Category: Religion

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.

Institute on the Constitution Promotes Indoctrination of Students; Calvin College Has an American Club?

At least that is what this Institute on the Constitution’s Facebook post says:

Founder of the neo-Confederate Institute on the Constitution, Michael Peroutka, is here speaking to high school students in Hudsonville, MI. Watch the video below:

Post by Institute on the Constitution.

 
 
Post by Institute on the Constitution.
Peroutka tells the students that the American view is based on a biblical view of law and government. He then sets up a straw man by contrasting what he considers to be the biblical view with the pagan view of law and government. He says you can call it socialist or communist, but it is the view which is marked by teaching evolution.  He says this kind of government will give you health care, retirement and “put an RFID chip in your wrist to, we want to know where you are all the time.” The contrast drawn by Peroutka is apparently designed to scare the kids into buying into his Christian reconstructionist view of government. They look a little bored so maybe very little of the stuff is getting through.
About two weeks ago, I wrote about how Liberty University’s Liberty Counsel plans to defend the IOTC’s American clubs in public schools. It seems clear from a review of the IOTC Facebook page that Peroutka and staff are serious about starting these clubs in local schools.
While in Michigan, Peroutka apparently stopped in at Calvin College to promote the American Club there. This, to me, is a shocker. I didn’t think there would be a taste among that many students for what Peroutka is selling.

Is the Latter Day Saint Church a Denomination of Christianity?

Last Friday, Latter Day Saint Glenn Beck told Liberty University students that Mormonism is a Christian denomination. While I focused briefly on the Grand Council reference in the speech, blogger James Duncan referenced Beck’s statement about Latter Day Saints and Christianity in his post on Beck’s speech in Liberty’s chapel.  Beck said:

I share your faith. I am from a different denomination, and a denomination, quite honestly, that I’m sure can make many people at Liberty uncomfortable. I’m a Mormon, but I share your faith in the atonement of the savior, Jesus Christ. In my faith, we have a guy who gave his life for what he believed in. You don’t have to believe it; I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you, “What is it that you believe? Are you willing to give your life?”

Unlike some other speakers who deviate from Liberty’s evangelical affiliations, Beck made a religious claim. It is incredible that Liberty allowed this to be said without any response or disclaimer. Given the enthusiastic response of LU leaders and the student body, I wonder if Beck’s claim is accepted and taught at LU.
Al Mohler addressed the claim that Mormons are members of a Christian denomination. As he points out, the LDS movement began as a rejection of Christianity and a claim that the LDS church had recovered the true Gospel.

Once that is made clear, the answer is inevitable. Furthermore, the answer is made easy, not only by the structure of Christian orthodoxy (a structure Mormonism denies) but by the central argument of Mormonism itself – that the true faith was restored through Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century in America and that the entire structure of Christian orthodoxy as affirmed by the post-apostolic church is corrupt and false.
In other words, Mormonism rejects traditional Christian orthodoxy at the onset – this rejection is the very logic of Mormonism’s existence. A contemporary observer of Mormon public relations is not going to hear this logic presented directly, but it is the very logic and message of the Book of Mormon and the structure of Mormon thought. Mormonism rejects Christian orthodoxy as the very argument for its own existence, and it clearly identifies historic Christianity as a false faith.

As I noted yesterday (and blogger Duncan also demonstrates), Beck spoke from the foundation of his Latter Day Saint theology. About that theology, Mohler wrote:

The major divisions within Christian history (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism) disagree over important issues of doctrine, but all affirm the early church’s consensus concerning the nature of Christ and the Trinitarian faith. These are precisely what Mormonism rejects.
Without doubt, Mormonism borrows Christian themes, personalities, and narratives. Nevertheless, it rejects what orthodox Christianity affirms and it affirms what orthodox Christianity rejects. It is not Christianity in a new form or another branch of the Christian tradition. By its own teachings and claims, it rejects that very tradition.

LDS founder Joseph Smith clearly taught that his angelic visitors told him that none of the denominations of Christianity were correct. From Smith’s writings 1:19-20:

18 My object in going to ainquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join.
 19 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all awrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those bprofessors were all ccorrupt; that: “they ddraw near to me with their lips, but their ehearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the fcommandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the gpower thereof.”
 20 He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time.

Some of the silence in response to Beck’s claims may be due to the endorsement of David Barton. Barton has claimed that Beck is a Christian who identifies as a Mormon out of loyalty.  Also, some of the silence may be due to the fact that Beck donated money to Liberty and promised to do more.
In any case, from both an orthodox Christian and the historic LDS perspective, the case for the LDS church being a denomination of orthodox Christianity isn’t credible.
 
 

Glenn Beck Talks Mormon at Liberty University

I honestly have a hard time figuring out Liberty University.
After finding themselves in some hot water over Mitt Romney, and then more recently Benny Hinn and Ron Godwin’s past devotion to Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, you would think they would take more care about the speakers in their chapel. However, last Friday, LU featured Mormon enthusiast Glenn Beck in their chapel. Right there in front of their motto “Training Champions for Christ Since 1971,” Glenn Beck spoke from his Mormon theological base to young evangelicals.
Right Wing Watch had the story yesterday. Here is a clip where Beck refers to the Mormon doctrine of pre-existence (begin at 26:45)
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYNjZ55nctE#t=1597[/youtube]
To the Liberty students, Beck refers to the Grand Councils which apparently is a reference to the pre-mortal meeting to decide the plan of salvation and other matters, according Mormon theology. I wonder how many classes the LU profs have to spend undoing what happens in chapel.
 
 

Underground Newspaper Shut Down At Cedarville University

John Fea brings word that The Ventriloquist, an underground paper at Cedarville University was shut down earlier today.
From the paper’s website:

On April 23, distribution of the April issue of The Ventriloquist was forcefully shut down by Cedarville University president Dr. Thomas White and VP of Student Life Jonathan Wood.
As usual, distributors were set up outside the DMC to pass out copies to students leaving the university’s mandatory chapel service. Before chapel was dismissed, White and Wood walked around the distribution stations confiscating papers. Wood forcefully removed papers from the hands of at least one distributor.
When queried, White and Wood stated that The Ventriloquist required prior permission to distribute the issue. Per the student handbook (available online in PDF format here), the only activity that specifically requires prior permission is a “demonstration.” The handbook does not provide a definition of “demonstration,” but The Ventriloquist has distributed twelve issues in similar fashion over the course of the last four years with no warning or retribution from university staff.

As an alum, I am sad to hear about this and about the drift to the far right which seems to be gripping the school.
Also, I can relate to the students who write for the paper. When Paul Dixon became president of the college during my time there, he appointed the public relations department to oversee the paper’s content. In essence, this shut down the school paper because the newspaper staff resigned in protest.
It can now be revealed that I was co-editor of an underground paper published stealthily to replace the absent newspaper. We printed the paper secretly and distributed it literally in the middle of the night. After awhile, the papers started disappearing from where we left them (mostly in the student mail room) and we had to get creative in ways to spread them around. What goes around comes around I suppose.
When I first went to the “Ville” in 1975, men were not allowed to grow beards or mustaches and long hair for men was forbidden, women could not wear pants to class, and movies and dancing were prohibited. I got into some hot water for playing Stairway to Heaven at the new student talent night. Music preferences were monitored. Generally, I pushed the rules as far as I could. As a relatively new Christian, I didn’t get the legalism. In years following graduation, Christian rock and pop artists were featured in chapel and other kinds of moderation followed. Before coming to Grove City in 1994, I had an informal interview at Cedarville.
However, I received a pretty good education and I know there are fine people still teaching there. I am disappointed to think that the school could be returning to a stifling rigidity and legalism that marked the early days.