There isn't that much daylight between the superstitions of Orthodox Christianity and American charismatic Christianity except the former has way cooler outfits

 

Beni Johnson soaking up something from the grave of C. S. Lewis in 2014

If God's love is so miraculous why is he still dead?

The early 1970s Shiloh Fellowship in East Lansing, MI, was literally a multi-level marketing scheme which preyed on the many to enrich the few

Derek Prince, one of the Ft. Lauderdale Five

 

Jesus inveighed against mammon, and Luther against indulgences, but human nature never changes.

 

My Three Years in a Christian Cult: On leaving the Shiloh Fellowship 

Peter Schwendener

... The message, which came straight from Christian Growth Ministries in Ft. Lauderdale, was this: the “Jesus movement” most of us belonged to was a good thing that had run its course. It was now time to start building the Kingdom of God. The Body of Christ, meaning the church, was more important than the individual Christian. ...

In 1975, the New York Times published an article entitled “Growing Charismatic Movement is Facing Internal Discord Over a Teaching Known as ‘Discipling.’” That was us, and I had by that year moved into the house on Brookfield Drive with three other “brothers.” Discipling and shepherding were the same thing. According to this teaching, the true church was not the usual setup of pastor and congregation but rather a vast network of relationships between sheep, who could be men, women, or children, and shepherds, who could only be men. You weren’t a real Christian unless you were personally “accountable” or “submitted” to a local shepherd who watched over all parts of your life. You also paid tithes directly to this person, who in turn tithed to the shepherd above him in a pyramid whose summit was in—you guessed it—Ft. Lauderdale. ...

I soon had my own shepherd, a Jewish convert named Kim Levinson who answered directly to Erik, who answered to Derek Prince, one of the Five. In Charismatic circles, Derek was a genuine celebrity whose books and cassette tapes circulated widely. His calling card was exorcism, a subject that, like shepherding, divided the Charismatic movement. ...

We were growing as a group, and almost everyone worked and tithed. I worked night shifts full-time at a twenty-four-hour restaurant. A sizable portion of our money went straight to Ft. Lauderdale, but we still had enough to buy the church building from our Lutheran landlords, who moved elsewhere. There was also enough to buy Erik and his wife a house near the church. A key tenet of the movement was “service” to those in authority, and I eagerly volunteered to help Erik with chores around his new house. ...

The group soon had seven or eight full-time shepherds who followed Erik’s lead by using money from tithes to buy houses near the church. Though mostly in their early twenties, they became known as “the elders” and assumed increasing importance at meetings and elsewhere as Erik began traveling, often for weeks at a time, with his mentor Derek [Prince]. The two men (Erik and Derek, as we called them) frequently went overseas to spread the movement’s teachings to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, and elsewhere. It was on our dime, of course, and some of us found it troubling while others attributed all doubts about it to you-know-who. ...

I went up to Erik and told him I had decided to leave the group. “I respect what you’re saying,” he said. “Let’s talk about it.” I was still working the night shift at the restaurant and met him there for breakfast a few days later. After admitting the Fellowship had lately experienced a few problems, he said we were back on track and tried to persuade me to stay. If I did, I would be “discipled” by him personally and would learn exorcism, have access to the group’s money, and maybe meet one of the sisters as a prelude to getting married. ...

At least Rome tried to stop the barbarian invasions from the north, the LCMS' Matt Harrison has welcomed the hordes from the global south for a decade

 Here.

You will be replaced by better Christians, he says. It is God's will, he says.

Except you won't be. You aren't being. The future is oblivion for the LCMS, not replacement.

This has only been the LCMS' latest gimmick in a long line of gimmicks to stem the tide of decline.

The first, minor dip in the numbers for the LCMS was from 1974. Seminex. It amounted only to a pruning of the tree. The second, steeper dip from the late 1990s was purely demographic, and cut to the root. Peak Baby Boom in 1957 reached age 40 in 1997, after which it is difficult for a woman to have children.

It was already then too late.

The LCMS was always an improbable enterprise to begin with, suffering from multiple personality disorder, just like the religion itself. Simul justus et peccator. The members were at once disloyal to the homeland as immigrants to America, yet here they were, still strangely German proud. It worked for quite a long while out in farm country, where animal husbandry kept the prime directive always in mind, but the forces of anti-German discrimination started to take their toll during the Great War, and finished off the German-lovers in the Second.

My grandfather, a graduate of Springfield who had been a missionary and church planter in places such as Oregon and Wisconsin, introduced English services once a month during The War To End All Wars. The anger over that expressed by church members caused him a massive heart attack which killed him suddenly in 1919 the day after an ugly voters meeting. He was only 52. His last of nine children ended up volunteering to fight Hitler in 1943, to the quiet consternation of the extended family, some of whom had retreated to the safety of the Wisconsin Synod. The LCMS continued to grow only because its loyal sons like my father survived the war and continued to have relatively big families of four.  I happily grew up taking German from the 7th Grade onward in the public school. In college I read Faust and the Lutherbibel.

But we were too few.

Some of the people running the show then weren't stupid. They knew what was coming if they didn't DO SOMETHING. And so there were desperate attempts pushing evangelization programs on the youth in the 1970s, many of them non-Lutheran in inspiration.  There was the Ongoing Ambassadors for Christ. The group would descend on a town for a weekend and cold-call at front doors, doing a survey, presenting the Gospel, inviting them to church. There was the Jesus Movement, then the Charismatic Renewal, The Purpose Driven Life, and the Church Growth gimmickry.

They all came to nothing, except to infect the LCMS' church life and worship with the same laxity infecting the wider culture. Die, Der, und Das was too hard! back then, but now we must learn over 100 gender identities. 

What they should have done is make babies. That is how one honors father and mother.

And so it is not well with the LCMS. And it will not live long on the earth.

The soul of the LCMS was required of it a long time ago. The only question now is whose things shall these be which remain?

Down he points.

 

Paula White and Beni Johnson: The dominionist lunatics behind Trump and the January 6 Capitol fiasco

Peggy Wehmeyer in The Dallas Morning News:

If evangelical Christians are called to live in truth, why do so many believe political conspiracies? :

In the middle of the Capitol siege on Jan. 6, I received a text message from a close friend in Colorado who’s been skeptical of my evangelical faith for years. He wanted me to see the picture on his TV screen: a giant Jesus 2020 flag waving beside protesters storming the nation’s capital. “I guess Jesus supports this mob!” he wrote. “Good to know.” Moments later, my daughter, alarmed, texted me a Facebook post from a friend calling on everyone to repent, for Jesus has come to the rescue. ...

When Trump became president, a rapidly growing faith movement began stirring political uprising in the evangelical church.

Largely unnoticed by any of the media, and rooted in charismatic and Pentecostal traditions, this informal network of mega churches counts its members in the tens of millions, many of them in their 20 and 30s.

Unlike other evangelicals, they believe their leaders are modern-day apostles and prophets who get their orders directly from God. Their mission is to usher in the Kingdom of God on Earth now, by, as they put it, “taking dominion” over politics, business and culture.

Trump caught on to the size and power of the movement quickly. When he lost the election in November, his spiritual adviser, Florida-based prophet Paula White, called for a “bold spiritual army” to restore him to power.

From California to Colorado to Texas, networks of apostolic prophets insisted that Trump won the election and was chosen by God to restore Christian values to America. Disagree with the prophets, according to this thinking, and you’re opposing God. If I didn’t know better, I’d ask them: If God is speaking through you and tells a lie, which one of you is the huckster?

One of the most influential churches in this movement is the Bethel Church in Redding, Calif., where spiritual leaders Bill and Beni Johnson oversee an 11,000-member ministry compound, including the popular Bethel Music label and the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Thousands of students enroll at schools like this to learn how to miraculously heal the sick, prophesy, and cast out demons.

Following the attack on the Capitol, Beni Johnson tweeted, “Pick up your sword and stand. Where’s your faith friends, is it in what God said or in a man? Find those seasoned prophets who are still standing and saying God has this!” Twitter quickly suspended Johnson’s account.

Naive American charismatics fantasize about taking over the Seven Mountains while China plans to dominate everything by 2025

"Plans like Made in China 2025 and their implementation are putting the two economies on a path of separation rather than integration in critical commercial areas."

-- The normally somnolent US Chamber of Commerce, here

Matthew Harrison, LCMS President, accurately diagnoses what ails the church abroad

The only problem is his own synod generally and leadership in particular in the United States are variously infected with the theological pathologies he cites.

Quoted here:

Realizing the highest growth potential is abroad, the synod is in fellowship with more than 30 church bodies worldwide, particularly in Latin American and Africa. Harrison says Lutheranism “sputters and fails” anywhere clergy don’t have extensive seminary training. For that reason, he said, church leaders in Ethiopia and other areas have asked the Missouri synod for theological support.

“They know they need pastors against glory theology, against prosperity theology and against all kinds of charismatic nonsense going on in Africa,” Harrison said at the conference. “If we are going to stand tall against the culture, if we are going to be intense about reaching out, church planting among cultures of immigrants, nonwhites, etc., we cannot shirk seminary education. It is our crown jewel because it teaches our men what they need to know and give for the gospel.”

Speakers In The Tongues Of Men And Angels In Africa Don't Realize The Devil Knows Every Language

Superstition begets superstition.

T. M. Luhrmann in The New York Times, here:

LAST month I was in Accra, Ghana, to learn more about the African version of the new charismatic Christian churches that have become so popular in the United States and are now proliferating in sub-Saharan Africa, especially Ghana and Nigeria. What struck me was how much people spoke in tongues: language-like sounds (usually, repeated phonemes from the speaker’s own language) thought by those who use them to be a language God knows but the speaker does not.

I went to services that lasted three hours and for most of which people prayed in tongues. People I interviewed spoke about praying by themselves in tongues for similar stretches of time. They said they did so because it was the one language the devil could not understand, but what I found so striking was how happy it seemed to make them. “We love to speak in tongues,” one young Ghanaian woman told me with a laugh.

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'But even Michael, one of the mightiest of the angels, did not dare accuse the devil of blasphemy, but simply said, "The Lord rebuke you!" (This took place when Michael was arguing with the devil about Moses' body.)'

-- Jude 1:9

A Rob Bell Sympathizer Admits "Spiritual" Experience Can Be Manufactured

"[S]o many Christian teachers oversell, and therefore inevitably underdeliver—or better, put God in the position where he will underdeliver. I suspect that in many cases, they are merely using hyperbole to drive home a point, but I'm convinced that readers and listeners take such exaggerations literally because they desperately want them to be true. ...

"I myself have experienced a healing of severe pain in my leg. I have also almost been "slain in the Spirit" (but got hold of myself just in time!). And as the Spirit leads, I speak in tongues. I have also had ecstatic experiences when the love of God penetrated my whole being.

"And in a life of 60 years, I can count these experiences on one hand. Because I've had such experiences, I understand perfectly the desire to have them all the time, and to imagine that maybe there is a technique, a method, a way to pray, a way to be open and alert—something!—that will allow me to experience this daily. Believe me, I tried that for a while and discovered that, yes, I could manufacture something very similar to a genuine spiritual experience. But it soon became clear that the search for daily wonder was creating a religion of Mark Galli."

-- Mark Galli, here

Yeah, well, what if the "genuine" experiences were in fact manufactured, too? It's the rare, unwilling conversions which interest me, the road-to-Damascus sort which are devoid of "the religion of feeling". Rob Bell's religion of feeling, on the other hand, appeals to an American culture which has finally surrendered to the sentimental in the post-war period because of the triumph of liberalism. And in an important sense Romanticized Christianity from the Great Awakening onward paved the way for that victory, just as it paved the way for socialism and communism in early 20th century Europe. To be converted today is to reject all these forms of Christianity.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?"

-- Jeremiah 17:9

"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever."

-- Psalm 73:26

The Absence of the Presence

If the experience of the divine presence can be as underwhelming in charismatic circles as it has been in sacramental Christianity, it is at least as equally elusive in what we may unhappily call "mystical" Christianity where a "personal relationship" with Christ is the emphasis.

Hard and fast borderlines between these forms do not exist universally, of course, and some mixture of these may be observed, depending on peculiar historical developments dominant in the experience of the individual congregation, especially since the 1970's when a great deal of interpenetration of ideas has occurred. For those sitting in the place of the unlearned, the sacramental churches may be represented as the far right of the spectrum, its mystical side is on the left but perhaps more to the center with the tongue talkers way out in left field. These last speak of being filled with the Holy Spirit in something called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and so emphasize a direct and personal experience with the Godhead, and of a dramatic sort. Those to the center often claim to have a profound experience of conversion, but without the dramatic signs. Altar calls, emotional personal testimonies, and public dunkings are more their style. The most bizarre of the pentecostal types include those, I kid you not, who now even claim that God has actually restored missing teeth, in gold no less, and will do the same for you. Snake handling is oh so yesterday, while there is no question of the blind seeing and the deaf hearing. Hope springs eternal for the one who so believes: "the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father" (John 14:12).

The stodgy right wingers of the sacramental ilk or their rationalist brothers will sometimes glory in the fact of having no religious experience at all, and feel no regret about it either, which is why the authority and inspiration of Scripture is so important to them, for without that there would be nothing else. Among Lutherans of this type the old theological insight, simul justus et peccator, sums up human experience in Christ in formal, legal terms from God's perspective. The best analogy is the courtroom where the verdict of the jury and the sentence of the judge do not transform the essence of the person on trial. The person who goes free and the one who goes to jail differ in no wise from one another, except that the one knows this while the other does not. Technically freed from the consequences of sin, until the flesh is transformed in the resurrection the former is stuck with its baneful influences as much as is the latter. So he makes the best of it until then. It's schizophrenia only in the formal sense. Justification is forensic, but its temporal application requires other work outs first. Any kind of Christianity other than that, they will tell you, is madness in fact. That way lies manic depression at worst, fanaticism at best. No good can come of it. Mother Teresa, for all we know, now that her true feelings have seen the light of day, went to her grave in anguish over the absence of the divine presence in her experience. In public, she kept up appearances, as they say.

Mystical Christianity is all about human transformation, and it is no coincidence that its contemporary forms are heavily influenced by concerns, conceptions and terminology derived from the so-called science of psychology more than they are from the historic Christian faith. Ours is, after all, an age of enormous narcissism, a(n inevitable?) by-product of the success of the West. It is primarily a phenomenon of the twentieth century which has co-opted the first, and it comes as quite a surprise to its simpler devotees to learn that their hero, Saul of Tarsus, was an unwilling convert to Christianity who did not wring his hands in anguish over his sins when he "accepted" Christ on the road to Damascus. The Emperor Constantine was not brought to Christ in a fit of existential anguish about his failed life, substance abuse, and hurt feelings in his family but by a vision of the cross on the battlefield of war, if the sources are to be believed.

The stories of our converts are sniveling by comparison, and effeminate. We are constantly regaled with stories of slavery to drugs, alcohol, political power, sex and tobacco, none of which they were capable of overcoming without the help of Christ. When this was still a sane society, people told you to stop doing bad things because they thought God had so equipped human beings to stand on their own two feet. Not any more. The citizens of this country give the impression that they couldn't stop drinking for twenty-four hours let alone declare their independence from inside the confines of a paper bag, quite apart from the King of England.

It is not fair to single out the Christians for their bad behavior as if the same in non-believers is not also bad. It's just that their pretensions to transformation simply do not stand the tests of investigation. When no one else is awake early on Sunday mornings, they are out there on the highways in their freshly washed cars, as many of them speeding to church as the general population to work on a Monday morning. A Christian couldn't possibly pad a bill, especially if he's also your relative. We can't really treat you like one for whom Christ died unless you join our church. In fact, we don't really want to know you unless you do.

From where I sit, Christian or not, whether it's got tits or testicles, it's going to cause you trouble.