PCUSA has a long history of siding with the communists
Posted Monday, February 27, 2006
Re: WCC/PCUSA
During the Cold War, I annoyed a number of PCUSA functionaries by asking for an example of U.S. military or foreign policy on which the church’s official position differed from that of the USSR.
Obviously, there were many instances where one party or the other had nothing official to say about it, or didn’t address it at all. But in the cases where both addressed the same issue, where did the PCUSA and the USSR party company? Never got an answer. Got some reproaches. One person at Louisville said I must have my mind made up in advance. I invited him to try to change it by giving me an example. No luck. Real surprise there.
Richard Aubrey
Those wishing to keep fidelity and chastity rule in Book of Order need to be organized
Posted Monday, February 27, 2006
I have a real concern as I reflect on how previous GAs worked with each presbytery getting to prosecute its overture before the committee dealing with it. Can you imagine what it will be like with 22 presbyteries giving their defense for each overture? Will any people outside the committee be given equal time to speak against the overtures? I hope that those of us who reject these moves to remove the fidelity and chastity rule from the Book of Order will be far more organized to present our position to the committee/GA.
Pastor Walter Hamer First Presbyterian Church , Monett, Mo.
Well spoken’
Posted Monday, February 27, 2006
How well spoken. Thank you Lt. Col. McCarty!! [letter to the editor, posted February 24, 2006] Chuck Larsen Minden, Neb.
If WCC has intellectual or spiritual honesty, it won’t take U.S. money
Posted Monday, February 27, 2006
If there were any intellectual or, dare I say, spiritual, honesty in the gathering of the WCC as it berates the United States, they should pass a motion that they will henceforth cash no checks coming to them from the United States. If my memory serves me correctly, the PCUSA contributes a large chunk of change to this miserable organization.
Think about it: They can be intellectually honest and not accept a dime from the hated capitalists!
Walter B. Funk Charleston, W.Va.
Didn’t God create us to be sociable and to love each other?’
Posted Monday, February 27, 2006
I appreciate what Brian Ahier [letter to the editor, posted February 20, 2006] shared in his own struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse. The basic problem is in how it seems to be popular to compare such an unfortunate affliction to LGBT persons. I’ve personally known people in my life that have struggled with addiction.
Mr. Ahier closes with this statement: “I have a good friend who is a homosexual. He needs the love of God and of God’s people just like I did back in those dark times. But the plain fact is that the only sexual relationship that God blesses is between a man and a woman in the bonds of matrimony. Anything else is sinful.”
OK, I have known people in dark times and try to reach out as best I can and shed some of God’s light. However, I have found it best to focus on the person’s reality rather than make comparisons to other struggles that may or may not have any relevance. Isn’t that what Jesus did was reach out to us where we were rather than make such simple comparisons?
It seems to me that the association between alcohol and drug addiction is very common among some in relationship to LGBT persons. Yet I fail to understand the connection. For those in the addiction and in recovery, for the most part, don’t expect the rest of society and the church to abstain from drinking or taking drugs legally? They obviously feel that there is some benefit or at least no detriment for some people engaging in such behavior.
My question is why should anyone relate this scenario to LGBT persons? It really has no relevance. And remember that LGBT persons are in relationships with real live people, not a synthetic drug devised by human kind. Didn’t God create us to be sociable and to love each other? Show me in the Bible where loving another person as much as one loves God is a sin.
Earl C. Apel, member Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church , Cincinnati, Ohio
A little theological ‘shock and awe’ is over due at PCUSA seminaries
Posted Monday, February 27, 2006
It is amazing how the power of truth leaps from the printed word! God bless Lt. Col. Michael McCarty! [letter to the editor, posted February 24, 2006] When you retire, ever think of going to seminary? How about one of the liberal PCUSA ones? A little theological “shock and awe” is over due.
Douglas Anderson Southlake, Texas
G-60106b is a product of confusion that exhibits neither faith nor logic
Posted Monday, February 27, 2006
Rev. Harrison makes some thoughtful and interesting points in his Feb. 16th letter, but even after repeated readings I cannot find the phrase “genital stimulation” in the text of G-60106b. I’m also wondering at Rev. Harrison’s distinction (if any) between “sexualization” and “eroticization.” All that is erotic is not sexual and all that is sexual is not erotic. What concerns me is not an increased sexualization but an increased sexualization combined with forces that disconnect, depersonalize and commoditize our relationships. The erotocization of personal relationships is by my understanding the breaking down of barriers that separate us, thereby connecting, personalizing decommoditizing, and ultimately bringing us closer to the Kingdom of God – while G-60106b in contrast serves the forces that separate and disconnect and perhaps counterintuitively makes both gender and genital stimulation the defining points of the holiness of a relationship.
I’m not confused, I’m making a conscious choice to personally set aside the distinctions that Rev. Harrison believes are in G-60106b as arbitrary and detrimental to the cause of Christ. Having had the misfortune to sit through several presbytery debates and discussions over this particular clause in the Book of Order, the best I can say is that the clause is a product of confusion that exhibits neither faith nor logic, and as such, cannot stand.
Christopher William Purdom, elder Tabernacle United Church
The notion that there are ‘other paths to God’ is unthinkable
Posted Friday, February 24, 2006
Re: Ritchie Jones, letter to the editor, posted February 23, 2006
So what you are saying is that the past incidents of “cooking the books” justifies the current “cooking the books?” I would say that both are a stench before God. For example: To even entertain the notion that there are “other paths to God” is so unthinkable for myself as a Christian. To make the claim that Christ did not have to suffer and die on the cross, that there was an “easier” way for salvation flies in the face of Scripture. What kind of God would allow his Son to go through what Christ did if there was another way?
Marc Karasek, elder Norcross, Ga.
WCC is populated with folks who have no sense of history
Posted Friday, February 24, 2006
And once again, our career bureaucrat-in-chief joins the “Hate America First” bunch. Clifton Kirkpatrick agrees with an open letter issued by a handful of U.S. delegates to the 9th Assembly of the WCC who are “ashamed of being Americans.”
No wonder 40,000 members a year of the PCUSA are voting with their feet. Here is what he “agreed with” on our behalf:
1. “US leaders’ turned a deaf ear to the voices of church leaders throughout our nation and world'” when they carried out their sworn duty to “insure domestic Tranquility [and] provide for the common defense” of the United States after we were sucker-punched by a pagan gang of thugs and cutthroats. In their strange little world, isolated from reality, it was the United States that “rain[ed] down terror on the truly vulnerable among our global neighbors.” I guess they were all asleep – or off in cloud cuckoo land – when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon erupted in flames on September 11.
2. We should be ashamed of the war in Iraq, which overthrew a corrupt and barbarous regime that had murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens – many through the use of poison gas and nerve agents – while sponsoring terrorism in the world. We should be ashamed of trying to spread American ideals of freedom and individual rights to a part of the world that is mired in 8th and 9th century despotism. We should be ashamed of trying to foster peace in a part of the world that has not known any lasting peace for millennia.
3. We are “guilty” of being rich while people of other nations are poor. The most generous nation in history, one that has shared its blood and treasure with the less fortunate for over a century, is, to these clowns, the sole source of “crushing poverty,” wherever it is found, HIV/AIDS, racism and “the grim features of global economic injustice.”
4. We are “seduced by the lure of empire” and powers of “violence, degradation, and poverty.”
It never ceases to amaze me that these wretched people, whom Cliff Kirkpatrick gleefully calls his own, have such a feeble grasp on history and reality. If we had wanted an empire, it would have been ours for the taking in 1945. Instead, we launched the Marshall Plan in Europe and took Japan from a feudal monarchy to a constitutional state in the space of a few years.
What has Cliff done to earn the rights of citizenship that he so obviously enjoys and takes for granted – freedom of speech, freedom to espouse his own warped religious views, freedom to hate his own country? What is it about his experience as a defender of his nation, one who donned its uniform and placed his life and sacred honor on the line, that makes him so eager to denounce our nation and his fellow citizens? Let’s consider his resume.
Ooops! Well, see, he had better things to do than actually serve his country, so he left that to others. He was too busy being a career denominational bureaucrat, one who has apparently never taken any position having accountability in service to his country, his community, or to the denomination. Note particularly the absence of service as a pastor of a congregation in which he would have been answerable to a session or congregation for his conduct.
He has served as stated clerk of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (USA); director, Worldwide Ministries Division (PCUSA); director, Global Mission Ministry Unit (PCUSA); director, Division of International Mission, General Assembly Mission Board (Presbyterian Church U.S.); executive director, Houston Metropolitan Ministries; executive director, Fort Worth Area Council of Churches; assistant director, Greater Dallas Council of Churches.
His sole claim to “civic” service may involve his membership in the “Advisory Committee, Americans United for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba:” his chairmanship of something called “Successful School Age Youth Community Investment Team;” and some unspecified “involv[ment] with United Way of Metro Louisville.”
Support for Cuba, a country so vile and despicable in its treatment of its people that hundreds try to flee it every year, is his claim to fame.
Our nation saved Europe in 1918, defeated fascism (which slaughtered tens of millions) in 1941-1945, defeated communism (which slaughtered more tens of millions) in the Cold War, all the while rebuilding shattered economies across the world. But Kirkpatrick agrees that we alone are to blame for the world’s ills. Ludicrous!
As one who served this nation in combat, who lost brave and noble young Marines who gallantly served their nation in the hope that a better world would result, I am sickened by this nonsense. As the father of a serving officer in the Air Force who is currently preserving Cliff’s right to spout such nonsense, I am appalled. As an elder and member of the PCUSA, I am sickened that he abuses his office and purports to speak for the denomination as a whole in such an irresponsible manner.
Lenin, another of those famous men of God that the WCC and its ilk look upon so favorably, is said to have called those mindless people in the Western democracies who would always find ways to excuse whatever the Soviet Union did “useful idiots.” Once again, the WCC has demonstrated that it is well populated with folks who have no sense of history and no firm footing in reality. With Kirkpatrick right there cheering them on, it has shown that it is happy to serve as an army of “useful idiots” for those despots and villains in the world who need to get the United States out of the way so that they can merrily oppress any who disagree with them.
Michael R. McCarty Lt. Col. USMC (ret)
Very little difference between the NCC and the Communist Party USA
Posted Friday, February 24, 2006
William Arthur [letter to the editor posted February 23, 2006] feels the WCC and NCC are left-wing political organizations. That’s nothing new! In 1962, St. Marks Episcopal Church in Shreveport, La., issued a report, the result of a serious study they had conducted. They found that there was very little difference (virtually none) between the positions of the NCC and the planks in the platform of the Communist Party USA! As a result, they demanded that the Episcopal Church not send any of their contributions to the NCC. I don’t know if it made any difference at all but they really tried – harder than most PCUSA bodies it would appear. Our lunacy in reducing missionary funding while sending $1M plus to these two outfits is but one of the reasons I left the PCUSA.
Fred Edwards
God will give us his peace, not the peace the WCC proposes
Posted Friday, February 24, 2006
To Desmond Tutu and others who want to be correct in their own minds about God: God is God, and there is no other. Christ is the Son of God, and there is no other. The Holy Spirit is God, and there is no other, so what makes one a Christian?
Repenting of one’s sin and wickedness, understanding that if one die’s in their sin, one will be condemned, eternal damnation, John 3:3, thus I am a Christian saved by the blood of Christ shed on the cross, and so who is God? God elects the believer into eternal life, thus God through Christ, and the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit elects one to be a Christian.
Thus to Desmond Tutu and others, God does not have to be a Christian, because God elects one to be a Christian. God is a Spirit and not a man.
We can only live in harmony with God if we have peace with God through his Son Christ, thus God will give us his peace, not the peace the WCC proposes. God is wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.
Lou. S. Nowasielski Wilmington, Del.
NCC and WCC are socialist, political organizations
Posted Thursday, February 23, 2006
Another putdown of the US by the WCC, the NCC and our stated clerk. After reading the rantings from Nancy Cardoso Pereita “Capitalism Unmasked as Savage Barbaric System,” why am I surprised? Ms Cardoso fails to mention that the U.S. provides major funding and support for catastrophes throughout the world. Our country is not perfect but I invite those critical souls to name a better place and encourage them to take up residence there. The WCC is obliviously looking to cover up some of its past actions, such as the support of Robert Mugabe that led to the economic destruction of Rhodesia and the robbing of the country’s wealth. Neither the WCC nor the NCC are church-related organizations. They are socialist, political organizations that are supported by misled church leaders of like mind. The PCUSA at one time was the largest donor to both these organizations and most likely still is.
There is little wonder that the PCUSA lost an estimated 65,000 members in 2005 and anticipates the loss of 85,000 in 2006. Numbers are not that important and one has to be careful with statistics but the anticipated loss of 1,250 and 1,635 members per week respectively in 2005 and 2006 indicates that something is seriously wrong. One must ask if this is by design or just the result of inept, bumbling leadership? I don’t know, but suspect it is a combination of both. I have little faith in Stated Clerk Clifford Kirkpatrick.
Why do we officers and laymen continue to allow funds from mission programs to be diverted to socialist political groups? Lets include the Washington Lobby Office in this outright waste of God’s money. Funding of the PCUSA comes from individual churches. We have the power to stop this nonsense by designating denomination per-capita payments to missions that are doing God’s work. I personally do not send money to the denomination for such things as Katrina relief as I do not trust Louisville’s handling of funds. There are other more reliable ways of reaching out to these needs. The PCUSA is heading in the wrong direction and has to be turned around. It is sad that I feel this way. When will we ever learn.
William Arthur
Are PCUSA’s ordination standards requirements or aspirational ideals?
Posted Thursday, February 23, 2006
Given that the PUP report portrays ordination standards not as actual requirements but merely as aspirational ideals toward which we are all to strive but which we are also to admit no one reaches (Recommendation 5, line 1104), wouldn’t approval of its recommendations mean that we really shouldn’t expect anyone to live up to the “Standards of Ethical Conduct” of the Presbyterian Church (USA) either?
That is, if there were no requirements for entering the ministry, how could there be any for continuing in it? And if those published ethical standards were to be understood as merely aspirational, wouldn’t that mean that we really couldn’t require anything of the officers or members of the church?
And if we couldn’t require anything of the members and officers of the church, wouldn’t that mean that we would have ceased to be the church? Is that really where we want to go? God, help us!
Dr. James C. Goodloe IV, pastor Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Va.
No peace, unity or purity as long as purity is not defined
Posted Thursday, February 23, 2006
There will never be peace, unity and purity in the Presbyterian Church (USA) as long as “purity” is not defined!
Scripture has no trouble defining sexual sins as impure, and this indeed does include homosexuality. But, Scripture revisionists, and the natural-minded people who are interpreting Scripture, rather than discerning it by the Holy Spirit, will never get this.
These same people state that the “waters of baptism seal us.” Where does it say that in Scripture? I read where Scripture says we are sealed by the Holy Spirit!
They say that our identity is in “sharing the bread and the cup.” Where does it say that in Scripture? I thought it said our identity is no longer outward signs, but by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and our new nature.
They say our faith is strengthened by “discernment and service?” I thought Scripture taught that our faith is strengthened by the hearing of the Word, and the preaching of the Word ( which involves discerning the Scriptures by the indwelling Holy Spirit).
They say “we confess faith in the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” I thought we confessed our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord … and this made us a part of the true church since Jesus founded it on the rock that he is the Son of the living and true God.
They say “we proclaim the gospel (their little “g”) by our commitment to peace and reconciliation.” I thought we proclaimed the Gospel by going into all the world and preaching it, and teaching all people to obey the things that Jesus taught his disciples, not by getting involved in politics, and collaborating with terrorist organization and regimes, or revising Scripture, teaching that the Old Testament is no longer relevant to our lives today, and that it was written by men who despised women, and were merely carrying out their paternalistic dogmas. Jesus certainly disagreed with them! He quoted them and he was totally flabbergasted that the people did not know who he was, since they should have known the Scriptures, the writings of Moses, the Psalms and the prophets!
They say “we confess the faith of the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition.” I thought we confessed our faith in Jesus Christ and the truth of his Word … not a man made organization that is ever changing!”
In an open letter to the presbyteries, the leadership of the General Assembly wrote “Agreeing and Disagreeing in Love,” quoting Ephesians 4:3, “Making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (they only quote Scripture when it is expedient for them in their arguments with those who disagree with their nonscriptural arguments otherwise!) And this is where they stumble!
In thought – accept conflict, affirm hope and commit to prayer; in action – go to the other. In a spirit of humility. Be quick to listen. Be slow to judge. Be willing to negotiate. (did I miss this latter one in the Bible?). They mean those who disagree that homosexuality is a sin, should be slow to judge, but they do not intend to be “quick to listen” to the Scriptural admonitions we would speak to them. They also have come short of the “in a spirit of humility” plea. Have they not heard the very proud rhetoric of the left, as they berate those who quote God’s Word concerning homosexuality and the Bible being God’s infallible Word, by which we must live our lives today? Indeed, those who hold Scripture in high regard and preach and teach it are “fallen prey” (as Scripture says) to those who contend only for their own way, not God’s, in this issue.
Be steadfast in love. Be open to mediation. Trust the community. This last one, “Trust the community” is absolutely laughable! They quote Acts 15, but I am sure they skipped over verse 20. As far as trusting the community, how can we? The judiciary of PCUSA strips their beloved brethren of their church properties, but does not bother to scold those who are outright out of order with our constitution, both polity and confession.
Glenda L. Smith, elder Reems Creek Beech Presbyterian Church, Weaverville, N.C.
As a conservative, Williamson has no moral ground to stand on in Brazil
Posted Thursday, February 23, 2006
Parker Williamson is not being entirely truthful when he comments “WCC policies have often weighed in on the side of armed conflict and violence, almost invariably conducted by left wing and liberationist forces.” He seems a little taken by his own politics.
It was not that long ago when the rightwing folks of Germany, Italy and Japan declared war on the human race, murdering millions of people, firm in their beliefs of their own moral superiority. While Japan was not a Christian nation, Germany and Italy were. What were the millions of conservative German Lutherans doing while their nation exterminated 10s of millions in camps, in cities, and killing fields? For sure they were not supporting Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Even less time ago, there were rightwing Presbyterians who did worse than just look away as the Klan terrorized the South. What prevents them from going down that same path again?
Speaking of Brazil, as an American rightwing conservative in Porto Alegre, Williamson has no moral ground to stand on. There in the early ’60s the military right wing overthrew a democratically elected president, with support from rightwing elements of the US government, and abolished their constitution in a “preemptive” coup against … mostly unarmed college kids. For the next 20 years they tortured and “disappeared” anyone who disagreed with their paranoid policies with the full support of the Brazilian Presbyterian Church and its conservative allies in the U.S. This active support of oppression, conflict and violence was the fertilizer that brought liberation theology to full fruition. Opposite sides of the same coin, they went completely hand in hand.
The WCC was not the only Christian institution cooking the books.
The tragedy is that the rightwing of the church has sided with secular rightwing movements just as much, and maybe even more so, than the left wing of the church has sided with the secular left. (Our tax dollars certainly favor the rightwing regimes and their death squads much more than our tithes favored the left and their “liberationist” guerrillas). Both star-struck by secular power politics, they wander completely out of touch with the source of our faith. Both have their hands dirty up to their elbows with the blood of too many millions of innocent victims. Mr. Williams knows this well, but still he wants us to take sides. He should read Peter Berger’s Pyramids of Sacrifice. Neither the far “right” nor the far “left” has ever done anyone any favors. Left unbridled there is nothing that keeps them from wrapping around and meeting on the other side in Hades.
The question today for all God’s people is whether we are going to help make the 21st century even bloodier than the 20th century. The drums of war that are now beating, if answered, will make the killing fields of Europe and Asia look like beds of roses. What do we want our sons and daughters to say of us? Parker’s speech about the means justifying the ends applies to him as well. Does his own ends justify his means, or does the corruptness of his methods pollute the sanctity of his goals?
When Jesus looked upon his people and saw a similar state of affairs he wept. “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace!” What is to keep our fate from being the same as theirs? I think God’s word for us today is best found in Robert Alter’s excellent translation of Genesis. God said to Abel’s brother Cain, regarding their religious dispute:
- Why are you incensed,
- And why has your face fallen?
- For whether you offer well,
- Or whether you do not,
- At the tent flap sin crouches
- And for you is its longing
- But you must rule over it.
I hope future generations live to say of us that by the mercy of our Lord, we escaped the hungry leopard at our doorstep.
Ritchie Jones Los Angeles, Calif.