Immorality in American Christianity

[LFC]

No longer just content to protest we have "Christians" now harassing Pagan groups with amplified bullhorns. And suddenly the (highly Republican) police refused to do anything about it.

Street preachers and Christian protesters have long been a fixture of earth-based religions’ gatherings as they try to distract and deter people from enjoying what are typically outdoor festivals and ritual gatherings. But this year, some attendees say, these opponents of witchcraft and paganism have become more aggressive and even dangerous.

“There were about 30 (evangelists) this year” said Starr RavenHawk, an elder and priestess of the New York City Wiccan Family Temple and organizer of WitchsFest USA, a street fair held in the city’s West Village in mid-July.

Over the past seven years, barely half a dozen of these disruptors would show up, RavenHawk said. But the groups who have appeared this year “aren’t just protesting,” she added. “They are collectively at war with us. They made that clear.”

RavenHawk said the evangelists and street preachers walked through WitchsFest, holding up signs and preaching through amplifiers. By the day’s end, their presence had caused class cancellations and vendor closings.

Many Pagan events are not held in public spaces for this reason, although that has been changing over the past 10 years as occult practices have found more acceptance in the public eye.

Held in busy Astor Place, a tourist crossroads, the daylong WitchsFest USA is one of the most visible pagan festivals and, therefore, one of the most vulnerable.

“RavenHawk creates this marvelous event every year in the heart of New York City as a public celebration where everyone is welcome as long as they maintain an atmosphere of respect towards others,” said Elhoim Leafar, who was scheduled to lead a workshop at WitchsFest USA and has attended for years.

The Christian group took up a prominent position on one street corner as the festival began at 10 a.m. and began talking to attendees and preaching into amplification devices. Among them, RavenHawk said she recognized members of the NYC chapter of Christian Forgiveness Ministries, a Toronto organization that had sent visitors before.

After her security team asked the preachers to leave, RavenHawk called the police as she has done in past years. But, for the first time, the cops did nothing, she said.

“The Christians say nobody is being bothered,” RavenHawk was reportedly told by the officers. In past years, officers would relocate the preachers to the far side of Astor Place, where they would continue without the use of speakers, which require a permit.

This year, the Christian groups were allowed to remain at the festival with their sound amplification. According to RavenHawk, the officers called the preaching “freedom of speech.” It is unclear whether the groups had permits.

One attendee, Soror Da Glorium Deo, said, “When the police had the opportunity to downgrade things by possibly escorting the troublemakers off the area, they chose not to de-escalate.”

The New York Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.

“(The officers) treated us as if we were invading the Christians’ space, as if they had more rights than we do” RavenHawk said. “(The preachers) were loud, and they were carrying on. Of course it was disruptive.”

When organizers moved the workshop tent away from the corner near the preachers, the Christian groups followed. “At a certain point, the protesters were not only in the surroundings and corners of the event with microphones and banners, but inside it,” said Leafar, whose class was cancelled due to the preachers.

“We are not publicly protesting at their churches on a Sunday,” he said.

Want to protest? Go ahead. But pushing in among people who are simply trying to worship as they see fit and not hurting anybody with bullhorns blaring is over the line. Well, except in Christian nationalist America.

[LFC]

Once again the sexual revolution, i.e. people rising up against the sex crimes of "Christian" religious leaders, strikes.

A local pastor has been arrested on charges that he sexually abused a minor.

Delaware County district attorney Jack Stollsteimer announced the charges against 70-year-old Edward Lilly of Boothwyn, Pa. on Monday.

Authorities allege that Lilly, a pastor at the Christian Church of Chester, met the victim at a supermarket in 2017 when she was 16 years old.

Over the next year, investigators say Lilly groomed the victim for a sexual relationship, which then began when she was 17.

[LFC]

This is a little off to the side of the main subject but I think it's related and I'm feeling up to a good fisk/rant. The Atlantic published a piece that, repeating a decades old trope, tries to call any social / political movement that has a number of motivated, impassioned people a "religion" or at least a replacement for religion. These attempts at forcing any social / political movement into the box of religion just piss me off. It's a desperate attempt at taking empirical beliefs and wedging them down into the faith based world.

The cherry-picking of a few anecdotes rather than citing any studies on views and motivations is a classic tactic of this kind of article. The author picked an example of somebody holding up a sign that said "REPENT" without grasping that it just might (OK, it absolutely f***ing does) have a bit of satirical intent. That's a huge blind spot for somebody expounding on society.

This fire-and-brimstone language might initially seem odd, because society is becoming less religious—in the U.S., church membership dropped below 50 percent for the first time in 2020, down from 70 percent in 1999. In Britain, where I live, the decline of organized religion is “one of the most important trends in postwar history,” according to the British Social Attitudes survey. We might expect that religious concepts—repentance, hellfire, heresy, apostasy—would have become less salient as a result. But that’s not the case. For some activists, politics has usurped the role that religion used to play as a source of meaning and purpose in our lives, and a way to find a community.

In the U.S., the nonreligious are younger and more liberal than the population as a whole. Perhaps, then, it isn’t a coincidence that they are also the group most likely to be involved in high-profile social-justice blowups, particularly the type found on college campuses. They’ve substituted one religion for another. In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff suggest that we look at campus protests as outbreaks of “collective effervescence,” a term coined by the sociologist Emile Durkheim to describe emotions that can be accessed only in a crowd. Singing, swaying, and chanting build up a kind of electricity, which ripples through the group. And that’s how a person can end up screaming “repent” at a stranger for the crime of holding a funny sign.

Then we have this. The author brings up "common social-justice phrases" and tries to tie it to social media and dating apps. (Huh?) Dafuq? A set of shared, common phrases is something that has existed in every interested I've ever had incl. birds, dragonflies, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, caving, fishing, and on and on. This is trying to take the most natural thing for literally every group of people with a shared interest to have and forcing it into a very narrow framework for just this one case. I call bullshit.

Bonus dishonesty points for getting the opinion of a "former director of a Christian think tank" because THAT's a solid, objective viewpoint. Bonus cluelessness points for that former director calling politics "the amphetamines of the people" while missing that people have been angry and motivated about many political issues for all of humanity. Some of these have been based on religious beliefs *cough* Inquisition, Crusades *cough, cough*), (pure lies (*cough* Christian nationalists *cough, cough*), but often naturally occurs when people are being harmed (*cough* Christian attacks on women's rights, minorities, and LGBTQ people *cough, cough*).

If you’re isolated, reading and sharing political memes and commentary is one way to find like-minded people; meanwhile, social media and dating apps encourage us to label ourselves so that we can be instantly categorized by algorithms and advertisers. Many common social-justice phrases have echoes of a catechism: announcing your pronouns or performing a land acknowledgment shows allegiance to a common belief, reassuring a group that everyone present shares the same values. But treating politics like a religion also makes it more emotionally volatile, more tribal (because differences of opinion become matters of good and evil) and more prone to outbreaks of moralizing and piety. “I was thinking about that Marx quote that religion is the opium of the people,” Elizabeth Oldfield, the former director of the Christian think tank Theos, told me. “I think what we've got now is [that] politics is the amphetamines of the people.”

Then we have this utterly clueless comment. The thing is she actually states the reason why this one woman won't date conservatives of today's ilk, and it's a very good one, without even realizing that it IS the reason. Hint, Helen. Go do a web search for "the cruelty is the point" and get back to us.

Politics has now crept into every aspect of our lives. In countries where racial and religious intermarriage have become commonplace, dating across political lines is the new taboo. The young British writer Tomiwa Owolade told me he often saw dating profiles that insisted on “no conservatives.” Victoria Turner, the editor of an anthology titled Young, Woke and Christian, told me that she could happily date someone from another faith, or no faith at all. But a conservative? “Absolutely not. No.” Why not? “Whether your God looks exactly the same as my God, I don’t know,” she told me. “But I do know what the answers are to stop people from suffering and to make the world a more equitable place.”

After quoting the author of a book called "Woke Racism" for two paragraphs she does finally get around to saying "This phenomenon is not confined to the left, though." Gee, that's nice of you to finally admit. Again, though, she misses the HUGE difference between the two sides. The side she's now comparing the "woke" people to are literally calling for imprisonment and death of their political enemies which include everybody not like them. They are demanding "rights" that nobody else who isn't in their religion can have. They are looking to create a society where members of their religion are supreme. This isn't just theory, words, feelings, etc. This is happening. Look at America. Look at Hungary. I don't know how badly Britain is sliding but the teaming up of fascism and religion is a problem in multiple places in the Western world. The bulk of the left's movement (not the sliver of ultra-ultra social justice folks that most of us ignore) is a response that's trying to protect themselves and others against this and from being treated as second class people. The author seems to have no clue about this.

She finishes with a discussion of how people use to be able to still respect one another with different views. That's still true but not so much when those views cause the believers to want to hurt others. If you miss this fact in today's Western world the you probably shouldn't be writing about this topic. From the Brit standpoint I'm pretty sure "Hey, you're Irish which means you're inferior to me in every way and don't deserve the same rights and opportunities but we can still respect one another" never, ever flew on her side of the pond.

[Bact PhD]

Got through maybe two-thirds of it, enough to see the quoted pieces in some sort of context. Where Ms. Lewis initially goes off the rails is mistaking people co-opting elements of the language of faith (e.g., repentance) in the vocabulary for wholesale substitution of "one religion for another." Moreover, Ms. Lewis is either that ignorant or deliberately clueless to not address the fact that people of faith have been active participants in various social-justice movements since at least the Abolitionist era. I couldn't get through all of it.

Yeah, my reaction was pretty much along the lines of "Dafuq?" as well.

[LFC]

Aug 24, 2022 22:04:45 GMT Bact PhD said:

Yeah, my reaction was pretty much along the lines of "Dafuq?" as well.

I reads like she started with a conclusion and worked backward from there to get a justification. Hey! She could be a Republican Supreme Court justice!

[LFC]

WTF?

A British Christian cult that attempted to fuse the burgeoning rave culture of the 1980s with Anglican worship is part of an investigation into alleged sex offenses, according to a report.

South Yorkshire Police in northern England confirmed that a man and a woman have been arrested in connection with the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS), a worship group designed to focus on youth that once boasted hundreds of members who flocked to its “rave praise” services in the city of Sheffield.

Anglican Church bigwigs once admired the NOS for its bold attempts to bring new young people into the faith—a demographic the organization had struggled to attract—with its flashy ceremonies that more closely resembled scenes from a nightclub than a traditional Sunday service. At his ordination in 1992, the NOS founder wore robes used by Robert de Niro in the film The Mission. His group emerged from a Christian rock group and would blend evangelical Christianity with environmental concerns and other social campaigns in its ministry.

But the NOS soon became notorious for some of its more questionable activities. Young women were enlisted by the group’s founder to become “postmodern nuns,” and allegedly performed sexual acts with him. At a Christian festival in 1992, there was uproar when a scheduled NOS worship on the main stage turned out to feature two bikini-clad dancers performing what one Christian journalist described as “provocative bumps and grinds.”

The radical group eventually shut down by church leaders in 1995 after complaints about blurred sexual boundaries in NOS and questions about the Service’s finances. Its charity, the Nine O’Clock Trust, had an income of several hundred thousand dollars in 1994 alone, The Times reports.

The police inquiry revealed Wednesday is believed to have started in 2021, after former members of NOS reported to have been sexually assaulted. Many of the people who have spoken to authorities are said to have begun civil cases against the church, which has itself started to provide counseling support to some former members of NOS.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 26, 2022 16:23:58 GMT LFC said:

WTF?

....

Anglican Church bigwigs once admired the NOS for its bold attempts to bring new young people into the faith—a demographic the organization had struggled to attract—with its flashy ceremonies that more closely resembled scenes from a nightclub than a traditional Sunday service. At his ordination in 1992, the NOS founder wore robes used by Robert de Niro in the film The Mission. His group emerged from a Christian rock group and would blend evangelical Christianity with environmental concerns and other social campaigns in its ministry.

But the NOS soon became notorious for some of its more questionable activities. Young women were enlisted by the group’s founder to become “postmodern nuns,” and allegedly performed sexual acts with him. At a Christian festival in 1992, there was uproar when a scheduled NOS worship on the main stage turned out to feature two bikini-clad dancers performing what one Christian journalist described as “provocative bumps and grinds.”

.....

Just a good old fashioned revival with postmodern nuns and bikini clad dancers. 

  

[AnBr]

[LFC]

Another megachurch collapsing over a sex scandal. Interestingly this one seems to be simple infidelity with no sexual assault, rape, grooming, children, or anything. It's positively mundane, at least to those of us who don't see pastors as having any special brand of moral authority.

A Tennessee megachurch has filed for bankruptcy and disclosed millions in debts, following scandal concerning Pastor Tavner Smith’s alleged sexual misconduct, federal court filings show.

Venue Church in Chattanooga filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Its bankruptcy petition shows the church has more than $3 million in mortgage, auto loan, and credit card debt.

The church has less than $5 million in assets, even counting its $4.5 million church building, according to the filing.

Tom Bible, the attorney representing Venue Church in the bankruptcy, didn’t immediately respond when The Roys Report (TRR) asked why the church had decided to file for bankruptcy.

But the filing shows a massive drop in revenue over the last two years. And the bankruptcy filing puts a temporary stop to foreclosure proceedings on the Venue Church building, reported earlier by TRR.

Give a gift of $30 or more to The Roys Report this month, and you will receive a copy of “The Lord Is My Courage” by K.J. Ramsey to donate, click here.

An amended listing of secured debts shows Venue Church still owes $2.77 million on its building. That’s about $5,000 less than the initial mortgage, the foreclosure notice shows.

Bible reportedly told the Chattanooga Free Press that the church intends to pay off its debts in full, even if that means selling the building.

That’s a different message than Smith communicated less than three weeks ago. He had pledged that the church would stay put, TRR previously reported.

The filing also identifies, for the first time, the former church governing board members who had reportedly quit in 2021.

Venue Church was reportedly a former member of the Association of Related Churches (ARC), one of North America’s biggest church-planting organizations. As TRR has previously reported, ARC is known for restoring and re-platforming morally fallen pastors. Current and past ARC member churches, including Venue Church, have faced multiple scandals involving money or sex.

Smith launched Venue Church 10 years ago. In just three years it had swelled to 2,000 attendees across six Sunday worship services, becoming the seventh fastest growing church in the country.

Venue Church bought its current building in late 2019. In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the church received more than $3.1 million in revenue, including a $141,691 loan that was forgiven through the federal Paycheck Protection Program.

But in late 2021, Smith was accused of kissing a woman who wasn’t his wife. Eight church staffers quit over the allegations, TRR previously reported. Then Smith went on a short sabbatical early this year before returning to preaching a month later.

Attendance has reportedly fallen steeply since the scandal broke. Revenue shrank to just over $2 million last year, the bankruptcy filing shows. And Venue has brought in less than $600,000 this year as of August 23.

[LFC]

This time it's a teacher at a Christian school. They really do seem to be attracted to these religious institutions. I'd love to see stats on that.

A former teacher at West Chester Christian School was convicted of sexually assaulting a first-grader there in 2007.

Randy Lee Boston, 64, of Shickshinny, Luzerne County, was found guilty by a jury Wednesday in the Chester County Justice Center of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, indecent assault of a person under 13, corruption of minors, and related charges.

The verdict followed a three-day trial before Chester County Judge Patrick Carmody. Boston awaits sentencing. The jury deliberated for about three hours Wednesday.

The victim testified during the trial that he was forced to engage in sex acts when he was in first grade.

“Randy Boston’s appalling actions not only stole a 6-year-old’s innocence but set that child’s life on a trajectory of depression, fear, and anxiety,” District Attorney Deb Ryan said in a statement Thursday.

[LFC]

Another pedophile pastor. The Catholic Church clearly didn't have a monopoly on attracting these sickos.

A former Calvary Chapel pastor and speaker is serving jail time in Virginia on multiple charges related to child sexual abuse, records obtained by The Roys Report show.

A plea agreement shows that Douglas Phillip DeAndrea, former pastor of New Ground Church in Danville, was sentenced in May to 40 years in prison.

DeAndrea, 44, was arrested October 18, 2021, on seven felony charges of object sexual penetration and aggravated sexual battery, according to Mark Hollandsworth with the Montgomery County Jail. A grand jury indictment reveals the charges related to sexual abuse of a minor.

The plea agreement shows DeAndrea pleaded guilty to two of the charges and will be incarcerated for eight years. The other 32 years of the prison sentence were suspended. He was also ordered to serve 15 years’ probation, according to the plea agreement.

The other five charges were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

The person who posted this on TPM noted this as well.

In a sermon posted online, DeAndrea praised his hometown as “a place where the Confederate flag definitely still flies.”

[LFC]

Here's a right-wing Catholic stance that is sure to horrify younger people and make them never want to set foot in their churches. Unless, of course, they're cherry picking the Bible but that would neeeever happen. (This is a comment over at TPM.)

From the far-right Catholic site LifeSiteNews:

Pope Francis has called for Catholics to pray for an end to the death penalty, saying that “in the light of the Gospel, the death penalty is unacceptable,” despite the Catholic Church’s nearly 2,000-year teaching, tradition, and contents of Sacred Scripture all upholding the legitimacy of the death penalty.

It is even against the words of Scripture, for in the book of Genesis capital punishment is permitted precisely because murder violates man’s dignity as being made in the image of God: “whosever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God.” (Gen 9:6)

“Let us pray that the death penalty, which attacks the dignity of the human person, may be legally abolished in every country,” stated Pope Francis, in his September video released as part of the “Pope Video” project, which has a new video and prayer intention every month.

Catholic News Service reports:

“Capital punishment offers no justice to victims, but rather encourages revenge. And it prevents any possibility of undoing a possible miscarriage of justice,” he said. “From a legal point of view, it is not necessary,” the pope added.

At the start of each month, the network posts a short video of the pope offering his specific prayer intention. For the month of September, the pope dedicated his prayer intention for the abolition of the death penalty.

In his video message, the pope said the death penalty was unnecessary because society “can effectively repress crime” without denying those who offend “the possibility of redeeming themselves.”

Pope Francis:

The death penalty is morally indefensible.

OK, since the right-wing Catholic conservative article cites Genesis then that simply MUST mean the entire Old Testament is on the table, right? So let's see a few places where death is not just allowable but required. First we have examples from Leviticus.

“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” --Leviticus 20:10

“A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.” --Leviticus 20:27

OK, I think we all know that Leviticus is brimming with seriously f***ed up shit but it's not the only book that's messed up.

“Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.” --Exodus 12:17 (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 says pretty much the same thing only for a rebellious child.)

“Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.” --Exodus 21:15

“Then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” --Deuteronomy 22:24

[Bact PhD]

Sept 3, 2022 15:02:23 GMT LFC said:

Here's a right-wing Catholic stance that is sure to horrify younger people and make them never want to set foot in their churches. Unless, of course, they're cherry picking the Bible but that would neeeever happen. (This is a comment over at TPM.)

From the far-right Catholic site LifeSiteNews:

Catholic News Service reports:

Pope Francis:

OK, since the right-wing Catholic conservative article cites Genesis then that simply MUST mean the entire Old Testament is on the table, right? So let's see a few places where death is not just allowable but required. First we have examples from Leviticus.

“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” --Leviticus 20:10

“A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.” --Leviticus 20:27

OK, I think we all know that Leviticus is brimming with seriously f***ed up shit but it's not the only book that's messed up.

“Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.” --Exodus 12:17 (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 says pretty much the same thing only for a rebellious child.)

“Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.” --Exodus 21:15

“Then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” --Deuteronomy 22:24

Talk about selective amnesia! Official Church teaching has been anti-capital punishment since at least the papacy of JPII (circa mid-1980s), if not since Vatican II. However, there’s been a swath of Catholics even back then who went “Cafeteria Catholic” on that particular issue…but ABORTION! BIRTH CONTROL! GAYS!

[jackd]

That's the papacy of "J2P2".

[LFC]

If you're a secular parent but choose to send your kid to parochial school for some reason, you have to expect this kind of bullshit. Well, maybe not this extreme but then again, why not?

A parochial school in North Carolina baptized 100 students without permission from parents—some of whom were left angry by the surprise. “My daughter calls me from the school and says, ‘Mama, can you bring me some dry clothes? I got baptized today,’” the parent of an 11-year-old told the Fayetteville Observer. “I said, ‘WHAT?’” At least three parents complained to the Northwood Temple Academy principal, who said a handful of students were scheduled to receive the sacrament and the others “just began to respond to the presence of the Lord.” In an email, she said: “In hindsight, we would do it differently and give the students an opportunity to contact their parents and ask permission to be baptized. We were not expecting such an overwhelming response to the message that was spoken, but as a mother I certainly can empathize with why some parents were upset.”

If you lie down with dogs...

[AnBr]

[LFC]

The immorality isn't just in the institutions. It's also rampant among those who would protect those institutions at the cost of the rape and sexual assault victims. And Dreher wonders why so many of the younger generations are horrified at organized religion. The track record just gets worse and worse.

In a sign of frustration with a county prosecutor’s decision to pursue less than a quarter of recommended charges against a boarding school accused of abuse, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has formally requested that the governor remove his office from the case.

In a letter sent Thursday, Schmitt said that Cedar County Prosecuting Attorney Ty Gaither’s decision to only pursue charges against seven of the 22 suspects the attorney general’s office identified and “a relatively small number of minor felony offenses reveals that he has no real need of the expertise and resources of the Attorney General’s Office.”

Furthermore, Gaither’s decision “indicated that he does not intend to seek justice for all of the thirty-six children who were allegedly victimized by twenty-two members of the Agape Boarding School staff,” Schmitt went on to write in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Independent.

The letter to Gov. Mike Parson came after the attorney general’s office filed a motion on Sept. 1 with the Cedar County Circuit Court asking a judge to empanel a special grand jury to hear evidence regarding the abuse children experienced “at the hands of the 22 identified suspects and to sign any resulting indictments.” That motion was later denied Sept. 17, according to Schmitt’s letter. A copy of the motion was not public as of Friday.

A spokeswoman for Parson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

In March, Parson directed the attorney general’s office to assist Gaither in an investigation into the abuse allegations at Agape Boarding School in Stockton in southwest Missouri.

“As a single prosecutor office, I cannot devote the hundreds of hours necessary to review, prepare and prosecute a case involving multiple victims, witnesses, and defendants,” Gaither wrote in a March 18 letter to Parson requesting assistance, Schmitt’s letter recounted.

Former students have alleged being restrained and beaten, sexually abused and used as manual labor during their time at the school. Agape received renewed scrutiny following an investigation by The Kansas City Star last year in which dozens of former students described enduring abuse and close connections between the school and local law enforcement.

Agape Boarding School is the second Christian reform school the Cedar County prosecutor’s office has asked for the state’s assistance with investigating in recent months. But unlike the case against Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in southwest Missouri, Gaither has retained authority on whether to issue charges related to Agape.

Earlier this month, Gaither told The Star he planned to file about 14 charges against seven individuals. The attorney general’s office recommended 65 criminal counts against 22 codefendants. Those charges involved 36 victims.

[LFC]

This example is not about American Christianity but rather very old but still Western Christianity and it's long war with reality. I have read Dreher's past defenses (before he literally went insane and became entirely untethered from reality) of orthodox religion and for me he just seemed to avoid how orthodoxy naturally seems to direct itself against any inconvenient reality. This is just another example in a very long list, though admittedly a very old one.

In 1054, the people of Earth were treated to an uncommon sight.

A strange light exploded and lit up the sky. For no fewer than 23 days the explosion—caused by a star running out of fuel and blowing up—was visible in the sky. For several hundred nights after the event the supernova remained visible in the sky. Stargazers around the world commented on the extraordinary celestial event, but Europe fell strangely silent. As far as contemporary historians were concerned, it never happened. Some have speculated that it was deliberately erased from history for religious reasons. But perhaps some hint of the censored event slipped through the cracks. A team of scholars claim to have discovered evidence of the mysterious event hidden in the symbols on a limited-edition gold coin.

The supernova event known as SN 1054 made proverbial headlines around the world. The first naked-eye sighting during the daytime was recorded on July 4, 1054, in East Asia. By mid-August the brightness of the explosion began to sharply decline, with the last nighttime sighting recorded on April 6, 1056. Astronomers in China, Korean, and Japan commented on the star and scholars have connected Native American paintings from Arizona, an Anasazi petroglyph from New Mexico, and Aboriginal oral traditions to the event.

But in Europe, most agree, the archival evidence is negligible. The celebrated astrologer Ibn Butlan, who was in Constantinople during the explosion, only reported it once he had left his well-compensated position and returned to Cairo. Part of the reason for Europe’s silence on this event, scholars have speculated, was the theological problems that astrology and the star represents. Europe was not always silent on astrological events—SN 1006 was recorded in numerous documents—but clearly there was something different about this potential portent.

Perhaps the solution lies in the complicated political and religious situation of the time. July 1054 was a busy time for European Christians. The church was torn apart by the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Churches (what are, today, known as the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches). The schism, which was centuries in the making, is usually dated to July 16, 1054, when three papal legates excommunicated the Eastern Patriarch Michael Cerularius. The timing of the excommunication corresponds to the period when the supernova would have been most visible in the morning sky.

In a recently published article in the European Journal of Science and Theology, and reported on by Livescience, an international team of scholars examined a set of small coins minted during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX. Most of the coins show the head of the emperor accompanied by a single bright star, but one set shows him flanked by two. The emperor’s head they argue, represents the sun. The eastern star is a reference to Venus (or the Morning Star) and the second star is a cipher for the supernova. Going further, they suggest that subsequent minting of this two-starred limited-edition coin may actually show the star’s light waning over time.

The study’s authors explore the possibility that the double-starred coin represents a cryptic interpretation on the Great Schism. Perhaps, they suggest, “the eastern star represents the stable and well-known Venus and the Eastern Orthodox Church, while the western star represents the short-lived ‘new star’ and the ‘fading’ Western Catholic church.” That’s a strong message that would not have gone over well with Church leaders in the West. There was, thus, a need for discretion. While, as Collins, Claspy, and Martin noted in an earlier study, “this [kind of] argument is largely circumstantial, it does provide a basis for understanding the lack of subsequent reference to the supernova of A.D. 1054 in the largely clerical European literature” of the time.

[AnBr]

Sept 19, 2022 20:07:07 GMT LFC said:

This example is not about American Christianity but rather very old but still Western Christianity and it's long war with reality. I have read Dreher's past defenses (before he literally went insane and became entirely untethered from reality) of orthodox religion and for me he just seemed to avoid how orthodoxy naturally seems to direct itself against any inconvenient reality. This is just another example in a very long list, though admittedly a very old one.

arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2103/2103.13290.pdf

[LFC]

Gee, look! A Christian leader pedophile who was able to commit crimes for decades. I'm shocked. I can't imagine that anybody around him would have tried to cover it up.

To the outside world, Don Ogden, founder of the music department at Grace College & Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana, was a charismatic and beloved Christian leader, husband and father.

When he died at age 88 on June 27, 2015, a publication of the private Christian college known as 289 described Ogden as a passionate family man who “loved being a servant of the Lord” most of all.

The twice-married father of three who founded Grace College’s department of music in 1950 and served as its chairman through 1987, was so passionate about music he reveled in “promoting the understanding and enjoyment of the music of ‘the masters,’ both secular and sacred.” He also championed the “preservation and meaningful use of great Christian hymnody,” the college said at the time.

But Ogden, who fathered two daughters and a son, and served a combined 42 years at two area churches, including the Winona Lake Grace Brethren Church, retired in 1993 after signs that he was hiding an ugly truth began to emerge.

The man who had declared that he "loved being a servant of the Lord" was also a serial sexual predator who had an attraction for sex with young boys, which he once allegedly likened to a “dentist that eats candy.” Ogden’s addiction was so deep that even at the age of 80, eight years before his death, he was still allegedly actively engaged in his predation.

A six-page statement with supporting evidence recently shared with The Christian Post by Ogden’s adult daughters, Diane and Kathleen, said they discovered in February 2021 that, along with his legacy in music, their father left behind an estimated 100 to 200 male victims of his predation.

They also accuse officials at Grace College and the Winona Lake Grace Brethren Church of mishandling his abuse out of fear they would disrupt the funding of their operations if a scandal about Ogden’s predation was made public.

I don't know their religious beliefs but it sure sounds like the daughters are more Christian than the leaders of the college or church. All they cared about was their reputation and their cash flow, not raped children.

[Bact PhD]

This is just utterly creepy. I can’t help wondering what these pastoral “accountability partners” do with the information…do they feel compelled to investigate for themselves? It would not surprise me one bit.

www.wired.com/story/covenant-eyes-anti-porn-accountability-monitoring-apps/

But Gracepoint did not leave the matter in God’s hands alone. At their next one-on-one the following week, Hao-Wei Lin says the church leader asked him to install an app called Covenant Eyes on his phone. The app is explicitly marketed as anti-pornography software, but according to Hao-Wei Lin, his church leader told him it would help “control all of his urges.”

Covenant Eyes is part of a multimillion-dollar ecosystem of so-called accountability apps that are marketed to both churches and parents as tools to police online activity. For a monthly fee, some of these apps monitor everything their users see and do on their devices, even taking screenshots (at least one per minute, in the case of Covenant Eyes) and eavesdropping on web traffic, WIRED found. The apps then report a feed of all of the users’ online activity directly to a chaperone—an “accountability partner,” in the apps’ parlance. When WIRED presented its findings to Google, however, the company determined that two of the top accountability apps—Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You—violate its policies.

[LFC]

Sept 22, 2022 20:08:31 GMT Bact PhD said:

This is just utterly creepy. I can’t help wondering what these pastoral “accountability partners” do with the information…do they feel compelled to investigate for themselves? It would not surprise me one bit.

[LFC]

What's that whole bible thing about logs / motes? Or is it beams / slivers?

avis prede #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦🌻🕊️
@iheartospreys
Replying to
@litzz11 and @jennycohn1

I screenshotted a search of just the words "youth pastor" a few days ago. I now tweet it at every wingnut I see on here screaming about public schools, Disney, drag shows ...

[Bact PhD]

Sept 30, 2022 16:19:01 GMT LFC said:

What's that whole bible thing about logs / motes? Or is it beams / slivers?

avis prede #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦🌻🕊️
@iheartospreys
Replying to
@litzz11 and @jennycohn1

I screenshotted a search of just the words "youth pastor" a few days ago. I now tweet it at every wingnut I see on here screaming about public schools, Disney, drag shows ...

Sadly, I don’t doubt that listing for one second. Although most major Christian bodies have safeguards in place to keep the crazies out of the ranks of the ordained, alas those safeguards are not foolproof. Moreover, the position of “youth minister” tends to attract a couple of different types:
(1) (RARE) Recently ordained individual in their first position after seminary training/Seminarian well along in the ordination process (and has cleared many of the hoops)
(2) Hustling college kid who likes working with teens and getting paid gas money for the job
(3) College kid/young adult exploring a possible call to ordained ministry
(4) Kooks looking for an easy opening to get to their “prey.”

Unfortunately, most youth pastors fall into Category 2 or Category 3, which means the clearing process, while far improved versus decades ago, is still between minimal and nonexistent (far less stringent than for those seeking ordination), giving plenty of leeway to those in Category 4.

[LFC]

Another "pastor" scumbag.

A former Citronelle pastor was back behind bars Tuesday night after he was indicted on child sex abuse charges.

Investigators said Gregory Adams lured young women in his churches and sexually abused them, dating back decades ago.

The 64-year-old was first taken to Metro Jail14 months ago. According to court documents, Adams was indicted on three counts of sodomy, two counts of sexual abuse, and three counts of rape.

Mobile Police said he started abusing four young girls when they were around 12 years old and into their 30s, adding he preyed on victims in both his churches in Citronelle and Waynesboro.

More details from last year.

Court testimony revealed a Citronelle pastor raped children as young as 12 and told his victims he chooses who goes to heaven or hell.

Gregory Renee Adams, 63, was arrested at the end of July and is charged with three counts of rape first-degree, two counts of rape second-degree, three counts of sodomy first-degree, and two counts of sexual abuse.

Four victims have come forward. The alleged crimes span back decades.

The Mobile Police Department alleges Adams met his victims through churches within Citronelle and Waynesboro, Miss.

In court on Tuesday during his preliminary hearing, an investigator with the Mobile Police Department detailed how he started raping one of his victims from the time she was 12-years-old until she was 24.

The sexual abuse and assault would allegedly take place in his home as well as in the victim’s home.

Another one of his victims, who was also 12, said she was staying the night at Adams’ house before a missionary trip to Arkansas when the first sexual assault occurred.

A third victim alleges she was a parishioner at Adams church and met him during her adult years. She claims Adams is the father of her child and had unwanted sexual intercourse with him.

A fourth victim alleges she was friends with Adams’ children and was raped at his home.

The investigator detailed how Adams used his power as a pastor to make his victims fear him.

According to testimony, Adams told one of his victims if she didn’t have sex with him, God would strike her down with lightning.

Adams allegedly told his victims he chooses who goes to heaven or hell.

Testimony also revealed Adams used “holy oil” as lubricant to sexually assault some of his victims.

The investigators said it took years for the victims to come forward because they feared no one would believe them.

But yeah, let's all fear sexual predation and grooming from transsexuals and drag queens.