Swedish pietism: Carl Olof Rosenius and George Scott

Yesterday’s post introduced Swedish pietists and alluded to Dwight Moody’s popularity among them in the 19th century.

Although I plan to post on David Gustafson’s book on Moody and Swedish pietists (mentioned therein) early next week, it seemed apposite to explore the possibilities for their appetite for Anglo-American holiness.

A likely place to begin is with two men, Carl Olof Rosenius, Lutheran pietist and George Scott, an English Methodist.

However, in the early 19th century, Napoleon imposed the Continental Blockade against Great Britain in retaliation for his defeat at Trafalgar. Napoleon wanted to isolate Britain from trading with Europe. He not only had his French Empire, but satellite states which included Scandinavia and much of Eastern Europe into Russia. Sweden refused to participate, and, consequently, was able to trade with Britain in a flourishing exchange of her raw materials for Britain’s colonial products.  Whilst that oversimplifies the situation, it also meant that a number of enterprising Britons settled in Sweden to establish their own businesses, from engineering to manufacturing to shipping.  They assimilated into Swedish society, married Swedes and became philanthropists.

As religious life was still essential, they invited their British clergymen to join them. These clergy came largely from what the British call non-Conformist churches, that is, those which are not established state churches (e.g. Church of England [Anglican], Church of Scotland [Presbyterian]). They came from the Free Church in Scotland (so called because it is free from state control), the Methodists as well as various Evangelical groups (e.g. Religious Tract Society and the Salvation Army).  The Methodists gained an extra boost with Nordic sailors on the floating mission in New York Harbor, the Bethel (Betel in Swedish). Led by a Swede, it was in operation for many years and resulted in numerous conversions of Scandinavian sailors, who then returned to their homes and encouraged the spread of Methodism among their families and friends.

Therefore, by the time Dwight Moody’s sermons and Ira Sankey’s hymns reached Sweden in the 1870s, Lutheran pietists were well acquainted with English and Scottish non-Conformist evangelists.

The early 19th century also saw Britain at the forefront of the age of steam during the Industrial Revolution.  A Englishman by the name of Samuel Owen (1774 – 1854) indirectly helped to shape not only industry but pietism in Sweden.

Owen was a brilliant inventor and engineer. Although born in Shropshire, he moved to Leeds (South Yorkshire) where he worked for a steam engine manufacturer, Fenton, Murray & Wood’s.  Swedish companies were naturally eager to purchase these revolutionary new engines and ordered four from the company. Fenton, Murray & Wood’s sent Owen to Sweden to help install them.

Owen made his home in Sweden in 1807 and had 17 children with three wives. It is unclear what happened to his first wife, an Englishwoman, but afterward, he married two Swedes, the first of whom died. Owen’s third wife, Lisette, was one of playwright August Strindberg’s aunts.

In the meantime, Owen had opened his own manufacturing works in Stockholm in 1809. Less than ten years later, he held the distinction of being the first person in Sweden to build a ship with a steam engine. He became prominent in Swedish society and is remembered today with a street named after him located near Stockholm City Hall, Samuel Owens gata.

He is known as the ‘founder of the Swedish mechanical industry’ and was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1831.

Although Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, Projekt Runeberg says that, in 1830, Owen and other British immigrants requested that the Methodist preacher George Scott move to Sweden.

Information on Scott is scant, unfortunately, but he met Carl Olof Rosenius and mixed in Swedish pietist circles for several years.

Rosenius’s father Anders was the local pastor in Nysätra in Västerbotten. Anders Rosenius became involved with Swedish revivalism in the 19th century. The younger Rosenius completed secondary school and went on to study theology at the University of Uppsala. However, for financial and health reasons, he had to give up his studies and become a tutor near Stockholm.

Rosenius experienced his ‘conversion’ moment at the age of 15. He was no doubt always a Christian, but certain pietist, Baptist and holiness denominations refer to the one big moment of being born in the Spirit as conversion. The Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, although steeped in faith from infancy, even had a ‘conversion’. Therefore, in this context it doesn’t mean they went from non-believer to believer but instead had a much deeper experience.

After his conversion, Rosenius preached to the school holidays conventicle (small group). He also impressed his local bishop with his deep understanding of the Lutheran doctrine of justification by grace through faith.

As a young tutor in Stockholm, however, Rosenius began to have doubts. There, he made the acquaintance of George Scott. In 1840, the two became good friends and Rosenius felt his faith buoyed by the association. Rosenius abandoned his goal of pursuing the priesthood and instead began working for Scott as his assistant. He lived in the grounds of Scott’s church Betlehemskyrkan — the ‘English Church’ (unrelated to the Church of England) — which the Foreign Evangelical Society helped to finance.

In 1842, the two men founded a journal called Pietisten, which became popular among its newly evangelical readership who were sceptical of the Lutheran Church and seeking a greater holiness and Spener-type religious experience.

However, that same year, Scott had criticised the Swedish government and, in reaction, a small riot broke out in front of Betlehemskyrkan on Palm Sunday. Scott left Sweden soon after for Gravesend, Kent, where he stayed until 1845, after which time he became Superintendent and Chairman of the Aberdeen District of the Methodists in Scotland. He also served in Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle. In 1866, he presided at the Wesleyan Methodist Conference of Eastern Canada.

Pietisten lived on, though, under Rosenius’s editorship. In 1868, Paul Peter Waldenström succeeded him.

After Scott’s return to England, Rosenius became more involved in the Swedish revival movement, known as ‘neo-evangelicalism’. He travelled around the country, speaking to various conventicles. He also rented premises in Stockholm.

In 1856, he joined a group of fellow pietists to found the Evangelical Mission (EFS) and edited their magazine Mission. The following year, a foundation which had bought Scott’s Betlehemskyrkan reopened it.  The Wikipedia image on the right shows Rosenius in the pulpit there.

In 1867, whilst preaching at St John’s Church in Gothenburg, Rosenius suffered a stroke and died a year later.

Like the Wesley brothers who never left the Church of England, Rosenius remained a member of the Lutheran Church in Sweden, as did his wife and children. Similarly, as the Wesleys felt resistance from the established Church, so did Rosenius from the Lutherans.  Rosenius opposed free and open Communion, which he and his family still received in the Lutheran Church.  He was also against schism.

Throughout his life, Rosenius continued to place primary importance on the Lutheran doctrines of objective atonement and justification by grace through faith.  However, he liked the warmth and personal approach of the Herrnhut school.  He found Scott’s Methodism helpful for its works-based emphasis on outward signs of holiness.

Rosenius’s legacy was probably what he would have wanted: a cross-pollination of pietism into the Lutheran Church and reinforcement of a core element of Lutheran doctrine into pietism.

One of his many followers, a lay preacher named Nicolaus Bergensköld, emigrated to the United States and became involved with the revival movement taking place in Scandinavian settlements in the Midwest.  He founded the mission church in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1868.

Next week: Moody’s effect on Swedish pietists

Later Wesleyan and pietist movements: holiness and temperance

Two of last week’s posts introduced pietism. The first explored its origins in Germany and the second examined its expansion in Methodism.

As we saw, pietism is based on the theology of Christian perfection, which comes from the perfection of Christ. Whilst all Christians are enjoined to sanctification — bearing increasingly holy attitudes and behaviours as a result of God’s grace and the Holy Spirit working through them — the danger is semi-Pelagianism. A list of proscribed activities — dancing, drinking and smoking — is not only a form of legalism but gives some believers in Arminian (‘free will’) denominations the idea that they can save themselves by obeying this checklist of behaviours.

Therefore, a number of pastors and theologians have condemned it over the centuries. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

denounced the basic aim of Pietism, to produce a “desired piety” in a person, as unbiblical.

Pietist denominations and Wesleyan denominations follow a doctrine called theosis in their interpretation of personal holiness and sanctification. Yet, everyone’s journey on the road to sanctification is different and personal piety happens in different ways at various times. One person might never be tempted by alcohol yet fall into sins of pride; another might drink in moderation yet conduct themselves in perfect humility. Nowhere in Scripture — as Bonhoeffer said — does the Bible proscribe or prescribe a variety of things that the pietists and Wesleyans say it does.

A case in point is Methodist Hillary Clinton banning smoking in the White House during her husband’s presidency. Mrs Clinton was trying to save other people from themselves and to get them to practice this little bit of holiness. Another aspect is social justice, also popular with many striving for Christian perfection. They like to impose this notional holiness on others by supporting government policies for higher taxes to ensure that wealth is evenly distributed. The Welsh, despite their increasingly secular nature, are still influenced by their Presbyterian Church’s teachings, which are more Methodist than Presbyterian with regard to morality. As such, they are becoming prohibitionists where drinking and smoking are concerned. They claim that society would be so much better if only these two pleasure outlets were done away with.

None of these ‘good for you’ policies works. We have seen this throughout history. Nevertheless, pietism and theosis of whatever kind can lead to mysticism, introspection and what is known as radical pietism, involving utopian communities.  Radical pietism promotes separatist communal living rather than church membership, a Christian experience based on emotion and sensation rather than doctrine and holding each other to behavioural accountability — often publicly.

The word ‘heart’ features prominently in any pietist movement and, in some situations, can trump what the Bible says.  What is important is what the person feels and what he does. Therefore, it is no surprise that Lutherans, Calvinists and orthodox Anglicans condemn it as works-based righteousness. These works are not necessarily spontaneous but carefully engineered by oneself and monitored by others.  Many of the ‘holy’ behaviours are manmade diktats, based on a leader’s personal likes and dislikes.

However, one of the greatest perils of semi-Pelagianism is that Nature abhors a vacuum. And Satan enters in quite easily, constantly tempting people.

This is why a Christian who believes an orthodox confession of faith will be able to better resist temptation as he prays for more grace to guide him spontaneously in the direction of holiness in obedience to Christ’s commandments.  Christ and the Apostles never said that faith was an ethereal experience or a lengthy to-do list.

That said, we come to the subject of Methodism and pietism as it developed in the 19th century to the present day. Emphases below are mine.

John Wesley’s legacy

Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, died in 1791 at the age of 87. His

call to personal and social holiness continues to challenge Christians who attempt to discern what it means to participate in the Kingdom of God.

Denominations which Methodism influenced include not only the Methodist churches around the world, but also the Methodist Episcopal churches, Wesleyan Church, the Church of the Nazarene and the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Charismatic and Pentecostal denominations also have their origins in Wesleyan holiness movements.

Wesley’s circuit riders helped to spread Methodism in the United States as did Anglicans emigrating from England who considered themselves more Methodist than Anglican. At the end of the 18th century, Methodists had their own chapels but without their own clergy, still received the sacraments in the Anglican church.

Wesley ‘laid hands’ on an Anglican priest — Thomas Coke — for his role as Superintendent of Methodists in the United States. He also ordained two presbyters who would accompany Coke on his journey.  However, Wesley was loth to offend the Church of England by ordaining any more Methodist clergymen.  Wesley and his brother died in the Church of England.

Francis Asbury joined Coke as co-Superintendent. Together, they founded the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784. The name implied that a Methodists would meet in chapel and receive the sacraments in the Episcopal Church. Later, the word ‘Episcopal’ would refer to its church government of bishops.

The Methodist Episcopal Church relied on modestly-paid circuit riders, unsalaried local ministers, stewards who were administrators and

class leaders who conducted weekly small groups where members were mutually accountable for their practice of Christian piety …

The earliest Episcopal Methodists in North America were often drawn from the middle-class trades, women were more numerous among members than men, and adherents outnumbered official members by as many as five-to-one. Adherents, unlike members, were not publicly accountable for their Christian life and therefore did not usually attend weekly class meetings. Meetings and services were often characterized by extremely emotional and demonstrative styles of worship that were often condemned by contemporary Congregationalists and Presbyterians. It was also very common for exhortations — testimonials and personal conversion narratives distinguishable from sermons because exhorters did not “take a text” from the Bible — to be publicly delivered by both women and slaves. Some of the earliest class leaders were also women.

Note the pietist characteristics of behaviour monitoring, small groups and emotional worship.

The founding of the AME Churches

On a positive note, Methodism was egalitarian in welcoming active participation and leadership from women and slaves.  It was also very much at the forefront of the abolition movement.  A number of Methodists participated in the Underground Railroad, which helped slaves to freedom.

However, not all black freemen in the North felt welcome in Methodist congregations and formed their own:

- In 1799, Francis Asbury ordained freeman Richard Allen. The congregation to which he was assigned, St George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, allowed him and another minister Absalom Jones to preach only to black congregations. Blacks could also only sit in specific galleries in the church. Consequently, Allen, Jones and others founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1816.

- A similar situation took place in New York City at John Street Methodist Church in 1800. Blacks were told to leave worship.  Blacks left to form their own congregation, the name of which was Zion. By 1820, other Zion congregations had grown from the original church. In 1821, elder James Varick was named the first General Superintendent of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and became its bishop the following year.

Both AME churches exist today. The AME Church has become increasingly involved in liberation theology. After the Civil War the AME Zion Church expanded into the American South and today has many missions in the Caribbean and Africa.

Mergers in the 19th century and German immigrants

At the end of the 18th century, other splits in Methodism were already occurring. In 1793, the preacher James O’Kelly rebelled against going where his bishop assigned him. He and other preachers who wanted the right to refuse a church assignment formed the Christian Church — Christian Connection — which later merged with the United Church of Christ.

There were also Methodist congregations which catered to German settlers in Pennsylvania. In 1767, Philip William Otterbein and Martin Boehm formed the United Brethren in Christ congregations, a branch of which is now part of the United Methodist Church. In 1800, German immigrant Jacob Albright (originally Albrecht) founded the Evangelical Association — the Albright Brethren — for German immigrants. Most of the group’s members became part of the United Methodist Church in 1968, however, a small group still exists as the Evangelical Church of North America:

probably in protest against perceived theological and social liberalism in American Methodism.

The German churches were heavily influenced by pietism not only from Methodism but also that from the Moravian and Mennonite communities.  Albright placed a good deal of emphasis on his personal religious journey, brought about by adverse family circumstances during which he rejected the Lutheranism of his youth. He was known to preach in a moving, emotional style.

Otterbein was ordained a German Reformed (Calvinist) minister in Herborn in 1749 and was assigned to a church in Pennsylvania, where he met Boehm.  Boehm was born in Pennsylvania into a Mennonite family and became a preacher.  The two men developed a close friendship which resulted in Boehm’s excommunication from the Mennonites. Otterbein, like Wesley, remained in the denomination into which he was ordained although he, with Boehm, began organising the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.  The two men were the first bishops of the new denomination.

The desire for holiness

Whilst most Methodist Episcopal Church members gradually merged into what is today’s United Methodist Church, a number of the offshoots of the Methodist Episcopal Church during the 19th century involved a quest for holiness and greater purity.

The Wesleyan Church was formed in 1843 in Utica, New York, and still exists today. Its members wanted a stronger abolitionist stance from the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1848, the Wesleyan Church also began its strong support of women’s rights and ordained its first female minister, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, in 1856.

However, revivals were sweeping across the United States and Canada in the 1850s, and the Wesleyan preachers, particularly the Revd James Caughey

brought in the converts by the score, most notably in the revivals in Canada West 1851-53. His technique combined restrained emotionalism with a clear call for personal commitment, coupled with followup action to organize support from converts. It was a time when the Holiness Movement caught fire, with the revitalized interest of men and women in Christian perfection. Caughey successfully bridged the gap between the style of earlier camp meetings and the needs of more sophisticated Methodist congregations in the emerging cities.^[4]

In the 20th century:

the denomination merged with the Alliance of Reformed Baptists of Canada and 1968 with the Pilgrim Holiness Church. It spread through revivals emphasizing a deepening experience with God called holiness or sanctification. Heart purity was a central theme. During this period of time, many small churches developed through revivals and the emphasis of sanctification (taught by John Wesley, but not emphasized by many Methodists). As many as 25 or 30 small denominations were formed and eventually merged with other groups to enlarge the church. The church was strong in missionary and revival emphasis. The merger took place in 1968 at Anderson University, Anderson, Indiana.^[5]

The Free Methodist Church was founded in Pekin, New York, in 1860, after disagreements with the Methodist Episcopal Church over a perceived lack of emphasis on holiness:

The name “Methodist” was retained for the newly organized church because the founders felt that their misfortunes (expulsion from the Methodist Episcopal Church) had come to them because of their adherence to doctrines and standards of Methodism. The word “Free” was suggested and adopted because the new church was to be an anti-slavery church (slavery was an issue in those days), because pews in the churches were to be free to all rather than sold or rented (as was common), and because the new church hoped for the freedom of the Holy Spirit in the services rather than a stifling formality.^[5] However, according to World Book Encyclopedia, the third principle was “freedom” from secret and oathbound societies (in particular the Freemasons).

The Free Methodist Church has a loose liturgical structure for its worship and professes

the standard beliefs of evangelical, Arminian Protestantism, with distinctive emphasis on the teaching of entire sanctification as held by John Wesley

It supports egalitarianism, however, like the aforementioned Evangelical Church of North America, it draws a line with regard to the social and political activism which characterises the United Methodist Church.

In England in 1865, former Methodist minister William Booth began evangelising in London’s East End, dispensing soup, soap and salvation. His mission work became the Salvation Army and spread internationally:

The Salvation Army’s main converts were at first alcoholics, morphine addicts, prostitutes and other “undesirables” unwelcome in polite Christian society, which helped prompt the Booths to start their own church.^[8] The Booths did not include the use of sacraments (mainly baptism and Holy Communion) in the Army’s form of worship, believing that many Christians had come to rely on the outward signs of spiritual grace rather than on grace itself.^[9] Other beliefs are that its members should completely refrain from drinking alcohol (Holy Communion is not practised), smoking, taking illegal drugs and gambling.^[10]

Meanwhile, back in the United States, the holiness movement was gaining strength. Pietism, quietism (‘let go and let God’ and silent prayer) and Methodism through small meeting houses, Quaker influence, revivals and camp meetings stirred the emotions of many people in towns and cities:

Two major leaders of the holiness revival were Phoebe Palmer and her husband, Dr. Walter Palmer. In 1835, Palmer’s sister, Sarah A. Lankford, had started holding Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness in her New York City home. In 1837, Palmer experienced what she called entire sanctification and had become the leader of the Tuesday Meetings by 1839. At first only women attended these meetings, but eventually Methodist bishops and hundreds of clergy and laymen began to attend as well. At the same time, Methodist minister Timothy Merritt of Boston founded a journal called the Guide to Christian Perfection, later renamed The Guide to Holiness. This was the first American periodical dedicated exclusively to promoting the Wesleyan message of Christian holiness.^[5] In 1865, the Palmers purchased The Guide which at its peak had a circulation of 30,000. In 1859, Palmer published The Promise of the Father, in which she argued in favor of women in ministry. This book later influenced Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army. The practice of ministry by women is common but not universal within the denominations of the holiness movement.

Camp meetings attracted large crowds:

The first distinct “holiness camp meeting” convened at Vineland, New Jersey in 1867 under the leadership of John S. Inskip, John A. Wood, Alfred Cookman, and other Methodist ministers. The gathering attracted as many as 10,000 people. At the close of the encampment, while the ministers were on their knees in prayer, they formed the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness, and agreed to conduct a similar gathering the next year. This organization was commonly known as the National Holiness Association. Later, it became known as the Christian Holiness Association and subsequently the Christian Holiness Partnership.

The second National Camp Meeting was held at Manheim, Pennsylvania, and drew upwards of 25,000 persons from all over the nation. People called it a “Pentecost,” and it did not disappoint them. The service on Monday evening has almost become legendary for its spiritual power and influence. The third National Camp Meeting met at Round Lake, New York. This time the national press attended and write-ups appeared in numerous papers, including a large two-page pictorial in Harper’s Weekly. These meetings made instant religious celebrities out of many of the workers. Robert and Hannah Smith were among those who took the holiness message to England, and their ministries helped lay the foundation for the now-famous Keswick Convention.

The Keswick Convention, founded by an Anglican Canon and a Quaker, still exists today as an ecumenical gathering of evangelical Christians in Cumbria (northwest England).  It is connected with the 19th century Higher Life movement in England which promoted

“entire sanctification,” “the second blessing,” “the second touch,” “being filled with the Holy Spirit,” and various other terms. Higher Life teachers promoted the idea that Christians who had received this blessing from God could live a more holy, that is less sinful or even a sinless, life. The so-called Keswick approach seeks to provide a mediating and biblically balanced solution to the problem of subnormal Christian experience. The “official” teaching has been that every believer in this life is left with the natural proclivity to sin and will do so without the countervailing influence of the Holy Spirit …

Little by little, Methodist churches in the London area became open to the concept of Christian holiness, which was their rightful inheritance from their founder. Robert Pearsall Smith warned them that they would end up falling behind other churches who had embraced the movement, and they began to invite Higher Life teachers to explain the doctrine to them.

Back in the United States in 1871, the famous evangelist Dwight L Moody met with two Free Methodist churchwomen and, although he did not become part of the holiness movement, greatly admired their teachings.

In a quest for holiness, two other new denominations were founded in 1895. One was the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church, which Benjamin Hardin Irwin founded. Irwin was a Baptist minister in Lincoln, Nebraska, who met with members of the Iowa Holiness Association. (Iowa is the state east of Nebraska.) He ended up joining the Wesleyan Methodist Church and believed there must be more to faith than sanctification — an additional experience. As such:

After receiving this experience in October 1895, he began to preach this “third blessing” among holiness adherents in the Midwest, particularly among Wesleyan Methodists and Brethren in Christ. His services were highly emotional with participants often getting the “jerks”, shouting, speaking in tongues, and holy dancing and laughing.^[2] Thousands attended his meetings and his teaching was circulated widely within the holiness movement, with its greatest strength in the Midwest and South. His message was largely rejected, however, and was denounced as a “third blessing heresy”.^[3]

He disapproved of:

women wearing “needless ornamentation”. However, he also applied this prohibition to men, making it a sin to wear neckties. He also said it was a sin to eat anything forbidden by the dietary laws of the Old Testament.^[10]

As is the case with pietist clergy, Irwin, too, had trouble with serious temptation:

In 1900, Irwin confessed to “open and gross sin” which brought “great reproach” to the church. He resigned as general overseer and was replaced by Joseph H. King, a 31 year old former Methodist from Georgia.

The Fire-Baptized Holiness Church would help to pave the way for Pentecostalism.Through mergers with the Pentecostal Holiness Church it became the International Pentecostal Holiness Church in 1975.

The second denomination founded in 1895 is the better known and less emotionally charged Church of the Nazarene. Phineas F Bresee was a pastor in the Methodist Episcopal Church but joined with a physician, Dr Joseph Pomeroy Widney, and a number of laypeople in the Los Angeles area to form this new church.  Widney thought of the name.  Its focus was to create family-oriented congregations for and of the urban poor.

The Church of the Nazarene took root in San Francisco, then expanded eastward throughout the United States. By 1907, its congregations were dotted all over the country. Church planting was also taking place in Canada.  Both of these developments were thanks to a merger with the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America which marked the denomination’s formal incorporation.

The Nazarenes are deeply committed to higher education and have undergraduate and graduate schools around the world.

They adhere closely to Wesleyan teachings:

A key outgrowth of this theology is the commitment of Nazarenes not only to the Evangelical Gospel of repentance and a personal relationship with God, but also to compassionate ministry to the poor …

Throughout its history, the Church of the Nazarene has maintained a stance supporting total abstinence from alcohol and any other intoxicant, including cigarettes. Primary Nazarene founder Bresee was active in the Prohibition cause. Although this continues to be debated, the position remains in the church. While the church does not consider alcohol itself to be the cause of sin, it recognizes that intoxication and the like, are a ‘danger’ to many people, both physically and spiritually. Historically, the Nazarene Church was founded in order to help the poor. Alcohol, gambling, the like, and their addictions were cited as things that kept people poor. So in order to help the poor, as well as everyone, Nazarenes have traditionally abstained from those things. Also, a person who is meant to serve an example to others should avoid the use of them, in order not to cause others to stray from their ‘walk with God,’ as that is considered a sin for both parties.

Interestingly, in light of the holiness movement’s origins in pietism, faithful Nazarenes are horrified (rightly so) to see their denomination move towards mysticism and contemplative prayer in their denomination. However, a study of pietism reveals that this is not uncommon.  Some of their leaders are also questioning biblical inerrancy, another characteristic of pietistic churches where personal experience overshadows Scripture and doctrine.

Worship includes personal testimony, and camp meetings still take place annually although revivals are less numerous than previously. Also:

A distinct approach to worship, especially in the early days of the Nazarene church, was the belief that ultimately the Holy Spirit should lead the worship. Services that were considered to be palpably evidenced by leadership of the Holy Spirit were marked by what was called “the Glory.” Almost equal to the emphasis on the doctrine of entire sanctification was the emphasis on these unusual worship experiences. Church leaders were careful to avoid emotional techniques to bring about such services. Ritual and the usual order of services were not abandoned but were held loosely. While some of the services were marked by shouting, others were marked by testimony, weeping, and individuals seeking spiritual help.

Other holiness and Methodist churches

In closing, there are two other Wesley-influenced churches worth mentioning. One is the small group of snake-handling churches in the American South, about which I wrote in 2010. They are an offshoot of the holiness movement.

The other is the Primitive Methodist Church, whose members were sometimes called ‘ranters’. They had their origins in England during an All Day of Prayer in Mow Cop, Staffordshire, in 1807. Four years later, this group grew to encompass other camp meeting groups.  The mainstream Methodists in England, called the Methodist Connexion at the time, frowned on the noise and unseemly emotions of this group of poorer brethren. Some groups fell into trances, some evangelists talked about the supernatural.  Both evangelists and their audiences were uneducated people. For these reasons, Thomas Coke was very much opposed to the Primitive Methodists. However, mainstream Methodists feared that the Primitives were giving them a bad name, at a time when the Church of England had scant regard for Wesley’s teachings.

Primitive Methodists used child evangelists in their preaching. Their worship music was seen to be undignified, inspired by popular melodies of the day.  By the end of the 19th century, however, they moved closer to mainstream Methodism and discarded their more eccentric denominational characteristics. In the 20th century, both Methodist groups were reconciled to each other.  In 1932, the Primitive Methodist Church became part of the Methodist Union. However, offshoots still exist in the United States and, perhaps, in Australia.

The Temperance Movement

A commonality between mainstream Methodists and the Primitives was their dislike for alcohol:

both the Primitive and Wesleyan Methodists wanted to reform popular behaviour. Again the Primitives were more radical than the Wesleyans and less in keeping with bourgeois correctness. [Co-founder Hugh] Bourne was not just in favour of temperance, he disagreed with alcohol altogether and thought of himself as the father of the teetotal movement. The Primitive Methodists were a religion of popular culture. While the Wesleyans attempted to impose elements of middle-class culture on the lower classes, Primitive Methodists offered an alternate popular culture. They timed their activities to coincide with sinful events. For instance, as an alternative to the race week at Preston they organised a Sunday School children’s parade and a “frugal feast”. Both tried to inculcate the doctrine of self-help into the working class. They promoted education through Sunday Schools, though the Primitives distinguished themselves by teaching writing. Through a combination of discipline, preaching and education both Primitive and Wesleyan Methodism sought to reform their members morality.

Of Methodism in the United States, Wikipedia states that John Wesley abhorred alcohol. Similarly:

The temperance movement appealed strongly to the Methodist doctrines of sanctification and Christian perfection … Therefore, those who believe are made new in Christ. The believer’s response to this sanctification then is to uphold God’s word in the world. A large part of this, especially in the late-19th century, was “to be their brother’s keepers, or [...] their brother’s brothers.”^[38] Because of this sense of duty toward the other members of the church, many Methodists were personally temperate out of a hope that their restraint would give strength to their brothers. The Methodist stance against drinking was strongly stated in the Book of Discipline. Initially, the issue taken was limited to distilled liquors, but quickly, teetotalism became the norm and Methodists were commonly known to abstain from all alcoholic beverages.^[30]

In 1880, the general conference included in the Discipline a broad statement which included, “Temperance is a Christian virtue, Scripturally enjoined.”^[38] Due to the temperate stance of the church, the practice of Eucharist was altered — to this day, Methodist churches most commonly use grape juice symbolically during Communion rather than wine. The Methodist church distinguished itself from many other denominations in their beliefs about state control of alcohol. Where many other denominations, including Roman Catholics, Protestant Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Unitarians, believed that the ill-effects of liquor should be controlled by self-discipline and individual restraint, Methodists believed that it was the duty of the government to enforce restrictions on the use of alcohol.^[38] In 1904, the Board of Temperance was created by the General Conference to help push the Temperance agenda.

The women of the Methodist Church were strongly mobilized by the temperance movement. In 1879, a Methodist woman, Frances E. Willard, was voted to the presidency of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, an organization which was characterized by heavy Methodist participation. To this day, the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Missions holds property across on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, which was built using funds provided by laypeople. Women of the church were responsible for 70% of the $650,000 it cost to construct the building in 1922. The building was intended to serve as the Methodist Church’s social reform presence of the Hill. The Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals was especially prominent within the building.^[39]

Apologies for the long post, however, it shows in one place the recurring themes of pietism: small groups, behavioural control, personal religious experience, loose worship styles and less emphasis on doctrine.

Next: Pietism and Pentecostalism

Pietism and Methodism

Yesterday’s post explored the origins of pietism, which originated in the Lutheran Church in Germany as a reaction to a doctrinal, established church of the state which many regarded as lacking in moral and religious fervour.

From Germany, the movement spread throughout Scandinavia, particularly Norway, and to Prussia. It also extended beyond Lutheranism, bringing about a Moravian revival. Lutheran and Moravian immigrants took their pietism to North America. Pietism, however, also influenced the practices of some Calvinists, particularly Anglicans attracted to the preaching of John Wesley and George Whitefield. This, too, was due directly to a Moravian influence which had come to England and Wales.

Wesley’s Methodist movement would eventually inspire further pietism in other churches, mainly those under the Holiness and Pentecostal banners.

John Wesley and the Moravians

At Oxford in 1729, John Wesley’s brother Charles, George Whitefield and other students formed a society called the Holy Club. John Wesley, older and by then ordained in the Anglican Church, had already begun devoting his life to the pursuit of holiness.

The Wesleys, together with the members of the Holy Club, developed a methodical way to achieve what they saw as a sanctified, obedient life. This rigid system of holiness would become known as Methodism.  The word ‘pietist’ was initially used by those critical of the movement; and so it was with the word ‘Methodist’, used against the Holy Club by its critics at Oxford.

The Wikipedia entry on pietism describes the German influence on Wesley as coming from both the Lutherans and the Moravians:

Moravians (e.g., Zinzendorf, Peter Bohler) and Pietists connected to Francke and Halle Pietism.

However, Wesley’s first encounter with their pietism initially occurred not in Germany but on his journey to North America with Charles in 1735.

A storm broke one of the ship’s masts en route to the American colonies. The story has it that, whilst the English (Anglicans and/or Calvinists) panicked, the Moravians on board remained calm by praying and singing hymns.  Their reaction impressed John Wesley, and he befriended them.

Yet, the pietists’ way of life dovetailed with Wesley’s own and that of the Holy Club in Oxford. Therefore, it was natural that he would have been attracted to it.

Once Wesley arrived in the southern colony of Georgia at the invitation of Governor James Oglethorpe to head a new congregation in the city of Savannah, he maintained his connections with Moravian pastors which affected his ministry there adversely.

Common pietist problems: women and the law

Reading biographical details of pietist pastors reveals two common themes: legal and women  troubles.

Wherever a dominant doctrinal and state-established church is in place, pietist pastors have run afoul of the law. As we saw yesterday, the Norwegian Hans Nielsen Hauge spent a number of years in prison for opposing the state church (Lutheran).

We will also see another Lutheran example — involving women — in a few days’ time.  Further on in this post is a Welsh example.

Wesley also experienced problems in Georgia. Many settlers were Anglicans and, as such, opposed to his Methodism. However, he also became romantically involved with Sophia Hopkey, a woman who sailed from England on the same ship as the Wesley brothers. A Moravian pastor advised Wesley against further involvement.

Hopkey maintained that Wesley promised that he would marry her. However, she went on to marry another — William Williamson — and, attending Wesley’s church with her new husband, presented herself at the Lord’s Table for Communion. Wesley refused to give Mrs Williamson the Sacrament.  This was an act which had grave overtones for a congregant’s or guest’s personal character.

The couple filed a lawsuit against Wesley, who stood trial, although the case was dismissed.  Mr Williamson filed another suit against Wesley in an attempt to forbid his leaving Georgia. However, a shaken and debilitated Wesley managed to return to England, escaping the law.

Wesley’s return to England — more Moravian influence

Upon his return to England, John Wesley continued his Moravian associations.

Moravians in London worshipped in Aldersgate Street, then at the Fetter Lane Society, which Peter Böhler established in 1738. Both Wesleys and George Whitefield, as well as other Anglican clergy and laypeople, began attending Moravian services.

Although technically Anglican, John Wesley and George Whitefield were no longer allowed to preach in certain Church of England parishes. They had strayed too far from the established Church.

It was in Aldersgate Street that Wesley had a profound religious experience whilst listening to a reading of a Martin Luther sermon introducing St Paul’s letter to the Romans. He travelled to Germany to study at the Moravian headquarters in Herrnhut.

Upon his return, Wesley would go on to help to devise the polity of the Fetter Lane Society and publish a hymnal for them.

Eventually, however, Wesley and the Moravians broke their association over disagreements about assurance and faith. Some at the Fetter Lane Society believed in a type of quietism — a ‘let go and let God’ philosophy — of doing nothing until they felt they had the full assurance of salvation.  Wesley rightly pointed out that this was heretical, which it is. He tried to impress upon the group the importance of nurturing a relationship with God through prayer, worship and study.

Pietistic worship style and revivalism

The Moravian worship style at the Fetter Lane Society was typically pietistic, inducing meaningful religious experiences, surges in emotion and a subjective notion of the presence of God.

This emotionally- and self-absorbed style of worship would become part of the First and Second Great Awakenings, which adopted an enthusiastic and revivalistic preaching style. It is one of the reasons that some Anglicans and social critics made fun of it.

As mentioned earlier, Wesley and Whitefield were restricted in what Anglican parishes they could preach. In 1739, Whitefield began preaching in the open air near Bristol to miners and encouraged Wesley to join him. Initially reluctant, Wesley went along two months later to preach outdoors in the same location.

Both men were powerful preachers, stirring the soul to give that characteristically pietistic sensation of an inner stirring — a notional religious experience which makes the listener feel a divine presence.

In pietism — then as now — doctrine matters little. Sermons are intended to be sensational and  personal in order to encourage repentence and to goad one into a manmade pursuit of holiness.

The Second Great Awakening of the 19th century would bring revivals and their enthusiasm to full fruition. Preachers like Charles Finney in the United States would capitalise on this, lending a Pelagian flavour to certain independent Evangelical and Bible churches springing up throughout America.

Lay and itinerant preachers with little to no formal training would travel from town to town spreading their message, collecting money from the crowds to finance their ministries and sometimes dupe followers in the process.

Methodist polity and popularity in western England and in Wales

After joining Whitefield in Bristol in 1739, Wesley noted that he lacked preachers. Nonetheless, he opened Methodist chapels in the area and would later return to London to do so there.

In order to have enough preachers to serve the chapels, and as he (as an Anglican priest) was under no authority to ordain any, Wesley decided that laymen were the answer. Indeed, the Methodist movement expanded rapidly as a result. The Methodist Church relies heavily on lay preachers to this day.  They preach and do pastoral work. For many Methodists lay preachers are the pastors in most respects.

By 1744, the Methodist movement had grown to such a size that a formal organisation and doctrine needed to be arrived at. However, 18 months prior to Wesley’s first conference to decide such matters, the Welsh — under the chairmanship of George Whitefield — organised their first Methodist Association. They would organise the movement in Wales into districts.

The Welsh also had Anglican preachers — some of whom had also studied at Oxford — who subscribed to a Methodist way of life. As such, they, too, preached at outdoor revivals. Whitefield would encourage and mentor the Welsh movement, which had its beginnings in 1735.

It was that year when Howell Harris had an awakening during an Easter church service and decided to begin holding services in his own house.  He had wanted to pursue ordination as an Anglican priest but was refused because his approach was too Methodist. Like Wesley and Whitefield, Harris found pietism the pathway to holiness.

Harris ran into much difficulty, even physical danger, because of his religious views but he continued to travel around Wales preaching in a deeply moving style which attracted many people.

However, he, like a number of other pietist pastors, experienced problems with the opposite sex. Harris had developed a close friendship with a wife and mother, Sydney ‘Madam’ Griffith.  Mrs Griffith’s marriage was an unhappy one. Already a devotee of Methodism, hearing Harris’s preaching in 1748 further moved her emotionally.  She made Harris’s acquaintance as well as that of his Methodist associate, Daniel Rowland, another prominent preacher of the day.

Wikipedia states:

For a short time, Madam Griffith was Harris’s constant companion. Although she had made considerable financial contributions to the Methodist cause, she was left without any income following her separation from her husband. Soon her health deteriorated, and Harris took her to London, where she died (her husband having died three months earlier).

Before she died, however, their association had become quite public and scandalous. As a result, Harris had returned to his home in Treveca in 1752.  Following the Moravian example, he established a religious community there called Teulu Treveca (‘The Treveca Family’), where he presided as ‘father’.

However, in 1763, Harris resumed public preaching and is considered the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, also known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church.  To many, this name will appear an oxymoron.  It combines Calvinist doctrine with Methodist polity and practice.  I cannot but help wonder whether the influence of this church on the Welsh is one of the reasons they clamour so loudly for Government controls on tobacco and alcohol.

Back now to Wesley’s first conference in 1744. Whereas the Welsh Methodists had organised districts, Wesley organised circuits, which exist to this day in the Methodist Church. In fact, the first men to make the rounds of regional congregations rode on horseback — as did Wesley — and were called circuit riders.

Wesley wanted his lay preachers to move to a new circuit every two years, making them ‘itinerant’. Even today, many orthodox Christians disparage ‘itinerant preachers’ for this reason, asking, ‘What formal theological training do they have? What is their history? Where are they from?’

As for the possibility of ordained ministers, the Wesleys knew that the chasm between them and the Church of England was growing ever wider and deeper. The brothers both stayed in the Church of England and were loth to leave it or to cause too much offence. When John Wesley laid hands on an Anglican priest, Thomas Coke, in order to appoint him Superintendent of Methodists in the United States, he also ordained two presbyters to accompany him across the Atlantic. Afterward, Charles begged John to stop:

before he had “quite broken down the bridge” and not embitter his [Charles'] last moments on earth, nor “leave an indelible blot on our memory.”

Wesley and Whitefield part ways theologically

It is sometimes unclear to the casual reader exactly where Whitefield ended up on the theological spectrum. As he was part of the First Great Awakening and was an emotive, charismatic preacher, not to mention connected with Wesley, some might think that Whitefield stayed within Methodism.

However, he never really left his Calvinistic roots and eventually separated theologically from Wesley — as did his proteges in the Calvinistic Methodist Presbyterian Church of Wales. That said, the two ministers remained good friends. Whitefield’s patron was Selina, Countess of Huntingdon.

Sanctification and holiness

Wikpedia’s entry on John Wesley states:

Wesley taught that sanctification was obtainable after justification by faith, between justification and death. He did not contend for “sinless perfection”; rather, he contended that a Christian could be made “perfect in love”. (Wesley studied Eastern Orthodoxy and particularly the doctrine of Theosis). This love would mean, first of all, that a believer’s motives, rather than being self-centred, would be guided by the deep desire to please God. One would be able to keep from committing what Wesley called, “sin rightly so-called.” By this he meant a conscious or intentional breach of God’s will or laws. A person could still be able to sin, but intentional or wilful sin could be avoided.

Secondly, to be made perfect in love meant, for Wesley, that a Christian could live with a primary guiding regard for others and their welfare. He based this on Christ’s quote that the second great command is “to love your neighbour as you love yourself.” In his view, this orientation would cause a person to avoid any number of sins against his neighbour. This love, plus the love for God that could be the central focus of a person’s faith, would be what Wesley referred to as “a fulfilment of the law of Christ.”

Wesley believed that this doctrine should be constantly preached, especially among the people called Methodists. In fact, he contended that the purpose of the Methodist movement was to “spread scriptural holiness across England.”

However, it would seem that his subsequent followers — including some Methodists I knew in the United States — had a different notion of holiness. Alcohol was often eschewed and even actively discouraged for non-Methodists, to be covered in the next post which concerns the 19th century temperance  movement, also associated with Wesleyanism.

Wesley Covenant Prayer and pietism

Early each January, Methodist churches in Britain and the Commonwealth hold a Covenant service, open to all. I have attended three and recommend that those who are interested go at least once.  This is at least one service during the year where more traditional hymns and liturgy are used.

The purpose is to affirm aloud one’s covenant with God. To this end, everyone recites in unison a special prayer known as the Wesley Covenant Prayer, said to be influenced by pietism.

The traditional form of the prayer is as follows:

I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,

exalted for thee or brought low for thee.

Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

thou art mine, and I am thine.

So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,

let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen.

Next week: The Holiness movement, temperance and Pentecostalism

Communist infiltration of the Church – an introduction

Nearly two years ago to the day, Churchmouse Campanologist published a précis of the Communist infiltration of the Roman Catholic Church.  The post concerned the memoirs of a Communist agent:  AA-1025: The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle.  Please consult the post for shocking revelations and a link to further excerpts from the agent’s book.

A number of my Protestant readers might take exception to the Catholic Church for various theological and scriptural reasons.  In many aspects, I would agree with them.  However, whatever infiltration or weakening happens in the Catholic Church occurs in Protestant denominations, too.  Communist infiltration was also occurring in Protestant churches in America as far back as the 1930s.

Personally, I believe that the methods of Communist influence are both direct and indirect today.  The paedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church could not have happened without years of subversion and the co-opting of useful idiots as enablers.  And it would not surprise me if the same dark forces which engineered this perversion in the seminaries and parishes then decried all of it as corruption in the Church.

Similarly, in the Protestant churches we have more entertainment and feel-good preaching than solid study of Scripture.  From praise bands to the Emergent Church movement, our worship moves us inevitably closer to Man than to God.  Again, my hypothesis is that this is a combination of conscious subversion with the co-opting of useful idiots.

Protestant subversion

As far as the Protestant situation is concerned, theologians drifted into Modernism, a notionally Christian offshoot of Marxism, and was furthered by leftists.  A few brief excerpts from this post will help set the scene:

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861 – 1918), Professor of Church History at Rochester Theological Seminary, is known as the ‘Father of the Social Gospel’.  You might be interested to know that John D Rockefeller funded this seminary, along with many others in the United States.

Dr Rauschenbusch grew up in a German Lutheran family but became a Baptist pastor prior to his professorship.  His status as a professor gave him the platform to become an influential theologian.  He wrote two books, Christianising the Social Order and A Theology for the Social Gospel.  He considered himself steeped in ‘higher criticism’ and well-versed in socialism.  He proposed a more relevant and compassionate Gospel designed to change the emphasis and direction of American Protestantism.  He also introduced the idea of an earthly Kingdom achieved through socialism. He posited that Jesus didn’t come to save sinners but had a ‘social passion’ for society.

In 1907, he met with the Fabians (socialists) in England … they proposed propaganda and infiltration to achieve their goals.  In Rauschenbusch’s case the  targets were to be universities, seminaries and churches.

A year later John D Rockefeller helped Rauschenbusch and the Fabian Revd Harry Ward — remember this name — to fund the establishment of the Federal Council of Churches. This would eventually become the National Council of Churches. We now have the World Council of Churches, which is very much aligned with the United Nations and global agendas.

In 1953 the Revd Harry Ward’s name popped up in the McCarthy hearings on Un-American Activities.  Here is what the transcripts from July 1953 said (emphasis in the original).

Manning Johnson, a former senior member of the Communist Party, answered questions from Robert Kunzig, Chief Counsel for the committee.  What follows is part of his testimony:

- William Z Foster, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, said, ‘Communists must ever be keen to cultivate the democratic spirit of mutual tolerance among the religious sects … A still greater lesson for us to learn, however, is how to work freely with religious strata for the accomplishment of democratic mass objectives… A very serious mistake of the American left wing during many years … has been its attempt arbitrarily to wave aside religious sentiments among the masses.  Reactionary forces [mainly concerned Christians] have already known how to work take advantage of this shortsighted sectarian error … In recent years, however, the Communist Party, with its policy of ‘the outstretched hand’ has done much to overcome the harmful left-wing narrowness of former years and to develop a more healthy cooperation with the religious masses.’

- Deceit was a major policy of Communist propaganda and activity:  ‘They made fine gestures and honeyed words to the church people which could be well likened unto the song of the fabled sea nymphs luring millions to moral decay, spiritual death and spiritual slavery.’

- The Revd Harry F Ward also headed the Methodist Federation for Social Service, or the Methodist Federation for Social Action.  He ‘was invaluable to the Communist Party … because through it the Party was able to get contacts with thousands of ministers all over the country … Quite a few ministers, for example, participated in the united front known as the American League Against War and Fascism … In fact, they were so deeply involved through Harry F. Ward that they became the spokesmen — the advocates, the builders and the leaders of this most important Communist front that engaged in everything from simple assault on a government to espionage, sabotage and the overthrow of the Government.’

- The Communists infiltrated and poisoned the religious organisations of America wherever possible: ‘Once the tactic of infiltrating religious organisations was set by the Kremlin, the actual mechanics of implementing the ‘new line’ was a question of following … the church movement in Russia, where the Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the church by Communist agents operating within the church itself … The infiltration tactic in this country would have to adapt itself to American conditions … In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries and divinity schools.  The practical conclusion drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small Communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen …  The idea was to divert the emphasis of clerical thinking from the spiritual to the material … Instead of emphasis toards the spiritual matters of the soul, the new and heavy emphasis was to deal with those matters which, in the main, led toward the Communist program of ‘immediate demands’ [or 'felt needs'].

Catholic subversion

Agent AA-1025′s account, published posthumously after the nurse tending him found the manuscript among his effects when he died in hospital, described his own indoctrination into Communism and entry into the priesthood:

[When young, Michael, the future agent] decided to run away from home and met a friend who introduced him to his uncle who was a high-ranking official in the Russian Secret Police.

Michael had completed 6 years of study and by now was 20 years old. He was called to the office of The Uncle who told him: ‘I am now going to send you to practice a militant and international atheism. You will have to fight all religions, but principally the Catholic, which is better organized. To do so, you will enter a seminary and become a Roman Catholic priest… ‘

The Uncle gave further instructions to Michael: ‘The ten persons who will be directly under your orders will never know you. To reach you, they will have to pass through me. Thus you will never be denounced. We already have in our service numerous priests in all countries where Catholicism is implanted, but you will never know one another. One is a bishop. Maybe you will enter into contact with him, it will depend upon the rank that you reach. We have spies everywhere and particularly old ones who follow the press of the whole world.’

Agent AA-1025 — Michael — already foresaw the vagaries of Vatican II, the most heinous reform to ever take place in the Catholic Church:

‘Some day, you will see married priests and mass said in vernacular tongues.’ I remember with joy that I was the first one to say these things in 1938. That same year, I urged women to ask for the priesthood…

… Someone was charged to watch attentively all the Vatican writings, in order to detect even very small details capable of displeasing one category of individuals. The quality of those who criticize the Pope does not matter, the only important thing is that he be criticized. The ideal thing, of course, would be that he displeased everybody, that is, reactionaries as well as modernists.

I also prophesied, and we were then in 1940, the disappearance of altars, replaced by a table completely bare, and also of all the crucifixes, in order that Christ be considered as a man, not as a God. I insisted that Mass be only a community meal to which all would be invited, even unbelievers…

Mass must only be a community meal for the greatest welfare of human fraternity…

…The Saints must disappear before God, although it is much easier to kill God than His Saints… Then, we will proceed to suppress Judgement, Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. This is all very easy… Many are well disposed to believe that the Goodness of God surpasses all crimes. AIl we have to do is to insist on this Goodness. A God Whom no one fears, quickly becomes a God about Whom no one thinks. Such was the end to be reached.

Always drive minds towards a greater charity, a larger fraternity. Never talk about God, but about the greatness of man. Bit by bit, transform the language and the mentalities. Man must occupy the first place. Cultivate confidence in man who will prove his own greatness by founding the Universal Church in which all good wills shall melt together…

We could try to rationalise these developments over the past century, but we would be mistaken.  It has happened and is happening.  Those pointing to an absence of Scripture or doctrine must look further back than the present to see what is happening.

Monday: More Catholic testimony about Communist infiltration

Richard Wurmbrand’s Marx and Satan: Chapter 6

Continuing with excerpts from the late Lutheran pastor Richard Wurmbrand‘s Marx and Satan, what follows are glimpses into the lives of children and Christians under Communist regimes.

Wurmbrand also explains why the language of Marxism and its offshoots is so complex.  It’s meant to confound and confuse.  Therefore, if you don’t fully understand their theory after reading them over and over again, consider yourself fortunate.  Marx called his own books ‘swinish’ and his ‘criticism’ a ‘nonsense’.

This post is not for those of a sensitive nature — or young children. However, once again, I cannot express how important it is for high school and university students to read this text, whether at home or as part of a church youth group.  Marx, Communists, Socialists and theorists (e.g. Fabians and the Frankfurt School) are only attacking God.  They don’t really care about building a better, more equal world.  Destruction and death are part of their goal — just for the sake of it.  What they propose and encourage us to do around the world is nothing short of criminal.  Wurmbrand calls it demonic, as it revolves around blasphemy.  The economic and social theory is a mere mask. You’ll find out more in this chapter.  Unfortunately, many of us have been lured to accept Marxism as something benevolent and loving for mankind.  Wurmbrand even gives statistics from the late 20th century showing how many American clergymen find it compatible with Christianity!  What a mistake!

Those interested in regression ‘therapy’ may also find this chapter of use to see how the Soviets deployed what Wurmbrand refers to as ‘occult’ techniques.

Excerpts are taken from pages 48 – 54 of the text, which can be found in full on Scribd. Subheads are in the original. Emphases in the text are mine.

Chapter Six – A Spiritual Warfare

The Little and the Big Devils

According to current official Marxist doctrine, which, as has been illustrated, is only a disguise, neither God nor the Devil exists. Both are fancies. Because of this teaching, Christians are persecuted by the Communists.

However, the Soviet newspaper Kommunisma Uzvara (April 1974) reported that many atheist circles were created in Red Latvia’s schools. The name given the children in the fourth through sixth grades was “little devils,” while seventh graders were called “servants of the Devil.” In another school eighth graders had the name “faithful children of the Devil.” At the meeting the children came clothed as devils, complete with horns and tails.

Thus, it was forbidden to worship God, though devil worship was openly permitted and even encouraged among children of school age. This was the hidden objective of the Communists when they seized power in Russia …

The Communists consider it wrong to believe in God. For this “crime,” many children were separated from their families and kept in special atheist boarding schools.

Incredibly, the Communists even wanted to make Satan-worshipers of church leaders. A Russian Orthodox priest named Platonov, an anti-Jewish agitator, went over to the side of the Communists when they came to power in Russia. For this, he was made a bishop and became a Judas who denounced members of his flock to the Secret Police, well knowing they would be severely persecuted …

Pravoslavnaia Rus writes:

The Orthodox cathedral in Odessa, so much loved by the Odessites, became the meeting place of Satanists soon after the Communists came to power…. They gathered also in Slobodka-Romano and in Count Tolstoi’s former home.

Then follows a detailed account of Satanist masses said by deacon Serghei Mihailov, of the treacherous Living Church, an Orthodox branch established in connivance with the Communists.  An attendant describes the Satanist mass as a “parody of the Christian liturgy, in which human blood is used for communion.” These masses took place in the cathedral before its main altar …

Religious Obscenities

It might be in somesense “logical” that Communists would arrest priests and pastors as counter-revolutionaries. But why were priests compelled by the Marxists in the Romanian prison of Piteshti to say Mass over excrement and urine? Why were Christians tortured into taking Communion with these as the elements? Why such an obscene mockery of religion? Why did the Romanian Orthodox priest Roman Braga, whom I knew personally when he was a prisoner of the Communists, and who presently resides in the U.S.A., have his teeth knocked out one by one with an iron rod in order to make him blaspheme?

The Communists had explained to him and others: “If we kill you Christians, you go to heaven. But we don’t want you to be crowned martyrs. You should curse God first and then go to hell.”

… Some prisoners were compelled to take off their trousers and sit with their naked bottoms on open Bibles.

Marxists are supposed to be atheists who believe in neither heaven nor hell. In these extreme circumstances, Marxism has lifted its atheistic mask to reveal its true face, the face of Satanism. Communist persecution of religion might have a human explanation, but the fury of such perverse persecution can only be Satanic.

In Romanian prisons and in the Soviet Union as well, nuns who would not deny their faith were raped anally, and Baptist girls had oral sex forced on them.

Many prisoners who were so treated died as martyrs, but the Communists were not satisfied with this. Using Luciferian techniques, they made martyrs die blaspheming because of the delirium provoked by torture …

Torture is productive, it leads to ingenious inventions– this is all Marx had to say about the subject. No wonder Marxist governments have surpassed all others in torturing their opponents!  This alone displays the Satanic nature of Marxism …

Satanist desecrations of Catholic churches occurred in the 1970s in Upyna, Dotnuva, Zanaiciu, Kalvarija, Sede, etc., localities in Lithuania. One about which we know happened in Alsedeai on September 22, 1980.

In his book Psychiatric Hospital 14, Moscow, Georgi Fedotov tells of his conversation with the psychiatrist Dr. Valdimir Lwitski about a Christian named Argentov who was detained there. The physician says, “You are pulling your friend Eduard toward God and we toward the Devil. So I’m using my rights as a psychiatrist to deny you and your friends access to him.”

The Christian Salu Daka Ndebele was interrogated by the Secret Police of Maputo in Communist Mozambique. The officer said to him, “We want to kill your God.” He raised his gun toward the head of the prisoner and declared, “This is my God. With this I have the power of life and death. If your God comes here, I will shoot Him dead myself.”

In Chiasso, Communist Angola, Communists slaughtered animals in a church and placed their heads on the altar and pulpit. A poster proclaimed, “These are the gods whom you adore.” Pastor Aurelio Chicanha Saunge was killed, together with one hundred and fifty parishioners.

When the Catholic Lithuanian priest Eugene Vosikevic was killed, his mouth was found to have been filled with bread, an apparent Satanist ritual.

Vetchernaia Moskva, a Communist newspaper, let pass a Freudian slip of the pen:

We do not fight against believers and not even against clergymen. We fight against God to snatch believers from Him.

… We do not wonder at these words in a Soviet newspaper. Marx had said it already in his book German Ideology. Calling God “the absolute Spirit,” as his teacher Hegel had done, he wrote, “We are concerned with a highly interesting question: the decomposition of the Absolute Spirit.”

… In Albania a priest, Stephen Kurti, was sentenced to death for having baptized one child. Baptisms must be performed in secret in many Communist lands, including North Korea …

In the former Soviet Union baptisms could be officiated only after registration. Persons wishing to be baptized or to have their child baptized presented their identity cards to the representative of the church board, who in turn reported them to the state authorities. The result was persecution. Kolkhozniks (workers on collective farms) had no identity cards and could therefore baptize their children only secretly. Many protestant pastors received prison sentences for baptizing people.

The Communist fight against baptism presupposes belief in its value for a soul. Religious people in Israel or Pakistan or Nepal oppose baptism in the name of their own religious outlook, because it is a Christian seal. But for atheists– as Communists clearly declare themselves to be– baptism should mean nothing. Supposedly it neither benefits nor harms the baptized. Why then do these Communists fight against baptism? It is because Communists “fight against God to snatch believers from Him.” Their ideology is not really inspired by atheism, but by a fervent hatred for God.

“Among other purposes,” said Lenin, “we created our party specifically for the fight against any religious deceiving of the people.”

Occult Practices

More about the relationship between Marxism and the occult can be found in Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroder. It is highly significant that the Communist East had been much more advanced than the West in research about the dark forces manipulated by Satan …

In Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, etc., the Communist Party spent huge sums on secret investigation into this science. They hid from the West information about what happened in the twenty parapsychological institutes located in the Soviet Union.

Komsomolskaia Pravda (Moscow) published a lengthy article about hypnotists who help people “regress to past lives.” For the induction process they use the following suggestions:

You descend into earth, deeper, even deeper. You and the earth become one…. You are deep in the earth. You are surrounded by thick darkness…. Around you is eternal night…

Now we approach a spot of light far away… nearer and nearer. We sneak through a small hole to the sky, leaving our own body deep in the earth…. We overcome the frontiers of time … and we return to your past….”

Soviet writers said clearly that this “time machine” was not science fiction. “Transpersonalism” offered this voyage in time.

In the Satanist black masses, all prayers are said from the end to the beginning, and the priestly robe is worn inside out. Inversion is the Satanist rule, and this is applied even to the doctrine of reincarnation. Whereas Indian devotees are concerned about their future reincarnations and try to better themselves by obeying what they believe to be God’s commandments, the Satanists offer a return to former incarnations. They care nothing about a better future in eternity.

Marxism as a Church

… Volume 2 ofThe Works o f Marx and Engels opens with Jesus’ words to His disciples (John
6:63), as quoted by Marx in his book The Holy Family: “It is the spirit which gives life.” Then
we read:

Criticism [his criticism of all that exists] so loved the masses that it sent its only-begotten son [i.e., Marx ], that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have a life of criticism.  Criticism became masses and lived among us, and we saw its glory as the glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father. Criticism did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made itself of no reputation, taking the form of a bookbinder, and humbled itself up to nonsense– yes, critical nonsense in foreign languages.

Those knowledgeable in Scripture will recognize this as a parody of Biblical verses (John 3:16; 1:14; Philippians 2:6-8). Here again, Marx declares his own works to be “nonsense,” as well as “swinish books.”

Marxism is a religion, and it even “uses” Scripture. Its main work, The Capitalle by Marx, is called “the Bible of the working class.” Marx considered himself “the Pope of Communism.”

Communism “has the pride of infallibility.” All who oppose the Communist “creed” (this expression is used by Engels) are excommunicated …

Those who die in the service of Marxism are feasted as “martyrs.” Marxism also has its sacraments: the solemn receptions in the toddlers’ organization called “the Children of October”, the oaths given when received as “Pioneers”, after which come the higher grades of initiation in the Komsomol and the Party. Confession is replaced with public self-criticism before the assembly of Party members.

Marxism is a church. It has all the characteristics of a church. Yet, its god is not named in its popular literature. But, as seen by the proofs given in this book, Satan is obviously its god.

It is strange that though Marxism is clearly Satanic, it is not seen as a threat by many churches in the free world. Some illuminating statistics on this are available.

Seminary professors in the U.S.A. were asked, “Can an individual consistently be a good member of your denomination and adhere to Marxism?”

Below are the percentage figures of those who answered Yes:

Episcopalian – 68 %

Lutheran – 53 %

Presbyterian – 49 %

Methodist – 49%

Church of Christ – 47 %

American Baptist – 44 %

Roman Catholic – 31 %

How sad that those who follow the Truth are duped by those who serve the father of lies.

Tomorrow: Chapter Seven – Marx, Darwin and Revolution

Apologetics Corner: Christians and animals

Before I get into the topic of this post, I’d just like to set the backdrop for it.  In researching this subject, I came across an essay by Dr Dean O. Wenthe, the President of Concordia University in Ft Wayne, Indiana.  (For my overseas readers — Concordia is affiliated with the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS).)

Dr Wenthe discusses modern university education in ‘Postmodernism & Sacred Scripture’. It goes some way in explaining why our everyday world is so puzzling on so many levels.

Many of the prominent names come (as indicated) from the larger circles of philosophy and literature: Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Stanly Fish, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jurgen Habermas, Paul Ricouer, Richa[r]d Rorty-to mention only select authors. Similarly, certain schools of thought take on labels: contextual pragmatism, deconstructionism, feminism, liberation theology, power-interests, semiotics, speech acts, structuralism, etc.

I studied semiotics, reading Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin at university for film class, so, yes, this is a fairly typical list of thinkers and topics.  Note that Habermas was part of the Frankfurt School.

The way we think today

Dr Wenthe comes up with some amazing quotes.  First, what about this from David Lyon of Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario)?

Only tribal truths and tribal decisions about right and wrong can be made.

In other words, your personal truth depends on what you have gleaned from your national origins and what faith you practice.  A ‘tribal truth’ is, therefore, based on a collectivist  perspective.  The people around you — through their actions, conversations and governance — will tell you what your notion of right and wrong is.

But someone following Jacques Derrida’s theories can always manage to ‘deconstruct’ these truths.  As Dr Wenthe explains:

Every statement invites a plurality of interpretations. Possible meanings multiply.

And we end up with the relativism that we encounter today.  This is one reason why people get so emotional when they come up against hard data and historical evidence.  As my better half often jests, ‘Surely you’re not going to bring fact into this discussion!’

Therefore, when it comes to Scripture, about which untold books have been written since Christ’s time on Earth, all this has been overturned (emphases mine):

Robert B. and Mary P. Coote have applied such a lens to the Bible in their book Power, Politics, and the Making of the Bible, (Fortress 1990) … Consider these exegetical adventures: (a) The Yahwist was “designed to appeal for the loyalty of tribal sheikhs in the Negeb and Sinai. It is David’s buttress against Egypt in the south and therefore suggests that Israel’s early chiefs, the Patriarchs were southern sheikhs like themselves.”⁵ (b) Or, when the texts describe the “fear of God” they remind us “that like all the privileged, Jeroboam feared himself in other men and hence projected this fear, in the guise of cultic and judicial respect“, or the “fear of God” as public policy.⁶ Hence, the fear of God becomes a nervous politician’s effort to handle his insecurities. (c) And, disingenuously, the beautiful Messianic psalm-Psalm 2-is described as a “raucous salute to the Davidic imperialism.”⁷

Jesus and the Gadarene Swine

So, it’s no wonder that we end up with conversations such as this British one on the United Reformed Church forum about Jesus’s ‘cruelty’ to animals.  This thread discusses the story of the Gadarene Swine: Mark 5:1-20, Matthew 8:28-34, Luke 8:26-39). (This scene — courtesy of the Tate Collection — is pictured above in an 1883 painting, The Miracle of the Gadarene Swine, by Briton Riviere (1840-1920).)

Robbie, who does not appear to be a Christian but rather a strong apologist for animals, writes (24 October 2010, 7:05pm):

My motivation is to discern the truth but it is also irrelevant – what matters is whether the argument is correct o[r] not …

It is the awful fact of Je[s]us’s appalling cruelty that you seem unable [to] escape. Think of the reports to the RSPCA if that happened today.  And all the evidence is in the bible.

The FACT is that if we bel[i]eve the evidence of three gospels Jesus was cruel to animals in a way that would make him utterly reviled by decent modern society.  I certainly have vastly more compassion than that – as do very many 21st century humans. I denounce him for his cruelty just as I denounce Luther for his vast works of evil.

In addtion it would be clear that Jesus’ suffering on the c[ro]ss was not suffering at all – just appearance …

It’s the breathtaking postmodernist reasoning in that quote which, putting it politely, stuns me.  First, the truth doesn’t matter as much as the validity of the argument does. (Huh?) Then, he sets himself up to be higher than the Son of God.  (Oh, boy.) Then, that Jesus never suffered on the Cross is ‘clear’? (It’s incredible that someone can even write those words.)  Yet, this is fairly common argumentation today.  And, of course, we have the mention of the all-powerful, pathological RSPCA.

But note Robbie’s lack of relief and gratitude that Jesus cast the demons out of the man, that the demons recognised Him and they themselves asked to be cast into the herd of swine. From the Bible story written by a retired schoolteacher and linked to in the preceding sentence:

The people of the area, the Gadarenes, believed this person was possessed by a devil. When he had started acting strangely, they had bound him with chains and forced him to live outside the town among the tombs. However, the wild man had superhuman strength and easily broke his restraints …

A strange thing happened when he saw Jesus. He ran up and bowed before Him. The demons inside knew who Jesus was all right, and they were forced to acknowledge His Divinity. Jesus commanded in a stern voice:” Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” …

The man’s rasping voice replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” Then, all the evil spirits who possessed the man begged Jesus not to send them away, but to send them into a herd of pigs who were  grazing on a nearby hillside. Jesus granted their request, but it did them no good.

As soon as the demons entered the pigs, the animals immediately stampeded down the hillside into the Sea of Galilee and were drowned.

This story is really about the continual battle between Jesus and Satan. Yet, today, people worry more about a demon-infested herd of pigs than a man’s mental health which Jesus, in His mercy, restored?  Something is seriously wrong with Western society.

From this type of reasoning, we progress to Christians drawing in their denominational founders to support claims of vegetarianism.  This thread comes from another British blog post with comments from vegetarians. The blogger, the Revd Richard Hall, a Methodist minister in Wales, balances out the discussion, particularly on whether John Wesley was a vegetarian:

Certainly JW went through veggie phases. On Dec 29th, 1747, he wrote in his journal, “I resumed my vegetable diet (which I had now discontinued for several years), and found it of use both to my body and soul; but, after two years, a violent flux which seized me in Ireland obliged me to return to the use of animal food.” Then in September 1749: “Today I resumed my spare diet, which i shall probably quit no more.” But whether he did or not, I don’t know.

Now, on to the main topic.

The biblical-based relationship between humans and animals

It’s important to really study this carefully and not just through a few hand-picked quotes. (This blog post is not meant to be a definitive statment on the subject but to give you ideas for further research.)

Going back to John Wesley for a moment, this is what the United Methodist Church has to say on the matter:

… some United Methodist theologians who’ve studied the issue say Wesley did forgo meat occasionally for health reasons.

“There’s no doubt about it—he followed a vegetarian diet from time to time,” said Randy Maddox, a United Methodist theologian and John Wesley specialist at Duke University.

“He never made that a requirement, and it wasn’t his consistent practice,” Maddox said …

Wesley stopped eating meat at times because it made him feel better, said Charles Wallace, a religion scholar and chaplain at Willamette University in Salem, Ore …

Maddox said Wesley ate animals while also crusading for their welfare.

“At one time, if an Anglican priest preached against cock fighting, they were accused of being Methodist,” Maddox said.

An Evangelical minister, Dr Stephen Vantassel, who teaches Theology at King’s Evangelical Divinity School in Kent (England), is also the webmaster for the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management.  In ‘Why Christians Cannot Support Animal Rights’, he observes:

People are generally intrigued by my line of work, but become unsettled upon learning that I am also a minister with a Ph.D. in theology. They seem puzzled that a minister would be teaching the public about techniques that involve shooting, trapping, and killing wildlife. After all, aren’t they God’s creatures? Shouldn’t ministers be about peace and love and harmony?

Unfortunately, what they fail to understand is that there is no fundamental contradiction between responsibly killing animals and following Christ. In fact, the contradiction lies with those who reject our right to kill animals on the grounds that such actions are non-Christian …

Dr Vantassel explains what Man’s God-given ‘dominion’ over the animal kingdom means:

First, Scripture clearly says that God gave dominion to humanity (Gen 1:26-8). Dominion does not mean despotism. Humans were to govern the world in service to God as managers run an apartment block for the interests of the owner. Genesis 2 explicitly relates God’s command to work the garden and to protect it. The evidence suggests that God wanted humans to protect species from extinction. Individual animals did not receive that protection. If you have any doubts, ask how our lives would be different if Adam and Eve decided to express dominion over the Serpent rather than listening to it. Adam and Eve failed to protect the garden because they failed to eject, or dare I say kill the Serpent, for its blasphemy. In short, they failed to express dominion over the serpent.

He also gives evidence for Christ’s pronouncing that all foods are ‘clean’ — suitable and good to eat.  Also note the mention of the Gadarene Swine:

Contrary to the limits in diet proffered by animal rights activists, Christ gave humanity permission to eat all animals. By declaring all foods ceremonially clean, Christians were no longer bound to follow the restrictions of Kosher Laws (Mk 7:19) and could enjoy the flavors of pigs and lobster with divine blessing. Christ’s actions towards animals are even more telling. He allowed demons to drown pigs without ever bothering to run into the Sea of Galilee to save them (Lk 8:33). He even helped the disciples kill more fish through the miracle of the fishes (Jn 21:6).  If we listen to the claims of the Christian animal rights activists, then we have to wonder whether Christ sinned by his treatment of animals. Of course, if Christ was not perfect, then we are still lost in our sin and we know that is not true.

Well, yes, as we saw above, some believe the RSPCA would have run Jesus out of town.

Dr Vantassel elaborates further in another essay, this one on hunting.  Before I take a quote from there, I would like to interject that, until recently, good stewardship of nature meant that man hunted not only for food but to ensure that the number of animals — particularly game — was kept at optimum levels.  Too many deer or pheasant, for example, led to starvation and disease. Leaving predators to multiply also threatened animal populations, in the wild or on farms. Therefore, hunting was a form of population control.  Similarly, at the end of the harvest, farmers used to burn their fields.  The ash from their crops would penetrate the ground and enrich it for the following year.  Now, both practices are frowned upon — if not forbidden — in places.

Christianity teaches that humanity has a stewardship role on the earth. Unlike the preservationists, we believe that it is our job to manage the animal kingdom with the natural predators that God has provided to keep populations in balance. We disagree that letting nature take its course is the correct action. For we are part of that nature. It always strikes me as strange how animal rights people think its okay for diseases to reduce a burdensome animal population, but they don’t think it’s okay for a human to preemptively reduce that population and even make money doing it …

In Christian terms, since animals are not humans they do not command the same moral rights as humans do. Just as plants are not on the same vital plane as animals … Scripture and experience both tell us that humans, while sharing many animal like characteristics, have something in them that is fundamentally different than what animals possess. Some call this different thing, soul, others spirit, still others reason …

… the Bible clearly teaches that humanity is created in God’s image (Gen.1:26). Scripture never asserts that animals are created in God’s image. The image of God consists of our ability to self-aware, to control our surroundings and to create.

How man came to eat meat in the Old Testament

James Hughes, an elder in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Canada, has traced man’s food consumption in the Book of Genesis, noting the disagreement of Protestant theologians on what was eaten.  John Calvin believed that man might have been eating meat all along.  Over a century later, the Calvinist minister and Bible scholar Matthew Henry wrote that man’s eating habits changed after the time of Noah and the flood.

Mr Hughes offers these hypotheses:

- They may have resorted to cannibalism. Cannibalism is found among the most degraded portions of mankind after the Flood, so it is not far fetched to surmise that this same evil also occurred before the Flood. If men ate the flesh of other men, it is not inconceivable that they also found a reason in their invented religions to eat animal flesh.

- It appears that God introduced animal sacrifice after the Fall (Gen 3.21; Gen 4.4,5) as a symbol of atonement from sin. It may be that men lusted after the ‘food of God’ and took animal flesh for food so that they could be ‘like God’.

He then explains Calvin’s and Henry’s points of view:

Calvin, assuming that men ate meat before the Flood, says further in his comments on Genesis 9.3 that the reasons God explicitly granted animals for food to men were: 1) to control unbridled licence since the right was granted by God after the Flood, 2) free men from having doubts about the propriety of eating meat. In other words, God validated what men had been doing without explicit licence before the Flood …

Matthew Henry states that he thinks that men were vegetarians before the Flood, and provides another perspective on why God may have granted man the right to eat meat.[2] He suggests that immediately following the Flood, there was a shortage of food since all the vegetation had been washed away, and thus men needed to eat meat. This seems like a peculiar reason since God had told Noah to take into the ark sufficient food for himself and the animals (Gen 6.21), and it does not explain why man was permitted to continue eating meat once the vegetation had re-grown.

Mr Hughes, however, believes the shift was in relation to a change in God’s covenant with Man.

There is however, an element found in all the subsequent covenantal administrations that is not found in the Covenant of Creation. This is the redemptive-substitutionary element …

With the introduction of the redemptive-substitutionary element there was an associated change in the covenant fellowship meal. In the first covenant administration the meal was based on life—fruit from the Tree of Life, and did not involve sacrifice or blood since there was no sin and no need for substitution. The second covenant administration, however, required both sacrifice and shedding of blood (Heb 9.22). The covenant fellowship meal was changed from ‘life’ to ‘death’ in that it involved eating a portion of the redemptive-substitutionary sacrifice—a portion of the meat of the clean animals that were sacrificed to God …

In the New Covenant we find the same concept. Those who partake of the covenant fellowship meal eat a portion of the redemptive-substitutionary sacrifice (Mt 26.26; 1 Cor 11.24). However, in the New Covenant, at least two changes occur: 1) the redemptive-substitutionary component is no longer bloody, because Christ’s blood has been shed once for all time (Heb 7.27); and 2) the participation in the eating is not physical but spiritual. The covenant fellowship meal has been changed from eating a portion of the sacrificed animals to symbolical elements (bread and wine) that allow us to participate spiritually in the once-for-all-time sacrifice of Christ …

I have emphasized the permissive aspect with regard to meat eating found in the Covenant enactment in Genesis 8 and 9. Without doubt, God permitted man to eat meat. However if we read the passage carefully, it appears that the provision of meat eating is not just permissive, but also prescriptive. Just as there is the command to “be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth” (Gen 9.1), there may also be a command embedded in the words “everything that lives and moves shall be food for you” (Gen 9.3 ESV).

As such, he has strong words for those who choose vegetarianism as a lifestyle choice:

Vegetarianism, even if not participated for ‘religious’ reasons, is rebellion against the Covenant. Personal-choice vegetarianism may be a slap in the face of God, and is to go the way of the heathen.

Meat in the New Testament

Dr Kim Riddlebarger, the widely-cited Reformed pastor and author, studies the church in Pergamum (Revelation 2:12-17) in ‘To the Church in Pergamum’.  He clarifies what the issue was with food.  It was not with the fact that the Nicolaitans were eating meat but that it was meat sacrificed to idols:

That the Nicolaitans were not denying Christ directly, but doing so implicitly can be seen when Jesus warns this church about eating meat sacrificed to idols, as well as reminding them that Christians must avoid all sexual immortality, especially when these things are directly connected to paganism. These are very prominent themes throughout the New Testament even though they seem foreign to us so many years removed. Recall that Paul speaks about this same matter in his first letter to the Corinthians. It is addressed at the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, when the leaders of the church affirmed with one voice the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone, while at the same time insisting that Gentiles avoid eating meat used in pagan sacrifices and sexual immorality.

What is in view here is not vegetarianism or celibacy. God is not against meat or sex. What is in view is the fact that Christians cannot eat meat which was left over from pagan sacrifices and rituals, and then sold in the marketplace at a discounted price. For a Christian to eat such meat is, in effect, to sanction or condone the pagan practice of animal sacrifice and bloody fertility rites. Paul calls this sharing the table with demons in 1 Corinthians 10 …

The principle for the church in Pergamum as well as the application for us today is very simple. Christians cannot worship Christ and at the same time participate in pagan or non-Christian religious practices …

Although Dr Riddlebarger does not touch on the subject, I shall interject that it is for that reason many Christians are in a quandary as to whether they should eat halal meat.

However, generally speaking:

²⁵Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. ²⁶For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” ²⁷If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.  — St Paul (1 Cor. 10:25-27)

And, very importantly:

¹Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, ²through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, ³ who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. ⁴For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, ⁵for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. — St Paul (1 Tim. 4:1-5)

In fact, the Lord instructed Peter to eat meat:

⁹The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. ¹⁰And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance ¹¹and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. ¹²In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. ¹³And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” ¹⁴But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” ¹⁵And the voice came to him again a second time,  “What God has made clean, do not call common.” ¹⁶This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven. — Acts 10:9-16

Jesus ate meat:

⁴¹And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³ and he took it and ate before them. — Luke 24:41-43

Romans 14 is hotly contested between Christian carnivores and vegetarians because of verse 15:

15For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love.

Note, however, that vegetarians apply it against carnivores but carnivores have the good grace not to apply it to vegetarians!

Jim Sawtelle, writing for the Reformed Herald, discusses Romans 14, legalism and Christian liberty — an article well worth reading.  Mr Sawtelle writes:

Two groups had emerged, the “strong” and the “weak.” The strong were able to grasp the significance of Christ’s death for daily living, such as receiving and using food, drink, etc. The “weak” were not able to sort out these things as of yet. But the heart of the problem, as Paul identified it, was not that there were differences of views. The problem was that the strong were despising the weak, and the weak were judging the strong (verse 3) …

First, both weak and strong are received by God in Christ. Both are justified. Behavior has nothing to do with acceptance before God. You are accepted because of the Christ’s death and righteousness. Therefore, receive the one who is weak in the faith and do not dispute with him or her over these minor differences. Do not despite this weak one, for this is one for whom Christ died; this is one whom Christ loves (see also Chapter 15:1,7).

Second, God is the judge of both the weak and the strong (verse 4). In other words, God is God and you aren’t! I’m not perfect and neither are you.

Third, God knows how to preserve and sanctify His people …

Because we are received by Christ, and in Christ, we can have differences of opinions; and yet these differences must never lead us to either “despising” or “judging” one another. No one’s actions and behavior led to God receiving them. Therefore, these differences over doubtful things … must never tear us apart from one another.

In conclusion, let’s not proscribe what God allows and may have actually prescribed: meat.  Furthermore, in our concern for our surroundings, let us take care not to exalt animals over humans.  Above all, let us love one another in Christian charity.

Apologetics Corner: Animals and Heaven

We are in an era when animals are becoming equal to humans within social constructs and, in some cases, within the law.

Many Christians wonder — and hope — that they will be able to be reunited with their pets in Heaven. (Photo of the adorable basset hound comes courtesy of sharenator.com.) This was less the case when I was growing up and I recall being chewed out in class by a (politically liberal) nun who said uncategorically that pets would not inherit eternal life.  My dad had told me that pets went to Heaven, but after this incident said that he was just trying to make me feel better about animals when they died. Needless to say, in the 1960s, this created a bit of a flap at the next private parent-teacher meeting.  ‘Is that what you’re teaching Churchmouse?  The Catholic Church does not teach that — anywhere.  Animals do not have souls.’

Today, I imagine the dialogue in the classroom and with parents is quite different, adopting the zeitgeist of equality of all things.

Below are statements from the main Protestant denominations on animals and heaven. Emphases mine.

The clearest statement comes from the United Methodist Church.  The Revd Dan Benedict of the Center for Worship Resources and General Board of Discipleship states:

With other Catholic and Protestant denominations, we United Methodists do not teach that animals have souls and therefore need redemption and forgiveness or heaven in the same way that humans do.

However, we do teach that “All creation is the Lord’s, and therefore we are responsible for the ways in which we use or abuse it [including the animals and diverse forms of life on the planet].” (¶ 160, 2004 Book of Discipline)

Further, “We support regulations that protect the life and health of animals, including those ensuring the humane treatment of pets and other domestic animals, animals used in research, and the painless slaughtering of meat animals, fish, and fowl. We encourage the preservation of all animal species including those threatened with extinction.”  (¶ 160C, 2004 Book of Discipline)

We include in our Book of Worship a liturgy for the blessing of animals and we see animals as companions and “friends” to humans and believe that all of them belong to God.

The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) states (citing the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, or WELS):

In the “Q&A” column of the January 1995 issue of the Northwestern Lutheran (the official periodical of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod), Rev. John Brug gives the following helpful response to the question, “Will there be animals in heaven?”

Since animals do not have immortal souls, we might think the answer is no. Several facts, however, make one hesitant to be satisfied with a simple “no.” Our eternal home is a new earth (Isaiah 65:17ff, 2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1). Isaiah 65:25 speaks of it as a place in which the wolf and the lamb live together peacefully.

This may be figurative language, but one other passage suggests animals might be in our eternal home.  Romans 8:21 says that “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage.” In this present, sin-cursed world, we inflict suffering on animals, and they inflict suffering on us. At Christ’s coming, when this world is freed from the effects of sin, animals, too, will be freed from suffering.

That text also says the creation will be “brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” That might mean there may be plants and animals in the new earth as there were in the first earth. If there are animals on the new earth, they will be good creatures of God as the animals of the first earth were.

In short, the answer is a cautious “maybe.”

Lutheran pet owner and LCMS pastor, the Revd Walter Snyder, elaborates:

We do know that humans are the only creatures on earth who were made in the image of God. This sets us apart from the animals more than logic, planning for the future, or anything else that behavioral scientists and biologists might indicate.

Perhaps heaven will have its share of animals. Still, the only “animal” definitely mentioned in heaven is the Lamb — who is, of course, Jesus Christ. I guess that you could also say that the “sheep” get to heaven, while the “goats” are definitely culled out. We do know that a new heaven and a new earth will be established. How the new life will be populated — except for God, the heavenly beings, and the saints who were saved by faith in Christ — we aren’t told. It could be that earthly animals will be replaced by something else altogether. Maybe only certain creatures will be introduced into the new creation.

It may be that animals, while they glorify God by their very existence on earth, are destined to pass away at the end of time. Pets may be part of God’s providence to a world filled with sin and sorrow.

A 2005 paper from a Reformed (Calvinist) author, Johan Tangelder, explores this question in detail:

[page 3] The humanization of animals and the belief that they go to heaven raises many questions. Historically, people didn’t always view animals in a positive light. Negative qualities of animals are often mentioned in reference to humans such as “as evil as a hyena,” “as sly as a fox.” In the early fourteenth century, Dante had condemned to the eighth circle of his Hell those guilty of “the sins of the wolf”: seducers, hypocrites, conjurers, thieves and liars. In the Bible there is also a reference to animals capable of being possessed by an evil spirit. For example, Jesus allowed demons to enter a herd of pigs who rushed into the lake and were drowned (Mark 5:1-13).

[page 4] Man can verbalize his thoughts in speech. The uniqueness of human language reveals man’s intellect, will, emotion and general ideas about space and time, and abstract concepts. It is man’s key to communicate concerning the past, the present and the future. Calvin brings human speech in its proper Biblical framework. He notes, “The use of the tongue and ears is to lead us into the truth by means of God’s Word that we may know how we were created incorruptible and that when we are passed out of this world there is an heritage prepared for us above, and in short to bring us to God.”

… the Bible does not say that animals have souls. But neither does the Bible deny this. The question whether animals have a soul is not new. The medieval theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-74), decreed animals were soulless, and graded them according to their utility to people. Wolves, bears, hairy beasts, useless to human comfort, were demonic. The twentieth century Reformed theologian, R.C. Sproul, observes: “Traditionally many have been persuaded that there is no future life for animals. The Bible does not teach that animals go to heaven. One of the key arguments against the idea that animals do not survive the grave is the conviction that animals do not have souls. Many are convinced that the distinctive aspect that divides humans from animals is that humans have souls and animals do not.”

Will animals be with the Lord in the intermediate heaven, the stage of eternal life before the coming of the New Heaven and Earth? An animal is not religious. Man is incurably religious. Even in his denial of God, man struggles with the God question … “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Our Lord Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). These texts do not include animals being drawn to the Father through Jesus Christ. Only man is capable of having a personal relationship with the infinite personal triune God.

[page 5] The Bible affirms the dignity of man. Man is sharply distinguished from the rest of God’s creation. He is unique! He has a very special place in God’s creation. Nothing in creation can be greater or have more dignity than man, for God alone is greater (Ps. 8). Man is neither junk nor animal. He is different from all other creatures; he is created in the very image of God. Man, as God’s image bearer, is elevated above animals and destined to have dominion over all the world (Gen.1:16, Ps. 8:5-9). Of all God’s acts of creation recorded in Scripture, this is the only one preceded by the statement that God, as it were consulted Himself, before acting, “And God said, ‘Let us make man’”, (Gen. 1:26). This formal fact, alone, is of great importance because it shows that this creative act differs from all the others. It is the fact that God created only man and woman in His image and likeness (vv.16-27). In the New Testament mankind is also referred to as being “made in God’s likeness” (Jam. 3:9). The apostle Paul describes Christ as the perfect image of God. He says, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18) …

Scripture also shows that people are allowed to use animals as work animals and for food (Gen. 9:3). Man is the scientist at work in God’s laboratory – earth. People may speculate whether animals go to heaven. But Scripture shows that the world is to be understood only in relation to man. Calvin notes, “The Lord Himself by the very order of creation has demonstrated that He created all things for the sake of man.” The world created and endowed as a habitation for man in such a way as to serve his true destiny in the worship and adoration of God. The first question of The Westminister Larger Catechism asks, “What is the chief and highest end of man” The answer? “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully enjoy him for ever.”

[page 6] Isaiah anticipates an eternal Kingdom of God on the new earth. He describes the glorious future which God’s people prayerfully and eagerly anticipate. He points to a time of the renewal of the old paradise where predator and prey will lie down together and be at peace. “‘The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox…They will neither harm nor destroy in all my holy mountains,’ says the Lord” (Isa. 65:25).

Will there be animals on this new world? Apparently there will be plants, rocks, trees and animals on the new earth. But ask what it will be like, we cannot say because Scripture has not revealed it to us.

Charles Colson, representing the Evangelical perspective, observes and warns us about taking empathy for animals further than we should:

Five years ago I warned … about an aggressive animal-rights movement that seeks to blur the distinction between animals and humans. Since then it has gained steam, even unwittingly drawing some Christians into its orbit.

I know of a Bible study group in Los Angeles that recently laid hands on a sick dog, praying God would heal her—and if not, receive her into heaven. A Christian veterinarian administers healing sessions for patients. And dozens of websites offer biblical “proof” that animals are resurrected, as if Christ’s atonement somehow included them …

Of course, Christians have a specific command to care for the creation. Genesis records that God, after forming every living creature and calling this “good,” entrusts to Adam the task of ruling over them in a responsible way … we should delight in the unique joy that animals bring, and support the work of local shelters that care for abused and abandoned animals …

Christianity teaches that humans are unique in all of creation: we are conscious of our existence, aware of death, capable of works of great creativity, and the only part of creation that bears the image of God. Humans alone have eternal souls, which confers unique moral status.

Many animal-rights activists dismiss any distinctions between humans and animals as “speciesism,” which Princeton professor Peter Singer defines as “a prejudice” that favors “the interests of members of one’s own species … against those of members of other species” …

The Scriptures tell us that animals are soulless creatures, and will perish with the rest of creation. We will not see them while our souls rest with God; when Christ returns and our bodies are resurrected, we will live in the new heavens and new earth—where there may be new, not resurrected, animals.

If we fail to understand our own doctrines, more and more Americans will begin to accept the idea that animals and humans are morally equivalent—and animal-rights activists may press on to their ultimate goals: eliminating animal agriculture and banning scientific research that uses animals—jeopardizing the development of life-saving medicines. And, as Singer proposes in his utilitarian system of ethics, activists would seek to allocate scarce resources fairly among animals and humans. (Fido’s operation will create greater happiness than keeping Uncle Ben on life support.) …

An Orthodox perspective briefly reviews the above points and adds:

When the holy God-seer Moses wrote that we were created by God in His “image and likeness,” it means that God shared with us some of His own characteristics (some actual, some potential), one of which is immortality. I’m sure that your pet is wonderful (mine was!), but you are more than wonderful — you are a child of God, created in His own image and likeness, created to share immortal life with Him in His kingdom.

In closing, this is what one Episcopalian — Veronique — says, which is pertinent to those who are upset at the thought they might never see their pet again after it dies:

God will make us perfectly happy by the perfect relationship we will enjoy with him; the need of companionship that we have on earth, and that may be filled by a pet here (or a plant), will be completely fulfilled in our perfect communion with God.  As someone else said, whatever is not there will not be missed.

Tomorrow: Christians and meat

Robert Raikes and his Sunday Schools educated the poor

This year marks the bicentenary of the death of Robert Raikes (14 September 1736 – 5 April 1811), the Englishman who helped to turn Sunday School into an international institution.

He did not found Sunday School, as the first was opened in 1751 at St Mary’s Church in Nottingham.  In 1769, Hannah Ball founded one in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. However, Raikes laid the groundwork for a number of Sunday Schools across England during his lifetime.  In the United States, mill owner Samuel Slater, originally from Derbyshire, began one for his child labourers in 1790.

Raikes was the grandson of an Anglican vicar, Yorkshireman Timothy Raikes, and the son of a newspaper owner, also named Robert.  Robert Raikes the Elder (as he is known) had settled in Gloucester by the time Robert Raikes the Younger was born.  His Gloucester Journal had been in publication for several years by then.  Raikes the Younger inherited the newspaper in 1757.

Raikes was concerned about the effect that the Industrial Revolution had upon children, especially boys.  He saw that because of a six-out-of-seven day workweek, they had no means of moral, religious or educational development.  Many adult factory workers were illiterate.  Furthermore, either exhaustion or social circumstances prevented them from attending church.  In the worst cases, fathers had ended up in jail or the workhouse, as they were too impoverished to pay their debts.  Raikes visited these institutions regularly and was appalled at the conditions, including the lack of food.

Raikes’s middle-class contemporaries hired governesses or tutors for their children.  Some sent their sons to fee-based local grammar schools or to boarding schools, which are still known today as ‘public schools’.  There were no state-run institutions at the time, although a number of charity or church-endowed ragged schools — some better than others — existed for the education of the poor and working class.

Raikes was so unsettled by the social conditions in Gloucester’s slums that he asked the Revd Thomas Stock of Ashbury, Berkshire, for advice.  Surely, a day-long school session held on Sundays and using the Bible as the textbook would teach the boys how to read and introduce them to Christianity.  Diligent students would then have not only skills to help them out of the grind of poverty but also equip them with good morals and biblical knowledge.

So, in 1780, a Gloucester woman, Mrs Meredith, opened her home to start the first Sunday School.  Raikes publicised the new venture in the Gloucester Journal and it quickly caught the attention of Englishmen nationwide.  In a recent biography of Raikes, the Telegraph recounted the story (emphases mine below):

In beginning Sunday schools, he worked with a local clergyman, at first paying four women to teach children in their houses. In 1780 he started a Sunday school in his own parish of St Mary de Crypt, hearing the children’s reading and awarding prizes.

Writing about the success of his venture in his own paper, Raikes attracted the attention of the Gentleman’s Magazine. The idea spread. “I find these schools springing up everywhere I go,” John Wesley noted in 1784. By 1786, 200,000 children were said to be involved.

Raikes had hit upon a need at a time when people were willing to do something to remedy it. Others had been working elsewhere on a similar idea. There was much energy among nonconformists, but Raikes was keen to make the enterprise serve the mission of the Church of England. Some parsons were reluctant to help, finding no warrant for it in the Book of Common Prayer and disapproving of independent lay initiatives.

Initially, only boys were allowed to attend, possibly because of their future roles as primary breadwinners. However, it was not long before Raikes and his teachers admitted girls to the classes. Raikes wrote the instructions for the teachers and described how they structured the day:

The children were to come after ten in the morning, and stay till twelve; they were then to go home and return at one; and after reading a lesson, they were to be conducted to Church. After Church, they were to be employed in repeating the catechism till after five, and then dismissed, with an injunction to go home without making a noise.

As one would expect, Raikes was not without his critics.  Wikipedia says:

There were disputes about the movement in the early years. The schools were derisively called “Raikes’ Ragged School”. Criticisms raised included that it would weaken home-based religious education, that it might be a desecration of the Sabbath, and that Christians should not be employed on the Sabbath. “Sabbatarian disputes” in the 1790s led many Sunday schools to cease their teaching of writing.

In 1811, the year Raikes died, the Telegraph states:

there was founded the splendidly named National Society for the Promotion of the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church. One thing it did was to provide booklets for Sunday schools. Under the modest name of the National Society, it still exists, promoting the Church education of a million children on weekdays.

Twenty years after Raikes’s death:

Sunday schools in Great Britain were teaching weekly 1,250,000 children, approximately 25 percent of the population.

Nonconformist churches and chapels also started Sunday Schools, particularly in deprived areas.  It was not unknown for adults to begin attending them in some regions.  From there, church-sponsored activities and associations began, particularly for the needy and disadvantaged.  One excellent illustration is that of Surrey Chapel in Southwark (London), which existed between 1783 and 1881.  Southwark, although somewhat transformed now with a number of office blocks, is still a poor area and has a number of council estates for its residents.  Surrey Chapel, however, helped transform the borough.  From Wikipedia (earlier link):

When built it was set in open fields, but within a few years it became a new industrial area with a vast population characterised by great poverty amidst pockets of wealth. Recently the site itself has been redeveloped as an office block (currently occupied by the London Development Agency), and Southwark Underground Station has been built opposite …

Its founding pastor, Rowland Hill, having a strong interest in inoculation, established one of the most effective vaccination boards in London at Surrey Chapel …

Surrey Chapel, though owned and managed by independent trustees primarily as a Nonconformist chapel, was operated as a venue for music, singing, and for the meetings of charities, associations and societies, several of which became closely associated with it. For a time, the composer and arranger Benjamin Jacob was organist, attracting thousands; a practical response to Rowland Hill’s well known concern about chapel music of the time: ‘Why should the Devil have all the good tunes ?’

Surrey Chapel – as a result of this ‘open door’ policy – became a popular London venue … as well as the site of the first Sunday School in London. So much so, that new premises had to be found to accommodate the growth in services, ragged schools, Sunday schools and the Southwark Mission for the Elevation of the Working Classes – an auxiliary to Surrey Chapel managed by the plain speaking George Murphy for the increasing numbers of industrial poor of the district.

infed (the informal education homepage and encyclopaedia of informal education) tells us:

By the mid-1800s many Sunday Schools had passed into the control of working people, although the membership of chapels would appear to have been drawn rather more from the skilled than the un-skilled working class (McLeod, 1984, p.24). Three quarters of working class children were attending such schools in 1851 (Lacquer 1976: 44). This was popular provision on a massive scale.

… the key element in the success of Sunday Schools was that they provided the education and expressed the values that working-class parents wanted for their children. In particular, it was the transmission of the values of the ‘respectable’ working class or labour aristocracy that were stressed: self-discipline, industry, thrift, improvement, egalitarianism and communalism. Sunday Schools, when considered in this light, paralleled other working class institutions such as friendly societies, trade unions and savings banks. Sunday Schools were used not simply to improve literacy and religious knowledge but also, arguably, to enhance the culture of working class life.

Indeed, if you walk around the area near the site of the former Surrey Chapel, you can still find a workingman’s temperance mutual society in Blackfriars Road. The council block across from the chapel (now the LDA building) is called Rowland Hill House.

As for Sunday Schools in the United States, the New York Times archive has a long article from 1865, which describes a meeting of the Methodist Sunday School Union, incorporating Methodist Episcopal churches.  This excerpt gives you an idea of the Sunday School ethos:

ORANGE JUDD, Esq., editor of the Agriculturist, then made an address. He gave some reminiscences of his own early days, when Sunday-schools were first organized among the log cabins where he lived when a boy, and referred to his own long experience as a Sunday-school teacher, and to his sense of obligation to Sunday schools for the good reading and good training they supplied, and explained how the children could bring other children into the schools …

In the course of his address, Mr. JUDD called on all those present who desired to go to heaven, to signify it by raising their right hand, which occasioned a heavy vote …

The exercises were ended in the usual manner, and the children filed out in good order, and with pleased faces …

The proceedings of the afternoon were inaugurated by the singing of “Glory to the Father give” by the united schools, subsequent to which Rev. W.F. COLLINS offered up prayer. The singing of the “Children’s Jubilee” was followed by an able address by Rev. W.W. HICKS, of Delaware, who welcomed the children and spoke to them of their duties toward God. A second address in the same spirit was delivered by JOSEPH LONGKING, Esq., and the “Sunday School Banner” by the pupils brought the exercises to a close. The benediction having been pronounced by the chairman, the assemblage then dispersed …

The galleries were thronged with the parents and friends of the little ones, who presented an orderly and attractive appearance … D.L. ROSS, Esq., delivered an address happily appropriate to the occasion, which elicited attention from all the children. He alluded to the necessity of Sunday-school instruction, to mold the early character, and its vast influence in disseminating the gospel among the young. After drawing a vivid picture of the thousands of little ones exposed to every temptation in this city, he contrasted their condition with those who had the advantages of the religious instruction which the Sunday-school afforded, and urged the necessity of advancing in the work.

Back in Blighty, the Telegraph concludes:

Sunday school and parish church formed a virtuous circle, each supporting the other.

Today, with leisure to be had on other days too, parish groups have diversified, but surely nothing can compare for intensity of mutual improvement with the 19th-century Sunday school.

Famous Methodists: J Arthur Rank of British film fame

As Easter Monday is a bank holiday in the UK, perhaps my British readers will watch a film sometime during the next 24 hours.  It might even be a J Arthur Rank film, introduced by the famous gong, pictured at left.

On November 21, 2010, the BBC devoted its Sunday evening Songs of Praise to J Arthur Rank, film industry mogul and philanthropist.

Not many people today know that the 1st (and only) Baron Rank (pictured, right) was also a practising Methodist.  He was born in Kingston upon Hull 1888, the seventh and last child of a wealthy flour mill owner and philanthropist, Joseph Rank.  Incidentally, the business — Joseph Rank Limited — later became part of two other well-known flour companies, Hovis and McDougall.  Combined, the concern was known as Rank Hovis McDougall and was part of the Premier Foods conglomerate until 2007.  Joseph Rank’s name lives on in an eponymous trust, about which you can see more on its home page and blog.

What follows is a synopsis of the programme and other sources as cited. Pam Rhodes is the Songs of Praise presenter. I’m sorry to say that her supercilious smirking got on my nerves.  She did not appear to take the subject matter too seriously, although, I must admit this is the only time I have ever seen the programme.

Joseph Rank was a keen competitor in the milling business, even travelling to the United States in 1902, to discover how to beat the Americans at their own flour processing. (Photo at left courtesy of the Joseph Rank Trust.) However, he was also deeply devoted to Jesus Christ and to Methodism.  He wrote a letter to Arthur and another son in which he said (emphasis mine):

God can help you if only you seek him in sincerity and truth.

Having said that, he was a stern taskmaster and had the respectful obedience of his children as well as the admiration of his friends and associates.

Arthur Rank followed in the family footsteps at the mill.  In his spare time, he taught Sunday School.  By the 1930s, he illustrated his lessons with the new medium of film.  The use of religious and moral short features, some of which he had made himself, spread to other churches. Consequently, he founded the Religious Film Society. Rank’s first film was called Mastership, which featured a well-known Methodist minister, the Revd W H Lax.  The film showed a story of workmen falling prey to drink, with one of them landing in jail.  Mr Lax asks the man whether he will choose God or drink.  Mr Lax also delivers a sermon in the film.

Although Arthur Rank wanted to show the films to a wider audience, he had no takers.  Around this time, film was thought to lead people into bad ways.  The Methodist Times complained about this, to which the London Evening News replied that the Methodist Church should look for a solution.  Rank stepped up to the challenge and founded the British National Films Company.

As his great-nephew, Colin Rank, said of Rank’s unintentional transition from flour to film, ‘God took him along a road’.  This road led Rank to hold interests in British film studios and other media concerns.  By 1937, his company became known as the Rank Organisation, which, even today, sounds rather grand, indeed.

The Rank Organisation had its headquarters in Soho’s Wardour Street, which was at the time, where British film companies had their offices.  By 1940, Rank owned five film studios, two newsreel companies and 650 cinemas.  In 1945, he said he wished to open up the world to British films:

if they are good enough and entertaining enough.

His biographer, fellow Methodist Michael Wakelin, said that Rank had hoped

the country and the world would be a better place wherever Rank films are shown.

Wakelin developed his interest in Rank from an early age.  His mother used to take him to the cinema where, as the gong sounded, she would whisper to him

He’s one of us, you know — a Methodist!

Ironically, when Arthur was younger, his father Joseph saw little to commend him.  Yet, as Rank moved towards middle age, he exhibited — out of all his brothers — his father’s gritty, steely determination.  By 1943, he dominated the British film industry and would continue to do so for the next 20 years.

Yet, Rank was not without his critics.  Some Britons took him at his word when he said that he would show films with good moral messages.  Yet, as any classic filmwatcher today will see, the Rank Organisation produced a variety of films, including The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and The Wicked Lady.  Although we see them shown on afternoon television now, some were intended at the time for adult viewing only.  The Wicked Lady was a case in point.  However, Rank thought that even racy stories could carry a powerful message for adults.  In the case of The Wicked Lady, good wins out in the end, which illustrates his point. He wanted to reach as many possible audiences as he could.

Someone in Songs of Praise compared Rank to John Wesley in that they both had an easily-accessible, popular style of evangelising.  Wesley was known for his outdoor sermons in the public square and for really reaching people wherever they were at that moment.  Similarly, Rank’s films touched cinemagoers in much the same way. Films can tap into the places a sermon cannot.

Although Rank had amassed a spectacular fortune, he never lost sight of God. He started a mobile cinema which would stop at churches to show religious films. One of these was about John Bunyan. The mobile cinema was another useful method of evangelisation for all ages, particularly young people. At home, Rank’s wife Nell helped him keep his feet firmly on the ground.  He relied on her as an informal advisor, often asking whether certain ideas and plans were worth following through.  It was not unusual for her to say no!

J Arthur Rank was made a life peer in 1957. Both Lord and Lady Rank wished to give something back to society, specifically Hull and the surrounding countryside.  Lord Rank created the Arthur Rank Centre, which puts the Church at the heart of its endeavours. The centre provides training for clergy entering rural ministry and runs the Rural Stress Helpline for those in rural areas in need of encouragement and help. A farmer’s lot is not an easy one these days. The Revd Dr Gordon Gatward is the current centre director.  He says that he often feels the presence of Lord Rank when he has decisions to make!  Lord Rank also instituted Arthur Rank Training which works with 200-300 youths, providing them with useful and relevant machine and manual skills for employment.

Lord and Lady Rank had two daughters — Shelagh and Ursula.  Shortly before he died in 1972, aged 83, Lord Rank wrote a family member:

You have big tasks before you — but the Power available is tremendous.

It was intimated in the programme that ‘Power’ meant the Holy Trinity. 

Songs of Praise read out his personal daily prayer, which is as follows:

Dear Heavenly Father, You always loved me. I ask in Jesus’s name for strong, active and continuous faith that I may always be conscious that the Holy Spirit lives in me.

What follows are a selection of his favourite hymns, which came live from the congregation of Carshalton Methodist Church (Surrey) in the programme.  I’m sorry that those are unavailable to share with you, so I have selected representative YouTube videos from other churches.

It’s worth noting that Lord Rank’s favourite hymn was ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ (hooray!):

He also liked ‘Love Divine’ (Blaenwern):

‘O Jesus, I Have Promised (Day of Rest):

and ‘Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us’ (Mannheim):

Beware of apologists and useful idiots

My sincere thanks to Christian Research Net, Watcher’s Lamp and Discerning the World for picking up my post from October 10, 2010, ‘Rick Warren’s Global Network‘.

Watcher’s Lamp and Discerning the World noted my mention of Warren’s fulsome address to the 2009 Islamic Society Convention in Plainfield, Illinois — a pleasant semi-rural town not far from Joliet. 

Watcher’s Lamp has more about the ISNA, the organisation behind the conference (italics in the original):

According to the Investigative Project On Terrorism, The Islamic Society of North America, ISNA “is one of America’s most prominent and active Muslim organizations.

As the information detailed in this report will show, ISNA’s ideology has been rooted in radicalism since its foundation.

Among the findings:

• ISNA remains an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas-support prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), despite its appeals to the court to remove that status.
• ISNA was created by members of the Muslim Brotherhood – a radical Egyptian
  movement that seeks to spread Shariah law globally – in the U.S. Many of those founders remain in leadership positions with ISNA.
• It invites controversial speakers to its nationwide conferences, including some of the world famous Islamists and advocates of Jihad.
• Speakers at ISNA conferences make radical statements, often in contradiction of ISNA’s cultivated public image.

Discerning the World concluded their post with a 2006 article from Amil Imani, originally from Iran and now resident in the United States.  Mr Imani cautions us on our approach in ‘Islam’s Useful Idiots’, which originally appeared in American Thinker.  Excerpts follow (emphases mine):

The Useful Idiot may even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits him. Terms such as ‘Political Islam,’ or ‘Radical Islam,’ for instance, are contributions of the Useful Idiot. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam, simply because they are redundant. Islam, by its very nature and according to its charter—the Quran—is a radical political movement. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the ‘real Islam’ constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non—political and moderate.

Regrettably, a large segment of the population goes along with these nonsensical euphemisms depicting Islam because it prefers to believe them. It is less threatening to believe that only a hijacked small segment of Islam is radical or politically driven and that the main body of Islam is indeed moderate and non—political.

But Islam is political to the core. In Islam the mosque and state are one and the same—the mosque is the state. This arrangement goes back to the days of Muhammad himself. Islam is also radical in the extreme. Even the ‘moderate’ Islam is radical in its beliefs as well as its deeds. Muslims believe that all non—Muslims, bar none, are hellfire bound and well—deserve being maltreated compared to believers.

No radical barbaric act of depravity is unthinkable for Muslims in dealing with others. They have destroyed precious statues of Buddha, leveled sacred monuments of other religions, and bulldozed the cemeteries of non—Muslims—a few examples of their utter extreme contempt toward others …

Almost three decades after the tragic Islamic Revolution of 1979, the suffocating rule of Islam casts its death-bearing pal[l] over Iranians. A proud people with enviable heritage is being systematically purged of its sense of identity and forced to think and behave like the barbaric and intolerant Muslims. Iranians who had always treated women with equality, for instance, have seen them reduced by the stone-age clergy to sub-human status of Islamic teaching. Any attempt by the women of Iran to counter the misogynist rule of Muhammad’s mullahs is mercilessly suppressed. Women are beaten, imprisoned, raped and killed just as men are slaughtered without due process or mercy.

The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power.

Lane Chaplin published what John Gresham Machen had to say on interfaith activity and also added a YouTube video from Todd Friel, which I’ll get to in a minute.  First, here is an excerpt from Machen’s What is Faith? (1925).  Italics in the original:

It is a very real obstacle, though at times it seems to be not a bit practical. It is the old obstacle truth. That was a great scheme of Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, to let Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity live peacefully side by side, each contributing its quota to the common good of humanity; and the plan has attained enormous popularity since Lessing’s day by the admission, to the proposed league of religions, of all the faiths of mankind. But the great trouble is, a creed can be efficient only so long as it is held to be true; if I make my creed effective in my life I can do so only because I regard it as true. But in so doing I am obliged by an inexorable necessity to regard the creed of my neighbor, if it is contradictory to mine, as false … Consequently, despite all that is said, the creeds, if they are to be held with any fervor, if they are really to have any power, must be opposed to one another; they simply cannot allow one another to work on in peace. If therefore, we want the work to proceed, we must face and settle this conflict of the means; we cannot call on men’s beliefs to help us unless we determine what it is that is to be believed. A faith that can consent to avoid proselytizing among other faiths is not really faith at all.

An objection, however, may remain … If, therefore, faith in such diverse and contradictory things brings results, if it relieves the distresses of suffering humanity, how can we have the heart to insist on logical consistency in the things that are believed? On the contrary, it is urged, let us be satisfied with any kind of faith just so it does the work; it makes no difference what is believed just so the health giving attitude of faith is there; the less dogmatic faith is, the purer it is, because it is the less weakened by the dangerous alloy of knowledge.

Plausible are the ways in which men are seeking to justify this circulation of counterfeit currency in the spiritual sphere; it is perfectly right, we are told, so long as it is not found out …

Such counterfeits should be removed, not in the interests of destruction, but in order to leave room for the pure gold the existence of which is implied by the presence of the counterfeits … Now we Christians think that we have found faith in what is true when we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as He is offered to us in the gospel. We are well aware of what has been said against that gospel; we are well aware of the unpopularity that besets a man the moment he holds any one thing to be true and rejects as false whatever is contradictory to it; we are fully conscious of the risk that we are taking when we abandon a merely eclectic attitude and put all our confidence in one thing and one thing only. But we are ready to take the risk. This world is a dark place without Christ … There are … voices within us that whisper to us doubts; but we must act in accordance with the best light that is given us, and doing so we have decided for our part to distrust our doubts and base our lives, despite all, upon Christ.

Sadly, not everyone sees the interfaith gestures as flawed as Machen did 85 years ago.  Here’s a clip from The Way of the Master Radio on a Christian 2007 Yale Center for Faith and Culture statement responding to a letter which over 100 Islamic clerics and scholars signed proposing that Muslims and Christians work together for greater mutual understanding.  It’s about the ‘love’, ‘common ground’ and so forth that the two faiths seemingly share, especially the ‘belief in one God’.  Hmm.

And who signed it?  Not only Rick Warren, but also Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary; other Fuller professors; Tony Jones; Brian McLaren; Robert Schuller; The Episcopal Church; United Methodist Church; National Association of Evangelicals; faculty from Wheaton College; faculty from Biola University and — John Stott.  Yes, that John Stott.

Our local Catholic diocese has been promoting interfaith dialogue and work for the past few years, apparently upon instruction from the Vatican.  This is no doubt a global directive.

Please avoid programmes promoted at your church in the name of ‘unity’.  It is a false and spiritually dangerous unity.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.  (John 1:14)

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.  (John 10:9)

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: (John 11:25)

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.  (John 14:6)

And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, [even] in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.  (1 John 5:20)