Painful Truth returns

The Painful Truth site is now back online after Ed Mentell Sr. returned to take on the project, though perhaps only temporarily. You can find it now at http://www.hwarmstrong.com/

Passing of a generation

It seems Raymond McNair is fighting his final battle with cancer. Once a "leading evangelist" and Armstrong lieutenant, McNair is a rare link to the church that some of us remember, a thriving, thrusting, in-your-face sect with a massive media presence.

In 2006 those high-flying frontmen have largely passed onto their reward. Herbert Armstrong, Garner Ted Armstrong, Herman Hoeh... to name just a few. McNair is reportedly bedridden and fading. He once ran the British "Work", later took the more modest role of Director for New Zealand, went through a messy and public divorce, and was portrayed in less than flattering terms ("Buffie") by former ministerial colleague David Robinson in Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web.

McNair has stuck closely to classic Armstrongism, attempting unsuccessfully to first work with Rod Meredith before launching his own obscure ministry. In so doing he has shown a form of integrity, even if it has been misinformed. Robinson devoted chapters to both McNair and Meredith in his 1980 book. His portrait of Meredith is the least flattering. McNair was clearly the more compassionate half of the duo. He was loyal to HWA despite everything he knew about the man, and he has remained loyal to his teachings. Whatever reservations one might have about his chosen path, there were surely worse individuals who ascended to the inner circle.

When McNair passes from the scene, who will remain? One name stands out, embodying the arrogance of a sect that once posed a credible challenge to mainstream evangelical Christianity: Roderick Meredith. But even Meredith, currently clinging on as unchallenged "presiding evangelist" of the Living Church of God, must succumb eventually to the tireless ravages of age. Then, and perhaps only then, Armstrongism will be to all intents and purposes, finally, dead.

Making a virtue of necessity

Down in Alabama the WCG remnant is trying to convince themselves that the Tkach revolution has been worth the grief. Here's a condensed version of how the July 7 Huntsville Times tells it:

A little more than 10 years ago, Paul Kurts pastored a congregation of 200 close-knit members. Today, his flock sometimes numbers as many as 20 - and he's never been happier.

For Kurts who, with his wife, had joined the church when he was a college student, it felt like someone had shifted the magnetic pole of the Earth.

There's a lot more in this pathetic little report. If this is typical of those who remain then you have to suspect that self loathing and self justification are mixed in nearly equal portions. Read it and weep.

Mario the Marine Biologist

UCG minister Mario Seiglie (that's not him in the picture, keep reading) has been pounding away at his keyboard for a long time. Now the veteran GN writer has achieved a moment of fame as a paragon of family values.

I confess that I've never heard of the Traditional Values Coalition (slogan: "Empowering People of Faith through Knowledge"), but they've chosen the very knowledgeable Mario - a person of faith if ever there was one - to help slay the demon of evolution.

You'll have to forgive me. Being a New Zealander I've been deprived of the cultural resources to make the connection, so maybe someone closer to the cusp of this sort of thing can explain it to me: what do traditional values have to do with an anti-evolution stance?

In any case, here's the spiel:

In a recent commentary on evolution by United Church of God Pastor Mario Seiglie, he points out that the archerfish is so uniquely designed that it could not have evolved with slight modifications... According to Sieglie, “The archerfish offers precisely such an example [of complexity], since several complex systems must all appear at the same time, perfectly and not gradually formed—binocular vision, a specialized mouth and tongue, specialized gills to compress and expel water and an aiming system based in the brain and not in the eyes. If any of these parts is missing, the mechanism will not hit the target and no survival advantage is created."

You can read the whole thing at the TVC site. You might like to also check out a counter-opinion at the Fundamentally Flawed blog. Here's an excerpt:

The argument seems to stem forth from statements made by Mario Seiglie. Seiglie believes that this combination of complex systems in the archerfish could not have developed through evolution, as they must have developed all at once to give the fish this ability.

Is Seiglie a world-renowned marine biologist? Not quite… he is a pastor in the United Church of God. It would seem that this position gives him indisputable expertice in the field of biology.

Here's the problem with those UCG experts that write for the GN and make guest appearances on their TV advertorial shows. They're not. Want to know about the wonders of the natural world? Pick up a National Geographic.

Nostradennis

Do yourself a favor and check out the latest offerings on Dennis Diehl's site. There are several rare treats:

Necro-Evangelism-When Dead Men Do Tell Tales (Garner Ted speaketh still!)

Fleecing the Flock 101...They Actually Have Classes!

The Planet Venus and Satan's Fall

and then a tip of the hat to that great prognosticator Nostradamus, Nostradennis

Who'd have thunk it!?

Dwight flight

According to the grapevine, WCG has recently placed all of Dwight Armstrong's hymns into the public domain, which means they're available for anyone who wants to make use of them.

Poor old Dwight got a bad press in some quarters. His hymns were described as dirges, and there were dark mutterings about plagiarism of tunes. But I have to say, after growing up with the very real dirges of Lutheran liturgy and hymnody, I found them (or at least some of them) quite refreshing when I first started attending. There is nothing as plain awful as a badly tuned organ accompanying a badly tuned congregation singing something that should have received a decent burial in the 16th century.

As for the plagiarism: it seems to have been something of an Armstrong family tradition. The words were from the Psalms, so I guess that was okay. The tunes are apparently suspiciously similar to a Scottish Psalter of long ago. If Dwight managed to make a buck out of his brother's paranoia about Protestant songs, well, that's fine by me. I hope he at least got his tithes back.

These days it may be all praise choruses and waving arms, but the old purple book still has its charms... kind of.

5 Personal favorites:
How Excellent in all the Earth (7)
O Eternal who shall dwell (14)
For Even from my Youth O God (52)
Holy Mighty Majesty (75)
He Shall Reign for Evermore (78) - complete with a "melancholy sparrow" :)

5 Personal un-favorites:
By the Waters of Babylon (103) - now the Boney M version I liked!
Blest and Happy Is the Man (1) - this one was thrashed to death
Let Thy Chastening be in Measure (31) - "my loins are filled with burning" :o
But as for me I'll call on God (45) - top of the hit parade when GTA was chucked out
O Pity Me, Be Gracious God (47) - and pity anyone trying to sing this one!

Tunnel Vision

I once wrote that Vision, the flagship magazine of David Hulme’s group, was the best of the bunch. Wrong. It’s merely the most pretentious.

That realization was brought home after reading the Vision review of James Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty. Sect heavyweights Hulme and Peter Nathan (former WCG Regional Director for New Zealand) collaborated on a lengthy pasting of Tabor’s book. Fair enough, if the criticism is valid. But is it?

They begin by lumping Dynasty together with The Last Week by Jesus Seminar scholars Crossan and Borg. Why? These are very different books. The Last Week gets the briefer treatment, and Crossan and Borg are chided for (wait for it!) not adopting the Wednesday crucifixion theory! Hulme and Nathan are then reduced to citing antiquated sources (Torrey, 1907; Pearson, 1939; Bullinger, 1922) to make Herbert Armstrong’s adopted reconstruction look credible (it’s noticeable that they don’t cite Hoeh.) The trouble is that the theory is a curiosity that has never gained acceptance, probably for very good reasons. If Hulme thinks this is the crux of a relevant discussion of The Last Week then he obviously needs to reread the book.

Tabor is the next for the chop, but here the Pasadena-based duo has to be careful. Tabor has previously been interviewed in Vision, and in their Paul television promotional, as a scholarly authority. What to do? The strategy they adopt is to both slap him around and then pat him on the head with an air of condescension.

The criticism: Tabor “doesn’t examine every side of an issue”, miracles “have no place in Tabor’s approach to history”, he believes that Paul and James were “antithetical” to each other; he believes “the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses”, he adopts a Thursday crucifixion reconstruction, and he suggests Jesus didn’t use matzos at the Last Supper. Then, in a final sideswipe, they accuse the unfortunate Dr. Tabor of being a “neo-Ebionite.”

Ouch.

While some have expressed keen reservations about the approach Dr. Tabor takes in The Jesus Dynasty, Vision’s rather facile objections miss those issues entirely.

If anyone deserves to be labeled “neo-Ebionite” it’s church leaders like Hulme. The Ebionites were the Jewish Christians of the first century. Mind you, Hulme isn’t a very good Ebionite because he tries to hold together the Old Testament elements alongside Protestant assumptions. Neither fish nor fowl, there’s a built in contradiction at the heart of this posture which just doesn’t work (witness the disintegration of the WCG.)

There are strong reasons why the Gospels can’t be regarded as eyewitness documents – and they’re spelled out in any college level textbook on the subject. Putting aside the speculative side of Tabor’s book, in this matter he’s only telling it like it is – honestly.

Miracles have no part to play in an academic approach to history. That doesn’t mean they can’t happen, or that there are no fairies at the bottom of Hulme’s garden, it just means that if you’re writing history you can’t excuse a weak argument with special pleading.

And if Hulme and Nathan aren’t aware of the broad consensus on the tension between the Jerusalem Church and the Pauline mission, well, they’re not nearly as well read as they make out.

A final observation: the story of the early church is a bit like a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle with 900 pieces missing. The actual hard data is surprisingly thin, and any reconstruction – Tabor’s, Crossan’s or Hulme’s – must be speculative to some extent. Some reconstructions are more probable than others, but if you had to put them on a scale of most to least likely, the traditional Armstrong version would drop right off the improbability end with a solid clunk.

If The Jesus Dynasty has rattled a few COG cages then that’s no bad thing.


Addendum: You can hear James Tabor speaking about his book on Tulsa Public Radio.

Journal holds up a mirror to our identity

I'm a big fan of The Journal. It's not something that many of the more radical ex-COG folk understand, but Dixon Cartwright strikes me as a decent man and a highly professional editor. The Journal exists to cater for those still within the wider fold, and overall it does a great job.

That doesn't mean agreeing with everything that appears there. The latest issue is no exception. To start with there's a lead article by Ian Boyne about the latest success his Jamaican branch of CGI has chalked up.

"Some Church of God critics say it is in decline, but it is certainly not declining in Jamaica!"

I've exchanged a few emails with Ian, and without giving away any confidences I think I can safely say that the man is something of a puzzle: part intellectual gadfly, part dogmatist and 100% self publicist. How does he hold it all together? And how will the Ian-o-centric Jamaican CGI hold itself together when he eventually, inevitably goes the way of all flesh?

James Tabor responds to Ken Westby's review of The Jesus Dynasty in the letters section, followed by a lengthy rave on Herbal themes from Eric Snow. There are only three letters in this issue, which must be a new minimalist record, but the third is a hoot: a brief (!), humorous comment on the WCG's on-off name change.

If there's a focus to this issue it's the brutal act of disfellowship, and Dixon launches it with a rare editorial on the subject, focusing on the treatment Dan Cafourek received at the hands of those Holy Spirit-led fellows who determine the direction of the United Church of God. Dixon writes:

"The institution of disfellowship in the COGs over the years has been a hateloaded weapon for church leaders to keep lower-echelon church members in line through one of the cruelest forms of intimidation: hanging over people’s heads the threat of the loss of their very salvation."

BI enthusiast Steve Collins soaks up most of the remaining column inches with an essay on the Babylonian Captivity (not the historic one - the coming one y'know.) I'd give you a precis, but would rather leap naked off a very tall building than waste the valuable time.

So it's another mixed bag. But the genius of The Journal is in the combination of the good, the bad and the ugly. It holds up a mirror to the community that calls itself the Church of God, and the reflection is uncannily accurate.

(The Journal website is www.thejournal.org )

Polybabble

Bob Thiel responded to the Heavy Canon Fire posting by protesting loudly: "As far as those "mythical COG leaders of the apostolic age"--these leaders were NOT mythical. There is more information about some of them than there are about most of the early leaders in the Apostolic Succession lists of the Romans and especially the Orthodox."

Clicking across to Bob's list of apostolic COG leaders was enlightening. He starts off with the usual suspects: Peter, Paul, James & John. Uh huh. Well, let's be clear, every Christian sect claims these figures as their own.

Then Bob pulls together a list of early church luminaries who, in his view, are authentic COG Christians. They include Papias, Polycarp, Melito of Sardis and some more obscure names.

I realize that this won't be the most riveting subject for most readers, so to cut to the quick, there is absolutely no evidence that any of these characters championed COG distinctives such as the Sabbath (though Bob tries to prove otherwise.) The best he can do is demonstrate that they were 'Quartodecimans', keeping Easter on the Passover dates. Big deal, so did the entire Eastern Church at that time. Bob spins this by writing: Easter was not observed by the second century Christians in Asia Minor, such as Polycarp. He and others observed Passover.

No Bob. They kept Easter on the Passover dates.

Let's have a quick look at Polycarp. He was a bishop in Turkey. Bob desperately wants to COGgize him because he was, according to tradition, a disciple of John. That tradition is preserved by a bloke called Tertullian who was anything but a model of COG Christianity, and Irenaeus, another very unCOG-like character. Why would these Catholic apologists lend credibility to Polycarp if he was, in their view, a heretical COG leader?

Polycarp trekked his way to Rome to discuss the aforementioned dating of Easter with the Pope, and they parted amicably as brothers, agreeing to disagree. Bob concedes as much when he quotes Irenaeus: And in this state of affairs they held fellowship with each other; and Anicetus (the Pope) conceded to Polycarp in the Church the celebration of the Eucharist, by way of showing him respect.

Does this sound like a COG leader? Notice that Polycarp celebrated the Lord's Supper (eucharist) in Rome with the Pope's blessing. That'd be like Rod Meredith celebrating the mass in Saint Peters with Ratzinger looking on.

Apart from a letter addressed to the Philippian church, a few nice little anecdotes and a heroic tale of martyrdom, that's it! That's what we know about Polycarp.

So, how does Bob manage to shoe-horn him into the fictive pre-history of COGism? Beats me, and I've read his rather long treatise on the subject. According to Bob he even kept the Sabbath; here's his third proof:

His church reported about the him and the Sabbath.
Huh?

And now a little more from that treatise. You can judge its lucidity for yourself.

Polycarp is unique among any claimed to be a direct successor to any of the apostles. He is the only possible second century direct apostolic successor considered by any church I am aware that there was a letter written to him while he was alive. He is the only possible direct apostolic successor considered by any church I am aware that to have written any document that we still possess to this day (there is a letter claimed to have been written by Clement of Rome, however, it does not say that he wrote it, nor is Clement considered to be the direct successor of any apostle--the Roman Catholic Church claims that Linus was Peter's direct successor; there are also letters written by Ignatius of Antioch, but the two Antiochian Churches I am aware of claim that Evodius, not Ignatius, was Peter's direct successor). Polycarp is the only possible direct apostolic successor considered by any church I am aware that to have any document written about him within a few weeks of his death.

Anyone who can make sense of that paragraph deserves an advanced diploma in reading comprehension.

Heavy canon fire

LCG web commentator and church history buff Bob Thiel writes: "one of the reasons that the COGs are NOT Protestant is that we believe the Bible and do not believe that anyone... is entitled to change it."

Which led me to think again about the whole canon issue.

To provide a bit of an introduction, Bob regards the Bible - his non-Protestant canon (which actually is the Protestant canon) - as a given. It kinda dropped out of the sky one day, intact, fully formed and fluttering gaily down beneath a Holy Spirit parachute. Those nasty Church Fathers and proto-Catholics had nothing to do with it. If I understand Bob correctly, he champions a reconstruction where the Eastern church created the current canon before it invented ikons, pillar saints and liturgical chants, and was still under the influence of those mysterious and mythical COG leaders of the apostolic age.

Yeah, right.

I disagree with Bob, though I don't doubt his sincerity (as the old refrain goes, folk can be "sincerely wrong.") For me, this was a real "trunk of the tree" issue several years ago, as it affects the whole underpinning of fundamentalist and evangelical belief. I even wrote a short article on the subject which attracted a bit of attention. It sorely needs a rewrite, which I'm hoping to get done later this year (then it'll appear as a PDF file on otagosh.) Currently the New Testament paper that I'm doing touches on this issue, and there's more to add. But despite the fact that it's a little dated, I stand behind what I said then.

Bottom line: for centuries the canon was subject to change after change as Christians of all hues and stripes debated what to include. And in some cases they got it terribly wrong in the final cut. The article explains this in some detail. I'll expand on this theme in later postings.