Several years ago Susan Sontag, darling of the intellectual Left, said, "The white race is the cancer of humanity."
A few years later, after God struck Ms. Sontag with cancer, her views of the use of that illness as a pejorative changed. But her disdain for her own race may, for all we know today, remain the same. If so, she has lots of company.
It is difficult for adults and impossible for students to escape descriptions of both historical and contemporary events without being told that it is all the fault of Caucasians - but not all Caucasians.
The slave traders of Islam are not psychoanalyzed or held aloft to scorn; the harem-masters of India and the evils of their caste system are barely recognized. The age-old indifference of the Orient to the value of individual life is seldom, if ever, the subject of indignation meetings; the sectarian wars of the Middle East are not eternally reviewed as evidences of religious fanaticism.
But Christian Caucasians are fair game. They are held uniquely responsible for the evils of the past. Their detractors are so numerous in contemporary Britain that The Spectator now refers to "the Race Industry" - in referring to professional monitors of behavior and association, whose livelihoods rely upon unearthing and prosecuting cases of discrimination and bias. Britain now has laws against openly prejudicial statements or actions - laws which might be beneficial if they were not applied only against Caucasians.
This pecularity in British justice has been explained to students as only fair, because Britain is dominated by Caucasians. And, it is argued, since Caucasians are responsible for the condition of the realm, only Caucasians should be prosecuted, fined and jailed for discrimination. All Britain's minorities, in other words, are victims by definition - and cannot be held guilty of violating the human rights of others, because whatever they do is done in reaction to a basically evil system.
This argument, which is echoed in American elite circles, in our courts and by our government, is not limited to the United Kingdom and the United States: it has swept the English-speaking world and its allies. It takes a variety of forms - almost all invidious and reeking with Caucasian self-hatred. For instance, there has long been a campaign against apartheid in South Africa which holds that such a system is the greatest evil in the world. Certainly it is not a good system. It is to be regretted that the Afrikaners and the English settlers in South Africa ever instituted or allowed such a system to develop. But we are now witnessing a progressive dismantling of that system and there is every reason to believe that it will fall of its own weight as the majority of South Africans rise in terms of education and living standards - and in Christianity.
We say Christianity, because it is the only faith that accepts all men, of all races, from all geographical locations and from all walks of life - irrespective of lines of descent, language, color, culture and past behavior - as worthy of equal rights.
It was because of their faith that Caucasian Christians stopped the Amerindians of Central America from conducting their enormous human sacrifices, who ended the Hindu practice of forcing widows to sit in the midst of flames that consumed the cadavers of their husbands, who halted the slave practices of Black Africa, who lifted (though briefly) hideous despotisms in many parts of the Orient.
Even in the United States, where Christian Caucasians are subjected to seemingly endless sneers about their religion, their color, their forbears, their manners and appearance, their customs and rituals, hundreds of thousands of Caucasian Christians sacrificed their lives in a great Civil War to free black people from slavery.
Yet their descendants, and the descendants of other Christian Caucasians whose immigrant parents helped make this nation the most creative and altruistic so far seen on earth, are subjected to incessant charges that they are uniquely racist and unworthy of respect.
If such charges came only from non-Caucasians they could be more easily seen as prejudice. But the basic arguments were invented by Caucasians. And today we have many Christian Caucasians who pride themselves on loathing their own kind.
These intellectual masochists decry the Christian Caucasians of South Africa, while tacitly approving the black government of Zaire, headed by Mobutu. Mobutu is now one of the richest men in the world, with a fortune estimated at $7 billion. The condition of the miners of Zaire is pathetic. Their wages are among the lowest; the dangers to which they are exposed among the highest. The people of Zaire are dirt-poor, and have little prospect of early improvement.
But neither our State Department nor our Christian Caucasian liberals are indignant over Zaire or Mobutu. They tacitly approve this horrid government because it is black. The blacks of South Africa may have the highest living standards of any black people in all black Africa - but they are governed by Christian Caucasians. And that is held to be unjust beyond words.
Much the same can be said for the rest of black Africa, which is on the edge of a great tragedy. Disease, starvation, tyranny, urban and rural collapse, desertification -- every definition of catastrophe applies to independent black Africa. Yet no films appear, no fashionable novels decry, no musicals are mounted, no boycotts launched -- for all the evils are committed by non-Christian non-Caucasians -- and it is only Christian Caucasians who can be safely made targets of indignation.
The atrocities of Cambodia; the wholesale murders in China; the wreckage of Lebanon and the renewed burning of brides in India do not, singly or in the aggregate, call for condemnation. No groups hold special seminars; no college courses dwell upon the imperfections of other races in other times and climes. Other races can torture and rampage at will, without fear that their origins will be insulted by our professors, or agitate our high-minded into protest parades.
Only Caucasian Christians remain objects of contempt by their own intellectuals, and by the intellectuals of all other groups in this land. Some term this Reverse Racism, but there is no reverse about it: it is simple racism.
The average Christian Caucasian does not, of course, believe such nonsense. Silence, in this instance, does not mean consent. But the elite, both Christian and non-Christian in the Caucasian-led societies of the West, appear adamant in pursuing the proposition that Caucasians are uniquely evil.
The root of the term suicide is in Latin, and means self-murder. Self-murder is murder. That is why suicide is both a sin and a crime in Christian theology. A self-murderer has succumbed to the unforgivable sin of despair, which means loss of faith in God.
A society that accepts suicidal beliefs about itself is, in effect, committing suicide; succumbing to despair. When such a mood overtakes an elite, it means that the elite is in the act of removing itself from leading in the future, for suicide ends the future.
Some non-Christians may welcome this prospect, in the belief that the world would be well rid of Christian Caucasians, but such a view would be to misread both history and our times. No race has brought more blessings to humanity than the Caucasian; none is more essential to the continued progress of world humanity. That Caucasian self-haters are not limited to Christians is proven by such persons as Susan Sontag and those for whom she writes.
Without Christians there would be no chance for long-range survival by minorities in our midst. The pre-Christian world of the ancients knew only conformity or death. The non-Christian societies of the Orient and the Marxists have restored similar tyrannies.
Stirring hatred against Christian Caucasians has had, however, unintended side-effects. It has envenomed our society and led to what Rushdoony has unforgettably called The Politics of Guilt and Pity. This has led to racial and ethnic quotas, "Affirmative Action" programs, vexatious litigation, unjust trials, dislocations, riots and ill-will. These are only some of the results of high-minded hatred against an entire race whose members are not, by any stretch of the term, Christians. But Ms. Sontag, for instance, is not immune from anti-Caucasian hatred simply because she shares it.
Self-hatred in our Academy, some mainline churches and parts of the cultural/governmental sector is a sign of intellectual senility at the top. Our elite looks forward to death rather than to life.
Fortunately millions, invisible to the media and government alike, are experiencing Christian rebirth. A generation is now visible on the horizon that will, in the foreseeable future, take the helm of our civilization. Composed of every race, assured by God of eternal life and eventual victory, it will lead all the world away from racism, despite the self-haters.
Although the word "salvation" is usually restricted to theological discussions, it is all the same a concern of all men, i.e., how to solve problems and make society a healthy and harmonious order. A variety of solutions, or plans of salvation, have been offered: philosopher-kings, economic doctrines, sexual arrangements, and more. One of the most popular salvation doctrines of the 20th century has been education, mass education as the means of social salvation. This hope is still with us, but is fading steadily.
Basically, the difference between all these plans of salvation and Christianity is this: these non-Christian hopes believe that the problem is not in man but in something outside of him, in his environment, family, heredity, schooling, or some like external factor. Thus, to change man, you first change the world around him. The most logical and thorough-going expression of this faith is revolution. It is held that the transformation of man must begin with the radical transformation of his social order. Then man will himself be changed. Liberation theology is the application of this faith within the church: change the world, it is held, and then man can become a Christian. This is the same faith set forth by the tempter to Jesus in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11).
Biblical faith holds the contrary view. For Christianity, man must be changed by the sovereign grace of God through Jesus Christ. Then the changed man can change the world. Salvation cannot come to man nor to society apart from Christ's atonement and His regenerating power. The dynamics of society are from God to man to the world.
In recent years, there has been a growth within the church of revolutionary ideas. The power of God unto salvation has been abandoned in favor of the power of revolutionary action unto salvation. We have already cited liberation theology as a proponent of this anti-Christian doctrine.
Another common application of the revolutionary premise is the tax revolt, that concept so much loved by Karl Marx, who understood its meaning. The excuse is the godlessness of the state. But Jesus Christ and Paul lived under men like Tiberius and Nero; they lived in a time of unjust taxation, abortion, homosexuality, and more. Neither our Lord nor St. Paul counseled a tax revolt. Rather, as against the tax revolts of their day, they counseled tax-paying (Luke 20:19-26; Rom. 13:7). Not revolution, but regeneration is the Christian hope for man and society.
In 1988, another revolutionary ploy became the methodology of many churchmen, the demonstrations at abortion clinics designed to violate the laws of picketing and protest and ensure arrest for impeding access. It is questionable whether or not these demonstrations saved the lives of any unborn babies: the women seeking abortions simply went elsewhere. Even more, the demonstrators set a precedent in violating civil laws of various sorts. What is to prevent pro-abortion people from blocking access to churches, or even entering them to disrupt services? If we allow lawless protest to one side, we justify it for all.
No Scriptural justification is offered by these demonstrators. The closest thing to a text to justify them is Acts 5:29, the answer of Peter and the other apostles, "We ought to obey God rather than men." What does this mean, however? There is no civil government anywhere which does not disobey God at some points, and, for that matter, there are no perfect churches either. The best of churches fall short of perfect obedience. Are we then justified in obeying only when we believe God's Word is faithfully observed? Then are those around us or under us entitled to rebel against our authority whenever they feel we fall short of or neglect God's Word? Nothing in Scripture gives warrant to that. David's respect for Saul, despite Saul's sin, gives us another model.
Where freedom of God's Word in the church, its schools, its families and members is denied, then we must obey God, not the state. We do not disobey to save our money nor even our lives but where God's Word and its proclamation is at stake.
The moral anarchy which revolutionists advocate is being brought into the church by some men. Not surprisingly, they impugn the Christian character of those who criticize them, men such as Dr. Stanley, and Rev. Joseph Morecraft III.
To believe in the efficacy of violence to change society means to abandon peaceful means. Not surprisingly, peaceful, legal action is being neglected. A pro-abortion justice on the U.S. Supreme Court has said that, in a new case, abortion would lose. Such a case would require much funding and highly competent legal help. The money to do this is being spent in sending people from one end of the country to the other to take part in demonstrations, to bail them out of jail, so on.
The methodology of such demonstrations has been borrowed from non-Christian and revolutionary sources. From one end of the Bible to the other, no warrant can be found for this methodology. To use ungodly means is a way of saying that God's grace and power are insufficient resources for Christian action. It means abandoning Christ for the methods of His enemies.
Such methodology can be effective, but not for the triumph of grace. When the leaders of the people wanted to force Pilate's unwilling hand, they assembled a mob to demonstrate before Pilate and to shout down all protest, screaming, "Crucify Him" (Mark 15:13).
There is a long history of injustice at the hands of mobs. There is no Christian calling to create mobs and to violate laws to achieve a purpose.
The sad fact is that, once we adopt a position, the logic of that faith carries us forward. Thus, I am finding that those who approve of demonstrations, and of the violation of the properties of abortion clinics, find it easy to justify violence against the property (bombing) and against the persons who are abortionists (which means murdering them).
The power to punish murders is a civil power, not an ecclesiastical nor a personal one. Just as we must believe that the spheres of the church and of the family should not be violated by the state, so we should avoid trespassing on the state's sphere. The early church faced many evils in the civil sphere: abortion, slavery, and more. Paul spoke against a revolutionary move against slavery but counseled the use of lawful means (I Cor. 7:20-23). The early church took a strong stand against abortion and disciplined severely all who were guilty of it. It organized its deacons to rescue abandoned babies (who had not been successfully aborted earlier), and it took strong stands without ever suggesting violence.
Humanism gives priority to man and the will of man over God and His Law-Word. If we place saving babies above obedience to God, we wind up doing neither the born nor the unborn any good, and we separate ourselves from God.
It is amazing how many people on all sides of issues are so prone to violence as their first and last resorts. They believe, when they see a serious problem, in taking to the streets, getting their guns, fighting the Establishment, and so on and on, without even using the many peaceable means which are at hand. For them, violence is not a last resort when all other means have been exhausted, but a first resort. Instead of providing answers, resorts to violence mean the death of a civilization. The use of violence, whether by Christians or non-Christians, is a way of saying that voting, the law courts, mean nothing, or, that faith and the power of God are irrelevant to the problems of our time.
The resort to revolution or to revolutionary tactics is thus a confession of no faith; it means the death of a civilization because its people are dead in their sins and trespasses. They may use the name of the Lord, but they have by-passed him for "direct action." In doing so, they have forgotten that since Day 1 of creation, all the power and the direct action are only truly in God's hands. By assuming that everything depends on their action, they have denied God and His regenerating power.
And they have forgotten our Lord's requirement: "Ye must be born again" (John 3:7). Regeneration, not revolution, is God's way.
Not since the 1960s has America been beset with so many social crises. The relative calm of the 1990s has given way to a train of national handicaps such as war, immigration, natural disasters, and rising fuel prices. People are frustrated. They are concerned about the state of a country that appears to be fading under the intense rays of national tribulation....
But, an even greater social divide is now looming large. It is the debate over the religious identity of America. On one side are the Christian nationalists -- revisionists bent on redefining America as a Christian nation. They refer repeatedly to the religious intent of the founding fathers as a buttress for a contemporary campaign to legislatively convert America.
Remember, a few weeks ago, when NEA President Reg Weaver told reporters that the teachers' union had "no policy" on homosexual "marriage"? Remember how, heading into the NEA's annual convention, he denied reports that the union would formally endorse "gay marriage"?
He lied.
The convention not only voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution endorsing same-sex unions, but also recommended that teacher training, in the future, should ensure that new teachers support the homosexual agenda (see the news story). The delegates also voted to replace the word "tolerance" with "acceptance" in all NEA policies dealing with homosexuality issues.
So it's official: America's largest public school teachers' union whole-heartedly supports redefining marriage, and means to see to it that all new teachers coming up should feel the same.
Can Christian teachers, in good conscience, continue to belong to this union, and support its pro-sodomy activities with their dues?
Can Christian parents, in good conscience, continue to send their children to public schools largely staffed by members of this union, pledged to support the march of sodomy?
The NEA uses, and will continue to use, the public schools as an instrument of social change, Gomorrah-style. They've been advertising themselves as "change agents" for almost a century.
We have all seen millions of Christians, taking their children with them, leave churches (the PCUSA comes immediately to mind) that have decided to espouse the same ideology promulgated by the NEA. Why are they so slow to leave the public schools? It may be said that a church should be held to a higher standard than a school (unless, like us, you believe God's standards should prevail everywhere). But in the case of NEA-dominated public schools, we're not talking about a lower standard, but an abysmal standard.
What more does the NEA have to do, to persuade you to take your children out of its schools?
I'm proud to announce the launching the R. J. Rushdoony podcast Our Threatened Freedom. These radio shows were recorded for a limited audience a number of years ago but they are filled with pertinent, relevant insights for today -- especially when freedom is under such a great threat.
The church began its history in the Roman Empire, in the midst of a Greco-Roman culture. Jerusalem itself reflected that fact and was richly subsidized by the emperors because of its strategic importance. Keeping Judea peaceful and happy was a basic policy. Judea's failure to appreciate its "privileges" led to the intensity of Roman vengeance during and after the war of A.D. 66-70.
The church was both influenced by that Greco-Roman culture and also hostile-to it. Herbert B. Workman, in Persecution in the Early Church (1906), noted: "By Roman theory the State was the one society which must engross every interest of its subjects, religious, social, political, humanitarian, with the one possible exception of the family. There was no room in Roman law for the existence, much less the development on its own lines of organic growth, of any corporation or society which did not recognize itself from the first as a mere department or auxiliary of the State. The State was all and in all, the one organism with a life of its own. Such a theory the Church, as the living kingdom of Jesus, could not possibly accept in either the first century or the twentieth." Many churchmen then as now tried to accommodate themselves to the sovereignty of the State or emperor rather than Christ. They were willing to confess, "Caesar is lord." Tlle church in part was preserved from absorption by Roman persecution. The intransigent, uncompromising Christians preserved the church by their refusal to compromise.
All the same, however, some things were absorbed, i.e., neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, asceticism, and the like. An important borrowing from Rome was organization and bureaucratization. Tlle church was in a very real sense a continuation of the synagogue, and in the Greek text of James 2:2, the word translated as assembly is actually synagogue.
The church, unlike the synagogue, was not only an Hebraic organization but it was essentially an organic body, a corporation: the body of Christ. Now the members of a body (i.e., hands, feet, etc.) do not hold office; they have functions. The words translated as office in the New Testament make this clear. For Romans 11:13, 1 Timothy 3:10 and 3:13, the word used is diakonia in Romans and diakoneo in Timothy. The word, in English as deacon means a servant, service, a function. In Romans 12:4, office in the Greek is praris, function. In Timothy 3: 1, it is episkope and its meaning is supervision or inspection to give relief or help. In Hebrews 7:5, the reference is to the Old Testament priesthood, hierateia, and refers to the sacerdotal function.
Thus, what we call church offices are in reality functions of the body of Christ in this world. This fact is very important. Offices lead to a bureaucracy and a ruling class, whereas functions keep a body alive.
In the early church also, we have no evidence of what is commonplace today, regular, stated bureaucratic meetings of presbyteries, synods, councils, bishops, etc. Instead, beginning with the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, the meetings were called to resolve a problem or meet a need. They were functional meetings, not organizational; they were aspects of the life of a body, not of a bureaucratic organization. They exercised no coercive power, but they did formulate questions and answers pertaining to faith and morals carefully and precisely.
Both Eastern and Western churches, and, in the West, Catholicism, Protestantism and Anabaptism, have developed great and powerful bureaucracies which impede the life of the church. Both church and state, and especially the state, suffer badly from bureaucratization and consequent constipation in their life. As a result, in the United States, many Protestants and Catholics have some home study groups which bring new life to their faith. In Edinburgh, Scotland, I found a remarkable charismatic church; it had purchased a large stone church closed by the Presbyterians and was the center of extensive ministries. But it had no membership list! Fearful of bureaucratic strangulation, it was keeping the church together as a faith bond in~ the Spirit rather than as an institution. While it is not necessary to go to such a length, clearly a corrective to emphasize function and life is urgently needed.
One of the consequences of bureaucratization in the church is the rise of the star system. This is certainly true also in other spheres, especially the state. People vote for presidents in terms of their "image" projection, not their faith and life, not their action. Most of the presidents of the earlier years of the United States would never be elected today. Lincoln is liked in retrospect. His high pitched voice, carelessness in dress, and much more, would today finish him after one television appearance.
The importance of the star system is necessary to understand. People want the star to epitomize what they want, or would like to be. They identify with the image he projects. Thus, some people feel that a prominent political leader, or a religious leader, is "entitled" to moral lapses because of his importance. In earlier times, such lapses were called the royal prerogative. The star must be the expression of the popular or common will, the general will.
In the church in the United States, the star system set in soon after churches began to move on the one hand into Unitarianism, and on the other, into Arminian revivalism. People gravitated towards powerful pulpiteers on both sides of the fence. The churches then began to take their life from the star: a star could bring in hundreds and even thousands of people, lead to a great church complex, attract people and money, and give the members the vicarious feeling of being part of a great church. This still is very, very much with us. Some people will simply say, "I want a church where the action is." By action, they mean crowds; the result is often a surrogate "Christianity," not a living faith.
The result too is spectator "Christianity," a star performing before hundreds and thousands. The mandate to believers in both numerically large churches as well as small is then reduced to being good spectators and contributors. For the surrogate "Christian," someone else expresses the faith and does the work. We have then what General William Booth called mummified church members.
The star system has had its shipwrecked stars over the centuries, men like Savanarola, Henry Ward Beecher, and others of more recent years, and the end is not yet. The star system tends to give, not life, but a form of life. As Paul says in 11 Timothy 3:5, some have the form of godliness but not the power thereol Instead, what the stars usually have is the power of money.
Paul tells us that we are "the church of the living God" (I Tim. 3:15). Jesus Christ declares that He is "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:4). The Trinity is never identified as the Great Bureaucracy but as life, the author of life, and more. For the church to identify itself in terms of its bureaucracy is a sorry fact.
If the church indeed is the Body of Christ, it must function as if it is alive. A dead church is a non-functioning church; it is salt which has lost its savor and is fit only to be cast out and trodden under foot by men (Matt. 5:13).
This is a grim possibility in our time. We cannot say that in all places the church today is dead, but in too many areas it is badly arthritic and feeble. Christ, the lord of life, commands us, saying, "I say unto thee, arise!" (May, 1988)
To combat clinical depression among British public school children, the UK Dept. of Education has decided to import American experts to teach British children how to be happy, The Independent has reported.
UK educators estimate that "at least 10 percent" of Britain's public school students are depressed. So they have turned for help to America--
This is like Mr. Bean going to Billy Joel for driving lessons.
To lead the project, the Brits have called on Professor Martin Seligman, University of Pennsylvania, widely hailed as "the father of positive psychology." Apparently Dr. Phil was not available.
"If it [Dr. Seligman's teaching] proves as successful as it has in the US, happiness classes could become part of the regular school timetable" in the UK, The Independent says.
American public education's menu features such happy innovations as "death education"--which was a factor in the Columbine High School massacre--school nurses handing out condoms to all and sundry, and liberal doses of Ritalin for all boys who don't know how to act like girls. We can certainly teach Britain the finer points of school shootings, carving your ex-boyfriend's initials into your bare leg with an X-Acto knife, and various exotic sex acts known only to the graduates of radical happiness programs like the Massachusetts Dept. of Education's 2000 "fisting" workshop (see Bruce Shortt, The Harsh Truth About Public Schools, "Fistgate," pgs. 77-78, Chalcedon Foundation, Vallecito, CA: 2004).
Meanwhile, Dr. Seligman and his crew will focus on revolutionary concepts like role-playing games, self-esteem, and special breathing exercises. If that doesn't work, there's always Oprah.
What happens if you flunk your happiness course? Won't that make you even more depressed?
Psychologists and psychiatrists have been tinkering with Western civilization for a good century or more, but no one has noticed any great rise in mankind's sanity, to say nothing of happiness. Instead, as a British study cited by The Independent shows,people have been getting more and more unhappy.
"Twenty-five years ago the average age people fell ill with depression was 30. Today this has fallen dramatically with 14 the age at which mental illness first strikes."
How can that be? Surely we have more psychologists, psychiatrists, grief counselors, and self-esteem programs than we had 25 years ago. It seems the longer these people work on the problem, the worse it gets. Would you keep hiring a plumber who made your pipes get leakier?
Happiness is a gift from God, and wisdom lies in accepting it. Children brought up without the knowledge of God--and they're not going to come by it in a public school, on either side of the Atlantic--will be severely handicapped in their quest for happiness.
If you want your children to be happy, don't send them to public school. Keep them at home, love them, raise and school them yourselves, and make sure they learn that "My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth" (Ps. 121:2).
Recent actions by the Presbyterian Church USA's 217th General Assembly have prompted some Bible-believing members to abandon hope of reforming their denomination.
The assembly did two things last month that may mean the end of the denomination, said John Adams, of the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
1. The assembly voted to allow congregations "to employ in teaching and in liturgy a variety of metaphors alongside the God-given names, 'Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.'" Metaphors like "Mother, Daughter, and Womb." It boils down, says the Lay Committee, to disobeying Christ's injunction, "Hallowed be Thy name," and breaking the Third Commandment by taking the Lord's name in vain.
2. The assembly also voted to allow PCUSA congregations to ordain as a minister virtually anyone--including persons openly having sex outside of marriage, practicing sodomites, and those who deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. "Every ordination standard may now be deemed optional," the Lay Committee said.
The committee's public statement accuses the assembly of breaking the covenant, and calls on faithful Christians to "rise to denounce this General Assembly's abandonment of the Church Universal" and "to challenge its seismic breaches of covenant."
"Reluctantly, and with deep sorrow, we conclude that current renewal efforts within the Presbyterian Church USA are not capable of reversing the denomination's plunge into apostasy... its sin is so systemic as to render it impervious to change from within," the statement says.
The Lay Committee will be holding meetings and discussions throughout the summer to decide where to go from here, Adams said. Factors such as pastors' salaries and benefits, and ownership of church property, will complicate the picture.
"I'm sure many good evangelicals will stay, and try again and again to reform the denomination," Adams said. "But I don't think the Lay Committee will try to do that anymore."
Adams predicted that the PCUSA's apostasy will drive it into extinction.
"We've already calculated a loss of 85,000 members over the next year," he said. "It's withering away piece by piece."
As the PCUSA and other mainline churches continue to melt away, "it is in just such times that Reformation and transformation break forth," the committee's statement says. "Even now--especially now--Jesus Christ is gathering his followers around his word. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, United Methodists and others whose denominational institutions have diluted or abandoned Biblical belief are turning away from decaying structures that have encumbered their witness, and they are turning toward the Lord Jesus, who alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life. In unison, we confess, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.'"
Okay, I'll have to admit that I feel a little silly writing about Superman, but my goal is to drive home the point that nothing is neutral — nothing is outside the Lordship of Jesus.
Superman was the creation of two Jewish kids from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They originally created him to be a newspaper comic strip character, but when it did not sell, they reformatted it and sold the idea to a publisher who was trying to put together one of the first comic books. When it first appeared, children all over the US absolutely loved it.[i] The problem with Superman, however, has little to do with his creators or his overwhelming acceptance by masses of children. The problem with Superman is with what he has become — a humanist substitution for Jesus, the Son of Almighty God. America's Superman is Nietzsche's "Uberman" which is translated overman or superman.
This statement, of course, will be denounced by many, but if it is, it is out of either ignorance or denial. Alvin Schwartz, who wrote Superman comic strips in the 1940's and 50's, is a metaphysical existentialist. Here is an excerpt from the back cover of his recent book An Unlikely Prophet : A Metaphysical Memoir by the Legendary Writer of Superman and Batman
Writer Alvin Schwartz received a great deal of attention from fans when he began talking publicly about his seventeen-year stint writing Superman and Batman comics. One of the individuals who contacted him was no ordinary fan, but a seven-foot Buddhist monk named Thongden, a tulpa or individual who was thought into being by a Tibetan mystic. Thongden put Alvin Schwartz on the Path without Form, an amazing journey he took in the company of Hawaiian kahunas, quantum physicists, and superheroes. Superman, as it turns out, is also a tulpa, a being created by thought that takes on a life of its own and, in Mr. Schwartz's words, is an archetype expressing the sense of nonlocality that is always present in the back of our minds—the capacity to be everywhere instantly. Superman is one of the specific forms that embodies our reality when we're at our highest point, when we're truly impermeable, indestructible, totally concentrated, and living entirely in the now, a condition each of us actually attains from time to time.
Alvin Schwartz's story is a personal journey through a lifelong remembrance of synchrony, inspiration, accident, and magic. As it unfolds it puts into vivid clarity the saving grace that inhabits every moment of our lives. The author travels as a stranger in a strange land, whose greatest oddity is that this land is our own.
ALVIN SCHWARTZ wrote both the Superman and Batman comics as well as many other comic-book titles during the 1940s and 1950s. He is the author of two philosophical novels, No Such Mirrors and The Blowtop, which was described by the New York Times as the first conscious existentialist novel in America. A recipient of the prestigious Canada Council Horizons grant, he has also written a number of screenplays and some thirty docudramas for the National Film Board of Canada. He lives in Ontario.
(emphasis added)
Whether you listen to the "Superman Returns" movie trailers, or read the recent article about the new movie and "The Myth of Superman" in the June 2006 issue of WIRED magazine, the language that is used is positively religious. Take this line from the trailer:
Jor-El (Superman's father) speaking: "They can be a great people Kal-El (Superman), if they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way. For this reason, above all for their capacity for good, I have sent you, my only son."
No doubt you see the blatant references to Christ:
John 1:9: "That was the true Light [Jesus], which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."
John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
The difference is also obvious, Superman is not sent to save them from their sins (in fact, in the movie "Superman Returns," Lois Lane tells Superman, "the world does not need a savior, and neither do I"). Superman's purpose is to show mankind the way to goodness, which is a humanistic idea. In other words, Superman was sent to show man how to achieve the goodness which is already in man.
We also can see the religious language in these excerpts from the article "The Myth of Superman." [ii]
"Superman transcends plot. We retell his tales because we wish he were here, real, to keep us safe."
"When the story appeared in the premiere issue of the anthology Action Comics, kids went crazy for it, as if there has always been a Superman-shaped hole in the world and it was now filled."
"Of course, baby Clark has a special destiny. He's literally empowered to be our salvation..."
"Superman stands between humanity and a capricious universe." (a naturalistic salvation).
"The few minutes of the film that outsiders have seen ... look good, a spiritual successor to the Richard Donner films from a quarter-century ago."
"We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence."
A humanistic savior is one who shows us how to save ourselves (a relativistic form of goodness) and/or saves us from the naturalistic universe (which is how humanists view science).
[i] Neil Gaiman & Adam Rodgers, "The Myth of Superman," WIRED July 2006 issue, pg. 158,159.
Perhaps the best evidence of how American history was rewritten, Soviet style, in the post-1865 era is the fact that most Americans seem to be unaware that "Independence Day" was originally intended to be a celebration of the colonists' secession from the British empire. Indeed, the word secession is not even a part of the vocabulary of most Americans, who more often than not confuse it with "succession." The Revolutionary War was America's first war of secession.
