Civil Commotion

A Wisconsin church is under fire for behaving like a — GASP! — cult.

A downtown Eau Claire church is picking up the pieces after a scandal that tested the faith of the congregation and led to the resignations of the entire pastoral team amid allegations of “spiritual abuse.”

Four Valleybrook Church pastors left after widespread claims surfaced about them pushing members and staff to reject their families, matching unrelated pairs of parishioners into “knit-together” relationships to replace biological family, sharing personal information gained in confidence, and abusing their authority by demeaning and shaming others.

Ho-hum. We are solidly into the post-Christian world, and so the pressure for pastors to bind their congregations to themselves in steadily increasing. Expect stories like this to increase.

The parents of two girls who allege a pastor sexually abused them gave court testimony yesterday that they don’t believe their daughters.

On Wednesday, church teacher Karen Hartman, a medical technologist, said her daughter, Jessica Watson, never complained –- even when asked during childhood – about being uncomfortable around Sperou. So an allegation brought to light later by her daughter doesn’t ring true, she said.

[ … ]

Later Wednesday, Assistant Pastor Greg Kirchem, a chiropractor, told the jury he and his wife, Cindy, met with daughter, Jennifer Olajuyin, at a restaurant in 2011 to discuss family finances. He said his daughter complained that they didn’t provide enough financial support.

He also dismissed her allegations against Sperou, whom he described as a friend and mentor.

“My reaction was, ‘Don’t try to come up with something as a reason for blaming other people for your circumstances,'” Kirchem said.

Seven separate women have stepped forward to make similar allegations. One woman might be dismissed as hysterical or making-up stuff, perhaps even two — but seven? Seriously? And these parents are so confidant their daughters are making-it-up that they will actually go into court and publicly disparage and humiliate them?

I say again: The typical congregation’s response to the sexual abuse of its own children is all the grounds you need to reject unconditionally the claim that religious faith makes people moral. It does not. It makes them oblivious fools.

Even as American pastors strive to cleanse big league politics of gays, the Holy Men of Papua, New Guinea are working diligently to cleanse their country of witches.

Four people have been accused of witchcraft and allegedly tortured in a Papua New Guinea village, following recent deaths in the community which locals suspected were caused by sorcery.

Human rights defenders, church groups and police were preparing to stage a rescue should a spiritualist, known as a “glass man”, be brought in to the village of Kaiwe and “confirm” the accusations.

An evangelical ministry is exhorting pastors to mobilize their congregations to share any information they may have regarding gays and/or gay-sympathies on the staffs on presidential candidates.

An evangelical Christian organization has called on right-leaning pastors to “investigate” the family and staff of U.S. presidential candidates in order to expose anyone who is secretly gay or who supports LGBT rights.

The Washington Examiner‘s Paul Bedard reported on Monday that David Lane’s American Renewal Project had asked “100,000 pastors” that it was working with to mobilize Christian voters to also dig up dirt on people connected to presidential candidates.

I remarked just a couple of days ago that cultural minorities, especially those who were once on top, often grow violent as they are pushed to the margins of civil life.

Well, what do you know? Now comes Scott Lively to instruct the Faithful that it’s getting to be about time to grab the pitchforks.

The natural family is the ecosystem of humanity! It must be preserved at all costs.

How? By a populist uprising! The elites need to see the angry mob — liberals and conservatives together — surging through the streets, pitchforks and torches held aloft, ready to tear down Frankenstein’s castle with their bare hands if need be. For Christians it’s Jesus and the money-changers time!

Lively says further on that he is speaking metaphorically — but how likely is it that somebody dumb enough to pay attention to Scott Lively would know what that means? This reckless and deliberately inflammatory language can have no wholesome end.