Bartholomew's Notes

The Dark Window introduces me to Vox Day (thanks!), Southern Baptist and Christian libertarian. However, as with a number of other Christian libertarians we’ve come across lately, the word “libertarian” is here being used in a rather odd way. As The Dark Window quotes him:

It’s pretty clear to me that one of the most destructive forces in our society has been women’s suffrage. Women consistently and reliably turn towards government as a solution for perceived problems, which creates more intractable problems, which then is used to justify more government intervention. This process is unlikely to stop until the entire edifice collapses of its own weight.

The answer, therefore, is to ban women from voting. Previously, Vox Day has outlined his Middle East peace plan:

The Israeli government must announce to the world a unilateral ceasefire, balanced by the deadly promise that for every Israeli soldier killed, 25 Palestinian police will die. For every civilian, 100 non-combatant Palestinian adults will be slain, and for every child, 1000 adults…In a fallen world, violence does solve some problems, and at times extreme violence is required.

So who is he? According to his website

He is a member of the SFWA [Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America], Mensa and the Southern Baptist Convention, and has been down with Madden [?] since 1992. His weekly column is syndicated nationally by Universal Press Syndicate.

His biggest claim to fame as Vox Day, however, is as contributor to WorldNetDaily. But for one so willing to stand tall and say what must be said (while looking incredibly “tough”), his site tells us nothing about who he actually is.

Luckily, Unscrewing the Inscrutable (which provided that quote about Israel/Palestine) has gathered a number of links that demonstrate that Vox Day is actually Theodore Beale, author of a computer game and a couple of fantasy novels published by Pocket Books. Beale’s father Robert, who developed a highly successful computer business, founded the Christian Coalition in Minnesota and sits on WorldNetDaily‘s board.

A website devoted to Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy features an interview with Vox Day/Beale, where he talks about his former atheism and conversion back to Christianity. He also informs us:

I’m now a Southern Baptist, albeit one heavily influenced by the warfare theology taught by Dr. Greg Boyd, to whom [Beale’s novel] “The World in Shadow” is dedicated. I’m a member of New Beginnings Baptist Church, and I also have strong ties to Woodland Hills Church, where Dr. Boyd teaches.

Greg Boyd’s Christus Victor Ministries explains warfare theology further:

The warfare worldview is based on the conviction that our world is engaged in a cosmic war between a myriad of agents, both human and angelic, that have aligned themselves with either God or Satan. We believe this worldview best reflects the response to evil depicted throughout the Bible. For example, Jesus unequivocally opposed evils such as disease, demonization, and even natural disaster (i.e. Jesus rebuked the storm) as originating in the wills of Satan, fallen angels, and sinful people, rather than of God.

What’s more:

Greg Boyd and counselor, Al Larson have designed an innovative approach to personal transformation and counseling called Theosynergistic Neuro-Transformation (TNT). This approach has proven remarkably effective in helping people overcome psychological and spiritual disorders such as phobias, addictions, and traumatic experiences. Christus Victor Ministries has teamed up with Dynamics of Growth, Inc. (Al Larson) to promote this novel approach to personal transformation and counseling.

Boyd has degrees from Minnesota University, Yale and the Princeton Theological Seminary, and promotes “open view” theism, in which the future is not determined. The future is open, and will unfold according to how he and humans fight against Satan. Two of his books are entitled God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict and Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy. However, although broadly conservative, he’s no stickler: according to his church’s website,

The people who make up Woodland Hills Church have various theological perspectives and diverse backgrounds. As Greg (our Senior Pastor) says, ‘We agree on enough to get the job done.’ That’s our policy. We do not exclude anyone on the basis of a different view on baptism, gifts of the spirit, predestination vs. freewill or any other matter of honest theological disagreement among members of the Church.’

Also, Vox Day should note:

We affirm that ministerial authority is based upon a person’s character, calling and giftedness, not his or her gender.

Boyd’s views, however, are controversial. In 1999 his teaching that the future is “open” and not known by God (shared by Clark Pinnock and John Sanders) was opposed in debate by John Piper. But against this, his dramatic views on spiritual warfare are attractive. According to C Peter Wagner (quoted here):

God at War raises the current discussion of spiritual warfare to a new and unanticipated level of scholarly investigation. I am ecstatic with the integrity with which Gregory Boyd develops his convincing argument for a biblical warfare worldview. This is an extremely important work for all who wish to advance God’s kingdom today.

The IVP (InterVarsity Press) website that advertises Boyd’s books bids us to “check out the Eternal Warriors website for a computer game based on the ideas from Boyd’s book God at War.” And whose website would that be? Yep, it’s Theodore Beale’s – where there is no mention of his Vox Day alter ego and where his portrait photo has a rather different haircut.

Vox Day’s regular church, the New Beginnings Baptist Church, does not appear to have a website, but its pastor, Ian Bethel, can be seen here.

UPDATE (7 June): More Vox Pox today.

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The White House website has published Bush’s speech at the First White House National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives:

[Some people in government have said that] because there’s a rabbi on the board, cross on the wall, or a crescent on the door. I viewed this as not only bad social policy — because policy by-passed the great works of compassion and healing that take place — I viewed it as discrimination…And the message to you is we’re changing the culture here in America.

Federal money can therefore go to such groups, “so long as they don’t proselytize, or exclude somebody simply because they don’t share a certain faith”.

Not proselytise? No discrimination? Is he quite sure?

[Tony Evans]…assures me that as of being — as a result of being a successful church, in the sense that it’s got a lot of building, a lot of members and a pretty good sized budget — by the way, he started with a — in a house; he started small and grew big — that he is willing to help young churches, and faith-based programs in inner-city Dallas, Texas, as to how to accomplish the mission, how to grow from little to big, how to grow from wanting to be vibrant, to successful. And that’s what the faith-based initiative is meant to do. It’s meant to allow for access of federal money, but at the same time spawn the entrepreneurial spirit, what I call social entrepreneurs, and encourage their growth.

Has Bush garbled it? Is he being deliberately ambiguous? Or does he really mean that he wants to assist Evans “to help young churches, and faith-based programs [i.e. both – RB] in inner-city Dallas, Texas, as to how to accomplish the mission, how to grow from little to big”?

Bush also gives his considered opinion on addiction programs:

I will tell you — I will tell you, the cornerstone of any good recovery program is the understanding there is a Higher Being to which — (applause) — to whom you can turn your life, and therefore save your life.

Therefore recovery programmes that don’t refer to a “Higher Being” are no good? If so, then perhaps federal money for them should be stopped? What’s more:

Six hundred thousand — more than 600,000 inmates will be released from prison this year. Those are a lot of souls that need help coming into our society. I can’t think of a better place for a prisoner to go is to a church or a synagogue, or a mosque and say, I need help.

Unless, perhaps, you think that non-religious people (or members of faiths that don’t run ex-prisoner support programmes) shouldn’t have to go knocking the doors of particular religious institutions because no other help is available?

Bush, however, is more modest about his own abilities – maybe he feels he has much to be modest about?

Listen, what I’m telling you is, is that I told our government, the people in my government rather than fear faith programs, welcome them. They’re changing America. They do a better job than government can do.

There you go – don’t blame Bush for any of the USA’s social problems – they are unfixable, except through faith-based organisations!

However, despite all of the above Bush may have blown it with some of his more conservative supporters – talk of a “Higher Being” rather than “Jesus” will have raised suspicions, but this will have the “New World Order” crowd in a frenzy:

When you hear me talk about faith, I’m talking about all faiths, whether it be the Jewish faith or the Christian faith or the Muslim faith or the Hindu faith — all faiths have got the power to transform lives.

Bush also mentions some of the people he conferred with just prior to the speech, “healers, and doers, and community changers”, as part of his drive to find out ” whether or not the strategy is being properly implemented”:

Mark Franken is the executive director of migration and refugee services of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — is with us. Wintley Phipps is the founder, president, and CEO of the U.S. Dream Academy, from Columbia, Maryland. Archbishop Harry Flynn, of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis; Bishop Don Wuerl, the bishop of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; my friend from the great state of Texas Tony Evans, of the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. (Applause.) There’s a few Texans here, Tony, that know of you. Pastor Rick Warren, of Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, California — (applause); Reverend Cheryl Anthony Mobley, is the founder and CEO of the Judah International, from Brooklyn; and from a local church here, Jim Sprouse, the pastor of Trinity United Methodist.

So who are these people and organisations? Well, Bush’s people aren’t going to want to bring up some of the less credible characters who have been involved with faith-based initatives (such as Reverend Moon), and by highlighting mainly mainstream denominational Christian leaders they’ve steered clear of any obvious link to the religious right (although Chuck Colson inevitably pops up later). The weakest link is Bush’s friend Tony Evans, who runs the Urban Alternative. How this would qualify is unclear, since its website clearly states that “The Urban Alternative is a teaching ministry, providing Christian resources for the home that will heal and renew relationships.” In fact, Evans admits that evangelism is a prime purpose of his organisation:

It is the mission of The Urban Alternative to equip, empower and unite Christians to impact individuals, families, churches and communities for the rebuilding of lives from the inside out. When each biblical sphere of life functions properly, the net result is evangelism, discipleship, and community impact. As people learn how to govern themselves under God, they then transform the institutions of family, church, and government from a biblically based kingdom perspective.

He’s also involved with the Promise Keepers, and his church can be found here. Moody publishes his books and pamphlets, premillennialist tomes (he was the first African-American doctoral graduate from Hal Lindsey’s alma mater, the Dallas Theological Seminary) and his Tony Evans Speaks Out Series, in which he Speaks Out on subjects like Sexual Purity, Spiritual Warfare, A Man’s Role in the Home, A Woman’s Role in the Home and diverse other subjects.

However, this should be balanced against the other figures and organisations mentioned:

The United States Catholic Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) does important and useful work. According to its website, it “resettles nearly one-fourth of all refugees admitted to the U.S. each year”.

Whitney Smith is a Gospel singer who has “performed before audiences across North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Bermuda and the Caribbean. He has sung for U.S. Presidents, the Vatican, and appeared as a special guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show and CBS Nightwatch.” Not sure how he got on at the Vatican, since, as a Seventh Day Adventist minister, he will be of the opinion that the Pope is the Anti-Christ. His U.S Dream Academy provides mentoring for children whose parents are in jail.

Archbishop Harry Flynn is noted for anti-racism, and for instructing that church members wearing rainbow sashes to support gay equality should not be barred from Communion (in a break with some of his colleagues and much to the annoyance of a certain David Pence, who’s been disrupting masses as a protest)

Bishop Donald Wuerl is also respected, having run his diocese well and, according to the Post-Gazette, he “emerged from last year’s Catholic sexual abuse scandals as a poster bishop for zero tolerance, hailed as a role model for his 1993 refusal to obey a Vatican order to reinstate an accused pedophile priest who had never been convicted of a crime, but who Wuerl believed was guilty.”

Rick Warren, of course, is very well-known for his Purpose Driven Life books on church and personal growth. He has had many profiles in the secular press of late – here’s one from USA Today. Chris Lehmann at Slate has a rather more sceptical take.

The Judah International Christian Center is a job training center, and has been profiled in the Gotham Gazette.

Jamie Sprouse, better-known as James Sprouse, pastors a congregation in McLean made up mainly of United Methodist Pentagon employees.

The White House has also issued more details of the meeting Bush held before the speech. There were few more Christians and several Jews, but that was about it.

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I’ve just seen a couple of obits for the French scholar Maxime Rodinson. I read Rodinson’s 1961 biography Muhammad when I was an undergrad (thanks to John Bousfield, who also died last week), and found it an excellent introduction to the man and his milieu; Edward Said, writing in The Nation in 2000 described it as “a bracing combination of anti-clerical irony and enormous erudition”.

The Egyptian government was rather less appreciative, as the Guardian reports:

Indeed, in 1999 Mohammed was withdrawn from the curriculum of the American University in Cairo after it was attacked by a newspaper columnist, and banned by the Egyptian minister for higher education amid charges that it “denigrated the Islamic faith”.

In a sympathetic review of Ibn Warraq’s Why I am Not a Muslim, Rodinson made this point regarding the excesses of Islamic fundamentalism (regrettably the article appears to have been quite poorly translated):

one must not reject the criticisms of Ibn Warraq a priori under the pretext that the individuals who are his targets have been or are still in great part the object of unjustified contempt. A crime is a crime even if the one who commits the crime is the target of another criminal. Likewise, an error. One is ashamed to express oneself with such obviousness. But it must be done and much more than once. For this is largely unknown. Fashionable intellectuals are besides the most relentless in their failure to recognize it.

The Beirut Daily Star notes that Rodinson and Edward Said fell out badly when Rodinson criticised Orientalism. The article accuses Said of “slander”, although it quotes him as having previously praised Rodinson for making “a constant attempt to keep (his) work responsive to the material (he was studying) and not to a doctrinal preconception.”

Rodinson, whose parents were killed in the Holocaust, was also a critic of Zionism and a supporter of Palestinian statehood.

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Just after completing my previous entry, on Doug Giles, I come across John Eldredge, whose teachings on Christianity and “wild men” complement Giles’s macho vision. On his website Eldredge provides an introduction to his best-selling book Wild at Heart:

God designed men to be dangerous. Simply look at the dreams and desires written in the heart of every boy: To be a hero, to be a warrior, to live a life of adventure and risk. Sadly, most men abandon those dreams and desires— aided by a Christianity that feels like nothing more than pressure to be a nice guy. It is no wonder that many men avoid church, and those who go are often passive and bored to death.

Discussing another book, The Sacred Romance, we learn that:

In the heart of every person lies an inconsolable longing. Men often know it as the hunger for adventure. Women tend to feel it as a thirst for intimacy. This longing is the secret of our lives. It tells us who we are, what our life was meant to be.

If you have ever felt those deep yearnings, we have some really good news: this is what the Gospel truly offers. Life is more than chores and Christianity is more than duty. It is a Sacred Romance® —a great love story set in the midst of a life and death battle.

To this end, Eldredge has a ministry – Ransomed Heart, based in Colorado – that seeks to assist men’s “masculine journey”. This means conferences, books, but also a boot camp and generally being outdoorsy (Eldredge’s one-time co-author Brent Curtis went to glory in a climbing accident). Naturally, his wife Stasi has a similar ministry dealing with women’s femininity.

Eldredge’s background is with Focus on the Family, and he has a PhD in counselling, having studied under Larry Crabb and Dan Allender. Both Crabb and Allender are Christian psychologists, and have their own ministries putting out Christian self-help books. Crabb’s New Way Ministries describes its mission thus:

When He planned the New Covenant, God’s intention was to recover His reputation that His Old Covenant followers [that would be Jews – RB] had pretty well ruined. God’s priority then, now, and always, is His glory. New Covenant resources are provided so we could live lives that are all about God and not all about us.

The point is that God be glorified in us, not that He become useful to us.

The old life energizes a dad to want to straighten out his drug-abusing son, to be a good father who does things right. The new life empowers a dad to want above everything else to enjoy God and be abandoned and responsive and honoring to Him even when his son stumbles in the door at four in the morning, buzzed and defiant.

Allender, meanwhile, runs The Path Less Chosen, from where:

He travels and speaks extensively to present his unique perspective on sexual abuse recovery, love and forgiveness, worship and other related topics.

With their backgrounds in psychology, all three have rather more subtlety than the posturing Doug Giles. However, even you’re not worried about the use of psychology to promote gender essentialism and patriarchy these Christian psychologists remain controversial. Allender promotes the discovery of “repressed memories” of sexual abuse (scroll down here), despite that theory (seized on by some Christians after all the Christian ex-Satanists like Mike Warnke were shown to be frauds) having been completely debunked (third item here). Christian psychology as a whole raises the suspicions of some conservative Christians. One hostile Christian reviewer notes that:

Eldredge’s views on the nature of man come directly from pagan mythopoet Robert Bly and occultic psychologist Carl Jung, NOT from Scripture. According to Bly and Jung, man’s “true self” or “true heart” is good, but men have been corrupted into creating “false selves” to cover the “wounds” that have been inflicted on them by others, most notably by their fathers. Eldredge’s dismissal of Jeremiah 17:9 (“The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it?”) is theologically unsound. He mangles the doctrines of justification and sanctification, and their effect on the heart and mind.

A list of complaints follow, that include:

Eldredge and his friends seem to have a lot of unresolved personal “issues” and hang-ups with their own masculinity, and they assume that all men are like them… 

Like Larry Crabb, he presents Adam’s fall as a sin of abdication (not stopping Eve), rather than of Adam’s own rebellion and disobedience. The text only tentatively supports this view.

The reviewer also objects to Eldredge’s profanity and discussions of penis size. Aha, so that’s what it boils down to…

Meanwhile, if you want to meet Christians (male and female) who really do know about taking risks, check out the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a member of which organisation was recently profiled in Salon. Somehow roaming Iraq collecting testimonies about the conduct of the Occupation seems more worthwhile and genuine than sitting in a wood in Colorado congratulating oneself for being a man.

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World O’Crap explores Rev Doug Giles’ latest sermon for Townhall, a bizarre exegesis on Adam and the Garden of Eden. Apparently the Garden was a wild place where Adam was hunter, killing antelopes with rocks and living among “giant lizards”; the Fall was his failure to live up to God’s masculine ideals by not mastering the serpent (and he means that literally, lest you are thinking Freudian). As we saw previously, Giles makes a living from a message of Christian masculinity and dominion. But where did he get it from?

Neo-Pentecostal pastor Dutch Sheets recounts the following story of Giles’s early years:

Some dear friends of mine, Mell and Paula Winger, have seen many family members come to Christ as they have faithfully interceded for them through the years. The testimony regarding Paula’s younger brother is especially powerful:

Doug Giles had an extremely ungodly lifestyle and was living in total rebellion. He hated the gospel message and was so repelled by our faith in Christ that he would leave the house when we came for dinner. We began devoting one night each week to pray and fast for Doug’s salvation. We did this weekly for a year and a half, praying that he would be able to see the truth of the gospel, binding the spirit of rebellion that was controlling him and asking God to soften his heart so that he might be drawn to Him. Then, although we were no longer setting aside every Monday night to intercede for him, we continued to pray these and other principles for Doug during the next six years. Finally, one night while attending a Christian concert, he received Christ as his Savior. That was 17 years ago, and today Doug has a powerful evangelistic ministry based out of Miami, Florida.

Giles’s brother-in-law Mell Winger (or “Mel Winger”) has a doctorate from Fuller Theological seminary, where it looks like (based on his theology) he studied under C. Peter Wagner, who promotes an interesting worldview based on constant “Spiritual Warfare” against demons. He is currently district pastor at New Life Church near the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, working under Ted Haggard (see below). Previously, however, he was a pastor at Trinity Church in Lubbock (now run by a follower of Kenneth Hagin) and the director of the Bible Institute of El Shaddai Church in Guatemala City (1).

Winger has an interesting take on Guatemala’s socio-economic problems, clearly based on Wagner’s demonology. Discussing the town of Almolonga:

About 25 years ago, the Church was small and weak, the fields were undeveloped and the city was characterized by an alcohol-induced lethargy – the fruit of serving an idol named Maxirnon.  This perverse idol is associated with the vices of smoking, drinking liquor, and immorality.  Maximon is a 3-foot idol consisting of a clay mask and a wood and cloth body.  He receives the kisses of the faithful who kneel before him.  Placing at his feet bottles of liquor purchased with their meagre earnings, they hope against hope that their offering will bring blessing and healing.  The priest   offers lit cigars to the idol, and taking a mouthful of the liquor offering, spews it over the devotees.  The followers leave expecting a blessing, perhaps receiving a demonic display of power, but nonetheless slipping deeper and deeper into an abyss of oppression.

But following mass conversions, exorcisms and a resurrection from the dead, all is now well, with Godliness and (nod to Max Weber and David Martin) a new work ethic:

This work ethic has produced an economic renewal, an incredible dimension of community transformation throughout Airnolonga.  There is no evidence of the unemployment, the beggars, the drunkards asleep in alleyways, or the loiterers that so often characterize similar places.

Winger, like Giles, sees spiritual warfare in masculine terms: he has a book entitled Fight on Your Knees: Calling Men to Action Through Transforming Prayer. According to the blurb:

For the Christian man the battle rages in unseen realms, and he’s got to wield God’s mighty weapon for warfare. He’s got to pray. Instead of “Stand up and fight,” his war cry must be “Kneel down and pray!” He understands that spiritual battles require godly tactics. He wrestles until he wins the war.

Fight on Your Knees inspires and equips men like you to pray for families, churches, cities, and nations—and to guard and strengthen yourself against the enemy’s onslaughts. This book compiles writings by fourteen men of various ethnic and professional backgrounds, Christian leaders such as Bill McCartney, Steve Shanklin, Ted Haggard, Dutch Sheets, and Dale Schlafer. Their words will challenge and encourage you to enlist in the growing army of intercessors. God is calling men to war through prayer, and you can join them. You can fight on your knees and win.

Winger also promotes the idea of the “prayer shield“, and headlines Exodus 15:3: “The Lord is a man of War: The Lord is his name”.

Winger’s boss Ted Haggard is head of the National Association of Evangelicals, where his promotion of Wagner and other Charismatic and neo-Pentecostal figures has annoyed the “sola scriptura” fundamentalists. It seems that C. Peter Wagner is as popular as ever, with a huge influence on the new generation of conservative Christian leaders. Winger has developed these ideas to emphasise the importance of masculinity, and this masculine posturing appears to provide the only idea that his brother-in-law Giles has any use for.

******

(1) El Shaddai was set up by a pastor close to TL Osborn, and has had links with members of the global neo-Pentecostal “A-List”, such as the Korean Pastor Formerly Known as Paul Yonggi Cho (now David) and (the late) Nigerian Benson Idahosa. Serrano Elías, Guatemalan president from 1991-93, was a member.

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ASSIST carries an interview with Kenn Gulliksen, the founder of the Vineyard neo-Pentecostal churches who is now best known (and so described in the headline) as “Bob Dylan’s former pastor”. Gulliksen provides an interesting perspective not just on Dylan, but also on John Wimber and the whole religious scene of which he has been a part.

Gulliksen started out in the 60s under Chuck Smith, a former Foursquare Gospel Pentecostal pastor who decided to use a more casual style to attract the hippies of Costa Mesa into his Calvary Chapel. Here Christian pop music and Biblical conservatism (Smith writes sub-Hal Lindsey works with titles like The Last Days) was a successful formula, and in 1974 Gulliksen started his own branch in Los Angeles. As this developed more emphasis on “signs of the spirit” it changed its name to “Vineyard” and a number of other Calvary offshoots elected to join this new grouping.

However, rather than becoming the leader, Gulliksen handed control over to another pastor, John Wimber. Wimber’s “power evangelism”, along with his friend C. Peter Wagner’s teachings on demons (which I think quite likely inspired General Boykin), was particularly popular in the 1980s, especially among Charismatic Anglican churches in the UK. The popular Alpha course that began in the UK promoted several Wimber books and followed his advice that exposure to Charismatic phenomena would bring about conversions; the “Toronto Blessing” began in a Vineyard Church (although it was eventually asked to leave the group).

But as Gulliksen now reveals to ASSIST:

I personally regretted giving John [Wimber] the Vineyard – lock, stock and barrel…I think I abdicated my role which was to be more of a balancing to John. I didn’t seek co-leadership, but I should have remained more involved with an emphasis on the Word and love because the emphasis was then on ‘Power’ and, of course, power without love is a clanging cymbal and I think that the Vineyard became a clanging cymbal for a while.

That will please critics of Wimber; his sincerity and probity were never in doubt, but his extravagant claims for supernatural encounters evoked scepticism and some (in particular Martyn Percy, although disputed by Mark Stibbe) detected authoritarianism lurking behind the avuncular visage and self-deprecating style. Wimber’s stock has also fallen since his death from a fall and a brain haemorrhage in 1997 following battles with “cancer, a stroke, and heart disease”, after vigorously promoting the idea that disease is caused by demons that Christians could cast out; references to Wimber have largely disappeared from Alpha materials.

Gulliksen also discusses his own problems, including a separation from his wife, albeit somewhat cryptically. On the Dylan issue, Gulliksen previously told ASSIST that

Dylan has never renounced his faith in Jesus Christ and that “God is not through with him yet.”

Further, Dylan’s Christian concerts were prophetic, “which was why Satan trashed him.”

Meanwhile, Dylan’s religious history is currently under investigation by Jewsweek, which has so far published three parts (1, 2, 3) of a four part series on the subject.

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The Tehran Times provides a nice “not a lot of people know that” piece with news that there are apparently 35,000 South Korean Muslims (plus 70,000 Muslims of foreign nationality in South Korea). Apparently Turkish soldiers introduced the religion during the Korean War (although there were previously mosques in the Koryo period of 918-1392, according to a Korea Times report posted here). The Tehran Times further reports that 37 South Korean soldiers have decided to convert to Islam as a prelude to being stationed in Iraq – a somewhat greater commitment to fitting in than the Japanese strategy of growing moustaches.

South Korean Muslim soldiers will be interesting contrast to the South Korean Christian missionaries currently descending on the region. A rather anonymous Korean website gives more information (in English) on Islam in South Korea – although its anti-occupation stance seems rather at odds with the idea of South Korean soldiers in Iraq. Much of the general information on (and apologetics for) Islam on this site is pulled from various other sites, and includes at least one essay by Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahab, the eighteenth-century Islamic “Puritan” whose ideology is the official understanding of Islam in Saudi Arabia. Overall, however, the site seems fairly moderate. Other material has been lifted (uncredited) from Muslim Answers, a Florida-based organisation that promotes essays by an American convert, Abu Iman Robert Squires (who has left various religions over the years, including Islam, but has now apparently returned to the faith), and others. Squires’ material pops up on various English-language Islamic websites – he seems to be a conservative Sunni, but not an Islamist.

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Education Week carries a piece on TC Pinkney, with photos and a bit more biographical information. Pinckney is a former Southern Baptist vice-President, and, as has been widely reported, he has put forward a resolution for the next Southern Baptist convention that members remove their children from public schools. The main reason given is the “acceptance” of homosexuality in public schools, although the teaching of science that contradicts the Bible is another of Pinckney’s worries.

Over the past few days this blog has chased up several references to find out where Pinckney is coming from, and has unearthed several interesting characters: Dan Smithwick, who runs an organisation which allows you find out if your children have been educated into socialism by means of a test; Marshall Fritz, a Catholic libertarian who sees all public education as socialistic and Soviet; and Ray E. Moore of Exodus Mandate. Today I note another of Pinckney’s fellow travellers, whose book Is Public Education Necessary? Pinckney is photographed reading in the Education Week report: Samuel L Blumenfled.

Blumenfled is quite a polymath. Although an ex-publisher (with an honorary PhD from Bob Jones), his main area is child education, where he (quite sensibly, I’ll concede) promotes phonic reading and rails against the use of Ritalin. However, as his essays on WorldNetDaily and elsewhere show, he has other area of expertise, including understanding the Middle East (Palestinians are Nazis and the parents of suicide bombers should be executed), and psychoanalysis (On Al Gore: “His body language reflected excessive anxiety about his ability to win the debate. His sychopathic behavior indicates that he does suffer from a mental disorder.”). Plus, he has a deep knowledge of the history of higher education, uncovering the conspiracies against Christianity emanating from there – ranging from the influence of Unitarians and humanists through to two (at least) secret societies. First, the Skull and Bones:

Most interesting of all is how The Order has managed to gain control of American education. Three members of The Order were responsible for this development: Timothy Dwight (1849), professor at Yale Divinity School and later 12th president of Yale; Daniel Coit Gilman (1852), first president of the University of California, first president of Johns Hopkins University, and first president of the Carnegie Institution; and Andrew Dickson White (1853), first president of Cornell and first president of the American Historical Association. All three also studied philosophy at the University of Berlin.

Second, the Rhodes Scholarships:

[Rhodes’s] network was the outgrowth of the secret society created by British diamond king Cecil Rhodes to carry out his fantasy of an Anglo-American federation that would form the core of a future world government, strong enough to impose peace on the rest of the world. Do we have proof that Cecil Rhodes created such a secret society and set up the Rhodes Scholarships as a means of recruiting future world leaders to his cause? Yes, we have proof. We have nothing less than the New York Times of April 9, 1902, which carried a front page story about a “Wealthy Secret Society” that would “Work to Secure the World’s Peace and a British-American Federation.”

Like Marshall Fritz, Blumenfeld also had links with the late theocrat Rousas Rushdoony (Gary North’s father-in-law, by the way). In a memorial piece, Blumenfeld recalls that:

For years [Rushdoony] had strongly urged Christian parents to take their children out of the public schools and home school them or place them in good Christian schools. He was a champion of educational freedom because he knew that religious freedom could not exist without it. In his book, “The Messianic Character of American Education,” first published in 1963, he recognized that the war between humanism and Christianity was a struggle unto death, and that the humanist control of the public schools gave the enemies of Christianity a decided advantage over believers.

My book, “NEA: Trojan Horse in Education,” covered much of the same territory as did Rushdoony’s book, but from a different angle. Therefore, we were in concert on all matters pertaining to education, home schooling, the need to get government out of education.

Rushdoony as a champion of “religious freedom” is a bit hard to take, but there are some interesting questions here: just to what extent is Christian Reconstructionism making inroads into the Southern Baptists and other conservative Christian denomiations? With the Left Behind books as bestsellers, one would have thought that “Rapture Ready” premillennialism was flavour of the month. Yet it would seem that the ideas of postmillennialists, who see Christ returning after Christians take dominion of society, are also gaining currency. Is there a blending of the two positions? Have recent events made some Christians more optimistic that they can take control, so making premillennialism less popular?

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Several bloggers (World O’Crap, The Dark Window) are making scoffing sounds at a report in WorldNetDaily that a plan is afoot to get South Carolina to secede from the Union and establish itself as an independent, Christian nation. The idea is the brainchild of Cory Burnell, who, on his ChristianExodus.org website explains the problem:

It is evident that our Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system. The efforts of Christian activism have proven futile over the past five decades and, whereas desperate times require desperate measures, we are now in the most desperate of times. The federal government is considering whether marriage, the foundation of civilization since Creation, should be reserved solely to a man and a woman. Christians must now draw a line in the sand and unite in a sovereign state to dissolve our bond with the current union comprised as the United States of America.

His organisation is (he claims) assisting the move of 50,000 Christians out of other states to facilitate a vote for succession. However, what the report doesn’t note is that this is just a revamp (relaunch?) of Burnell’s Confederate States of America Project. Burrnell explained the reason for the CSAP on Dixie Internet.com earlier this year (emphases in original):

First, our enemy is NOT a tyrannical federal government, but rather the socialist populace that demands its existence…the citizenry of these United States shackle our chains to us by demanding pork-barrel legislation and continuously sending socialists to Congress who’ll ignore the Constitutional limits on their power…We should gather thousands of like-minded Constitutionalists, Christians and Southerners – our people dispersed among the enemy in all 50 states – and relocate to our target state.

For further information, Burnell points us to Ron Holland’s Dixie Daily News. Holland is most enthusiastic of Burrell’s plan, as he is also, unsurprisingly, of Christian Reconstructionist and theocrat Gary North. Holland and North run a website called SwissGnomes.com: “A Daily updated, pro-freedom news portal for high net worth individuals around the world providing unique comment and expertise on financial and economic topics plus reports on international lifestyles, travel and offshore opportunities.” (North was a major figure in the late 1990s Y2K hysteria, so he’s really someone with a good record on financial advice) Holland also writes paleo-con type isolationist and anti-war essays, where he makes odd statements about how Winston Churchill was helped out of post-1929 poverty by a famous broker called Bernard Baruch (what can he be suggesting, I wonder?).

Burnell is a member of the Texas Constitution Party, which sees as its second most important duty, after ending abortion, as dealing with AIDS as a criminal issue, and he holds a position in the Texas League of the South, which lists among the hate groups it will have nothing to do with the Aryan Nations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP.

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TC Pinckney and Bruce Shortt’s proposal that Southern Baptists remove their children from public schools is, I’ve just discovered, only part of the plan: if Pinckney has his way, there won’t be any public schools to send children to anyway. As noted by Joe Rodgers in a long essay from a while back (undated, maybe 2002?):

approximately 15,000 [latest figure 25508] have gone so far as to sign a Public Proclamation for the Separation of School and State that calls for the end of government involvement in education. Scores of religious leaders, including [James] Kennedy, Pinckney, and [Tim] LaHaye, have endorsed this concept.

Rodgers’ link to the Alliance for the Separation of School and State, run by Christian libertarian Marshall Fritz from California, is broken, but it’s easy enough to get to. VIP Signers to the Proclamation also include Joseph Farah, (the late) Rousas Rushdoony, Gary North, and a number of other religious figures (including Mormons and a couple of Muslims).

The Alliance argues that

for over a century, American school leaders have more and more focused on “career skills” and for over a half-century, on “life adjustment” or “social skills” as the ultimate goal for their students.

This is dishonest. Schools implicitly tell students a lie: Mere professional and social success can bring satisfaction.

Well, I went to a state school in UK so I can’t judge – although if the above is really the whole picture, one wonders why the Christian conservatives are so worried about American schools teaching liberal values and non-theologically approved science, both of which would surely be squeezed out by a purely utilitarian education. So, should schools perhaps backtrack to what they were like in the good old days of a broad education? No:

By definition, public schools are in the “public” sphere, and are thus subject to political winds — just like your City Hall, your state’s legislature, and Congress.

Besides, the very idea is socialistic, like Soviet farms. The problem that results is that:

A teacher who has children of different beliefs in her classroom can’t honestly share her own beliefs on the Big Questions because that would seriously undermine some of the parents.

The Alliance argues that everyone will benefit:

From Baptist to Buddhist, from Catholic to Calvinist, from Montessori to Muslim, from Progressive to Classical, from Child-centered to Direct Instruction, from Phonics to Whole Language, from sports to arts, and more, parents will choose schools where teachers support their values.

These new private schools will have to be good to stay in business, and “by blending campus-, cooperative-, home-, and self-schooling, education in urban centers will be cheaper to run.” Private accreditation services will ensure “stated objectives” (i.e. stated by the school) are met. A huge tax cut and scholarships will provide the money for tuition fees. In interview, Fritz adds that some on the religious right have complained, but:

I would not have government intervene if a private school was teaching that homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality, just as I would not approve intervention if that school was teaching that God does not exist and that man is morally autonomous. That would make government the arbiter of Truth, a role it has already wrongly claimed in our present government schools. We cannot count on the government having a proper understanding of Truth. I would allow intervention if a school were advocating direct violence against others. In my mind, this would give government the impetus to exercise its proper role of “punishing the evil doer.”

So why are theocrats like Gary North, who would have homosexuals and non-believers executed, supporting Fritz’s movement? Are they confident that in a free market secular schools will go bust, leaving them in charge by default? Or that a period of separationism would be a stepping stone to their “dominion” over society? In fact, it seems that the likes of Pinckney and North will support any movement that seeks to undermine public education. Katherine Yurica notes that North advocates conservative Christians getting on school boards in order to strangle funding for public schools.

She also points out that the end of public education is already part of the Republican Party of Texas’s platform. The party has also called for “the abolition of the state’s regulatory authority by eliminating the Texas Education Agency and demanded that all power should reside with the local board of education.”

UPDATE (24 May): More libertarian theocracy today.

UPDATE 2 (27 May): More on Pinckney’s associates today.

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