Yesterday, I posted a little bit about this post from a guy who is in authority at my former church.
He realizes it’s self-refuting. He shouldn’t have posted it at all, and it’s false the way it’s written. However, giving him the benefit of the doubt, I can reword it a little bit, and I think I can find some truth in what he’s saying.
I’m the type of personality that enjoys having written debates more than face-to-face. I don’t care that much about whether someone who knows a lot actually cares about me or has a relationship with me. I want to hear what they have to say.
However, not everyone is like me. Some people care more about relationships, and if he wants to spread his knowledge face-to-face in the context of deep relationships, I’m not going to criticize him for that. But, I find that favor is often not reciprocated. The existence of this post is him criticizing those of differing personalities.
Relationship may be his personality, but he can’t carry it out in real life. Has he ever gone to a doctor or consulted with some sort of expert that he didn’t have a close relationship with? Has he ever hired a contractor or taken his car to a mechanic without supping at his house weekly for years? Does he care how much those people know even though they don’t give a crap about him personally, other than they have to do a good job to get paid?
Did Jesus and the prophets and disciples only do relationship evangelism? They open-air preached and spoke to strangers. Jesus spoke with the woman at the well and told her she was an adulteress after speaking with her for only a few moments. Philip appeared out of nowhere, “offered truth” to the Ethiopian Eunuch and disappeared. Did the Ethiopian care how much Philip knew before he knew how much he cared? What a stupid thing to say!
But, Jesus and the disciples cultivated relationships as well. Do what you can to spread the truth to people. Use strategies that work for your strengths and work on your weaknesses.
I need to improve my relationship skills, no doubt. But headsmacker here needs to learn to speak the truth to strangers, too. God uses all of us. He made us all different. I have trouble empathizing with people like this guy, but it seems too many of his type are quick with the criticism of my type. I think this post reveals a lot of immaturity in him and it’s not good that he’s in a position of leadership in a church.
I love a good online discussion. The challenge is often keeping my comments short. I’ve learned a lot from reading other people’s conversations and debates. I’ve learned a ton from articles and memes. I love memes, because they are often short and to the point and can be powerful ways of conveying complicated arguments. Memes have challenged me to go on and do a lot of research on my own and change my mind on many things. I’ve often heard people say that no one ever changes their mind because of an online debate/discussion. I don’t know, but maybe that person is not open minded or is so pompous as to think they’ve got it all figured out. That has certainly not been my experience.
I’d say I started debating online around 2007 or 2008. I loved the way Youtube used to do their comments. There would be great debates there. Blogs also used to be great, but no one really does much of that anymore. The comment system on Facebook is terrible, but it’s good enough, and it’s where people are right now.
One of the problems I had when I started was being able to tell when I won an argument. It seemed I would say A, they would say B and then it would go on, and as long as the conversation would go on, as long as they continued, I must not have won the argument. After reading “Always Ready” by Greg Bahnsen (who was a genius), I learned that whenever anyone used a self-contradictory argument, their position was untenable, and they had lost. Also, if they can’t be consistent with their argument, whether that’s from topic to topic or even in the same discussion, they’ve also lost.
But over the last few years, I’ve noticed that people also indicate the loss of their argument in a couple other ways. They will delete all their comments, or they will start attacking me personally. In Facebook, if you reply to someone’s comment, and go on to have a long conversation with them, you can lose the whole conversation if they delete their first comment. You can take screenshots if you start to worry about someone deleting the conversation. At least you won’t lose everything you typed that way. Another way is to not reply to their comment, but to make a separate comment and tag them in it. Then, they may do the same or they may reply to your comment.
I’ve had people insult me personally. Atheists will hurl all types of filth at me personally, but even Christians will insult me personally or say I’m judgmental or change the subject to me or talk about something I might be doing. Here’s an example of that from the woman from my previous post.
Here’s the meme she was referring to. You can see it in yesterday’s post, but it might be too small to read. It is one of my favorites, especially for this individual.
My initial comments are on yesterday’s post, and maybe I’m the biggest jerk in the world, but I presented, rational, logical arguments. Those arguments are either right or wrong, regardless of where I live or how beady my eyes are.
I have recently found most people to be utterly incapable of responding to an argument in a rational way. Even people from my former church want a safe place, and desire safety over truth.
As I said yesterday, Karen is a principal at an elementary school. People send their kids to be educated by this woman who probably hasn’t had a rational thought pass through her head since the late 80s. What results do you expect from public school when the principal is a moron?
I keep running into my former teachers on Facebook who say some of the most retarded things. This woman was never my teacher, but she must be a real winner, because she’s a principal currently. People with her logic skills ought to be placed in positions of authority, right?
Really, I blame pastors for being unwilling to teach on any political topics, even though Scripture speaks clearly on it. Christians are supposed to protect the weak, but when the majority of citizens vote to have government force an individual to pay for something, the individual is out of luck. The taxpayer must not be the weak person in his relationship to government. There must not be any moral principles involved in taxation and the Bible must not speak about government’s proper role.
However, I blame anyone who sends their children to a government school where the teachers are in unrepentant sin and demonstrate an atrocious level of thinking skills. Sartori is the principal of Mountain View Core Knowledge advocating that people vote for a property tax increase to pay for a swimming pool. Here’s the conversation.
Here’s my initial complicated 3-sentence argument full of supposed logical leaps.
Forcing others to pay for something you want is theft.
Voting for this is committing the sin of covetousness.
Thieves will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Where is the leap? Which proposition does she disagree with? #2 might be new information for people. #3 might be new, but I provided a Bible verse.
As far as #2, if you don’t have the right to force someone to pay for something, how did government get that right? Is government not made of humans? If a group of people don’t have the right to force someone to pay for something, how does a group of people get the right to vote for another group of humans to force someone to pay for something? There is certainly nothing in Scripture that would make it acceptable for government to force people to pay for something and the questions in the paragraph have nothing to do with Scripture.
Sentence #3 might be disagreeable to non-Christians, but I’m only here to tell people what the Bible says. Your covetousness will take you to hell, whether you agree or not.
This is the logic of someone responsible for educating hundreds of people. A greedy, covetous statist woman with extremely limited logic skills. But keep sending your kids and according to Christ, they will be like their teachers.
Conservatives generally deny that black people face any sort of disadvantage or bad treatment from cops. I think it’s safe to say otherwise. Poor people are much less likely to be able to hire a lawyer to mount a defense in court. It is easier to get a conviction on someone like that. The video below gives further evidence of that.
It is an utter injustice that we should be angry about. It could be solved by eliminating all socialism in this country, including socialist-funded police.
By the way, the channel that Youtube video is on is Free to Choose, which has some excellent videos. I’m going to be posting some of the other videos from there that I find particularly interesting.
I stole this title from Nicholas in my last post. The Christians he was referring to were well beyond the level of the guy in this post. I personally know this guy. He attends a conservative, Bible-believing church where the pastor preaches 55-minute sermons and is seriously trying to mature the people in attendance. He attends regularly and sits through these sermons.
Maybe his anger got the better of him or something, but his comment is just really disappointing. It’s not the first time people who regularly attend this church have made this same basic error. I know the pastor can’t be blamed for every single individual remaining immature, but the church as a whole is very immature, and this guy is just an indication.
I started a Facebook group with mostly people from this church and the purpose was to try to come up with ways to apply Scripture to the real world and not just worry about ourselves all the time. It has been a complete and utter dud (as I’m rereading this the last paragraph in this post is haunting me). Nevertheless, I keep trying to post things that might provoke some conversation. Because that’s the point we’re at. These people would look at me like I’m crazy if I actually tried to get them to do some of the things I’m thinking about or have been involved in. These folks and I are definitely not on the same page, and so we are still at the conversation level. So, between once a month and once a week, I post something.
I adapted this post to Facebook format and posted it there a few days ago. I got this response:
“Judging and gossip is sinning as well.”
I think it’s safe to say he was accusing me of judging and gossip. I’m not sure how it’s gossip to comment on a public Youtube video. And I’m certainly guilty of judging. Of course, judging righteously isn’t a sin and is something we all do dozens if not hundreds of times per day.
In fact, when this guy accused me of judging, he was judging me. He actually was sinfully judging me, because he was using a double standard–aka hypocrisy. He doesn’t know that there is righteous judgment and he’s not capable of recognizing hypocritical judgment.
Of course, the problem is that this guy clearly hasn’t read the New Testament, much less the Old Testament. He’s sat through hours of preaching and has been a Christian for at least four years that I know of. He’s been a newborn Christian who hasn’t learned the basics of the basics of Scripture.
If I was his pastor I would be shocked and ashamed and reevaluating everything I do. If the pastor is honest, this guy isn’t an exception, but the general rule for the level of knowledge of his congregation. And those who are the exception and know more about the Bible are still not actually accomplishing very much for the kingdom and neither is the church as a whole.
Of course, this is what their pessimistic eschatology teaches will happen. So when it happens, they expect it to happen. They don’t have an expectation that they are going to accomplish great things for God or that the gospel will actually defeat Christ’s enemies. But surely, the pastor thinks that a guy sitting through hundreds of his sermons will not still be completely retarded.
At some point, we (and I’m including myself), have to examine the fruits of our efforts to see whether the results are fruitful or thorny. The fruits of that church are thorns and they need to change. We need to be semper reformanda. I’m trying something new for my church situation, and I’m keeping an eye on whether it bears fruit, whether I and my family bear fruit through it. If not, we have to try something else.
There is so much quality in these comments on Facebook. This might get long, but I want to compile a nice place to read through this in future months and years. It would be hard to find on Facebook again, and that’s not really even a good way to read comments in my opinion. I’ve put a next to the names of the commenters who are knocking it out of the park. Here it is.
ORIGINAL POST R.C. Sproul – Postmillennialist
John MacArthur – Dispensational Premillennialist
Voddie Baucham – Amillennialist
These three men represent(ed) all three of the major positions and yet were great friends. It should serve as a reminder that eschatology should not hinder relationships with other brothers, rather it should spur us on.
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NICHOLAS
All three are pietists, and receive(d) a lot of money while doing very little if anything for Christ’s kingdom, so they have much more in common than we at first glance might think
#DatChurchHustle
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JEREMY
Nicholas, you are saying Sproul did very little for Christ’s kingdom. Are you kidding me? Not evenly remotely close to the truth. I wouldn’t speak ill of MacArthur or Baucham either
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JOSEPH
Jeremy, //Sproul did very little for Christ’s kingdom//? He did a great deal institutionally. He also created a great following who were kept busy by his ideas and so did not have as much time to go in worse directions. He was really good at arguing for theory. He was a great guy to have a beer with.
Beyond that the fruit of his and all 19th & 20th century ministry is an entire culture that went from professing Christ to finding the church and Sproul entirely irrelevant.
It’s hard to call such men great. We by following their charm instead of Christ have given a world to our children which now must rebuild from the ground up.
Let’s not follow them.
With the reformers, what we should be saying is turn the priests out and put them to work if they will not work let them beg for their bread. For their institutions have nothing to offer, except the dim mimicry of the church of Jesus Christ.
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RANDOM COMMENTS RESPONDING TO NICHOLAS’ FIRST COMMENT
“This is not a good take.”
“You should feel bad.”
“Yeah you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about”
“kind of trollish of you if you ask me.”
“#datignorancehustle”
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NICHOLAS
Pastor worshipers are the cutest little baby Christians you’ll ever meet. Didn’t mean to slow the idol production. Carry on.
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ELI
Nicholas, if believing that faithful expository preaching of the word, ministering to a congregation, and being an apologist for the Christian faith advances the kingdom of God makes one an idolatrous pastor-worshipper, than I too am one since I think all three lived their lives accordingly. Perhaps you’d care to elaborate on why you think they did little or nothing for the kingdom of God, and share with us what you think they should have done. All we’ve got so far is a statement of your opinion which can only be evaluated in terms of my knowledge and preconceptions until you share what yours are.
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NICHOLAS
Eli, Not knowing the difference between productive kingdom work, and regurgitation of the milk of the word decade after decade; and not being discerning enough to tell the difference between a real pastor, and making a career of the perpetual marketing of milk is what makes you a baby Christian and pastor worshiper.
BTW, I love RC Sproul. I listened to him and read his books for years. But he’s not a pastor, and he did next to nothing for the kingdom, and I do appreciate the popularization of Calvinism as much as any Calvinist.
JMac, on the other hand, responsible as he is for infanticide in CA, is not fit to untie the sandals of a pop teacher like Sproul. I doubt if JMac knows the Lord.
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JOHN
Nicholas, What do you believe is in fact the difference between productive kingdom work and regurgitation of the milk of the word? Could you also elaborate on John Macarthur and infanticide?
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NICHOLAS
John, we see in Hebrews 5 that spiritual meat is defined as the message and application of practical righteousness. A true pastor trains the moral senses of Christ’s sheep to discern good and evil in every area of life, to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Low hanging fruit would be the Biblical doctrine of murder applied to infanticide. A little higher would be concepts like economics, money, banking, welfare, and taxation in general. A little more meaty would be law enforcement, immigration, due process and consistent application of criminal justice concepts like lex talionis and habeas corpus. Every area of life, really: art, science, health-care, math, everything! Men like RC Sproul and JMac and Voddie could never teach us to think Biblically about these matters presumably because nobody ever taught them (and so they never taught you), and if somebody did teach them, there’s just no money in it, so best for the prudent celebrity to keep quiet about issues that are just too meaty. Best to stick to TULIP and theoretical eschatology. Nothing too practical.
What is productive kingdom work, then? We are commanded to go out and take dominion, to press Christ’s crown rights into every area of life, to–on the basis of all authority being given to Him–go out and put all enemies under His feet.
The kingdom is entrepreneurial centered, because the properly functioning Body of Christ is gifts oriented, and many members will take many gifts to the world for every area of life, whether your gift is mechanics or engineering or culinary or healing, your business will springboard off your gifts. Since the greatest will be the greatest servants, entrepreneurship and wealth necessarily follow from kingdom mindedness. This is the Biblical prescription for subduing the nations.
For 1,800 years, the Church believed this, and they went out and conquered every area of life. The Church did not center on pastors. The Church was centered on manifold gifts, each relevant for the mission of the Church, and for the discipline of the nations.
Men like Sproul, JMac, and Voddie need to get real jobs, and discover productive gifts. Instead, they discovered a profitable racket, and their business is ever telling the Church milky truths which we should all get past within 60 days of converting to Christ, and they thus doom us to perpetual immaturity, salt without savor, lamps without light. Real pastors mature Christ’s people ala Ephesians 4. False pastors make careers on the back of a perpetually immature Church.
Regarding JMac and infanticide, I’m referring to the part he played in the Satanic persecution of Operation Rescue. For all we know, JMac is single handedly responsible for the persistence of child sacrifice.
When JMac’s deacon, Bob Vernon, chief of police, came to his “pastor” for counsel regarding what to do do with the Rescuers, Vernon was advised to use the Romans 13 sword to crush the rebels.
First hand witnesses to Vernon’s execution of JMac’s pastoral counsel include JOSEPH, John Cummins, et al. Here’s an excellent YouTube video documenting these facts.
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JOSEPH
Nicholas, yes I had several meetings with Bob explaining what we were doing and why. Bob “when I put on my blues I am the property of the state” Vernon was confirmed by his Pastor John MacSomething to use state authorized violence to crush those who would rescue the unborn.
The church sees work/career through entirely secular eyes.
Work is gaining sufficient Genesis 1:24-27 dominion over an area of creation to be able to use it to meet someone’s needs.
Payment is either directly trading such need-meeting or monetizing your excess and paying for it.
God designed societies to exist through such exchanges and gave His law to be the ethical structure of them.
The economy is merely the part of our human exchange system you can measure with money. But it is no less spiritual or divinely ordained than anything else we exchange.
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NICHOLAS
That’s precisely why RC, JMacSomthinOrTheOther, and Voddie are all pietists. Their religion is fundamentally distinct from our postmil optimism.
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JOSEPH
Eli, look, Nicholas gave some theoretical arguments which you should weigh carefully. But there is a single fact that is unmistakable:
Whatever Sproul et. al. and Great Leaders like them were doing, an entire civilization has been lost through their “ministry” and they and the organizations they represent are vilified and considered racists and abusers by most of society. I know I know it’s not fair. But it is reality. Whatever these Great Ones taught and lived it was not the world-changing salvation.
Time to follow Christ and leave the great ones on the shelf where they preferred to spend their lives.
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NICHOLAS
Joseph, This is exactly what needs to be said from Christ’s Church, and until this is the consensus of the Body of Christ, you and I know that only judgement can be expected. All we can do is be faithful voices in the wilderness. Praise God for you, dear brother, blessed of God.
On the testimony of two witnessesses…
If we do not bring JMac, the false shepherd, up on charges of his crimes, we are ourselves infidels. The very least we should do is call his conversion into question.
“You shall not covet” is the Tenth Commandment. It’s on the list with obvious sins like “You shall not murder”. But, apparently both Republicans and Democrats, Christians and non-Christians can get on board with rampant covetousness.
You don’t have to watch the video from Kurt Zerby if you don’t want. His first error is that renters don’t need to worry about property tax hikes. As if expenses don’t get passed on to renters in rent hikes. His math may be correct, though it’s based on a wild guess on his part. But he’s obviously playing on people’s greed showing how their house value will go up. Just by voting to take your neighbor’s money via government extortion, your house will skyrocket in value.
Socialism is built on covetousness, greed and theft. You get free something or cheap something or financial benefits by forcing people who don’t want or don’t agree with something to pay for it. Capitalists are often accused of greed, but it is just the opposite. Capitalists make money when people voluntarily pay for something they value. Both the buyer and the seller are better off after the transaction. In socialism, you get something for very little. You can benefit from your neighbor’s stuff. This video is in-your-face, blatant covetousness.
If a rec center is so valuable, it would be supported by people donating to it and by customers paying to use it. But raising funds is hard work, and it may mess up his return on investment, because that is dependent on the cost being spread out to everyone.
Socialism just keeps creeping up on us, while Republicans and Christians go all in on each little socialist project as long as it’s not proposed by a Democrat. Now they’re even in favor of recreation services being provided from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. In reality, there’s only one political party in this country–the Big Government Party.
Pretty much all Christians agree our country has problems. The problem is the solutions offered by most Christians is more of the same that has been tried over the last 50 years. Here’s an example from a friend running for the local school board, which he posted on Facebook:
“Children have been entrusted to their parents and parents trust the schools to educate their kids. This means that schools must honor the request of the parents when it comes to thier kids. And this means that schools do not have the right to do as they please with our kids!”
The problem is that some parents request crazy things like their sons to use the girls locker room and bathroom.
It’s also just not true as courts have ruled. For example, “Fields v. Palmdale (2005), which held that parents have no say in what, when, or how their children are taught about controversial subjects in the public schools; and Parker v. Hurley (2007), which held that parents have no right to opt their children out of objectionable material, even if it does not involve a core curricular subject.”
Not only that, but schools can hand out birth control and even help girls get an abortion. Colorado law only requires that parents be notified–not that they consent.
The problem is we’re forced to pay for public school whether we like it or not. As with all socialist systems, they get their money regardless of whether they provide good service. There’s no good way to force biblical beliefs on a socialist system, because the very existence of socialism is contrary to Scripture.
Public school is failing and we need to give it a push.
There’s a pro-freedom, local page that I take part in. A lady posted about how courageous everyone opposed to masks was at the school board meeting where they were begging their school board masters not to make them mask/abuse their children. First of all, I think sending our kids to socialist, government schools is the primary cause of this country’s long, gradual destruction. We’re handing our kids over to be discipled by the enemy, and teaching them that socialism is the best way to educate them.
I wanted to post something, along those lines in the conversation, but the post was already two days old when I first happened across it. I decided to post a meme that would hopefully get people thinking about how stupid it is to send their kids to the government. Below is what I posted and the ensuing conversation with one lady.
The quote in the picture of the school bus says, “Parents give up their rights when they drop the children off at public school.” -Texas Federal District Judge, Melinda Harmon.
Of course the quote is absolutely true, if you know the law. They can do all kinds of things to kids without your consent while they’re at school. Additionally, anyone who thinks that’s not true, sent their kids to school all last year wearing masks, so I’m not too impressed with anyone who claims to be not giving up their rights.
The thing I wanted to point out with this conversation is that Ms. Kunkel objects to my calling public school a socialist program, or being free. She has no idea what socialism is. The vast majority of conservatives/Christians opposed to socialism and wanting it to end have no idea what it is or that they are participating. They have no idea that their continued participation in the program is destroying our country. They have no idea that when they go beg the school board for scraps, they’re advocating for socialism.
We will continue to lose until pastors speak up about not sending Christian children to be educated in the false religion of human secularism.
The bad thing about how the internet works is people can just take things down and break links, so many of the links on this site are just not viewable anymore, and even I don’t know what they were in reference to 100% of the time. I posted this video about John Macarthur’s response to Operation Rescue in the 1980s. One of the links went to an LA Times article, and the link changed. I want to post the article here for safe keeping. It will be easy to find on their website by searching any of the longer phrases.
Here is the video I made, and below that is the text of the LA Times article:
ABORTION PROTESTS IN THE SOUTHLAND : Clerics’ Views Differ Over Militant Action
BY RUSSELL CHANDLER AND JOHN DARTMARCH 25, 1989 12 AM PTTIMES RELIGION WRITERS
The militant Operation Rescue anti-abortion movement has divided the ranks of Southern California Christians and stirred moderate opposition from pro-choice clergy.
But the vast majority of religious leaders–already immersed in Holy Week activities–stayed on the sidelines, in part because of disagreement over the protesters’ tactics of civil disobedience and fundamentalist rhetoric.
Devout Roman Catholics on both sides of the emotionally charged abortion protest paraded, prayed and held signs with opposing messages Friday outside a Long Beach family planning clinic targeted by Operation Rescue.
“I’m not pro-abortion, I’m pro-choice,” declared Armida Brashears, 54, of Huntington Beach, a Catholic mother of three and a member of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Brashears was accompanied by her placard-carrying mother, 77, “a pro-choice Catholic who goes to church religiously every week,” in the words of her daughter.
But also marching back and forth in front of the clinic was Maria Famolaro, 15, of Cypress, who prayed loudly and earnestly while fingering her rosary.
“We are praying for the people so they will understand abortion is killing those who can’t speak for themselves,” she said.
Few Catholic priests apparently took part in the demonstrations, and Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony extended only lukewarm support to Operation Rescue, giving its goals his “blessing” but questioning the effectiveness of its methods.
Norbertine Father Leo John Celano of St. Michael’s Abbey in the Diocese of Orange and a member of the Operation Rescue steering committee said he believed that more Catholic priests did not join him in Long Beach Friday because they are “the least available” just before Easter.
Clergy leadership in Operation Rescue, both nationally and in Southern California, is largely made up of theologically conservative Protestants.
The Rev. Randy Adler, 43, pastor of the nondenominational Stone Mountain Church in Laguna Hills, stressed God’s judgment upon a disobedient nation–a theme heard often in fundamentalist and charismatic church groups.
“The babies are secondary,” Adler, who was arrested during Thursday’s Operation Rescue sit-in in Cypress, said in a brief interview Friday.
“God has always judged nations that have destroyed classes of people. . . . (Abortionists) are brutally murdering the defenseless and innocent. . . . We’ve got their blood on our hands.”
But not all conservative Protestants agree with that interpretation of Scripture.
Grace Community Church in Panorama City, whose senior pastor, John MacArthur, is influential among evangelicals and fundamentalists, explained its opposition to Operation Rescue and civil disobedience in general in an article distributed to its nearly 10,000 churchgoers.
The statement noted that no government authority is requiring abortions to be performed and that the Apostle Paul said that civil law must be obeyed.
While opposing all forms of abortion, MacArthur’s church facetiously chided Operation Rescue for not preventing gays from going into bathhouses, parents from abusing children or otherwise stepping into other situations where “any of God’s laws (are) being broken.”
“The church has never been called to prevent sin by force or intrusion but to proclaim the Gospel to sinners,” the church statement said.
Operation Rescue’s approach provoked opposite responses from two popular Southern California evangelical talk-show hosts.
Rich Buhler of KBRT participated in Friday’s Long Beach demonstration and said he saw nothing wrong with Rescue’s civil disobedience.
“If we really believe it’s a human life in the womb, then we have to do more than print pamphlets and march in front of clinics,” he said.
However, KKLA’s John Stewart said in an interview he remains convinced that day-to-day “sidewalk counseling” by anti-abortion workers outside clinics is much more effective than the dramatic attempts to close down clinics for a day or two.
“God bless the people putting themselves on the line, but this seems almost like a frustrated reaction to the fact that abortion laws have not changed,” Stewart said.
Meanwhile, in a Friday morning news conference at Hollywood United Methodist Church, several pro-choice religious leaders emphasized that religious people within all denominations have differing views on abortion.
“But we disagree in a friendly way . . . rather than this circus attitude that Operation Rescue has brought to Los Angeles,” said the Rev. Ignacio Castuera, pastor of the Hollywood church.
Two Reform Jewish rabbis and Lisa Desposito, the six-months-pregnant state director of Catholics for Free Choice, challenged the tactics of Operation Rescue and defended the “choice” stance on abortion as morally justified.
Judaism has always recognized that when pregnancy threatens the life of the mother, an abortion is permissible, but rabbinical opinion differs on other difficulties surrounding giving birth, said Rabbi Janet Marder, assistant regional director for Reform Jewish congregations in Southern California.
Referring to the protesters, Desposito said: “I don’t see Martin Luther Kings. . . . I see bigots, moral absolutists.”
The Rev. E .V. Hill of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles disagreed. In a telephone interview, the pastor said there is a valid comparison between the Rescue operation and the arrest-drawing civil rights movement led by King.
However, Hill and most other prominent Southern California ministers have neither been involved in Operation Rescue nor issued public statements about it.
But on Good Friday, some clergy who did take a stand appealed to the scriptural model of Jesus for support.
“We would honor (Jesus) most this day by following his example,” said the Rev. Martha Siegel, who chairs the Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese Commission on Theology and Human Sexuality.
“In this holy season, we remember Jesus Christ, who did not coerce belief or intimidate people into improper behavior but drew them through his example of self-giving love,” Siegel said at the Hollywood news conference.
And in the crowd Friday, the Rev. Dusty Pruett, 42, pastor of the homosexual-oriented Metropolitan Community Church in Long Beach, declared:
“I think Jesus would be here for women holding up a sign saying, ‘I’m for pro-choice.’ He had a heart for the oppressed.”
The Rev. Joseph Foreman, 34, of the Presbyterian Church in America and national field director of Operation Rescue, also thought that Christ would have been in Long Beach.
“This is Good Friday, when Jesus led the first ‘rescue,’ ” he said, referring to the Christian belief that Jesus saved humanity from sin by his death on the cross.
At least one banner-carrying demonstrator Friday thought the uproar over abortion was beside the point. Premarital sex, insisted Stephen Christian of Los Angeles, is the culprit making abortions necessary.
Working for the Secession of Fremont County from the Union
next to the names of the commenters who are knocking it out of the park. Here it is.
