Month: April 2015

Petitioners Ask Hillsong to Reconsider Mark Driscoll Interview

Back in March, Brian Houston released a statement to me saying that Mark Driscoll would not speak at the Hillsong Conferences in London and Sydney but instead would be interviewed with his wife. While that move represents a diminished role at the conferences, the change is not good enough for UK resident Natalie Collins. She has started a petition asking Hillsong to remove Driscoll from the program.
The petition begins:

This is both disappointing and of great concern to many across the UK and internationally.  Mark Driscoll resigned from leadership after many leaders and other within his church raised issues about unethical and abusive behaviour including:

  • Ex-leaders of Mars Hill Church repenting of their collusion with Mark Driscoll
  • Ex-members of Mars Hill reporting they have experienced spiritual abuse from Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll, including controlling and manipulative behaviour
  • Evidence of plagiarism in at least one book he has written
  • Misuse of tithes by Mars Hill Church
  • Unethical actions taken to ensure Grace and Mark Driscoll’s book was featured on a bestselling book list
  • Mark Driscoll’s public statements against women in leadership over the last two decades which have greatly undermined the Gospel message of women as leaders, evangelists and full members of the Body of Christ.

With only 17 signers, the petition does not seem to be catching on rapidly.
Driscoll recently refurbished his website and renamed his non-profit entity, Mark Driscoll Ministries. Meanwhile, some former members have continued their fund raising efforts to bring a RICO lawsuit against Driscoll’s former church.

Update on the Lawsuit Against Mars Hill Church

Just a little while ago, an update appeared on the GoFundMe page designed to raise money for a lawsuit against Mars Hill Church.

This campaign has ended. 

You can still help by clicking on the following link:http://www.gofundme.com/MarsHillLawsuit

Thanks to all who participated.

Rob Smith

The new page begins:

It is time for Christians everywhere to stand up and say, “Enough!! We will no longer put up with pastors who reach for honor for themselves and who enrich themselves at the expense and harm of those they claim to be shepherding!” 

When leaders in the Church choose to stay silent, others must speak up. Paul’s mandate to Timothy regarding leaders who persist in certain sins (1 Timothy 5:19-20) must not be ignored by the Church. Most of those who were leaders at Mars Hill Church have chosen to remain silent.

Please help us discover and make clear the truth about what happened at Mars Hill Church by contributing to this fund for a RICO lawsuit against the former top leaders of Mars Hill.

The funds already raised have gone to the attorney who did preliminary work on the suit. Brian Fahling constructed the RICO action and presented the requests for mediation to the church.
The president of Mars Hill Church is now Kerry Dodd. Dodd has not replied to requests for comment regarding the church.
Information about the lawsuit can be found at /2014/12/26/letter-the-legal-case-against-mars-hill-church/.
 

Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson

In honor of our third president, I can suggest a worthy gift given to anyone in his name.
jeffersonbookcover
 
Written mostly to debunk David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies, the book stands on its own as an examination of Jefferson’s views on religion, the Bible, and slavery.
Barton spent a lot of time at the Faith Baptist Church telling the audience that the founders all followed Blackstone’s ideas that our government was based on the Bible. Thomas Jefferson wasn’t impressed with that argument as this letter to John Adams shows. Here’s just a bit that sounds like what David Barton would like us to do:

it is not only the sacred volumes they have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land. we have a curious instance of one of these pious frauds in the Laws of Alfred. he composed, you know, from the laws of the Heptarchy, a Digest for the government of the United kingdom, and in his preface to that work he tells us expressly the sources from which he drew it, to wit, the laws of Ina, of Offa & Aethelbert, (not naming the Pentateuch.) but his pious Interpolator, very awkwardly, premises to his work four chapters of Exodus (from the 20th to the 23d) as a part of the laws of the land; so that Alfred’s preface is made to stand in the body of the work. our judges too have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these make a part of the law of the land.

David Barton Again Says Bible Teaches HIV Vaccine Won't Be Discovered; Distorts Vaccine Research

David Barton continues to mislead his audiences about HIV research. Earlier this year, he told Charis Bible College students that a vaccine won’t be discovered for HIV because the Bible teaches HIV is the penalty for being gay. Then he misrepresented two separate studies on HIV vaccines to make it appear vaccine research had been halted due to lack of success.
Barton did the same thing again Saturday, April 11th at the Faith Baptist Church in Knightdale, NC. He told the audience the Bible teaches that no HIV vaccine will be found and then he misrepresented two studies so that he could seem right. Watch:

If Barton is right, then why don’t all gays get HIV? And why is HIV a straight disease in countries other than the United States?
What I wrote in early March is still true about Barton’s claims. At about 1:56 into the clip above, Barton shows a headline touting the discovery of a HIV vaccine. Then he says, “six weeks later” another article came out saying the vaccine didn’t work. However, what he doesn’t tell his audience is that he is deceiving them. The first headline was about one study and the second headline was about another study conducted four years later. To Faith Baptist Church, Barton said essentially the same thing as he said at Charis Bible College. What I wrote then about the claims applies to this speech:

…Barton said he might be wrong because of a 2009 article in Popular Science with the headline: “For the First Time Ever, An HIV Vaccine Shows Success in Trial.” This was taken from the New York Times and is a report about the RV 144 vaccine trials, also known as the “Thai Trials” because the six-year study was conducted in Thailand. According to the NIH News, the trials began in 2003 and demonstrated safety and modest effectiveness. Barton implies that this trial was halted; it was not.

In the video, Barton first showed the Popular Science headline and then said:

The headlines came out and said, for the first time ever an HIV vaccine shows success in trial. Oh my gosh, I guess there is, I guess I must have misinterpreted the Bible, cause the Bible’s true, and then six weeks later, they came out with this that says, NIH halts trial of HIV vaccine after it fails to work. The newspaper said it worked but none of the medical evidence said that it worked. So they still don’t have a cure.

The problem with Barton’s presentation is that the second headline didn’t come out “six weeks later.” Rather it came out four years later in 2013 and was about an entirely different attempt to create a vaccine.

The Yahoo News article Barton referred to (the second headline – NIH Halts Trial of HIV Vaccine After it Fails to Work) is only available via Internet Archives and is dated April 26, 2013. The Yahoo article linked to a NIH announcement that the HVTN 505 clinical trial had been halted. The HVTN 505 trial results had nothing to do with the earlier success of RV144. The RV144 trial was reported in 2009, the same year that the HVTN 505 started. The NIH has more on the HVTN 505 trial on the NIH website.

Barton got the time frame wrong and made it appear that the two headlines were related to each other.

Barton’s use of the headlines is extremely deceptive. In fact, progress continues to be made which builds upon the modestly successful vaccine already available. In fact, R144 vaccine does offer protection from HIV infection. An extension of the success of R144 is being conducted in South Africa now. 
It is hard to understand how Barton could make this mistake unless he either didn’t read the articles (just relied on the headlines but didn’t read the articles) or he is intentionally misleading people.