Lying leaders who infiltrated United Methodism responsible for its subversion and schism

Methodist John Lomperis in "Methodism’s Messy Divorce" in National Review, here:

 

We lost our collective appetite for doctrinal accountability.

 

Over time, we then welcomed more and more ministers who essentially crossed their fingers behind their backs while taking the required ordination vows of doctrinal loyalty. Some have frankly admitted to lying through this process in order to change the church from within. Many such clergy members ascended to the highest levels of denominational leadership.

 

Have a serious conversation with most any even conservative Methodist minister and you will more often than not find an individual who emphasizes God's grace at the expense of God's law.

 

Ideas have consequences.

 

 

Lockean liberalism is in the final analysis a creature of Christianity as universal but benign religion, without which it stands to reason it will not survive

The wonder is that Locke seemed blissfully unaware, or unconcerned, that Islam was not benign and was therefore incompatible with political liberalism because it was a political religion which spread by the sword, not by the dictates of conscience.

The Need for a Revival of Lockean Liberalism:

A manuscript titled “Reasons for Tolerating Papists Equally with Others,” written in Locke’s hand in 1667 or 1668, has just been published for the first time, in The Historical Journal of Cambridge University Press. The document challenges the conventional view that Locke shared the anti-Catholicism of his fellow Protestants. Instead, it offers a glimpse into the radical quality of his political liberalism, which so influenced the First Amendment and the American Founding. “If all subjects should be equally countenanced, & imployed by the Prince,” he wrote, “the Papist[s] have an equall title.” ...

In his first major treatise supporting religious liberty, An Essay Concerning Toleration (1667), Locke constructs an argument, a defense of the rights of conscience, that he will build upon for the rest of his life. He argues that magistrates have no right interfering in religious beliefs that pose no obvious threat to the social order: “In speculations & religious worship every man hath a perfect uncontrolled liberty, which he may freely use without or contrary to the magistrate’s command.” The challenge of accommodating different religious traditions, including Roman Catholicism, is front and center. “If I observe the Friday with the Mahumetan, or the Saturday with the Jew, or the Sunday with the Christian, . . . whether I worship God in the various & pompous ceremonies of the papists, or in the plainer way of the Calvinists,” he wrote, “I see no thing in any of these, if they be done sincerely & out of conscience, that can of itself make me, either the worse subject to my prince, or worse neighbor to my fellow subject.” ...

What Locke found intolerable was not Catholic theology per se but rather the agents of political subversion operating under the guise of religious obedience. As he put it in the newly discovered manuscript: “It is not the difference of their opinion in religion, or of their ceremonys in worship; but their dangerous & factious tenets in reference to the state . . . that exclude them from the benefit of toleration.” On this point, Locke could be as tough on Protestants as he was on Catholics. ...

Political philosopher Greg Forster insightfully observes that Locke “towers over the history of liberalism precisely because virtually everything he wrote was directed at coping with the problem that gave birth to liberalism — religious violence and moral discord.” ...

America’s experiment in human liberty and equality is profoundly Lockean. It is also, in some important respects, deeply Christian. Locke believed that the gospel message of divine mercy — intended for all — implied political liberalism. The founder of Christianity, he wrote, “opened the kingdom of heaven to all equally, who believed in him, without any the least distinction of nation, blood, profession, or religion.”

It would be hard to conceive of a better doctrine on which to build a more just and humane society. A revival of Lockean liberalism would do much to tame the hatreds now afflicting the soul of the West.

The ideology of a terrible simplifier, the Editor in Chief of Christianity Today, would have meant tens of millions more dead in World War Two

Here in "The Use of Nuclear Weapons Is Inherently Evil":

[W]e stand in that stream of Christians who find no justification for the use of nuclear weapons. Under no circumstances would the use of nuclear arms be justified. Our reasons hinge on the sixth commandment, “You shall not murder,” and the indiscriminate nature of nuclear weapons. Simply put, they end up killing a great many more civilians than combatants, and therefore, their use violates one cardinal principle of just war: proportionality. Sadly, every war will entail the death of civilians, but as one summary of just war theory put it, “The violence in a just war must be proportional to the casualties suffered.” Thus, “innocent civilians must never be the target of war; soldiers always avoid killing civilians.” ...

This is not the place to argue the fine points, but it is the place to reiterate that we stand in that stream of Christians who find no justification for the use of nuclear weapons. This is not a politically radical view. Some of the most conservative of Christians and politicians, including evangelist Billy Graham, have also concluded that nuclear weapons are inherently evil or, to not put too fine a point on it, “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization” (Ronald Reagan).


This is, as the kids say these days, a hot mess.

It begs the question of innocence for one thing, which God has found little of in the world, and cares as little for. Just last week a famous anti-nuclear weapons advocate, a survivor of Hiroshima, admitted she and her classmates were being trained as decoders for the Japanese army, in preparation for the expected American invasion.

The Bible is full of instances of the indiscriminate killing of innocents, civilian populations targeted for destruction by none other than Yahweh himself. The possession of the promised land was predicated on this very idea:

And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. -- Deuteronomy 7:16.

It was murder on a grand scale, mass murder.

Perhaps the most famous of these stories is about how Saul was actually removed from being king, to be replaced by David the ancestor of Jesus, precisely because he disobeyed God by NOT destroying the Amalekites utterly: 

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. ... And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly. -- 1 Samuel 15:3, 8f.

Evangelicals often explain away such evidence by appealing to dispensational theology, which provides a convenient way of making self-contradictory evidence from the Bible of null effect. That was a different dispensation they will say, this is now. There is bad relativism, and then there is divine relativism. And yet they insist "He changeth not".

Well, things mundane haven't changed much, either. American Evangelicals are content to imagine God still blesses America despite a slaughter of over 60 million innocents through abortion since 1973, right under their noses. But somehow we're supposed to get exercised over the possibility that Donald Trump might fry up millions of North Koreans. If proportionality mattered, the death of every man, woman and child in North Korea today wouldn't add up to 45% of the slaughter that's occurred right here in the land of the free, the home of the brave.

Many Evangelicals being Democrats over the years voted for this abortion status quo. Are we supposed to believe that was not politically radical, just because that's the way it was? Ronald Reagan said something sweeping about nuclear weapons, so just because he said it it's not radical? The is-is-ought fallacy never had it so good.

Citing Ronald Reagan as an authority for your position isn't always a good idea, but it is telling.

Ronald Reagan couldn't imagine that signing abortion legislation in California when he was governor would lead to an explosion of abortions from the hundreds to an average of over 100,000 by the time he left office. Just as he couldn't imagine that his defense build up to defeat Soviet communism wouldn't be paid for after all by spending cuts. Instead it was paid for by borrowing, becoming part of the national debt of $20 trillion which we cannot repay. Just as he couldn't imagine his immigration amnesty would act like a magnet for an explosion of illegal immigration into the United States. Just as he couldn't imagine that signing EMTALA requiring hospitals to treat all comers would eventually lead to Obamacare.

Ronald Reagan couldn't imagine a lot of things.

The reason for this is because Ronald Reagan was an ideologue, specifically a libertarian ideologue. Not a dangerous ideologue like Lenin, but an ideologue nonetheless. That's what made Reagan the enemy of communism, because communism is a rival ideology. That was a good thing, because we all agree it's better to have a produce department brimming with variety instead of one which sells everything in theory but has only cucumbers.

But ideologues often get carried away by the primacy of their principles, which come to act like blinders on their eyes, rendering them incapable of seeing things they might need to see. The ideologue becomes like a pack horse which goes down the road, undistracted from pursuing its single, certain purpose. It can see nothing but what lies ahead, forgetting what lies behind, pressing onward toward its simple calling. This is fine, until the driver falls asleep, or the cargo comes loose and falls away.

It shouldn't surprise us that Ronald Reagan's views on nuclear weapons became ideological, or that Christians of a certain sort would be attracted to those views, but those views are blind. The use of the atomic bomb in World War Two not only ended the war, but dramatically lowered the number of expected casualties from a conventional assault on Japan, on both sides. Tens of millions did not die who would have. Not only that, the fact that America developed the bomb before the Germans could meant the US homeland was spared the fate we inflicted on Japan.

Not developing the bomb in order to save America from moral culpability for killing millions might well have destroyed millions in America. We will never know for sure.

But not using the bomb in order to save America from moral culpability definitely would have destroyed much more of America, and all of Japan.

Those millions who did not die would insist that things weren't so simple. And they still aren't.

Baptists who want to extend religious liberty to people who want to kill us are clearly insane

You know, like Russell Moore.

And Presbyterian NeverTrumper David French here in National Review defends him:

At the same time, the ERLC was working diligently to try to bridge persistent racial divisions in the SBC and the Evangelical church more broadly and to persuade the public that religious liberty wasn’t just a Christian concern, but a deeply American value. Towards that end, it controversially (to some) signed on to an amicus brief defending the religious liberty of Muslims seeking to build a mosque in New Jersey. (To criticize this decision is particularly odd given the ERLC’s explicit mission to preserve religious liberty. The same legal standards that apply to mosques will also apply to churches.)

Nope, no spiritual problem across the tracks on the nicer side of town

Stereotyped neighborhoods of greater Grand Rapids, Michigan

David French in National Review here:

One can’t read the [Washington] Post piece without thinking of Charles Murray’s Coming Apart, perhaps the seminal book of the decade. Spend any real time on the ground in working-class America, and you’ll see all the things that Murray describes: broken families, declining church attendance, and communal alienation. Cross the tracks to the nicer side of town, and the picture changes. There is more religious engagement, more civic involvement, and a healthier sense of shared responsibility and pride. ... The complex nature of the crisis should not be a license to avoid facing its ultimate truth head on: America’s working class is in the grips of a malady far more spiritual than material. We can spend trillions more, but safety nets won’t save the human soul.

Religious engagement, but only on their side of the tracks. Civic involvement, but only on their side of the tracks. A sense of shared responsibility and pride, but only on their side of the tracks.

The tracks!

But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. -- Luke 6:24f.

Atheist George Will baldly lies about the Christian origins of the English common law

Here, in the formerly conservative National Review:

'Morality evolves: Religious and other moral instructors base their moral codes on the way people who are considered moral behave, people who are deemed moral because they exemplify rules conducive to human flourishing. Legal systems evolve: The common-law basis of the system under which Americans live had no inspired law-giver; it emerged from centuries of the Anglosphere’s trial and error.'

F. N. Lee explains here, at considerably more length than I dare quote.

From the opening:

'In 1892, the famous German Church Historian Rev. Professor Dr. J. H. Kurtz called King Alfred the greatest and noblest of all the monarchs England has ever had. King Alfred ruled from 871 to 901 A.D. He applied all the energy of his mind to the difficult problems of government; to the emancipation of his Christian country by driving out the Pagan Danish invaders and robbers; and then to improving the internal condition of the land.

'Alfred is perhaps best of all remembered for his famous Law Code. According to the celebrated former British Statesman and Historian Sir Winston Churchill, the roots of King Alfred's Book of Laws or Dooms (alias his "Deemings") came forth from the (as then already long-established) laws of Kent, Mercia and Wessex. All these attempted to blend the Mosaic Code with the Christian principles of Celto-Brythonic Law and old Germanic customs.

'Churchill adds that the laws of Alfred, continually amplified by his successors, grew into that body of Customary Law which was administered [as the ‘Common Law’] by the Shire and the Hundred Courts. Cf. Exodus 18:21f. That, under the name of the ‘Laws of St. Edward’ [the ‘Confessor’] — as the A.D. 1042f last Anglo-Saxon Christian King of England — the Norman kings undertook to respect, after their 1066f invasion and conquest of England and hegemony over Britain. Out of that, with much dexterity by feudal lawyers, the Common Law emerged (which was re-confirmed by Magna Carta in 1215).'

If It Weren't For Islam You Wouldn't Need A "Coexist" Bumper Sticker At All

So says Mark Steyn, here:

"[I]f it weren’t for that Islamic crescent you wouldn’t need a bumper sticker at all."