Religious Expression
The “Prosperity Gospel”
THE “PROSPERITY GOSPEL”
One of the slogans of the disciples of this new cult is “Name it and claim it.” (Some wags have it as “Blab it/Grab it.) We’ve been hearing for decades that God’s will is that everyone should be healthy and prosperous, so that anyone who isn’t is simply lacking in faith. In fact, I remember a healing specialist from Saratoga Springs, New York who went so far as to say, “If we have enough faith, God has no choice but to heal.” I honestly don’t know what she did with the Apostle Paul’s statement that he had prayed fervently three times to be delivered of his “thorn in the flesh” (possible the best guess: malaria), but that all God did was tell him, “My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness.” It’s a little hard to imagine Paul as a man lacking in faith.
The healer to whom I’m referring did some significant damage. When my ten-year-old brother-in-law ultimately died of leukemia (this being in 1959, when kids generally didn’t recover from it), my mother-in-law blamed herself and the family for not having generated sufficient faith to keep him alive.
The so-called prosperity gospel, sometimes known as the health and wealth gospel, is probably strongest among the general run of televangelists and in the megachurches. It goes without saying that anything resembling responsible interpretation of the Bible, as opposed to proof-texting, is not permissible in this context. Children and teenagers are urged to memorize Scripture verses containing God’s promises, and steered away from any discussion of Jesus’ statement that anyone desiring to follow him must take up his cross and do so. The cross, of course, has become an innocuous symbol of the Christian faith, having lost the impact that it must have made when Jesus first mentioned it in this context, some time before he died on one. It was simply the epitome of cruel and unusual punishment, an unspeakable horror for anyone facing execution by that means. What Jesus was saying was that his followers must be ready to give their lives for him by the cruelest means of torture available to his enemies.
By the same token, the Greek behind our word “martyr” originally meant “witness.” In those first centuries of evangelism, being a witness for Christ meant exposing oneself to the very real possibility of dying for him, and in time the word took on the meaning we still give it. I have read in a responsible publication that no fewer than a half-billion Christians are currently living under persecution, out of a total of two billion worldwide who claim to be Christians. Try telling THEM their problem is a lack of faith.
But then, the prosperity gospel is nothing new. At one juncture Jesus felt constrained to get rid of the many hangers-on who expected him to keep them healthy and well-fed. He did so by telling them, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53, NIV). It seems obvious to most of us that he meant a total involvement in faith with him that would come to be symbolized in the Eucharist, but many didn’t stay around long enough to find out.
The texts plucked out of the Bible by the purveyors of this ideology may sound very convincing, but a wise Bible scholar once pointed out that a text without a context is nothing but a pretext. And the Apostle Paul, speaking of some early perversions of the simple faith, stated, “Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.” Pretty harsh words, but a lot was at stake, both then and now.
Liberation Theology
Around 1959, One of my professors remarked, “The battleground of the remainder of the twentieth century will be the question of authority.” It wasn’t long before, as someone said, Pope John XXIII decided to open the shutters to let in a little air and the wind blew them off the hinges. The former Cardinal Ratzinger has pointed out more than once that unjustified extrapolations from the proceedings of Vatican II have formed the basis of liberation theology, which first took hold largely in a Latin American Roman Catholic context. Specifically, the adherents of the Catholic branch of the movement have set aside the teaching office of their church and attempted to bring their own authority to the development of their system.
Liberation theology is based on a complex set of presuppositions growing out of the deconstructionist aspect of postmodernism. Specifically, since even the Bible is thought to be informed by the prejudices of its time, it is felt that we may legitimately reinterpret it in the light of the pressing concerns of our own sociopolitical environment. As Cardinal Ratzinger, presently the Pope, expresses it, now “the experience of the ‘community’ determines the understanding and the interpretation of Scripture.” He goes on to say that Karl Marx’s dialectical view of history is brought into play in liberation theology’s approach to the Bible, leading to the view that human beings must engage in revolutionary activities to bring about the liberation of the masses.
The ideology itself is rather complex and has many submovements within it, and perhaps that is inevitable in the nature of the case. If no one’s truth is authoritative, ideologies tend to splinter. Be that as it may, at its most basic level, liberation theology goes to the Bible and finds that God often warns his people that he opposes the rich when they oppress the helpless, and that he is on the side of the dispossessed. This theme runs right through the Hebrew prophets and is picked up in a startling way in Mary’s inspired hymn of praise when she declares of God, “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:53, NIV).
The problem for those of us who still believe the Bible should be approached through a set of consecrated common-sense hermeneutical principles is that there is a tremendous logical leap between God’s declaring himself to be on the side of the dispossessed and against the wealthy exploiter, and the idea that human beings should foment revolution, including the use of violence “if necessary.” What is plain on the surface of the New Testament is that Jesus never suggests that his followers should take up arms to change the world. A group of zealots tried that and ended up dead on top of the Masada fortress. It is also plain that Jesus and his apostles intended rather to undermine the evils of their time. St. Paul’s statement that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28) is one of the most radical pronouncements ever made in the ancient world. The fact that the church was extremely slow to implement its implications does not invalidate the case.
Furthermore, liberation theology strays so far from the clear meaning of the Scripture that it often ends in fanatical irrationality. A former colleague of mine was an extreme pacifist and, as a sincere Mennonite, profoundly dedicated to the cause of the poor and downtrodden of Latin America. Yet that led him to become so enamored of liberation theology that he believed it was legitimate for the poor to take up arms and massacre the rich. He even declared that the rich of Latin America did not deserve to have the gospel preached to them. Great idea. The Bible says I don’t either.
Back to the question of authority. The traditional Christian presupposition is that the Bible has God behind it and is therefore authoritative as it stands. Liberation theology’s presupposition is that the Bible is a fundamentally human document, complete with outdated ideologies that must be identified and rooted out. The only authoritative reading of it, then, is one that the proponents of liberation theology can convince the public is pertinent to our time.
Convince away, but Marxism isn’t doing so well, for all its talk about “praxis,” and the Judeo-Christian ethic of redemption of the whole person, when properly applied, still works in practice.
Maps of War (and Peace)
Someone working on the Maps of War site has done a wonderful job of graphically portraying the development of the major religious groups through history in the video entitled “History of Religion.” There are slight errors, for example the portrayal of all of Spain as under Islam in the eighth century AD, when the northwest corner remained steadfastly Catholic, but overall it is an excellent history lesson. What strikes me, though, is that the Jews were never particularly interested in converting people, but that the Christians took off from their base in Judaism and spread over much of the world through persuasion.
That was at the beginning. With their so-called triumphalism in place, the “Christians” lost their biblical bearings and began massacring people (including each other) in the name of their faith. Islam didn’t bother with any initial restraint, but spread mainly by way of conquest from the outset. Its representatives have been called “meataxe missionaries.” As for the Eastern religions, their emphases, in particular Gautama Buddha’s insistence that “life equals suffering,” inhibited any movement to improve the lot of the people in material terms for many centuries.
Oh, religion! What crimes have been committed in thy name!
World Ends With A Whimper Not A Bang.
The National Policy Institute estimates what the world will look like in 2060 – about 50 years hence.
According to an article in Human Events authored by Pat Buchanan and published on May 2, 2008 in 1950 whites were 18% of the world’s population and Africans accounted for 9%. By 2060 the percentages will be about the same but the colors reversed. Two hundred million whites will vanish by then. Arabic people, counted among whites, will rise ten-fold to 743 million and account for 75% of whites.
Iran’s population will rise from 71 to 100 million. Pakistan will grow to 300 million from about 71 million today. Afghanistan will triple to 79 million and Iraq will leap from 29 to 62 million. In America Hispanics will triple to 127 million while Mexico will grow to 130 million.
Last October PEW RESEARCH asked 45,000 people in 47 countries what they thought and majorities in 46 countries expressed fear about loss of their national culture. Sixty-two percent of Americans said more must be done to protect “our way of life.” Three-fourths wanted stiffer immigration laws and restrictions. Asians, Africans and Middle Easterners appear, by simple weight of numbers appear to be poised to inherit the earth.
“This is the way the world ends, “wrote T. S. Eliot in his closing couplet of “The Hollow Men,” “Not with a bang but a whimper.” It begs the question of whose world to which he referred.
Wright’s Rants Wrecking Obama
Barack Obama said Tuesday that his relationship with REV JEREMIAH WRIGHT has changed because of what Wright said contradicts much of what Obama stands for has done and is trying to do. Obama said yesterday’s “performance” by Wright was a “bunch of rants.” Obama said what Wright said contradicts his fundamental convictions; was a:show of disrespect to me” and an “insult to what we have been trying to do in this campaign.” Obama said nothing Wright said yesterday was constructive and Wright “caricatured” himself. Obama said he made clear to Wright that his “sound bites” was inexcusable when he spoke with him before his Philadelphia speech.
Obama said Wright was never his spiritual mentor nor advisor but his pastor. That parses the words “mentor” and “advisor” when compared with what Obama described in his book. Obama has been sent reeling by Rev. Wright’s radicalism. Obama said it was only yesterday that he realized the tone and impact of Wright. Main stream media is filled with denunciation of Wright.
NEWT GINGRICH said yesterday and on Tuesday’s ABC SHOW the VIEW that Wright appears is trying to harm Obama. Observation and polls appear to prove that if that is correct Wright is succeeding.
Wright’s comments have raised Obama’s already majority unfavorability ratings even higher with 41% saying he hurts their opinion of Obama.
Wright’s Sunday Speech To NAACP To Be Carefully Watched.
The Detroit chapter of the NAACP is featuring Barack Obama’s longtime minister, Jeremiah Wright, as keynote speaker at its annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner this Sunday. It is billed as the largest annual sit-down dinner of African Americans in the country. At least 10,000 people are expected to hear the Rev. Wright speak.
The question on most lips is will Wright make his trademark denunciations of America as an oppressor of blacks and a creator of the AIDS virus to kill them off?
“When you take the t-e-x-t out of context, you’re left with c-o-n, and we have been conned,” Detroit branch NAACP President Wendell Anthony explained as he announced the dinner’s speaker at a news conference. If Wright shouts anything like, “Goddamn America,” the context will flow like sewage into Indiana, North Carolina and across the nation to Obama’s deficit. Stay tuned.
Public Expels Stein’s EXPELLED Critics
Nine percent of film critics have given positive reviews to Ben Steins new movie EXPELLED, No intelligence necessary that questions the notion of random life versus intelligent design. In contrast, Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” is adored by 93 percent of the critics notwithstanding its nonscientific premise. The New York Times uses some choice words to describe the movie, stating that it is a “conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.” Time magazine fumes that “the man made famous by Ferris Bueller . . . quickly wades into waters far too deep for him.”
The public apparently isn’t listening. “Expelled” had a huge opening weekend for a documentary with a radioactive topic. It placed ninth with a box-office take of $3.1 million. By comparison, Morgan Spurlock, director of “Super Size Me,” debuted his “Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?” documentary on the same weekend. Spurlock’s film took in an embarrassing $143,300.
Question of the Day
Does Bill Maher deserve to be fired again as Newsday says in recent article?
Or is he America’s most politically astute comedian as The Huffington Post said recently?
Maher’s Non-Apology To Pope and Catholics
HBO’s Bill Maher issued a non-apology Friday night for having called the POPE a NAZI saying it was a joke that he’d never tell again. then saying he’s be in jail were he a CEO of day care centers involved in such sex abuse cases. Maher said on Friday he’s be in jail were he a CEO of day care centers involved in such sex abuse cases. Maher has called Catholicism a “cult” that promotes “organized pedophilia.” In May 2007 compared communion to homosexual oral sodomy and called for turning homosexuality into a religion.
Slightly less than a quarter of all Americans are catholics.
The Catholic Church Continues to Give Hypocrisy a Bad Name
The Catholic Church was once a blood brother in the warmongering, corrupt triad of eurasian armies with armed monks, the incestuous monarchies and state religion commanded by the city state that became the Vatican and the home of the Pope, the nation state of the Catholic Church. Before the Henry the Eighth sexually motivated break, it battled with the Muslims for control of the Holy Land, winning some battles but ultimately losing the war. Bill Maher belonged in the Catholic Church of that time, but not the evolving one that I hope I see emerging today.
The holy land remained outside of the control of Catholic, Protestant or Jewish authority until the controversial creation of Israel in 1948. I support the right of Israel to exist, acknowledging all of the injustices committed by all sides in that arena from the beginning and in so much of human history. Show me a place anywhere in the world inhabited by human beings, give me a little time and if there is written or oral history to be researched, I will show you a lot of injustice committed in human actions against other humans that will revolt you.
In more modern times the Catholic Church has renounced violence, becoming significantly but not completely pacifist, a goal I support and admire. The Church asserts its transnational rights on the basis of it’s agenda of searching and supporting human dignity first, at least it does so in the US where it can get away with it. It denounces the sovereign rights of the United States to have and enforce immigration laws on the basis that humans are not always accorded the dignity god wants them to have. Today the Pope’s TV surrogates emphasized that his agenda is not nation based, rather that his agenda transcends nations and is based on the search for human dignity. To be sure to distance himself from Bush, he refused a state dinner with the President. I might consider doing that same thing but for different reasons.
Today the Pope says he is deeply ashamed of the sexual abuse committed in America (or is it just exposed in America?) and wanted to assure everyone that it will never happen again in the Catholic Church. I give him credit for such a clear statement. But why no apology?
So many questions bubbling up, but one seems to be particularly jangling given the Pope’s view that the US does not have a right to protect its borders by enforcing its laws due to human considerations which should come before all.
Why then does the Catholic Church hide behind and exploit various US laws and procedures to try to evade or minimize it’s exposure of the than embarrassing sexual abuse of children, which was overlooked by Bishops who retain their positions.
What about that element of human dignity the Catholic Church now hypocritically ignores, even TODAY while the Pope was speaking, to take advantage of US regulations that protect the Church due to the passage of time? Why does it use some laws and feel it has the right to work against other laws. Why not look beyond US laws as it does with immigration laws, to enhance human dignity and accept responsibility for those whose rights have expired because their human dignity was seriously taken away so long ago?
When will the Church make amends to those many who kept silent so long that US laws now protect the Catholic church from prosecution?
Not being an insider, I do not know, but here is an outside clue: The Catholic Church has so far been forced to dispense 2 billion dollars in legal settlements. Yes, they want this embarrassing event to stop, stop the bleeding of their coffers. Hang the dignity of a person who kept quiet too long and has lived for decades with who knows what kind of shame, embarrassment and psychological disruptions.
So the first persons loss of dignity decades ago seems not to be equal in the eyes of the Churck to the loss of dignity experienced by mostly hardworking family men trying to make money to support their family who happens to be a citizen of another country is held accountable for breaking that law. What is the real difference in these two different circumstances of human dignity?
The first deserves for the Church to compensate him and the second is part of a fine group of people who are inclined to give the Church money.
Pay money or get money? A transnational agenda for sure.
The Catholic Church, despite stated good intentions and vast improvements from the embarrassing inquisitions and so on, continues to give hypocrisy a bad name.
Is Barack Obama Henry Wallace Reincarnate?
The Democrat presidential nomination dog and cat fight between Clinton and Obama continues to be a fur ball with charges and counter charges flying over Obama’s creepy extraction from Karl Marx’s 1867 communist manifesto Das Kapital [das kapi’ta’l] about religion and the proletariat.
Never before, not even by the so-called American Progressive Party (the political party of Communist Party USA) candidates, has anyone used such an alarming and elitist equivalence.
Perhaps the last time any major candidate espoused such an ideological notion was the 1948 election when Henry Wallace, who had served as Secretary of Agriculture and Vice-President under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wallace opposed the Cold War, the Marshall Plan and Big Business. H.L. Mencken and Dorothy Thompson, accused the Progressives of being covertly controlled by Communists. Several leading figures of the Progressive Party (such as socialist leader Norman Thomas) quit the party in protest over what they perceived as the undue influence Communists exerted over Wallace.
It is an eerie coincidence that Wallace, like Obama, fell under the influence of a religious radical. Wallace, who was raised Presbyterian, left the church and became closely associated with the Russian theosophist Nicholas Roerich. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Wallace’s search for inner light took him to strange prophets.”
Legend is that J. Edgar Hoover confronted FDR over his Vice President’s his pro-communist sympathies, and ideas not in America’s best interest and threatened to expose Wallace and FDRs own dalliances and forced him to pick another Vice President in 1943. Of course FDR did pick Harry Truman and America barely escaped a Wallace presidency when FDR died April 12, 1945.
Read America Alone
“The future belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West — wedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivion — is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization,” says Mark Steyn in his New York Times best seller America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It. Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a Muslim muezzin. Millions of Europeans already do points out Thomas S. Winter Editor in Chief, HUMAN EVENTS. “…(L)iberals will still tell you that “diversity is our strength” — while Talibanic enforcers cruise our cities burning books and barber shops… the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn’t violate the “separation of church and state” … and the Hollywood Left gives up gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can’t happen, you haven’t been paying attention,” he says Winter.
If you have not read AMERICA ALONE you will find it funny, sobering and in some measure alarming.
Sermons of Race and Multiculturalism
To Christians worldwide, Easter Sunday is a day of hope, of forgiveness, of God’s undying love and His promise of a better tomorrow. When Christians walked out of church this Easter Sunday filled with His message what did they then face from the secular world?
They heard that at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago the new pastor who replaced Rev. Wright preached a sermon titled “How to Handle a Public Lynching”. Rev. Otis Moss stated that the recent news stories on Rev. Wright’s vile anti-American hate filled statements were like lynchings and compared it to the crucifixion of Jesus.
They heard that Muslims are once again protesting and boycotting Denmark due to a movie they say is anti-Islamic. This comes on the heels of 17 Danish papers reprinting the 2005 cartoons which caused world wide protests. The reasoning behind republishing the cartoons was to strike a blow for free speech and stand up for it in the face of mounting violence.
While writing this blog, I went to YouTube and somehow stumbled onto a truly radical video by an Englishman. Pat Condell is a comedian and writer and gives a speech on race and multiculturalism that puts Barack Obama’s earlier speech to shame. For Pat doesn’t mince words as he bluntly and courageously speaks out against the real inequities in today’s society. He actually says out loud that not all cultures are equal. That to treat radical Islam the same as other cultures is to acquiese to Islams fascist regime, their degrading attitude towards woman and their archaic rules of law. I urge everyone to take a moment and watch this before it, too, gets pulled when Islams protest it, as they surely will.
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" />" />Wright Wrongs Help McCain
A Rasmussen Poll released Monday has McCain leading both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton by an identical 48% to 42% margin. McCain has a double-digit lead over Clinton among unaffiliated voters and is essentially even with Obama among those same voters. However, McCain makes greater inroads among Democrats with Obama as the nominee. McCain has gained ground against both Democrats in recent days as stories about Obama’s former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, have been widely discussed Wright is viewed favorably by just 8% of American voters and 73% consider his comments racially divisive.
Obama is viewed favorably today by just 47% of voters nationwide. That’s down five points since last Thursday. The number with an unfavorable view of Obama has risen from 44% on Thursday to 50% today. Among White voters, Obama is now viewed favorably by 43% and unfavorably by 54%. McCain, visiting Iraq and left out of the Democratic mudslinging, is now viewed favorably by 54%, unfavorably by 42%. Clinton is viewed favorably by 46%, unfavorably by 52%.
Barack and Michelle Obama’s vexing records.
Barack Obama’s longtime minister, friend, and adviser blames America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society that would never elect a black man as president. His hate filled speech have included his saying: America the No. 1 killer in the world; believes in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God, conducted radiation experiments on our own people, started the AIDS virus, and support Zionism shamelessly. He proclaimed that based on his assertions “God has got to be sick of this s***.”
In February Barack Obama described Wright to Jewish leaders in Clevelandas being like “an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don’t agree with.” Obama has yet to describe the details of items of disagreement with the radical, racist minister whom he has frequently praised. Hearing Wright’s venomous and paranoid denunciations of this country, the vast majority of Americans would walk out. Far from walking out Obama and his wife Michelle listened attentively. Michelle Obama added to her record of peculiar statements and charges this week by saying America is “downright mean” and a place that “has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl.” She and her husband both received cost free Ivy League educations even though she admits her high school record would otherwise have disqualified her.
ST. PATRIK’S DAY MARCH 14 - 17 THIS YEAR
For the first time in nearly 70 years, the luck of the Irish has run out, and March 17th – St. Patrick’s Day falls during Holy Week. So, the Catholic Church has moved the saint’s holiday to Friday, March 14th. But, not everyone will honor the Vatican’s decree and any number of Irish will likely celebrate on both days, and preferably over the four day weekend. This calendar conflict won’t happen again until 2160 depressing whiskey distillers worldwide.
America’s Religious Decline
Religion in decline in America says a massive survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life - considered the most