Month: May 2014

Mars Hill's Board of Advisors and Accountability Hints at Secret Meetings

In today’s Mars Hill Church newsletter (as posted on a ex-Mars Hill members Facebook group), a statement was made by Michael Van Skaik, Chair of the Board of Advisors and Accountability about the silence from the church on mediation and reconciliation.

In the current season, Michael [Van Skaik] explained that the BOAA is focused on meeting with individuals as opposed to releasing public statements. Unfortunately, said Michael, public communications are often wielded as ammunition against the church, regardless of the motives of those communications. So the board invests its time into meeting with people one on one and limits its public communications. It’s a slow process, but Michael warned against being in a hurry to see change. Things didn’t get where they are in six months and they won’t be buttoned up that quickly either. The board is after long-term culture change and health.
“The fact is, spiritual growth can be slow,” Michael said. “[The reconciliation processes] are going well, but take time.”
That said, Michael is encouraged by the fruit that he’s seeing in the hearts and lives of the Executive Elders. He believes that God has certainly anointed Pastor Mark’s preaching and Mars Hill’s influence and views the current issues surrounding the church as ways that God is refining the leaders, working in their hearts and minds to further his message.
“The best days of Mars Hill are ahead,” he said. “Everyone on the Board is feeling like we need to go through these issues and learn from them deeply and have them affect the culture of the church for the future.”

This piece raises more questions than it answers. In private, 20 former pastors asked for mediation via a March 17 letter. Many days went by with no response. Then in early April, when the pastors started to make problems public, the BOAA made an overture to bring in an employee of one of the BOAA members to help mediate. Since then there has been silence from both Mars Hill and the twenty pastors. Now, Mars Hill speaks on the matter of reconciliation but still doesn’t mention the public overture made by the pastors.
Van Skaik appears to acknowledge that there are significant issues which “didn’t get where they are in six months” and which can’t be “buttoned up that quickly.” The message here seems to be that the situation is so bad that we need lots of time to clean it up but at the same time, things are good and getting better.
When Mark Driscoll and the Mars Hill leadership fired Paul Petry and Bent Meyer, the process was pretty public with Driscoll talking about the firings in sermons just before the deeds were done. He disparaged the work of those men in a sermon that left little doubt to whom he referred. Now, that charges have been filed the other direction, the BOAA wants a secret process.
Secret meetings may be appropriate for many situations but there are public issues which the church appears to be ducking. Meyer’s and Petry’s situation is one. A public exoneration of those men is in order. The legal matters relating to Mars Hill Orange County in 2012 is another one.  Most aspects of that situation are matters of public record and yet the church refuses to address questions from observers and members.  Mars Hill’s leadership has pretty ambitious goals and via Mars Hill Global wants donations and participation from the broader community of evangelicals. However, when it comes to being accountable to the broader community, in my opinion, they continue to fall short.

Where in Hudsonville MI is This American Club?

On Wednesday, I reported that the Institute on the Constitution has expanded their American Clubs into Michigan. Specifically, I posted a link to some pictures and a video of high school students IOTC said made up an American Club in Hudsonville, MI. Appropriately, Peroutka titled this picture “high school student indoctrination.”

Here are some other pictures of the club.
Peroutka says these meetings took place at a high school in Hudsonville, MI. As far as I can determine, there are three high schools in Hudsonville, MI: Hudsonville High School (public), Unity Christian and Freedom Christian. I called all three and asked if the schools endorse or recognize this club. No one claimed the American Club. All representatives I spoke with denied that this meeting took place at their school. I also posted a question on the IOTC Facebook page with no answer.
Now I am curious. Where did this take place? Peroutka says he was mind snatching in MI but where did this mischief occur?
While public schools may not be able to keep American Clubs out, I would want to know about such a club in my child’s school. Instead of American Clubs, they should be called Christian Reconstruction clubs, or Dominionist Clubs.
Anybody recognize this school?
UPDATE: This picture appears to be the same location but the caption says it is in Grand Rapids.

Glenn Beck's Historical Problems at Liberty University: The Purple Triangle and the Jehovah's Witnesses

Leaving aside the wisdom of having a Mormon leader deliver a sermon, Liberty University should apologize for Glenn Beck’s questionable history.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/TYNjZ55nctE?t=9m16s[/youtube]
At about 10 minutes into the video of his sermon at Liberty, Beck went to a table on the stage with various documents. He first picked up a collection of colored triangles used by the Nazi’s to identify why prisoners were placed in work and death camps. He then identified several Bibles, saying one of them put an end to the Salem witch trials. He then told his version of how Joseph Smith died, pulling out what he claimed was Joseph Smith’s pocket watch. While not everything Beck said was incorrect, there were some significant problems. I am going to take each one in a separate post.
Let’s start with Beck’s incorrect identification of the people required to wear the purple triangle.  Beck said at 10:04:

or this one, what got you sent to the concentration camps for the purple triangle? You were a Bible scholar. The Bible is the enemy to fascists.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were required to wear purple triangles in Nazi concentration camps. The Nazi’s called the Jehovah’s Witnesses Bibelforscher (Bible student/researcher) and viewed them as dangerous because they refused to salute Hitler. Beck’s presentation is misleading and obscures the fact that many Protestants and Catholics stood by while the Witnesses were persecuted. Perhaps Beck confused the terms “Bible students” with “Bible scholars,” but the way he used that term without identifying the Jehovah’s Witnesses gave the impression that orthodox Bible teachers were rounded up. While a very small percentage of orthodox Christians (Baptists, Adventists, pentecostals, etc.) were taken into custody, the overwhelming majority of purple triangle wearers were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Given that Beck said he vacationed at Auschwitz and has studied the history, it seems incredible to believe he was unaware of these facts.
According to Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoss,* the Jehovah’s Witnesses were particularly striking in their behavior. They were trustworthy and resilient and seemed to revel in their affliction as giving them a chance to stand for their beliefs.

Out of respect for the sacrifices made by Jehovah’s Witnesses, I think Beck should publicly acknowledge how misleading his presentation was at Liberty. The Bible may be a problem for fascists but in practice there was one group the Nazis singled out because of the way the Witnesses interpreted the Bible and lived out those beliefs.
 
*Hoss, Rudolph, Steven Paskuly, (Ed.), (1996). Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. New York: Da Capo Press.

Religion News Services Weighs In on Glenn Beck at Liberty University

Liberty University graduate Jonathan Merritt posted an article yesterday titled: “Glenn Beck Preaches Mormon Theology at Liberty University.” In the article Merritt provides analysis of Beck’s sermon and the Latter Day Saint references in it.
While there has been some outrage expressed by Liberty grads on Twitter, the school hasn’t responded to these expressions with the vigor it did to concerns the school was partnering with Benny Hinn. Merritt seems largely correct when he wrote:

There seems to be no outcry from students, parents, or faculty over Liberty’s invitation of Beck or of his sermon so far. Perhaps the silence is because this is business as usual for the evangelical mega-school.

After clearly identifying the Mormon theology in Beck’s sermon, Merritt concludes:

So what does all this mean?Given the school’s history, Beck’s sermon may be nothing more than Liberty doing what it has always done best: thriving amidst controversy and leading with conservative politics rather than theology. But it may also be one more sign that Mormons are becoming more mainstream in American life–even increasingly welcomed by evangelicals who would have rejected them only a few years ago.

While Merritt says this gently, I do agree that Liberty often puts conservative politics before religion. To varying degrees, one might have a hard time finding a religious institution that has not done this at one time or another. However, there has to be a line somewhere, and for my taste, Liberty crossed that line by giving Glenn Beck a platform to sermonize and in essence to proselytize their students. If Beck provided value to the educational mission of the school then I can see him speaking in classes, or at politically oriented events, etc. However, Liberty showcased him preaching what was in essence a sermon.
More broadly, there are many reasons I think Beck should not be invited to speak at an institution of higher learning. Mostly, the reasons have to do with his endorsement of the historical problems of David Barton. So much misinformation has been spread by Barton through Beck’s media empire that he is culpable for it.  Beck has been approached about the matter by those close to him and he has persisted to give Barton a platform. Barton in turn has softened and minimized the real differences between historic Christianity and the LDS doctrines. All of this disqualifies both of them in my opinion.