Bartholomew's Notes

The Village Voice carries a piece on Pastor Robert G Upton and the Christian Zionist Apostolic Congress, who were the subject of this blog a couple of weeks ago. According to the report, the Voice has picked up a confidential memo signed by Upton in which he describes a meeting between a delegation from the Congress and White House staff, including National Security Council Middle East director Elliot Abrams. Three weeks before Bush’s recent endorsement of Ariel Sharon’s latest plan, Abrams told the group that (quoting the memo itself):

the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph’s tomb or Rachel’s tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace.

The Voice spoke to National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones to confirm:

When asked whose job it is in the administration to study the Bible to discern what parts of Israel were or weren’t acceptable sacrifices for peace, Jones said that his [i.e. Abrams’s] previous statements had been off-the-record.

White House political director Matt Schlapp, who was also at the meeting, is reported as having stated (again from the memo directly) “that the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level” in relation to gay marriage, and Tim Goeglein, White House deputy director of public liaison, asked the group to “Pray, pray, pray, pray.”

The Voice also obtained a report that showed that Apostolic Congress representative Kim Johnson was undertaking illegal missionary work in Israel, and that Johnson believed herself to be under spiritual attack after coming near to a Harry Potter book.

Abrams (best remembered as an Iran-Contra conspirator and perjurer) is a religious Jew, so we can be confident that his Biblical reference point is his genuine perspective rather than just a sop to some Christians. The Voice treads familiar ground with the “Christian Zionist/Israeli alliance” angle, but declines to mention another interesting aspect to the story: Upton and friends are anti-Trinitarian Oneness Pentecostals, while most Christians see the Trinity as non-negotiable. Yet Upton is able to work alongside the likes of Ed McEteer without any controversy.

The Voice also fails to note that a previous Congress delegation met with Karl Rove last year, after which it was reported that:

Pastor Upton…posed questions about the war with Iraq. Due to the nature of Mr. Rove’s answers, we cannot write his answers to all these questions.

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Yesterday I noted that the proposal “encouraging” Southern Baptists to take their children out of public school had cited studies by the Nehemiah Institute, run by Dan Smithwick. Today I’ve been able to look at the Institute’s website; and sure enough, there’s Smithwick with E. Ray Moore, the retired military man whose Exodus Mandate promotes TC Pinckney and Bruce Shortt’s proposal.

The main work of the Institute is the PEERS test. PEERS stands for “Politics (civil government), Economics, Education, Religion, and Social Issues”, and by asking test takers (e.g. the children of worried Christian parents) various questions the Institute can determine whether the taker subscribes to one of four possible “worldviews”:

Biblical Theism
Moderate Christian
Secular Humanism

or – dread horror of horror:

Socialism!

To these four worldviews is applied a score:

Biblical Theism worldview- 70 – 100
Moderate Christian worldview- 30-69
Secular Humanist worldview- 0-29
Socialist worldview- less than 0

Smithwick has alarming news: “Results from seniors in high school have ranged from -59.43 to +100.00. The average was 33.34”. So perhaps Walt Brown won’t be in White House just this autumn, but if the sinister forces behind public education have their way Socialism will soon prevail, with all the Columbine-style school shootings that malignant system of philosophy involves (see my previous post if that sounds weird).

The site offers you a chance to do a mini PEERS test over the internet, and consists of twenty statements you are invited to agree with or not, along these lines:

Individuals should be allowed to conduct life as they choose as long as it does not interfere with the lives of others.

and:

Just as a minimum wage law helps poor people earn a fair income, a maximum wage law would benefit all citizens by using the abundance of money exceeding the maximum wage amount to finance programs beneficial to all (e.g., education, health care, etc.)

PEERS can “help individuals and organizations identify key areas where their views of life are contrary to Biblical reasoning.” Just think – you may be an agent of Goldstein and not even know it! Now you can find out and repent.

(NB: I’ve had trouble getting on to the Nehemiah site, but much of it is mirrored here, including the mini test. And the Nehemiah Institute School in San Antonio is a public school that appears to be unrelated to our organisation – I had a bit of a wild goose chase there)

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As is widely reported, the Southern Baptists are currently pondering this resolution, put forward by T.C. Pinckney (Brig General USAF retired) and Houston Attorney Bruce Shortt:

that the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention encourages all officers and members of the Southern Baptist Convention and the churches associated with it to remove their children from the government schools and see to it that they receive a thoroughly Christian education, for the glory of God, the good of Christ’s church, and the strength of their own commitment to Jesus

The problem as they see it is that too many teenagers are dropping out of church, and they cite a study by the Nehemiah Institute which shows that “student attitudes and beliefs that acceptance of a secular humanist worldview by Christian children attending government schools has increased dramatically over the last fifteen years”.

The Nehemiah Institute’s website is currently down, but one of its studies is available from this Creationist website. Here Institute President Dan Smithwick (who has links to Christian Reconstructionism) tackles the subject of violence in schools. Could school shootings have something to do with gun laws and unhealthy weapon fetishism? Naah…

We find violent actions as a result of God bringing judgment upon disobedient people who failed to heed His warnings…”I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt; I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses, And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me,”(Amos 4:9)…Is God using violence in our public schools to get our attention? Have we so disobeyed God and spurned His warnings of idolatry such that all there is left for Him to do is bring violence upon our children’s lives to see where we have missed the mark? I believe so…The schools in America were once Bible-based, openly Christian, and under local control…For most schools the biggest discipline problem was chewing gum in class. All of this began to change 150 years ago through the efforts of two key men- Horace Mann and John Dewey.

With Dewey and Mann running education, it was only a matter of time before children would begin to think it was OK to blow away their classmates with guns, but with, err…a wrathful God egging them on.

In a 2001 article on Exodus Mandate (run by another military man), Pinckney delves further into the anti-theistic conspiracy, involving “wealthy Unitarians in Boston”, Auguste Comte and humanists:

And the American Humanist Association understands the importance of capturing the children for they have written: “In order to capture this nation, one has to totally remove moral and spiritual values and absolutes from the thinking of the child. The child has to think that there is no standard of right and wrong, that truth is relative, and that diversity is the only absolute to be gained.”

(Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell us where this was written or in what context, and the only references to it that come up on the web are from sites much like his.)

But will his Christian schools be biased? No:

Note that they should also teach about evolution, about humanism, about post-modernism…but in a balanced way, giving the evolutionists’ arguments fully and fairly, but also demonstrating their weaknesses, the mythological presuppositions upon which these lies are based, and the disastrous consequences for those who choose to live without God. Our children must be prepared to live among, confront when necessary, and triumph in debate with secularists. This is one area where ignorance is NOT bliss.

UPDATE (19 May): See today’s post.

UPDATE 2 (23 May): More again!

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Folllowing the furore over Buddha bikinis (see Ryan’s Lair) come complaints about a sweet (“candy” for US readers) sold in Nara near the huge bronze Daibutsu (Great Buddha statue) in the Todai-ji Temple:

Priests at one of Japan’s most famous temples have taken steps to block the sale of a sweet marketed as the “Snot from the nose of the Great Buddha”.

They have prevented the name being registered as a trademark at the patent office, but have been unable to stop vendors selling the sweets to hordes of tourists…Local media have suggested that the sweet is popular because the people of western Japan have an earthy sense of humour, which other Japanese often find coarse. Another famous Nara sweet is called “Deer Droppings”.

As it happens, I currently live in Japan and I was there just recently, and I must say that the temple’s case is slightly undermined by its brisk trade in Buddha keyrings and such. The shops nearby also sell these furry glove puppet Buddhas:

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When I read a while back that Bush ghost-writer and confidant Karen Hughes considered that God had arranged things so that George Bush had “come to a royal position for such a time as this”, I assumed she must be some sort of Christian Reconstructionist, thirsting for Christian dominion over society. But her Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church would same to have a different, quite mainstream perspective. Although Calvinist, the church belongs to the Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination, which holds the position that:

Because we live as Reformed Christians in this tension between obedience to civil authority and critical evaluation of it, we have strongly supported the separation of church and state as institutions. While this does not mean that we have put our faith aside as Christian citizens, it does mean that we have not only felt free to challenge those in authority but also have resisted efforts to impose the beliefs of any particular religion, including our own, upon the whole of society through the use of governmental authority.

What’s more:

It is the job of the church to see clearly the “idolatries in church and culture” that we are called to “unmask” (Brief Statement of Faith). The pastor of one of our large Presbyterian churches, preaching in the aftermath of “9/11,” raised the question, “Are we going to take off our WWJD (“What Would Jesus Do?”) bracelets and replace them with the American flag?” We may well wish to wear both, but we should never be in doubt as to which one deserves our highest loyalty…we can challenge every earthly authority to remember that they serve at the pleasure of a God who is just and merciful and requires the same of them.

Also of interest: Hughes’s pastor, Douglas Fletcher, appears to be a supporter of Palestinian rights. Perhaps he could have a word…

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Jesus’ General recently [May 3, second item] brought to my attention Rep. Jay Love of Montgomery, Alabama. In the run-up to the National Day of Prayer Love got some attention for decreeing that those praying outside could move inside the state capitol in the case of rain, whilst those attending a rival Atheist Law Center rally would just have to get wet, on the grounds that:

Many of the beliefs that [ALC head Larry Darby] espoused and said publicly, a great deal of my district finds offensive. A great deal of the people of Alabama would find offensive.

Standing in the rain would have been especially just, since, according to Love’s Calvary Baptist Church, Montgomery:

all such as continue in impenitence and unbelief are in His sight wicked and under the curse (Romans 3:19-23)

Love’s church has an exceptionally long list of things that must be believed, including:

the King James version of the Bible is the divinely preserved word of God for the English-speaking people

We believe the Genesis account of creation is to be accepted literally and not allegorically or figuratively (Genesis 1); that the creation was accomplished in six (6), twenty-four (24) hour days

the unbelievers left behind [after the Rapture] will go through a seven year period called the Tribulation

At least Love takes his church’s positions seriously. And any other Christian group wanting to use the state capitol had better be careful:

We are opposed to the ecumenical movement, neo-orthodoxy, new evangelicalism, liberalism, and modernism that emphasize an unequal yoke with unbelievers.

“New evangelicalism”, by the way, means the likes of Billy Graham, Carl Henry and Christianity Today.

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Since we’ve heard so much about Kerry-the-pro-Choice-Catholic, I’ve decided that checking out the actual places of worship of other political figures might be fruitful. First up, from the statement of faith of the First Presbyterian Church of Tulsa:

In sovereign love God created the world good and makes everyone equally in God’s image male and female, of every race and people, to live as one community. But we rebel agaist [sic] God; we hide from our Creator. Ignoring God’s commandments, we violate the image of God in others and ourselves accept lies as truth, exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care…

But:

…In a broken and fearful world the spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in the church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.

So how does church member Rep. James M. Inofe get from that to his now-infamous remarks supporting the torture of prisoners in Iraq?

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It seems that Florida is not the only place where conservative Christian groups will have a captive audience of prisoners: apparently Christian television will soon be piped to prisons in Russia. Speaking to ASSIST, Rev. Igor Nikitin, president of the Association of Christian Churches in Russia, claimed that:

The movies we have on secular television are terrible. So the head of the prison [in Volgograd] wrote me a letter saying he needed our television. They’re willing to put educational television for all our prisoners. He wants to exchange secular television to Christian television, and they know it’s going to bring a positive impact.So this is amazing. I believe every prison in Russia will soon be watching Christian television. Imagine millions of people serving in the prison now.

The Association was founded in by Nikitin in 1995 as an umbrella for Charismatic churches, and received official government recognition in 1998 (see here – scroll down). According to a report by the Kansas Prayer Mission (scroll down again), the Association provides “Christian programming in partnership with TBN”. The Trinity Broadcasting Network, as readers may know, is run by Paul and Jan Crouch, and, as stated on its website, “offers 24 hours of commercial-free inspirational programming that appeal to people in a wide variety of Protestant, Catholic and Messianic Jewish denominations” – Hal Lindsey and Benny Hinn being particularly prominent.

Nikitin attributed this breakthrough to the prayers of the Reverend Lee Jae-Rock, a controversial Korean Christian faith-healer who held a large crusade in Russia last autumn. Well, it certainly is odd. Just a few days ago ASSIST was worrying about freedom of religion for Protestants under Putin, and recently Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned from meeting even in private in Moscow. Soviet laws instructing religious organisations to provide membership details to the state are also making a comeback. Even if the complaints of prisoners denied secular television can be ignored, will the Russian Orthodox Church really want “a wide variety of Protestant, Catholic and Messianic Jewish denominations” to enjoy such a monopoly?

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The Christian Zionist-Jewish Zionist love affair is undergoing another strain with the announcement in Haaretz that a leading religious authority believes Jews should not be accepting cash from the Fellowship of Christians and Jews:

Some two weeks ago, Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu – one of the national-religious camp’s most highly regarded halakhic authorities, alongside Rabbi Avraham Shapira – published a letter in which he backtracked on his ruling that Jews can enjoy the fund’s bounty despite it being a gift from Christians. “Now, it appears otherwise to me,” Eliahu wrote in his new letter. “And as a result, I concur with what was written by the great rabbi, the genius Rabbi Avraham Shapira…and, therefore, my statements or writings from before this letter are all null and void, and I am party to the prohibition.”

The Fellowship, which is based in Chicago and is run by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, invites Christians to support Israel in several areas, such as assisting with Jewish emigration from Russia and, according to its website, helping “victims of terrorism and poverty in the Holy Land”. According to an AP report, the Fellowship

raised $20 million from American Christians for Jewish immigration to Israel last year [2002]. This year it’s giving $2.8 million to welfare programs in 80 communities in Israel, in some cases triple the amount of funding those cities get from Israel’s Ministry of Social Affairs.

But Jewish concerns about Eckstein are long-standing. ADL head Abraham Foxman told the Jerusalem Report (undated) that

Eckstein is selling the dignity of the Jewish people and the state of Israel by pandering to Christians for money…We have a modern state with extensive social services. And we’re not a poor people. What he’s doing is perverse. And for the Jewish and Israeli leadership to accept his money is also perverse.

There are even claims that Eckstein is secretly a Messianic Jew, with a rabbi character in a novel he wrote calling himself a “Jew for Jesus”. Eckstein had strong links with the late Jamie Buckingham, a Pentecostal-Charismatic pastor (and one-time ghost writer for Corrie Ten Boom and Nicky Cruz). Eckstein called Buckingham his “rabbi”, and according to ASSIST News Service, Eckstein claimed that he wrote the novel after receiving a prophecy from a Charismatic Christian:

I happened to be giving a talk at The Community of Jesus in Cape Cod where Jamie would often go to speak. 

There was somebody there and he said that he had a ‘word of knowledge’ that I should write a book about Jamie and I walking through Israel together…

Well, that’s a bit unusual, but not in itself evidence of a secret Christian faith. As MinistryWatch suggests:

Rabbi Eckstein’s comments on faith and evangelism seem to imply a commitment on his part to a kind of religious relativism.

MinistryWatch also notes that critics might think that “Rabbi Eckstein’s total compensation seems excessive at about $381,500 for 2002”, although supporters would point towards the organisation’s “financial openness and transparency”. Eckstein, who enjoys endorsements from the likes of Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, claims that he has no contact with groups that specifically target Jews for conversion. But, as noted before, it seems that despite the prayer breakfasts and petitions, there is increasing scepticism among Jews and Israelis about their “allies”.

UPDATE (11 May): The AP has picked up the story. Eckstein defended his links to Christians who may wish to convert Jews or bring about the end of the world by stating that

Judaism does not focus so much on motivations as much as deeds…In Judaism, the actions speak louder than words, and certainly louder than motivations.

However, Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee’s Jerusalem office complained that the Christians’ political agenda was more worrying than their possible missionary activities:

There’s support for some of the most extreme political positions in Israeli society…That I find far more disturbing than any suggestion that there could be missionary activity.

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Dave over at The Grace Pages has helpfully cut and pasted a couple of articles about Douglas Goodman, the London-based pastor who has just been sent down for three and a half years for indecent assault and perverting the course of justice (the jury failed to convict on other charges, including one of rape). Goodman’s first trial was last year; this verdict comes after a retrial. The Daily Telegraph reports that Goodman’s former church, the Victory Christian Centre,

was closed down in 2002 when it was unable to pay creditors despite an estimated income for that year of £7 million.

Meanwhile, Goodman

spent lavishly, using £21,000 from the church to take his family on holiday to Hawaii, buying designer clothes and giving expensive presents to a variety of young women, the court heard.

However, the Telegraph fails to note that since then Goodman has been running a new church based in Wembley, called Victory to Victory, or Victory 2 Victory (V2V). Visitors to this church’s website are directed towards a very interesting, purely general, sermon entitled “Is it wrong for Christians to take each other to court?” Funnily enough, the answer is “yes”. As I fear this gem may disappear from the internet before too long, I quote at length:

more and more preachers are living in a state of paranoia as women in the church more and more frequently feel free to stand up and make allegations of sexual misconduct, men and women alike have been known to sue ministries for thousands, even millions of dollars…

“Now therefore it is an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another.” 1 Corinthians 6:1-7 (NKJ)…

There are people that have been wronged in some way or the other, for example lending money to other Christians that may take you into the lending of thousands of pounds. In your heart you can probably justify taking them to court in order to have your money restored back to you, but in doing so you and I would violate scripture…

A young lady named Sally, relates an experience she had in a seminary class, given by her teacher, Dr. Smith. She says that Dr. Smith was known for his elaborate object lessons…On the wall was a big target and on a nearby table were many darts. Dr. Smith told the students to draw a picture of someone that they disliked or someone who had made them angry, and he would allow them to throw darts at the person’s picture. The class lined up and began throwing darts…Dr. Smith began removing the target from the wall. Underneath the target was a picture of Jesus. A hush fell over the room as each student viewed the mangled picture of Jesus; holes and jagged marks covered His face and His eyes were pierced. Dr. Smith said only these words… “In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40

Goodman also asks us:

Have you ever wondered why God likened us unto sheep? Sheep are one of the few animals that have no defence system; in fact they rely wholly on their shepherd. This is what God expects for us to do.

Journalistic clichés about fleecing come to mind. Speaking of which, I did wince slightly when the Telegraph stated that Goodman “preached in an American evangelical style”. That’s rather oversimplified. From what I’ve heard of Goodman, and seen of churches like his, Goodman preached a mix of Prosperity Gospel teachings and Norman Vincent Peale-type motivationalism, within a neo-Pentecostal setting.

One unresolved aspect of the case concerns the footballer John Fashanu, who was a member of Goodman’s church. According to accusations (denied by Fashanu) made in both the original trial and the retrial, Fashanu made threats against one of the central witnesses:

The Old Bailey jury was told youth leader Banjo Aromolaran had been told of complaints by some women, but felt intimidated after Mr Fashanu said he could become the victim of an acid attack or sex allegations.

UPDATE (May 13): The V2V website has been updated! The sermon on not taking Christians to court is still available, but there is no link to it from the main part of the site. Plus Douglas Goodman has gone the way of Trotsky: his wife Erica Goodman appears alone as “senior pastor”, and all of Douglas’s products are gone. I also note the 2004 “Women of Excellence” conference advertised on the site is titled “I’m a survivor”.

UPDATE 2 (May 15): More on Erica from the Black Information Link (via The Pagan Prattle of 7 April):

THE WIFE of a pastor accused of rape attempted to exorcise demons from one of her husband’s accusers, a court heard.

Erica Goodman, the wife of Pastor Douglas Goodman, exorcised of the ‘spirit of witchcraft and Jezebel’ from a woman, after the congregation member claimed Pastor Goodman had attacked her.

But after laying her hands on the alleged victim’s head to draw out the evil spirits, Mrs Goodman then accused the woman of sleeping with a 15-year-old boy.

The preferred term is “deliverance” rather than exorcism, a practice I looked at a few posts ago.

UPDATE 3 (11 March 2005): Goodman has lost his appeal (in all senses of the word).

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