculty members by collecting evidence and ascribing views to them often without personal interaction.

2. Failure to observe the ethical and professional canons of the teaching profession by use of non-credible information to formulate accusations against fellow faculty members.

3. Failure to observe the ethical and professional canons of the teaching profession by not conversing with colleagues about asserted concerns.

4. Failure to abide by the University Principles and Expectations, which speak to “understanding of Scripture and a commitment to its authority regarding all areas of Christian faith, learning, and living.”

5. Failure to follow Matthew 18 in addressing your concerns with your colleagues directly. As supporting information, the provost and the president pointed to Bass’ notes, Bass’ testimony, and the testimony of Redford faculty.

Despite the fact that Bass presented administration with seven letters of testimony and the names and phone numbers of five pastors who could testify further to the doctrinal faults of the Redford College, administration did not reach out to anyone. 

II. Evidence Suggesting a Lack of Doctrinal Alignment between Redford faculty and the Missouri Baptist Convention

1. Signs of deficient alignment as Redford appears more aligned with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

The department chair of the Redford College (Don Denton) is actively involved in a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship church (University Heights, Springfield MO). The Redford College has regularly employed a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor as course instructor (Danny Chisholm). 

Above all other graduate programs, Redford faculty have consistently recommended a CBF endorsed institution, Truett Seminary. This was Bass’ experience both as a student and as a professor. The Southern Baptist seminaries are often portrayed as schools for unthinking preacher-boys. 

In August 2016, the Redford College hosted a ministry conference in which they invited Cooperative Baptist Fellowship minister, Dwight Moody, to be the keynote speaker. In one of his talks, Moody spoke proudly of rescuing a student from Boyce College and drawing him away to CBF endorsed Georgetown College. It is also a longstanding practice that the Word and Way (Baptist paper which, under moderate influence, severed ties with the Missouri Baptist Convention) be distributed through the Redford College offices. The Missouri Baptist Convention’s paper, The Pathway, is not distributed within the Redford College. 

2. Signs of deficient alignment: the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture.

In October, 2013, dean Rodney Reeves communicated to Bass that understanding Barth was the pivotal moment in his theological education. Reeves attested to Barth’s tremendous influence on his thinking. Bass also listened to a lecture in which Reeves suggested that elaborate defenses of the historicity of the gospels (naming specifically R. Bauckham and N.T. Wright), were unnecessary pursuits. Instead, he preferred a Barthian approach. 

Similarly, during lectures promoting Barth’s threefold form of the word of God, Don Denton revealed to the class that he embraced Barth’s approach to revelation (academic year 2017-18). 

During a prospective student visitation day, the Redford faculty were questioned by a father about the inerrancy of Scripture. Before a crowd of parents, the dad asked each faculty member to indicate whether or not they held to inerrancy. All Redford faculty nodded in approval. Once the parents vacated the room, many faculty expressed anger towards the dad. Rodney Reeves coached the faculty that in such situations always just say yes. Bass defended the dad’s efforts, and in response to this, one faculty member suggested that no one actually understands what inerrancy is, no one can define it. 

While reflecting on recent conflict over inerrancy at Wheaton, Reeves dismissed the relevance of the doctrine as a matter pushed by those “still caught up in that battle.” In the same conversation, Reeves spoke critically of the Evangelical Theological Society, suggesting that they pursued a devotional approach to study rather than an academic approach (March, 2017). 

Reeves claimed that he was once interviewed for a position at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, but he was not granted the position because “he was not a political inerrantist” (conversation with Bass, September, 2015). Mike Fuhrman suggested to Bass that the doctrine of inerrancy took on emphasis among Protestants only when the Roman Catholic church accepted papal infallibility as official dogma (a point that Bass contested). 

In both August of 2013 and August 2015, Bass engaged Zach Manis in discussion over the canonicity of Scripture. Bass defended the traditionally Protestant view that Scriptural authority is derived from inspiration and that the church merely recognized an authority intrinsic to the inspired books. Manis assumed a Roman Catholic position, tracing Scripture’s authority back to the church’s councils. In May 2018, Rodney Reeves declared that, when in heaven, he would not be surprised to find that 2 Peter was not Scripture. He went on to reassure the class that it was worthy of study because the church had deemed it Scripture some 2000 years ago.

3. Signs of deficient alignment: the afterlife.

Rodney Reeves has self-identified as an annihilationist. He communicated this to students. During a public forum which two Missouri Baptist Convention pastors attended, Reeves claimed that he was a 55% annihilationist. When a student pointed out that his position seemed to conflict with the Baptist Faith and Message Article X, Reeves retorted that Baptists are not creedal. 

In a Redford faculty meeting (August, 2018), Reeves stated that someone could believe in hell even if they did not hold to the doctrine of everlasting punishment. Bass pointed out to the provost, Lee Skinkle, that Reeves’ position conflicted with the faculty handbook (Christian Worldview, article which mentioned “the eternal consequences of sin.” Skinkle then suggested that annihilation was an everlasting consequence. 

Zach Manis has described his own view as purgatorial. Manis had several lengthy conversations with Bass about the subject (August 2013, August 2015). Manis argued that humans must be made fit for heaven, but they cannot be instantaneously switched without their personhood being destroyed. Thus, purgatory is necessary for this process of purification to take place. Manis also expressed sympathy with inclusivist interpretations of Christianity and with those who believed in second-chance type positions on the afterlife. 

On August 27, 2015, Manis engaged Bass on the doctrine of everlasting punishment. Manis defended Rob Bell’s Love Wins while attacking scholars who held to everlasting punishment (specifically John Piper). Manis declared that he was not prepared to regard universalism as a heresy. His research had persuaded him that there was greater Scriptural evidence for universalism than there was evidence for the traditional view of everlasting punishment.

4. Signs of deficient alignment: the doctrine of justification by faith.  

Zach Manis’ purgatorial view of the afterlife does not allow for the doctrine of imputed righteousness. Manis expressed on several occasions (August 2013, August 2015) his preference for the doctrine of deification. He argued that there was as much Scriptural evidence for Rome’s view (faith and works) as there was Scriptural evidence for the traditionally Protestant view (faith alone). 

5. Signs of deficient alignment: the doctrine of the church.

Rodney Reeves has argued that the Scriptures do not affirm a particular system of church government: Polity is to be determined by circumstances. Addressing the subject of the Lord’s Supper, Reeves commented on his blog: “I’m still not sure if Paul believed the table was reserved for believers because he is always concerned about the impression outsiders will have of the assembly. Plus, the earliest reputation Christ believers earned was their unique hospitality.” 

In August 2013, Manis took issue with Bass’ strong emphasis on regenerate church membership. Manis expressed his belief that the Roman Catholic practice of confirmation was capable of accomplishing what Baptists gain in emphasizing conversion as a prerequisite to baptism. Manis claimed that the absence of Scriptural proof for infant baptism was equal to the absence of Scriptural proof for an age of accountability. 

In a Redford faculty meeting (Spring, 2014), Manis expressed concerns that Bass’ proposed courses might make the graduate program too baptistic. 

6. Signs of deficient alignment: women and the office of pastor.

Mike Fuhrman has been pushing an egalitarian agenda in his courses over the last twenty years. It is a well known fact among the Redford students that he promotes women as overseers of congregations. He commented to ministry students, “One day Southern Baptists are going to be very sorry they did not use 50% of their population for the pulpit.” 

7. Signs of deficient alignment: the Redford College’s anti-confessionalism.

In January 2018, Rodney Reeves told Bass that confessions were not the right instrument to unite the Redford College. Instead, it would be united “relationally.” Reeves explained the Redford College’s position to a parent: “Much in the Baptist tradition (no creed!), we do not require our faculty to sign a doctrinal statement.” 

Reflecting on his rejection of confessionalism, Reeves claimed to have been scarred by the conservative resurgence. The provost, Lee Skinkle, also stated to Bass that he had observed good professors driven out of Southwestern by an administration bent on subscription to the BFM 2000. 

Similarly, during a Redford faculty meeting, Rodney informed the faculty that a trustee had been calling for the university to require confessional subscription among Redford College faculty. Zach Manis complained that this would create a toxic work environment if it ever passed. At least six of the eight Redford faculty belong to Baptist churches that do not affirm the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

One Redford faculty member suggested that if parents of students expected strict adherence to the BFM 2000, they would not be satisfied at SBU. Another Redford faculty member, Don Denton, stated that if parents wanted greater doctrinal specificity than what is afforded in SBU’s Principles and Expectations (which is only about ethics), then they would not be comfortable sending their students to SBU. 

On October 22, 2018, representatives of administration met with the Redford faculty. They asked two questions: What should never change at SBU and what should change at SBU? The department chair of theology, Don Denton, asserted that the “short list” of required doctrines should not be expanded (this “short list” is a no list as no Redford faculty member has ever had to sign a statement of faith). 

His demand of doctrinal latitude was affirmed by Mike Fuhrman who then critiqued the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as being too narrow. Rodney Reeves joined in and suggested that the BFM 2000 was “politically restrictive.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y90vascr09xw1ia/Overview_Evidence.pdf?dl=0

[Reformation Charlotte] MANILA (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos joined an annual procession in the Philippine capital to kiss or touch a centuries-old black wooden statue of Jesus Christ, believed to have miraculous healing powers, in a grand display of Catholic devotion.

The devotees, mostly walking barefoot, surrounded the carriage bearing the life-sized image of the “Black Nazarene” shouldering a heavy cross as it paraded through the city.

Many of them, in yellow and maroon shirts, threw white towels to people on the carriage to wipe on the statue, while others jostled to touch the thick ropes used to pull the carriage, believing the slightest touch would bless and heal their illnesses.

About 80 percent of the more than 100 million people of the Philippines are Roman Catholic. The Philippines is renowned for its colorful religious rituals, and the celebration of the “Black Nazarene” is a tradition in the former Spanish colony that goes back more than two centuries.

The increasing number of devotees showed the growing strength of the Catholic faith, Manila auxiliary bishop Broderick Pabillo said in response to criticism that the procession borders on idolatry.

“Let’s deepen our understanding of spirituality,” Pabillo was quoted by DZMM radio station as saying.

Wednesday’s procession, which is expected to last around 20 hours, is expected to draw 5 million people, police said.

It is not known why the statue, which was carved in Mexico, turned black. There are myths that the original statue donated by Spanish priests was burned as a fire erupted on the ship that carried it to the Philippines in the early 17th century.

Read More >>

[Editor’s Note: Reprinted with permission.]

(RNS) — Ahead of next month’s special session on sexuality intended to resolve an issue that has dogged the United Methodist Church for decades, a group of affiliated college and university presidents issued a strong call for full inclusion of LGBTQ Christians.

The group, which represents presidents of 93 United Methodist-affiliated colleges and universities, urged the denomination to amend its policies and practices to recognize the “sacred worth” of people regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

The three-paragraph statement won unanimous approval in a vote taken Friday (Jan. 4) by the National Association of Schools and Colleges of The United Methodist Church.

“We call upon the leaders of the United Methodist Church at this 2019 Called General Conference to honor the past and current practices of inclusion by amending their policies and practices to affirm full inclusion in the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church of all persons regardless of their race, ethnicity, creed, national origin, gender, gender identity/expression or sexual orientation,” the statement reads.

The 93 affiliated schools serve more than 260,000 students across the United States. They include large institutions such as American University, Boston University, Duke University and Emory University, as well as dozens of smaller schools such as Randolph College, Otterbein University and Greensboro College.

At issue is the denomination’s rulebook, the Book of Discipline, which bars “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained as ministers and forbids pastors from marrying them in the church.

The special session called for Feb. 23-26 in St. Louis is intended to resolve once and for all an issue that has divided the United Methodist Church despite repeated attempts to resolve it going back to the 1970s.

Last year, the denomination’s Council of Bishops endorsed a plan that would allow regional decision-making bodies called annual conferences to determine whether to ordain LGBTQ clergy and allow individual churches to vote whether to perform same-sex marriages in their buildings.

While the university presidents did not formally endorse that plan, they made it clear they want the language on homosexuality in the Book of Discipline stricken.

“The presidents are really firm about full inclusion,” said Scott D. Miller, president of Virginia Wesleyan University and a board member of the National Association of Schools and Colleges of The United Methodist Church.

“It is my disappointment and the feeling of many of my colleagues that this has been one of the reasons contributing to a decline in membership and attendance,” Miller said. “The church has not stayed current with the people it serves.”

The statement on sexuality issued by the university presidents is their fourth in the past 13 years. In 2006, 2011 and 2013 the presidents drafted similar statements calling on the church to offer LGBTQ people full inclusion.

Sexuality was so divisive a topic during the denomination’s 2016 conference that 56 different legislative petitions were submitted to try to resolve it. Instead, delegates voted to defer all proposals to a special Commission on a Way Forward.

Last year, that commission concluded its work and put forth three proposals. The Council of Bishops endorsed the so-called One Church Plan, which would allow the most flexibility while keeping the denomination’s various factions together.

Lacking any resolution, the denomination has been plunged into chaos.

Many regional United Methodist bodies have made their own decisions regarding ordination and marriage of LGBTQ people.

In 2016, the Mountain Sky Conference elected Karen Oliveto, a married lesbian, as the denomination’s first openly LGBTQ bishop, and dozens of individual pastors have publicly or secretly celebrated same-sex weddings. Some have been summoned to church trials and stripped of their preaching credentials.

But while the United Methodists’ 7 million U.S. adherents might be inclined to change the rules regarding gays and lesbians, the denomination is a worldwide body active in 136 countries. Many of its African churches oppose any steps toward LGBTQ inclusion.

Regardless, some university presidents said they would disaffiliate rather than back down, though that was not mentioned in the statement.

“Some institutions that feel very strongly about inclusiveness could very well say we no longer wish to be affiliated with a denomination that, in their view, discriminates against the LGBTQ people,” said Miller.

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Yonat Shimron and originally published at Religious News Service]

(RNS) — Snake-handling Pentecostals may be on the fringe of American religious culture, but a new opera brings their exuberant worship and rockabilly-inspired music to center stage this week.

“Taking Up Serpents,” a 60-minute work by composer Kamala Sankaram and librettist Jerre Dye, debuts Jan. 11 and 13 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Set in Gulf Shores, Ala., the opera tells the story of Kayla, a 25-year-old clerk in a convenience store whose father runs a serpent-handling church. Washington National Opera soprano Alexandria Shiner plays the lead role. Timothy J. Bruno plays her father, the pastor of a Pentecostal congregation called the “Church of the Lord Jesus Christ With Signs Foretold.”

The “signs” referred to in the church’s name come from Mark 16:17-18, which claims believers can speak in tongues, survive a dose of poison or a bite from a venomous snake, heal the sick and cast out demons. Most Pentecostal churches accept the first, fourth and fifth signs as normative. But only about 100 U.S. congregations, mainly in Appalachia, believe that church services should also include snake handling and the quaffing of strychnine and similar poisonous substances.

The opera traces Kayla’s journey after she learns her father is dying of a rattlesnake bite in a Birmingham hospital. Her mother wants her to come home. As she travels there, Kayla reminisces over her childhood and frayed relationships with her family. She visits her father in the hospital, then makes her way to his church.

There won’t be any live snakes onstage, but during the final aria, Kayla reaches into a snake box (typically a flat wooden box with a Plexiglas cover) to pick up a serpent.

“She does choose to handle at the end,” said Dye, who grew up Pentecostal and embraced “gifts” of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues. Although his family didn’t frequent serpent-handling churches, he knew they existed nearby.

“When I grew up, snake handling was considered the line in the sand for that culture,” he said. “The most theatrical charismatics would absolutely distance themselves from snake handling. They would say, ‘We don’t handle snakes, but we know people who do.’”

The opera was inspired by Dye’s upbringing and the 1995 book “Salvation on Sand Mountain,” which features serpent handlers in Alabama’s rural northeast. He calls serpent handlers one of the great hidden stories of the South. Their church services, he said, are filled with built-in drama.

“Possessing an electric testimony is built into the culture,” he said. “They have to talk about how God found them. They call themselves godly and yet their lives are very messy.”

Dye was also impressed with the music of serpent handlers, which is often improvised and plays a major role in church services. Congregants will sing and dance for hours during worship.

“There’s a jangly, gorgeous lopsided sound to their music. It’s like Johnny Cash crashes into something,” Dye said. “They’re all very self-taught and they use piano, tambourine, drums, whatever instruments are available.”

Dye has left the beliefs of his childhood behind. Theater, he said, has taken the place of religion in his heart. Still, there are the memories.

“I try to tell this human story of this search, this longing,” he said.

The use of snakes in worship services is a solely American phenomenon, beginning around 1910 after George Hensley, a preacher from Chattanooga, Tenn., began teaching that the Mark 16 verses mandated the practice. The practice spread to the point that several states in the region outlawed serpent handling because of the many deaths that resulted.

About 100 people have died of snake bite or poison intake during such services over the last century. One of the most recent deaths occurred Feb. 15, 2014. The Rev. Jamie Coots, 42, the co-star of “Snake Salvation,” a 2013 reality show on serpent handling aired by the National Geographic Channel, was fatally bitten while holding three rattlesnakes at a church service in Middlesboro, Ky.

Serpent handling is not a practice associated with the arts world, as it’s typically represented in documentaries or photo exhibits. As for fiction, Ralph Hood, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who’s considered the world expert on the practice, said there had been a few novels about the snake handlers, although “none of any real merit,” he added.

Robert Ainsley, director of the American Opera Initiative program sponsoring “Taking Up Serpents,” said religion is not an alien theme for opera.

“‘Samson and Delilah’ have huge elements of that,” he said. “This opera is more about a dysfunctional family than about serpent handling, but religion is fundamental to the plot. Faith is a constant and a given and it flows in some form through everyone’s life. I think that (Dye) has nailed that fact.”

The performance, which has a cast of six (playing multiple characters) and a 13-piece orchestra, heads up a quartet of short operas sponsored by the American Opera Initiative Festival. The festival, which seeks to bring new talent for the opera stage, commissions pieces that reflect American society.

Sankaram, the composer, had worked with music in Episcopal and Catholic settings but wasn’t familiar with immersive music that dominates in Appalachia. Because the freewheeling rockabilly style of serpent-handling churches was foreign to her, she watched a lot of videos to get a feel for the four- to five-hour services. The music typically includes bluesy keyboards, electric guitars, drums and tambourines.

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Julia Duin and originally published at Religious News Service]

[Lincoln Journal Star] Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl.

The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Act does not set minimum age requirements. And in weighing petitions for spouses or fiancees, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner lives.

But the data raises questions about whether the immigration system may be enabling forced marriage and about how U.S. laws may be compounding the problem despite efforts to limit child and forced marriage. Marriage between adults and minors is not uncommon in the United States, and most states allow children to marry with some restrictions.

There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiances, according to the data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled into a report. 

Some victims of forced marriage say the lure of a U.S. passport combined with lax U.S. marriage laws are partly fueling the petitions.

“My passport ruined my life,” said Naila Amin, a dual citizen from Pakistan who grew up in New York City.

She was forcibly married at 13 in Pakistan and applied for papers for her 26-year-old husband to come to the country.

“People die to come to America,” she said. “I was a passport to him. They all wanted him here, and that was the way to do it.”

Amin, now 29, said she was betrothed to her first cousin Tariq when she was just 8 and he was 21. The petition was eventually terminated after she ran away. She said the ordeal cost her a childhood. She was in and out of foster care and group homes, and it took a while to get her life on track.

“I was a child. I want to know: Why weren’t any red flags raised? Whoever was processing this application, they don’t look at it? They don’t think?” Amin asked.

There is a two-step process for obtaining U.S. immigration visas and green cards. Petitions are first considered by USCIS. If granted, they must be approved by the State Department. Overall, there were 3.5 million petitions received from budget years 2007 through 2017.

Over that period, there were 5,556 approvals for those seeking to bring minor spouses or fiancees, and 2,926 approvals by minors seeking to bring in older spouses, according to the data. Additionally, there were 204 for minors by minors. Petitions can be filed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

“It indicates a problem. It indicates a loophole that we need to close,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told the AP.

In nearly all the cases, the girls were the younger person in the relationship. In 149 instances, the adult was older than 40, and in 28 cases the adult was over 50, the committee found. Among the examples: In 2011, immigration officials approved a 14-year-old’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse in Jamaica. A petition from a 71-year-old man was approved in 2013 for his 17-year-old wife in Guatemala.

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Colleen Long and originally published at the Associated Press]

[Townhall] This is the tale of two lectures at Wheaton College, a Christian evangelical college in the suburbs of Chicago. One was given in September 2017 and the other in November 2018. Though only a year apart, the responses to the two presentations were universes apart. The reaction is very telling and tragic for those who believe that a Christian education is different than a secular one.

The first speech (listen to excerpts here) was given by Dr. George Yancy, a philosophy professor at Emory University (huge thanks to Jamie Dean at World Magazine for an excellent article on this and uncovering actual audio recording). It was sponsored by Wheaton’s Philosophy department and held in the esteemed Billy Graham Center on campus. It was entitled: “A Post-Racial America? White Gazes and Black Bodies.” It can only be described as an expletive-laced, pornographic, racist, anti-biblical screed. His theme? “To be white is to be racist.”

There was no backlash from Wheaton’s leadership. There were no letters sent out by any staff or student government leaders denouncing him or raising concerns about the hostile, f-bomb-laden speech. There was only internal praise by the school’s own Wheaton Record. 

Then there’s that second speech. Wheaton College Republicans courageously invited me to speak about abortion and race. Keep in mind, there’s never been anyone—ever—to address racism and the abortion industry at Wheaton. In fact, no one has addressed the issue of abortion at their thrice weekly chapels but once (briefly) in many years. Wheaton, though founded by slavery abolitionists, doesn’t lead whatsoever on the abolition of abortion. One would think a school that (sort of) espouses a pro-life worldview, at least on its website(“followers of Jesus Christ will uphold the dignity of human beings, from conception until death…”), would encourage students to put that into action by attending the March for Life Chicago or volunteering at a local pregnancy resource center. 

Needless to say, I did not speak in the center named after the school’s most famous alum. But I did speak to a standing-room only audience in another Wheaton lecture hall. My multimedia talk was entitled “Black Lives Matter In and Out of the Womb.” it was an expletive-free, fact-based, statistics-driven, Biblically-rooted, deeply personal and grace-filled discussion on the systemic racism of the abortion industry and the hypocrisy of the pro-abortion #BlackLivesMatter movement. As an adoptee and adoptive father who was conceived in rape, I challenged students to see the most vulnerable, the most marginalized, and the most powerless among us as having equal intrinsic worth and God-given Purpose.

Six days later, I was severely denounced by a campus-wide email sent out by two Wheaton staff members and signed by three student government leaders. My entire message was branded as “offensive rhetoric” that made “many students, staff and faculty of color” feel “unsafe” on their campus. And now, the school has cancelled the College Republicans’ next event, because leadership claims their speaker approval process needs to change so Wheaton students aren’t exposed to such factivism (aka truth) again.

So a biblical worldview that reminds us we’re created in the image of God and that we’re one human race, created out of one blood (Acts 17:26), is not in line with Wheaton’s mission? 

“Given the history of white supremacy, we ought to be the ones who fear white people. I mean sh*t, if you’re black you should be scared as hell here at Wheaton College,” Yancy told students. He also asserted “that in the end, white people are the n***ers.” That got zero pushback from Wheaton leadership. Zilch. 

“To be white is to be racist,” Yancy repeated over and over. This is what a Christian institution is peddling. 

Yancy dug up racist diatribes of people from the 1700s like Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson (with a revised f-bomb version of Jefferson’s quote about the “oranootan”, now spelled orangutan) and David Hume. The only modern-day examples he gives are anonymous rants from online commenters and white supremacists on obscure and unnamed websites. He never gave any examples of actual racism from modern-day leaders. No stats—just regurgitations of mainstream media #blacklivesmatter propaganda that divisively color the narrative of police brutality. 

He could have invoked plenty of examples of racists in the 20th century in the American Eugenics movement like Frederick Osborn(founder of the American Eugenics Society), Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), and Henry H. Goddard(psychologist who coined the term “moron”), but he would have had to talk about all those “white bodies” touching and destroying “black bodies” through the undeniable and celebrated form of systemic racism—abortion. But I digress.

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Ryan Bomberger and originally published at the Townhall]

[World] The success of LGBT activists in dictating how therapists counsel minors about sexuality and gender dysphoria continues to gain momentum as we head into 2019. Some pro-LGBT groups want to make it illegal for therapists to encourage children to embrace heterosexuality or their biological sex and expect legislative victories in at least four states this year: Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, and New York.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia, as well as cities and municipalities in seven other states, have laws against so-called “conversion therapy” on the books. Just this week, the Denver City Council voted unanimously to similarly restrict therapists.

Two Hollywood films released in 2018, Boy Erasedand The Miseducation of Cameron Post, were an attempt to bolster these efforts. The movies showed teens sent to religious programs that used extreme, abusive tactics to rid them of same-sex desires. Newly proposed laws would not only restrict such residential programs, few of which still exist, but also prohibit therapy sessions involving straightforward talk from Christian counselors. Those counselors say prohibiting Bible-based therapy muzzles the free speech of practitioners and denies parents and children access to the treatment of their choice.

The movement against therapists who hold Biblical views of sexuality and gender also ignores a growing population of Americans who openly regret engaging in transgenderism.

Former transgender activist Walt Heyer, 78, had sex change surgery in 1983 and lived as a woman for eight years before he became a Christian and accepted his biological sex. He released Trans Life Survivors in October, a book of stories from dozens of individuals who regret their decision to undergo sex change surgery. The book only tells 30 stories, but Heyer said hundreds contacted him and said they wished they hadn’t identified as transgender.

“I present this representative group of gut-wrenching personal testimonials to put the transgender advocates on notice: We survivors know there is deep trouble in Trans La La Land,” Heyer wrote in the book’s introduction.

Heyer argues that a childhood event—sexual abuse or being cross-dressed by an adult—often precedes gender dysphoria, which sometimes co-exists with other mental conditions. He contends doctors should slow down and first search for the underlying issues before recommending hormone therapy and surgical procedures. When patients realize a transgender life does not bring the hoped-for relief, the same system of doctors “abandons them to their pain,” Heyer said.

Laws that ban Bible-based counseling make getting help for such minors impossible and ignore deeper issues.

One of Heyer’s examples: A girl, 14, kept asking her mother for boys underwear, a short haircut, and to be called by a male name. The mother contacted Heyer, and he encouraged her to talk with her daughter and ask why she was acting this way. The mom learned her first husband had sexually abused her daughter, who said she “wanted to erase her childhood” by becoming a boy. They both wept and continued to talk: The daughter eventually said, “I don’t want to be a transgender. I don’t want to be a boy. I just want to be a girl.”

As of Jan. 1, adult residents of New York City may change their gender to “X” on their birth certificates and parents may choose “X” for the gender of newborn babies. The City Council passed the measure in a 41-6 vote in September, and Mayor Bill de Blasio signed the bill in October, saying, “You be you. Live your truth. Know that New York City will have your back.”

Before the bill went into effect, New Yorkers needed to have sex change surgery and present a letter from a physician, or some other medical affidavit, prior to changing the gender designation on their birth certificates. “Today is a historic day for New York in its role as a worldwide champion for inclusivity and equality,” council spokesman Corey Johnson said.

New York City is not the first jurisdiction to make such a change. California, New Jersey, Oregon, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., already offer the option.

The trend is growing in Canada, as well. In 2017, officials in British Columbia agreed to issue a baby a national health card marked “U” for unidentified. The baby’s mother, Kori Doty, who identifies as transgender and is a member of the Gender-Free I.D. Coalition, refused to designate the baby as either male or female.

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Joel Maas & Kiley Crossland and originally published at World]

In a recent outburst on Twitter, Southern Baptist pastor and race-baiter, Thabiti Anyabwile, suggests he’d be in favor of enlisting foreign nations to commit voter fraud, as he states,

If I were the head of state for an American ally, I would be working to convince other American allies to work together to hack the next election to choose for the US a normal president so we could return things to normal. The world can’t afford more of this.

[Liberty Voice] Democrats, who now hold the majority of House seats, have voted that Father Patrick J. Conroy will remain as their chaplain. They solidified their intent by granting him a new two-year contract.

In April 2018, former Speaker Of The House Paul Ryan asked the Jesuit Priest to submit his resignation. Conroy agreed and included in the resignation that it would take effect on May 24, 3018.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats and a few Republicans pulled together to support the priest. As a result, Conroy withdrew his resignation and on May 3, 2018, and Ryan concluded that the priest would remain chaplain.

In a video found on “YouTube” which is not dated, Conray is seen as saying that the Catholic teaching and thoughts pertaining to homosexuality is outdated, and that the Church needs to change with the times. Conroy continued in the video, stating that humans conceive male to female, but human sexuality is not about procreation, it is about more than that.

Ryan’s staff said that the reason the priest was asked to resign was because of concern regarding a prayer Conroy delivered on Nov. 6 during a deliberation regarding tax overhaul.

Conroy said in his prayer that he hoped the efforts of Congress assure that under the new tax law there will be no winners and loser, but it will be balanced and all Americans will share in it.

Ryan stated he disagreed with his staff’s statements and Conroy was not fired for that reason.

One of the people on the committee to fill the position which would be vacated by Conroy was Mark Walker (R-North Carolina). He said he wanted an individual for the position whose was nondenominational, someone shepherding a multicultural congregation.

Nancy Pelosi released a statement expressing that she strongly disagreed with the decision Ryan made regarding Father Conroy. She found it particularly peculiar that Ryan asked for the resignation at the end of his term knowing he was unable to fire Conroy directly.

The House has no rules on the process to remove a chaplain from their position.

Members of the Congress who opposed Conroy’s dismissal raised concerns that Ryan was being driven to fire Conroy by evangelical Republicans whose views differ from the Jesuit’s beliefs. The focus of a Jesuit is to focus on service to the community and education. They also have more liberal beliefs in terms of religion compared to those who consider themselves a traditional Catholic.

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[Editor’s Note: This article was written Barbara Sobel and first pubilshed at Liberty Voice]

[One News Now] Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry issued a partial restriction on a New York bishop’s ministry because of his refusal to allow same-sex wedding ceremonies to be performed in his diocese.

The punishment was executed against Episcopal Diocese of Albany Bishop William Love in response to a pastoral letter he released last year declaring his refusal to abide by a recently passed resolution requiring all of the Episcopal Church’s regional bodies to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples.

Conduct same-sex marriages, or else …

As the leader of the mainline Protestant denomination, Curry has been a fervent advocate of same-sex marriage, and he made it clear that the Episcopal Church will not tolerate those opposed to the LGBT lifestyle – behavior that is clearly forbidden in the Bible.

 “During the period of this restriction, Bishop Love – acting individually, or as Bishop Diocesan, or in any other capacity – is forbidden from participating in any manner in the Church’s disciplinary process in the Diocese of Albany in any matter regarding any member of the clergy that involves the issue of same-sex marriage,” Curry proclaimed in a media release issued Friday by the Episcopal Church. “Nor shall he participate in any other matter that has or may have the effect of penalizing in any way any member of the clergy or laity or worshipping congregation of his diocese for their participation in the arrangements for – or participation in – a same-sex marriage in his diocese or elsewhere.”

He stressed that the restriction on Love will go into effect immediately and will not be lifted until a solution is reached regarding the bishop’s potential canonical offense.

“In the meantime, I or my successor – should this matter continue after my term – shall review the continued necessity of this restriction from time to time and amend or lift it as appropriate,” Curry added.

Bulldozing God’s Word to make room for LGBT doctrine

A decision permitting same-sex marriage in the denomination was reached and instituted last month.

“Last year, the Episcopal Church General Convention passed Resolution B012, which allows congregations to perform same-sex weddings – even in dioceses where leadership objects,” The Christian Post (CP) reported. “The new policy took effect on Dec. 2.”

Certain technicalities exist in the new church doctrine that disallow key leaders in the denomination to reject the pro-LGBT resolution.

“While the new resolution still gives clergy the right to refuse to perform same-sex weddings, bishops who oppose same-sex marriage rites must call on another bishop who does not oppose such unions to provide pastoral support for the couple and a clergy for the ceremony,” CP’s Michael Gryboski noted.

Not bowing down to the LGBT agenda

The unbiblical mandate instituted by Resolution B012 did not sit well with Love, who made his objection known in writing.

“[The same-sex marriage rites approved] shall not be used anywhere in the Diocese of Albany by diocesan clergy [canonically resident or licensed].” Love wrote in his pastoral letter released last year, which is posted on AnglicanLink.com. “Jesus is calling the Church to follow His example. He is calling the Church to have the courage to speak His Truth in love about homosexual behavior – even though it isn’t politically correct.”

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[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Martin Burillas as first published at One News Now, title changed by P&P]

[CNS News] Some claim that building a wall is a “medieval solution” to a modern problem. The wheel is an ancient solution too. Nobody’s complaining about that. POTUS is on target. Walls do work; as in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, walls are still viable solutions. Why now? Just days away are the March for Life and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, yet America is in crisis at the southern border.

As an African American voice for justice, a defender of the sanctity of life, and perhaps most importantly, a Christian evangelist, I stand with President Trump as he labors to build a wall. From my perspective, compassion trumps terror. Our prayers are needed more than ever. We must rally around the wall to avert crisis.

Having survived, and in many cases overcome tyranny, oppression and racism in America, we as African Americans are close to the heartbeat of justice and compassion. We are not color blind. Our hearts are touched by the plight of all children and their families – not just at the border, but here at home as well.

Children in the womb, in cribs, in school, in jail, with parents behind bars, on the streets, at our borders – many are in danger. We must have responsible compassion for them all.

My goddaughter, Angela Stanton King, cofounder of the American King Foundation writes: “The process of draining the swamp, is a process of seeking genuine true justice, jubilee, pardon, and forgiveness. We’re going to continue to discover that there are some very thin lines between right, wrong, justice, and injustice. Meanwhile, we live in a world where security is necessary. The Wall plan is viable.”

Rev. Bill and Dr. Deborah Owens, Founders of CAAP write: “Christians have a responsibility to help those in need, including the undocumented immigrants at our southern border. At the same time, we must also respect the need to secure our borders and ensure the safety of all U.S. citizens. The African-American community has been gravely injured by unfettered illegal immigration, which has resulted in loss of jobs, loss of housing, and other economic hardship.”

Collectively, we stand with President Trump in the battle for the soul of America. I’m praying that POTUS builds the wall in the manner that Ezra and Nehemiah did in days of old.

As Commander and Chief of America, POTUS is fighting for the soul of our nation. In his address to the nation on January 8, 2019, President Donald J. Trump speaks to the people of America:

• There is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.
• Customs and Border Patrol agents continue to encounter thousands of illegal immigrants at our southern border. 
• Meanwhile, Americans are continually at risk from uncontrolled, illegal migration. 
• This climate strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages for the American people as well as the legal immigrants who are here. 
• Among those ethnic communities hardest hit are African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
• Sadly, our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl.
• As a result, every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border. 
• If something isn’t done, and soon, more Americans could die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.
• Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States — a dramatic increase.  These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs. 
• One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico.  Women and children are the biggest victims, by far, of our broken system.

“This is a humanitarian crisis — a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul,” he asserted.

Thankfully, the President is not alone in his efforts to serve the people of America as well as the immigrant families who are flooding our border. The president further appeals to the soul of the American people with a call to heart:

• America works hard to welcome millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation.
• In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 violent killings.
• This is the tragic reality of illegal immigration on our southern border.  This is the cycle of human suffering that POTUS is determined to end.
• We must fall to our knees and then rise and rally to the call.
• The president’s proposal includes requests from Homeland Security for cutting-edge technology for detecting drugs, weapons, illegal contraband, and many other things. Also included in his proposal are requests for more agents, immigration judges, and bed space to process the sharp rise in unlawful migration fueled by our very strong economy. 
• The plan also contains an urgent request for humanitarian assistance and medical support.
• There is also an urgent request that Congress will close border security loopholes so that illegal immigrant children can be safely and humanely returned back home.
• In addition, as an overall approach to border security, law enforcement professionals have requested $5.7 billion for a physical barrier.  At the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall. 
• This barrier is absolutely critical to border security.  It’s also what our professionals at the border want and need.

Today, I join my colleagues in the faith in a cry for prayer and compassion as we face this present danger.

Speaking from a platform in support of diversity and compassion, Bruce LeVell, Executive Director of NDC Trump writes: “As a follower of Christ, my convictions are to set up processes to aid those subjected to evil. Meanwhile we must protect our citizens. Mr. President, build that wall!”

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[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Alveda King, first published at CNS]