The US footprint of The Church of the Nazarene is small, just over 600k as of 2016, but it is growing abroad because it is Christian, Holy, and Missional

Church of the Nazarene expels theologian over LGBT advocacy

“Oord is guilty of conduct unbecoming a minister and of teaching doctrines out of harmony with the doctrinal statement of the Church of the Nazarene,” read the decision, as quoted by the Roys Report.

“Oord has shown absolutely no repentance or willingness to submit to the authority of the church … his behavior exhibits a pattern of disregard and disrespect for authority.” ...

The Church of the Nazarene traces its origins to the 19th century Wesleyan Holiness Movement and is a member of the World Methodist Council. The denomination reports having more than 30,000 churches globally and approximately 2.6 million members.

Oord is not the first Church of the Nazarene figure in the United States to face punishment for advancing progressive views on LGBT issues within the Methodist denomination.

Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah joins Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory who named Joe Biden a cafeteria Catholic on Easter Sunday

 

Cardinal Wilton Gregory

Cardinal Robert Sarah

Cardinal Robert Sarah, who formerly served as the Catholic Church’s Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, gave a lecture titled “The Catholic Church’s Enduring Answer to the Practical Atheism of Our Age” at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., last week. During his remarks, Sarah echoed the analysis of Cardinal Wilton Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington by describing Biden as a “self-identified Catholic president” who amounts to a “cafeteria Catholic.”

Sarah, a Guinean prelate who has emerged as one of the more outspoken conservative voices within Catholic Church leadership, suggested that the phenomenon of “cafeteria Catholics” extends beyond the president and applies to many other “Catholic public officials.”

More.

Same Sex Marriage Schism: United Church of Christ membership down 68% since 1960

 From 2.24 million in 1960 to 0.712 million in 2022.

The UCC report acknowledges a considerable decline from 2005 to 2007, when “the UCC experienced a loss of nearly three congregations per week on average” due to its 2005 General Synod passing a resolution supporting same-sex marriage.

More.

Bethel Redding's Beni and Jenn Johnson declare "cancer free zone" in April 2017, Beni comes down with it in March 2018

You can't make this stuff up.

Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

 

-- Proverbs 29:20

Beni Johnson is the wife of Bill Johnson, a so-called miracle worker and faith healer.

From the story here:

Beni Johnson, co-pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, is being treated for a cancer diagnosis that "shocked" her. "When this all began in March and I walked out of the doctor's office shocked." ...

Just over a year ago in April 2017, Beni's daughter-in-law, Jenn Johnson, urged members to pray for a "cancer free zone" at Bethel during a during a worship session while singing "By the Blood." During that service, Beni Johnson revealed she had a heavenly encounter with Jesus in the spirit and gained access to healing power over cancer. "All through worship whenever I start to sing this song and I close my eyes I just actually step into Heaven. And I was looking around Heaven but I noticed that my brother-in-law Jim, and my father-in-law Bill's dad are standing on the edge of Heaven and they are looking down," she said. "And both of them died from cancer. And I said, Holy Spirit, Jesus, why are they standing out to me? Why are they standing and looking down and then Jenn said 'we declare healing over cancer,'" Beni Johnson said as the audience applauded. ...

As people were encouraged to pray for those with cancer, Johnson stated, "Don't pray; declare. This is a time, this is an open Heaven right here and we're calling down the healing power of Jesus over cancer." 

"Bible Answer Man" Hank Hanegraaff falls for superstition, booted from US radio network serving 51 million listeners, mostly Baptist, for converting to Greek Orthodoxy

From the story here:

[Bott Radio Network] had reportedly been broadcasting the "Bible Answer Man" since the 1980s, even before Hanegraaff joined the show in 1989. ... BRN says on its website that it operates over 100 broadcast signals with a combined coverage of 51 million people in 15 states, offering "family quality Christian programming 24 hours a day." The "Bible Answer Man" page could no longer be found on the BRN website. The Christian Post confirmed last week that Hanegraaff, who is also the president and chairman of the Christian Research Institute, was chrismated on Palm Sunday at Saint Nektarios Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.

http://www.stnektarios.org/files/various_pdf/baptism_requirements.pdf

Wingnut Princeton professor blames 'tens of millions' of deaths on Protestants during 30 Years' War, compares them to ISIS

The best estimates put total losses on all sides from all causes in all venues at 8 million. 

Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, knows a thing or two about sloppy, exaggerated, scholarship, and politically correct slurs, quoted here:

'If there are any lessons about ISIS that can be drawn from what happened during the Protestant Reformation, Bernard Haykel said, those lessons are "terrifying."

'"If we're embarking or are actually already in something like the Reformation in the Muslim world, then, you know, hold on because we're in for a really wild ride with lots of violence," he added. ...

'"Christianity was a violent religion at times, extremely violent, in fact, much more violent than what we're seeing with the Islamists today. If you think of the 30 Years War, something like 30 percent of Germany's population was killed, tens of millions of people," he said.

'Haykel also noted that ISIS is similar to the Protestant Reformation in its emphasis on individualism.

'"The individual is at the core of this [ISIS] movement, the autonomy of the individual, the decision of the individual to make decisions despite, and even against one's own family, which flies in the face of Arab and Muslim tradition," he said. ...

'"Calvin was a really nasty guy. Okay? I mean, read up about him — and there's a huge, a big statue of him in Geneva today — but people forget actually what the city he led was like under him."'

Haykel is the son of a Lebanese Christian and a Polish Jew.

Sorry Kevin Shrum, But St. Paul, Like Jesus, Demoted Marriage By Exalting The Single State

St. Paul exalted the single state above the married state because he believed, like Jesus and in keeping with Jesus' teaching about marriage (Matthew 19:10ff., Luke 20:34ff.), that the world was coming to a sudden end:

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to touch a woman. ... I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. ... I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none . . . But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. So that he who marries his betrothed does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better.

-- 1 Corinthians 7, passim

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

-- Luke 20:34ff.

Paul would not have agreed in his own time with this from ours, by one Kevin Shrum, here:

'If marriage implodes then so, too, does a civil, productive society. Any culture that demotes, demeans, demoralizes, diminishes, denigrates, or re-defines marriage does so at its own peril. Cultures that eviscerate marriage will survive, but those same cultures will be, as Plato would argue, mere shadows of the "real thing," of the "real idea." How can we help our neighbors see and hear the truth in this matter of marriage?'

The irony of such statements is that despite the radical teachings of Jesus and Paul about marriage, Christianity went on to conquer the West and recreate its culture in its own image . . . and flourish.

110 Congregations Flee PCUSA Over Faggotry In 2012

Story here:

According to statistics released Thursday by the Office of the General Assembly for PC(USA), 110 congregations were granted dismissal in 2012 in order to join other denominations; in 2011, the reported number was only 21.  In 2010, at the 219th General Assembly of PC (USA), a majority of presbyteries, or regional bodies, voted to approve Amendment 10a, which lets presbyteries allow for the ordination of openly homosexual clergy.  Because of this amendment, many conservative congregations in PC (USA) decided to pursue dismissal from the mainline denomination, usually for more conservative Presbyterian sects.

------------------------------------------------

Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Be'lial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, "I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."

-- 2 Corinthians 6:14ff.

Nebraska Has A Lutheran Pastor, Dan Delzell, Who Doesn't Know The Catechism

A Lutheran pastor should know better than to ask, as Rev. Delzell does for The Christian Post, here:

"Is it up to us to hand out the punishment to lawbreakers....and the free gift of eternal life to sinners who repent and believe the good news? All of this is beyond us, and outside of our human understanding."

Well yes, it is up to you. And no, it is not beyond us.

I guess they don't teach The Office Of The Keys anymore in the Lutheran Church, number five of the six chief parts of the small catechism, knowledge of which was normally assumed in pastors, and also expected of confirmands . . . already at the age of 13.

It is based on these texts:

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

-- Matthew 16:19

Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. ... Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

-- Matthew 18:18, 21f.

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; [and] whose soever [sins] ye retain, they are retained.

-- John 20:23

Clearly in Matthew the emphasis is on the side of overflowing mercy, but you rarely find that from Christians these days, who are very quick to condemn.

Things are evidently worse in Lutheranism than I thought.

Is The Absence Of Human Transformation The Best Argument Against Christianity?

A certain fellow named Robin Schumacher, featured at Real Clear Religion, goes on at some length, here, to acknowledge that the best argument that is made these days against Christianity is the one made by ever larger numbers of contemporaries who point out that Christianity must be untrue because Christians behave so badly, and concludes:

"[T]he fact is that an authentic Christian life is the only thing that defeats the best argument against Christianity."

This is a very unsatisfactory conclusion to what really isn't a very helpful discussion about arguments for or against Christianity.

What it amounts to instead is a demonstration of what passes for the accepted understanding of what is true conversion in some circles. In other words, it's not really about Christianity per se, it's about human actors and their experiences relative to that subject. In short, it's about us, not about Christianity or its object, God.

Key for the author is the notion that conversion is a form of human transformation, which can be authenticated on the evidence of human experience. "If you were truly converted you wouldn't do x."

What is it about Christianity, contemporary or otherwise, that it so quickly veers off into a kind of narcissism where adherents and opponents alike wind up agreeing that man is the measure of all things? The authentic Christian life is the only thing that defeats the enemies of Christ? I'm sure that comes as quite a surprise to God. Last I checked, God needed or depended upon no one for anything. There is sophistry. And then there is philosophy.

I think one answer for this narcissism may have something to do with what Krister Stendahl once called the introspective conscience of the West. The tortured conversion of Muhammad comes to mind in W. Montgomery Watt's biography of the prophet. Or the Jesus of The Fourth Gospel, at war with the Jews over his paternity. Or the ever autobiographical 13th apostle, Paul of Tarsus, who happens to be the most interesting because he is so immediately, candidly available in his letters as he plies the waters between his sectarianisms and his Roman citizenship. It shouldn't come as a surprise that these models would attract adherents in whom the same tendencies operate. In truth, however, thoughtful people would probably agree that narcissism is a broadly human phenomenon, not simply a characteristic of the West.

But there are counter trends in some of our literature which bear thinking about. Consider, for example, that conversion in Luke's Acts of the Apostles is occasionally portrayed as conversion of a whole household, based on the personal experience of a single person in it. For those household members personal human transformation, being born again, is hardly in sight. Even in the cases of the personal salvation of the individual head of the household who leads the rest into the fold, notions of human transformation seem wholly absent. Far from the world of altar calls involving personal crises, repentance and emotional decisions for Christ, what we find instead is concrete deliverance from temporal calamities, infirmities, threats and dangers. Like Paul's own conversion, these amount to almost unwilled experiences submitted to and accepted in the face of an overwhelming, sovereignly acting, Providence.

Some of these stories in Acts are reminiscent of nothing so much as stories of God's deliverance of his people Israel from Egyptian slavery, the plagues, the angel of death and the Red Sea waters. It is more about God continuing to act in history than it is about what happens in the hearts of men.

One might also mention the apocalyptic ethics of Jesus in The Synoptic Tradition, where personal conversion amounts to a renunciation of all the traditional contours, roles and behaviors of human existence in a desperate attempt to escape the destruction which Jesus said was coming on the world forthwith. This is not some comfortable religion of personal fulfillment, but a (crazy?) rejection of it which depends utterly on God to establish his kingdom quite apart from any human agency, even Jesus'. 

Anyone with a little honest experience of the world knows that there are many what we call very fine people who are not Christians, and many Christians who are just plain drek. If one gets bogged down in this navel-gazing cul-de-sac, however, what gets distorted about our thinking about conversion is that conversion becomes too much about how we act, and not enough about how God does.

"We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness."

-- Acts 14:15ff.

Really, How Would They Know 'God Speaking', So As To Reproduce It, Hmm?

A new translation of the Bible into English does not contain the name "Jesus Christ" nor the word "angel." It also prefers the word "emissary" over "apostle."

The Voice, a Bible that replaces "Jesus Christ" with terms like "Jesus the Anointed One," had its complete edition released by Thomas Nelson Publishing last month. ...

The scholars and authors who collaborated on the translation say their intention was to help readers "hear God speaking."

Read the whole thing, here.

Debating Mormonism Isn't Remotely Close To Imposing A Religious Test For Public Office

Unless you happen to believe that discussion of religion is speech without protection from the First Amendment.

The question isn't "Can Mitt Romney be president?", because he was born here and is at least 35 years of age. He meets the constitution's test.

But politics imposes a different kind of test than asking "Can he?"

The political question is "Should he be president?"

Some people won't vote for Mitt Romney because he's a flip-flopper on some important issues. Some won't vote for him because he supported TARP. Others won't vote for him because he's a Mormon. Still others won't because of RomneyCare in Massachusetts.

But probably the largest group which won't be voting for Romney will be Democrats, simply because Romney is a Republican. But you won't hear the media's C-students bemoaning that as a stupid reason not to vote for someone.

Ken Connor attempts to clarify the matter here:

"[T]he question remains, 'Are Mormons Christian?' Since Mormons assert that they are, isn't this a fair subject of public debate? Since religious truth claims have eternal consequences, isn't it in the public interest to examine the merits of those claims? The election of a Mormon president will likely do more than any other single event to mainstream Mormonism into American life, with all of the consequences attendant thereto. That being the case, why should the claims of that religion be any more immune from scrutiny than those of any other religion?

"America will be a poorer country when we reach the point where discussions about religion and our eternal destiny can no longer be part of the public dialogue."

Like Evangelicals, Roman Catholics and Methodists Have Problems With Mormonism

As reported here:

For Christians, calling yourself a Christian while not believing that God has always existed as the triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is as inconceivable.

This is not simply a conservative evangelical Christian view. Methodists have said "the LDS Church is not a part of the historic, apostolic tradition of the Christian faith." Even Roman Catholics (hardly conservative Protestants) don't recognize LDS baptism.

The problem is that, in America, everybody's an expert: If you say you are xyz, you are xyz. Even though you most definitely, unequivocally, are not xyz.

Russell Kirk once said that Christianity wasn't a failure, it's just that it has never really been tried. Quite the condemnation, that, on Paul, Augustine and Luther among others, when you think about it. Or on Thomas Aquinas.

I'll go him one better, though, since fools rush in where angels fear to tread: Jesus had no disciples in his lifetime, and he's never had any since. He just hasn't been around to correct the record which states otherwise.

At most one might venture to say that Jesus has had imitators who took themselves almost as seriously as he took himself.

But apart from that opinionated air, it is probably more useful for the issue at hand to accept at face value the early observation that "Christian" was in truth an epithet applied by outsiders. It was not originally a term of self-description:

"And in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians" (Acts 11:26).

Jews in particular understood believers in Jesus like Paul to be members of a sect of Judaism, a cult if you will, which was not officially recognized, in a way similar to how Christians today do not recognize Mormonism, which borrows from Christianity quite freely and builds something new on it.

Interestingly enough, the self-designation which Paul mentions in referring to this fact is follower of "The Way":

"But this I admit to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the law or written in the prophets" (Acts 24:14).

That self-description goes back directly to the teaching of Jesus:

"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide [is] the gate, and broad [is] the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew 7:13f.).

For Paul, those belonging to "the few" became an increasingly larger number beyond just the lost sheep of the house of Israel:


"Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into [any] city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 10:5f).

But there Paul did go, and the rest, as they say, is history. Which I think goes a little way toward explaining religious innovation in our own time, Mormon innovation included.