Civil Commotion

Wade Burleson, one of the very few Southern Baptist pastors I’m able to pay attention to without feeling that I’ve soiled myself, takes up the subject of church membership covenants. Spoiler: He’s against ’em.

Read Village’s Church Covenant. It’s chilling when it comes to the authority of elders and church leaders. Here are some of the phrases that the prospective must read and then sign, vowing their allegiance to obey them:

• I understand the importance of submission to church leadership

• I will submit to the elders and other appointed leaders of the church

• I will agree to walk through the steps of marriage reconciliation at The Village Church before pursuing divorce from my spouse

I’ve written several articles stating that the major problem in modern evangelical Christianity is the authoritarianism of evangelical leaders. I have sought to explain how pastors/elders “twist the Scriptures” and demand “obedience and submission” to this alleged authority. Jesus tells us that that true ‘spiritual leaders’ are only servants, never masters.

I especially like this observation:

When a Christian signs a church covenant he or she is enabling that institutional church to maintain an authoritarian structure. Rather than the weak and wounded sheep being the focus of attention within church covenants, most are written with phrases that seem intent on bringing church members into “submission to church authorities.” Paul Burleson points out that any institutional church more concerned with supporting their authoritarian system of control than healing their wounded members is sending signals that are a sign of weak spiritual leadership. Jesus said that the world uses titles, positions of honor, and seeks to “exercise authority over those they rule,” but “this should never be the case among His followers (Mark 10:35-45).

Pastor Burleson and I are obviously miles apart on some fundamental questions, but this goes to exactly the behavioral element that leaves me unwilling to be a good sport who goes through the motions and at least shows up on Christmas, Easter, et cetera and drops a few bucks in the plate.

In a nutshell: Who do these barely-educated under-achieving goddam buffoons think they are?

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
IV: How Virtue Is Made to Dominate

§313   We should begin to entertain doubts concerning a man if we heard that he required reasons in order to remain respectable: we should, in any case, certainly avoid his society. The little word “for” in certain cases may be compromising; sometimes a single “for“ is enough to refute oneself. If we should hear, in course of time, that such an aspirant for virtue was in need of bad reasons in order to remain respectable, it would not tend to increase our respect for him. But he goes further; he comes to us and tells us quite openly: “You disturb my morality with your disbelief, Mr. Sceptic; so long as you cannot believe in my bad reasons, that is to say, in my God, in a disciplinary Beyond, in free will, etc. you put obstacles in the way of my virtue –.” Moral: sceptics must be suppressed: they prevent the moralisation of the masses.

A U.N. inspector has returned from a tour of Middle Eastern refugee camps with disturbing news.

Bangura detailed the processes by which “pretty virgins” captured by the jihadists were bought and sold at auctions.

Here’s a chilling excerpt: “After attacking a village, [the Islamic State] splits women from men and executes boys and men aged 14 and over. The women and mothers are separated; girls are stripped naked, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and prettiness. The youngest, and those considered the prettiest virgins fetch higher prices and are sent to Raqqa, the IS stronghold.

There is a hierarchy: sheikhs get first choice, then emirs, then fighters. They often take three or four girls each and keep them for a month or so, until they grow tired of a girl, when she goes back to market. At slave auctions, buyers haggle fiercely, driving down prices by disparaging girls as flat-chested or unattractive.

This recalls the Midianite genocide (Numbers 31) — which few Christian apologists hesitate to defend:

Since the Israelites had good reason to believe in God’s moral perfection, omniscience and omnipotence, the best choice for them would be to trust that God had a better understanding than they of the situation itself and the moral rules governing it. The only way for them to be justified in not obeying God’s command would be if the command were inherently evil and impossible to justify (though it must be cautioned that humans with their imperfect understanding could incorrectly decide a command was inherently evil).

And, of course, slave markets were common throughout the American south before the Civil War, and it was a commonplace for women to be displayed naked so that their value could be properly judged. So, please: When you look at ISIS’ horrors, you’re looking at America’s Judeo-Christian heritage.

It was the Enlightenment that ended the indecencies of the Abrahamic faiths, and in only a small part of the world at that. And it is the Enlightenment, modernity’s spur, that is now under attack domestically and internationally. The sad truth is that human moral progress is the work of the few, that the overwhelming portion of humanity lives indifferently in the time in which they find themselves and with the values they are given.

Civil Commotion is taking a long weekend. Regular posting will resume on Tuesday, May 26, and Will to Power will be back on the 27^th. Y’all have a good, and safe, Memorial Day weekend.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
IV: How Virtue Is Made to Dominate

§312   Cruelty has become transformed and elevated into tragic pity, so that we no longer recognise it as such. The same has happened to the love of the sexes which has become amour-passion; the slavish attitude of mind appears as Christian obedience; wretchedness becomes humility; the disease of the nervus sympathicus, for instance, is eulogised as Pessimism, Pascalism, or Carlylism, etc.