The International Small Town
On e-mail lists, I've met a number of great people that I've later gotten to know better via private e-mail or perhaps even a phone conversation. I've also made a lot of friends on the list I started with a few fellow Christian GNU/Linux users last year. It's small enough people can post a bit more about themselves there. However, for the most part, the people still feel distant. Personal web sites also seem somewhat distant, perhaps because they are often stale and non-interactive.
Blogging is different. I really feel like I “know” many of the bloggers on my blogroll even if I only know them through blogging. Through blog postings you sort of experience what the people are going through in a way that seems very different than other forms of remote communication. Comments and trackbacks also help in this respect.
It's interesting too how the different “communities” of the blogosphere form, perhaps that's part of the charm. It's like a small town. I might link to something Kevin or Christopher has to say or some such. Sometimes its just a link, sometimes it starts something much larger than just a link — such as Pressed's Southern Baptist posts that got me motivated to write on the UCC's current state (Part III is on the way).
Like a small town, when someone new “moves in,” word spreads pretty quickly. When Sophoristically Speaking launched, it took only a month or two for many blogs I read, and my blog, to link to it. While this happens in the web at large, it doesn't happen nearly as much. I posted stuff on my site when it was just a site and didn't have a blog, and it went largely unnoticed in the billions of pages on the internet. It was only entering the blogosphere, or more precisely, the small community of it that I'm largely in, that I really started to get interaction about what I posted.
By small community, I'm referring to the set of bloggers that I link to that largely link back and forth between each other. Like a small community, probably each “resident” knows people they border on that others in the community might not have met yet. For instance, Josiah “flickerfly” Richie's blog links mostly go to blogs outside of the community of bloggers I link to. But, as I link to stuff he mentions and vise versa (as he recently did on a post or two of mine), those communities come together to an extent like two small towns converging toward their borders.
Through this method, you get to meet a lot of great people. My personal experience with blogging began when Ciaran gave me this blogging script. I read his blog, but I didn't venture out into the blogosphere. Then another friend of mine, Kevin started a blog and slowly reading comments and visiting links I was “introduced” to bloggers he read, such as Christopher. From there I went on to run into Pressed, Le Renard, Susan and Katie, Tony, Justin (Sophorist) and others. In a reverse manor I met Jake and Owen (of the late gooddogbaddog.ca).
The interesting thing about this community within the blogospheres is that it may actually be more of a “virtual community.” In that there are no real boundaries, each blogger exists in a community that is slightly different than his neighbors. My “community” covers a slightly different region of the blogosphere than another blogger's community. I can't simply say “my blog is located in Blogosville.” To someone outside of the blogosphere, there is no community, only an incomprehensible number of blogs. However, once inside the blogosphere this “virtual community” forms between one's blog and the blogs of those who read and link back and forth to that blog. Certainly not a community in the sense we are use to in the physical world, but still strangely similar in many senses.
All of this is part of the nature of the blogosphere and makes blogging the interesting activity it is. I wonder — are different sectors of the blogosphere sort of forming a replacement for the small community that most of us no longer have the opportunity to live in? How will these “virtual communities” grow and change in the future? And most of all, are you thinking I'm off my rocker for talking about virtual communities at all?
Denominational Loyalty Ain't What It Use to Be
Copyright Gospel Communications International, Inc - www.reverendfun.com
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger and Tonto walked into a bar one day and sat down to
drink a beer. After a few minutes, a big tall cowboy walked in and said,
“Who owns the big white horse outside?” The Lone Ranger stood up,
hitched his gun belt and said “I do. Why?”
The cowboy looked at the Lone Ranger and said, “I just
thought you would like to know that your horse is just about dead
outside.” The Lone Ranger and Tonto rushed outside and sure enough,
Silver was about dead from heat exhaustion. The Lone Ranger got him some
water and made him drink it. Soon Silver was starting to feel better.
The Lone Ranger turned to Tonto and said, “Tonto, I want
you to run around Silver and see if you can create enough
of a breeze to make him start to feel better.” Tonto said, “Sure,
Kemosabe”, and took off running circles around Silver. Not able to do
anything but wait, the Lone Ranger returned to the bar to finish his
drink.
A few minutes later, another cowboy struts into the bar and announces,
“Who owns that big white horse outside?” The Lone Ranger stands again
and claims, “I do. What is wrong with him this time?” The cowboy says to
him, “Nothin' much, I just wanted you to know….you left your Injun
running.
In Memoriam
I felt like I should post something acknowledging today. I didn't have a chance to write a lengthy post, but perhaps that's not needed. Two years after 9/11, I still find it a sobering, saddening event. I mourn for the families of those who were lost. For those who were lost without having a personal relationship with Jesus. For the naïve innocence of our nation that has been lost. For the lives that have been lost in wars sprouting from 9/11.
Everything has, as it is often said, changed. Just today I heard a jet overhead that was especially loud and had a small, but persistant nagging that it could be another hijacked plane. On a less terrorist related level, the aftereffects of 9/11 threaten the very fiber of our nation politically as its terror is misused to push through legislation such as the PATRIOT Act in the gloomy days after the attack.
And most of all, all of those people who perished in such a horrid way. Oh, if only we could again live in the world of 9/10/01 and not 9/11.
Troubling Times Ahead
Due to legal documents XYZ Company has received via certified US mail that indicate XYZ Company and its customers may be liable for damages or licensing of intellectual property contained in the linux kernel, effective September 9, 2003, XYZ Company is no longer supporting any GNU operating system that uses the linux kernel. The linux@xyzcompany discussion mailing list is also permanently
discontinued.
I'm not sure if “XYZ Company” is looking for publicity about this, so I chose to change their name, however, the text is verbatim. This is just speculation, but my guess is that SCO has sent them notice as they expand their circle of litigation and they didn't feel like gambling on whether SCO was bluffing or not.
If that indeed turns out to be the case, this would signal a troubling new stage in SCO's campaign against GNU/Linux. It would show that SCO is moving down from top tier resellers to smaller, regional ones.
To be clear, after thorough analysis of SCO's case, most of those familiar with it agree that the case is really no case at all. The snippets they have released as a showcase of the code “illegally placed in Linux” turned out to be code SCO itself had authorized for reuse in virtually any way imaginable — including inclusion in Linux.
The question isn't who is right, but whether anyone can afford to stand up to the wrath of SCO, and their lawyer, David Boies (yes, that's the same Boies that represented Al Gore in the 2000 post-election fiasco).
Mmmm.... Dooouuggghhhhnnnnuuutttsss
Hmm, not bad, not bad at all. I was hoping to be either Original Glazed or Chocolate Covered whipped cream (not custard creme).
Original Glazed
What Kind of Krispy Kreme Doughnut Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
From Christopher.
Hymn of the Day: Be Thou My Vision
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul's Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.
Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.
High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.
The Demise of the UCC, Part 2: Crisis in the Church
The decision sent shockwaves through the Biblical Witness Fellowship, the UCC renewal organization that St. Paul's had been deeply involved in. With St. Paul's Sr. Pastor Mark Friz on the Fellowship's national board and St. Paul's Spiritual Council serving as the evaluation body for BWF scholarships, those involved with the BWF realized this was a major and serious move.
The disaffiliation process also caught the attention of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which did a half-page story on the subject the next day. St. Paul's was one of the largest churches in the UCC's Missouri Conference, but those watching the event rightly would see this as just one church in a growing trend to escape the collapsing denomination to avoid going down with it.
Heresy Spreads
Last time we worked up to the 80's in UCC History. In 1982, Dr. Theodore L. Trost, Jr., after considering the revision of the UCC's Book of Worship, wrote “Like Marcion of old, I'm afraid the UCC wants to rewrite the Christian faith in terms of here own current, ideological bias. But this is to wander into the sidepaths of Hersey. The tragedy of much that is included in these proposed Services (Book of Worship) is that their content further moves us into the map of sectarian Christianity and thereby destroys the unity of the Church.”1 (emphasis mine.)
By the middle 1980's, what had begun as the 1977 Sexuality Report had ballooned; one department of the UCC had been commissioned to “develop resources on human sexuality for use in local churches” and to “collect and continue to update information about the nature of human sexuality, including variations in sexual orientation and behavior, seeking to provide material appropriate for use with all age groups and making this information available for study by churches.”2
During the General Synod session in 1985, what was already clear to many would be made even clearer. The UCC was abandoning any semblance of Biblical morality, urging congregations to not only be open to, but also to affirm persons of lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientation. The member churches of the UCC were being softened for the onslaught that would occur in the 1990's.
By 1991, the UCC would recognize the “common ground” between its sexuality studies and that of the Unitarian Universalists, and the two groups convened the Human Sexuality Education Taskforce. Within just three decades of its founding, the UCC's views were beginning to take facets of the UU's beliefs, or lack there of.
The UCC's similarities with the UU wouldn't remain merely in the department of sexual morality. 1995 brought on the concept of “Deep Ecumenism,” promoted as the logical successor to the ecumenical movement between the mainline denominations. Deep Ecumenism moves from cooperation and recognition of other denominations into cooperation and recognition of other “faith traditions.”
Dr. Trost's 1982 letter would appear prophetical by this point as the UCC completely removed any attempt at remaining true to its biblical heritage and would now show its true colors in full. In the midst of this, those leading the UCC were warned that their current path would lead to accelerated decline within the denomination, which has lost churches every year since its formation in 1957, but the UCC leadership made it clear that it did not care.
The 90's would yield three immensely controversial and divisive publications: The New Century Hymnal, as well as the Affirming Persons and Our Whole Lives Sunday School materials. Affirming Persons was published in 1994 targeted at every age level of children's' Sunday School.
This material effectively demonstrates the moral decay of the UCC. Here are a few excerpts from the 5-6 grade materials (10-11 year olds), some of this is a bit more graphic than I'd normally post on my site, so you may want to skip over these quotes.
The introduction to the materials for 10-11 year olds:
“This is, in many ways, the pivotal Learning Series of the entire Affirming Persons-Saving Lives curriculum. Children in this age group are on the brink of a dramatic expansion of their world, which promises new experiences, increasing independence and a variety of relationships, possibly including sexual relationships.”
Then here are some excerpts of what the Sunday School teacher is suppose to say and do:
“Tell the children: 'When people talk about 'sex' it can mean a lot of different things. People can have sex with someone else or have sex with themselves.”
“Write the term 'sexual intercourse' on the newsprint. Then say: 'Usually, when people talk about 'having sex' or 'making love,' they are referring to two people being sexual with each other in a way that involves genital contact. This is called 'sexual intercourse.' Sexual intercourse means being sexual with another person in a way that involves the genitals—the penis or the vagina.'
“Forms of Sexual Intercourse: Tell the children '…There are three forms of sexual intercourse.' Write the term 'vaginal intercourse' on the newsprint … Vaginal intercourse means contact between the male penis and the female vagina. This is also the way human beings reproduce and make babies.
“Write the term 'oral intercourse' on the newsprint. Then say: 'another form of sexual intercourse is oral intercourse … Oral refers to the mouth or tongue. So, oral intercourse is contact between the mouth and the genitals. … sexually active people may use their mouths for kissing and for engaging in oral intercourse.' ”
“Write the term 'Anal Intercourse' on the newsprint. Then say: 'Anal intercourse means contact between the penis and the anus or rectum … Both men and women may engage in anal intercourse … some of these behaviors may seem strange to you now, but there are many different ways that two people can express their sexuality with each other. Sexual partners have the right to choose how they will express their sexuality in private.
Keep in mind, this is material targeted at pre-teens and is “Sunday School material.” Of course, this fits with the “whatever feels good” mentality of the secular humanists. I emphasize this is very real material coming out of the UCC and not materials that were just being considered.
Perhaps even more controversial, since it would be hard to miss its impact, whereas some might be unaware that their church had started Affirming Persons, is the New Century Hymnal (NCH), released in 1995. The hymnal project was a large scale production, which was not, to the best of my knowledge, based on any previous E&R or UCC hymnals. In fact, one might even wonder if it was based on any existing hymns — perhaps that's an exaggeration, but not much of one.
Reading the UCC's own description of the NCH makes clear that the intentions of the Hymnal were quite agreeable with the so-called “re-imaging” movement. “The only hymnal released by a Christian church that honors in equal measure both male and female images of God,” the information proudly proclaims. Hmm… why would it be that no other Christian churches have hymnals that honor both male and female images of God? It couldn't possibly be because the Bible clearly illustrates that God is male, could it?
According to the Biblical Witness Fellowship, “We found 304 of the NCH hymns in other hymnals. Often the words were so changed that we could only find them using the tune indexes, not by first line.” The report on the NCH continued, “Of these 304 traditional hymns, 45 were unchanged or virtually unchanged. 259 had significant word changes.”
The BWF report also includes excerpts from some of the hymns. Here are a few of the quotes:
#560 - By Whatever Name We Call You — “By whatever name we call you Fashioner of spheres, you are grander, so much wiser than our minds perceive. Labels limit understanding, God, you have no peers. So, we question - changing, growing - wanting to believe.”
#11 - Bring Many Names — “Strong mother God, working night and day, planning all the wonders of creation, setting each equation, genius at play … .”Old, aching God, grey with endless care, calmly piercing evil's new disguises, glad of good surprises, wiser than despair …”Young, growing God, eager, on the move, saying no to falsehood and unkindness, crying out for justice, giving all you have …”
The BWF also provides a full text comparison of How Great Thou Art and its “replacement” in the New Century Hymnal, known as “O Mighty God, When I Survey in Wonder.” I encourage you to read the mutilation of How Great Thou Art and the rest of the NCH saga on the Biblical Witness Fellowship's web site.
Sadly the UCC's activities are more than just talk and publication. I have heard reports from around the country of terrible heresies taking place in United Church of Christ churches. One person told me that in his former church they invited a Native American “witch doctor” to summon good spirits and the like. A elderly couple at our church came to my church after being kicked out of their UCC church by the pastor for voicing concern over the New Century Hymnal, after attending that church all of their lives.
And then there is the issue I mentioned in passing — re-imaging. The UCC has supported the Re-imaging Conference in the Minnapolis/St. Paul, which promotes goddess worship. UCC sponsored events, including this year's Synod, have had the central theme of worshiping “Mother Nature.” The UCC has taken hold of Sophia worship too, going so far as to have seminars in which communion was replaced with bread and honey, which is more traditional of goddess worship.
This year's synod's symbol was the “Earth Mother” (Gaia). That might have been bad enough, but the order of “worship” for the first day was also arranged to recognize the “feminine” side of God. I feel filthy just writing such blasphemous statements, even if I am only quoting what they are saying. One hymn's words include the reference to “mother earth and father sky” — if the UCC thinks Greek mythology is so great, why don't they just admit it and become Hellenistic polytheists.
The UCC has also promoted and, to the best of my knowledge, fully agrees with the opinions of the infamous Jesus Seminar. Even liberal pastor friends of mine cringe at some of the opinions of the Jesus Seminar!
Yet, this is where the UCC is. Sadly, the UCC is hurdling forward with extreme inclusitivity. In the process, the UCC has become a massive political machine attempting to support and promote the ideology of the far left. The UCC has condemned those who support a ban on partial birth abortion. The UCC compared American troops in Iraq to a Nazi occupation. The UCC is even fighting against using Federal Funds to repair the church were Paul Revere hung his lantern, lest the secularization (oops… I mean separation) of church and state be “damaged.”
While many organizations are pressing against the orthodoxy and even neo-orthodoxy of Christianity, few have done so to the extent of the United Church of Christ. One joke that has circulated among Unitarians suggests that UCC really stands for “Unitarians Considering Christ.” While it is a joke, it is hard not to see the truth in it. As official beliefs go, the UCC's main theological difference with the Unitarians would have to be the remnants of Trinitarian belief. Yet, as the denomination seeks to find new, inclusive language even for the Trinity itself, I wonder how long even that will remain within the beliefs of the UCC.
While I hate to say it, I honestly wonder how long we can continue to consider the UCC Christian rather than classifying with other “almost Christian” faiths such as Mormonism and Russelism (Jehovah's Witnesses). While a big difference that some evangelicals remain in the UCC, at least as far as official positions go, there is increasingly small common ground between the UCC and Biblical Christianity.
The denomination of my youth, I am sad to say, fits all the requirements of a non-Christian cult. While I pray for restoration and reformation, I fear it might be too late. The denomination, or whatever it is now, has become a liability for those evangelicals still in it and for seekers who do not realize its increasingly anti-Christian theology.
That is why 92.5% of the congregation at St. Paul's realized our time in the UCC was over. With that, St. Paul's became the second largest church up to that point to leave the UCC. In my next post I'll consider others who have left and what has formed around them to support such churches.
1 “BWF - 25 Years of Prophetic Witness.” The Witness, 12. Summer 2003.
2 From the UCC Our Whole Lives web site, http://www.ucc.org/justice/owl/chrono.htm.
Are You A Conservative Christian?
A site called the “Internet Monk” raises some thought provoking questions on the faith-political merger that is a “Conservative Christian.” In particular he wonders if we spend more time listening, reading and watching conservative news and opinion sources than we do studying and applying Scripture. OK, I'll admit it, I've definitely been guilty of that sometimes!
This guy hits the nail on the head concerning a number of issues, I think. First, while we should be interested in politics, they aren't the end all be all or shouldn't be (and while he doesn't say this, the question I have asked myself — especially since the Iraqi conflict started this spring — is, am I more worried about my particular political ideology being spread or the Gospel being spread?). In many cases politics are essential and we should deal with them to keep our freedoms (which in turn allow us to spread the Gospel), but we should also make sure they don't become our “Ultimate Reality,” in other words, we don't want them to become an idol.
Secondly, its nice to see someone speak out against Bill O'Reilly. Here's a guy who has called pro-family and pro-life advocates “fanatics.” He's compared these people, such as former homosexual Stephen Bennett of Stephen Bennett Ministries, to the radical fringes of Islam. He got upset with one interviewee, I think it was Jerry Falwell, for insisting that Christ is the only way to receive salvation. This guy might be a fiscal conservative, but he is very liberal on many social issues, and it is sad to see Christians endorsing the guy as he rips apart Evangelical Christianity.
My only big beef with the article was on his comments about Rush's theological views. I could be off base, but from what I've read in his books and elsewhere, I think Rush is a Christian. The cows will still probably come home before Rush starts having a Bible verse of the day on the EIB Network, however.
Anyway, I thought this article was interesting. I'm not going to drop politics. I'm still going to listen to Rush Limbaugh when I can (I haven't be able to lately). However, I thought it was a thought provoking article and well worth a few minutes to ponder.
Exploratory Committee
I've decided to form an exploratory committee to decide if I should try to go for the write-in vote on the California Recall Election. I figure the whole thing is so fractured as is, a write-in candidate might have a chance. To get things started, I've got my good ol' BSEC campaign sign back up.
Not bad, huh? Maybe if word gets around, I'll even get my own burrito.
