Sunday, October 31, 2021
It's Time For Evangelicals To Quit Churches Which Embrace Heresy.
What is the future for evangelicals in the established Church?
(Photo: Christian Concern)Christian Concern staffer, Ben John, 27, has just been elected to the Church of England's legislative body, the General Synod.
Ben comes onto the new 2021-2026 Synod as the CofE considers whether it will change its teaching on marriage, sexuality and gender.
Reports from 42 dioceses on the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) consultations, launched in 2020, will "feed into the Bishops' discernment for the Church in 2022", the CofE has announced.
Son of the evangelist J John, Ben is a lay representative for St Albans Diocese and development officer of Christian Concern's student and young adult training arm, the Wilberforce Academy.
Christian Today spoke to Ben about his election to General Synod as an Anglican evangelical who wants to defend the traditional biblical teaching at this crunch-time for the established Church.
CT: As one of the younger members of the new General Synod, what do you think you can achieve over the next five years?
BJ: Well, I simply hope to graciously proclaim the Lordship of Christ over all things. Christ through his atoning work on the Cross is reconciling the world to himself, and the Church needs to be bold in proclaiming the love, grace, and call of Christ into a culture that rejects him.
One of the big lies today sadly propagated in the Church is that we need to compromise and listen to the spirit of the age to reach young people. This was even explicitly said at my General Synod election hustings. As a younger member of Synod, I want to be able to speak into this area, that what the world needs to hear is the power of the gospel and the radical call to discipleship.
If we are not offering anything distinctive, then what is the point? And this applies to all issues, whether racism, social justice, climate change, or sexuality. In all these issues the Church has sadly tended in recent years simply to mirror the narratives of the world and not offer a distinctively positive Christian vision for society. This partly comes from a rejection of the authority of Scripture in the Church today. We need to go back to Scripture constantly to see what God has said and is saying.
Obviously one of the major issues that will be discussed will be sexuality, and whilst many of the issues to be addressed in the quinquennium (Synod's five-year term) are important, there is far more at stake over the issues of homosexuality in the Church. I hope to be able to make a positive contribution in defence of the biblical and creational definition of marriage, as well as the transforming and converting power of the gospel, which washes and sanctifies us.
CT: As a convinced Anglican evangelical, how do you feel about engaging in the politics of Synod and the inevitable need to form alliances with traditional Anglo-Catholics on the marriage and sexuality issue in particular?
BJ: In one sense I don't care too much who votes, but I care about which way they vote. Obviously, I hope to align with traditional Anglo-Catholics over issues such as sexuality, and upholding provision for those whose convictions would not support the ordination of women.
However, we should never ignore serious differences just because of agreement over a single issue.
It is worth adding, that we should hope to make a positive and persuasive Biblical case on the issue of marriage and sexuality. We should never rule out the possibility of God changing the hearts of those who maybe even stood on an 'Inclusive Church' ticket as well those who are currently 'undecided'.
CT: The biblically orthodox think tank Anglican Futures has predicted that in 2023 the bishops will produce a service of blessing for same-sex couples without a General Synod vote. What is your view of that prediction?
BJ: I think it may well be possible, but I sense it is unlikely. It is certainly important that evangelicals understand the different routes that could be taken so we can know how to respond and oppose these different efforts. I suspect that the bishops would not attempt to do this, particularly with everything said about how the LLF Next Steps Committee needs to present proposals to General Synod.
Nevertheless, we are talking about the same bishops who encourage celebratory services for so-called gender transitions using the reaffirmation of baptismal vows liturgy. So given the bishops can promote such wickedness, and blasphemy, and fail to shepherd so grievously, it should not surprise us if they do produce a service of blessing for same-sex couples without a General Synod vote.
CT: What do you think is the future for Anglican evangelicals like you in the established Church?
BJ: I am very sympathetic to the view that we need to stay and have a faithful witness in the Church of England until we are kicked out. The question is what faithful witness will look like going forward. Are we prepared to take courageous stands that may well lead to us being kicked out?
I think we need to be prepared to break communion with false teachers, for example bishops who are promoting LGBT issues or denying the uniqueness of Christ, and there should be a visible disunity. This is not something to relish or celebrate, but to lament. Christ clearly calls us to unity, but also to oppose the works of darkness.
Of course, visible disunity and impaired communion can only last so long; eventually new leaders have to be appointed. I think more needs to be done by evangelicals to think this through and also to think through the effect on our public witness of partnering with false teachers.
I do believe that God will bless faithfulness to him and in particular the faithful proclamation of the gospel. Failure to proclaim the gospel is why liberal churches collapse, but we as evangelicals cannot simply presume on God's blessing for our ministry whilst we come under the authority of bishops promoting wickedness or working alongside false church leaders.
CT: In November last year just after the CofE published its LLF resources you broadcast a critical video which led to a transgender activist reporting the video. What has happened over that?
BJ: Yes, I was critical of the LLF project. The whole process seemed to be a subtle attempt to move towards a two-convictions approach, that we can allow for both the orthodox view and the revisionist view in the church. But attempts to do that must be opposed.
Nothing came about over the investigation. The police never contacted Christian Concern or myself about the video. We were only told about the investigation through the BBC when they reached out for a comment on the matter. The video may have been registered as a 'non-crime hate incident' but nothing has been flagged on my record about that.
Interestingly, the trans URC (United Reformed Church) Minister in the video wrote an article published in the Journal of Theology and Sexuality in August 2021 describing the video as a 'contemporary text of terror', though I would respectfully disagree that articulating historic biblical truth could be described as such. [Editor's note: the minister has commented on their decision to report the Christian Concern video in this article]. CT.
Witch Hunts For Beginners.
10.28.2021
Climate change fuelled witch hunts… Then and now
Gregory Wrightstone
European witch hunts of the 15th to 17th centuries targeted witches that were thought to be responsible for epidemics and crop failures related to declining temperatures of the Little Ice Age. A belief that evil humans were negatively affecting the climate and weather patterns was the “consensus” opinion of that time. How eerily similar is that notion to the the current oft-repeated mantra that Man’s actions are controlling the climate and leading to catastrophic consequences?
The first extensive European witch hunts coincided with plunging temperatures as the continent transitioned away from the beneficial warmth of the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1250 AD). Increasing cold that began in the 13th century ushered in nearly five centuries of advancing mountain glaciers and prolonged periods of rainy or cool weather. This time of naturally-driven climate change was accompanied by crop failure, hunger, rising prices, epidemics and mass depopulation.
Large systematic witch hunts began in the 1430s and were advanced later in the century by an Alsatian Dominican friar and papal Inquisitor named Heinrich Kramer. At Kramer’s urging, Pope Innocence VIII issued an encyclical enshrining the persecution and eradication of weather-changing witches through this papal edict. The worst of the Inquisition’s abuses and later systemic witch hunts were, in part, empowered by this decree.
This initial period of cooler temperatures and failing crops continued through the first couple of decades of the 16th century, when a slight warming was accompanied by improvements in harvests. Clearly, the pogrom against the weather-changing witches had been successful!
Unfortunately for the people of the Late Middle Ages, the forty years or so of slight warming gave ground to a more severe bout of cooling. The summer of 1560 brought a return of coldness and wetness that led to severe decline in harvest, crop failure and increases in infant mortality and epidemics. Bear in mind that this was an agrarian subsistence culture, nearly totally dependent on the yearly harvest to survive. One bad harvest could be tolerated, but back-to-back failures would cause horrific consequences, and indeed they did.
Of course, the people’s misfortunes were attributed to weather-changing witches who had triggered the death-dealing weather, most often in the form of cold, rain, frost and devastating hailstorms. Horrific atrocities were alleged of the witches, including Franconian witches who “confessed” to flying through the air to spread an ointment made of children’s fat in order to cause a killing frost. Across the continent of Europe, from the 15th to the 17th centuries there were likely many tens of thousands of supposed witches burnt at the stake, many of these old women living without husbands on the margins of society.
Pfister (2007)
The worst of the witch hunts occurred during the bitter cold from 1560 to about 1680. The frenzy of killing culminated in the killing of 63 witches in the German territory of Wiesensteig in the year 1563 alone. Across Europe, though, the numbers of witches continued to increase and peaked at more than 500 per year in the mid-1600s. Most were burned at the stake; others were hung.
The end of the witch hunts and killings tie closely to the beginning of our current warming trend at the close of the 17th century. That warming trend started more than 300 years ago and continues in fits and starts to this day.
In the Late Middle Ages, a large segment of the population actually believed that evil people could negatively affect the climate. It appears that we haven’t learned the lessons of the 16th century and the dangers of stirring unfounded fears concerning changes to our climate. Perhaps in the not too distant future we will have the benefit of hindsight and realize that people like Al Gore and Dr. Michael Mann were the Heinrich Kramers of the early 21st century, trying to convince us all that we can control the uncontrollable — the natural cycles of the Sun and Earth that are operating today, just as they have for many millions of years.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist and the Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition in Arlington Virginia. He is bestselling author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know.
References:
Pfister (2007) Witch Hunts: Strategies of European Societies in Coping with Exogenous Shocks in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
Behringer (1999) Climatic change and witch-hunting: the impact of the Little Ice Age on mentalities.
Birdie.
California condors: Virgin births discovered in critically endangered birds.
The study's co-author said it is "truly an amazing discovery"
US wildlife researchers have discovered that two California condors, a critically endangered bird, gave birth without any male genetic DNA.
The discovery that condors are capable of virgin births - formally called parthenogenesis or asexual reproduction - surprised scientists.
Virgin births have been recorded in other bird species, as well as lizards, snakes, sharks, rays and other fish.
Only about 500 California condors remain in the US south-west and Mexico.
In the 1980s, fewer than two dozen birds remained in the wild, but conservation efforts have boosted their numbers in recent years.
The peer-reviewed findings from San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were published this week in the American Genetic Association's Journal of Heredity.
The researchers describe how routine genetic screenings of captive birds led to the discovery that two male chicks hatched in 2001 and 2009 were related to their mothers and had not inherited DNA from any father bird.
Thoughtful Comments About Happer's Attacks On 'Noble Lies'.
Wikipedia alleges:
Contemporary climate change includes both global warming caused by humans, and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history.
William Happer: Noble Lies and the Evil They Allow.
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Oct 25, 2021
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