Category: Religion

Unification Church President Says Richard Cohen is Foremost Expert on Gays in Their Movement

From 2007 through 2008, I wrote a series of posts which revealed ongoing ties between the Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation and the Unification Church (aka Moonies). Initially, Cohen’s staffer Hilde Wiemann denied she was a member of the movement but then later admitted she had been in the movement long after Cohen said there were no ties between his organization and the church.

This week I have come across video which again links Cohen with the Unification church. On October 7, 2012, Moon’s son and president of the Unification Church Hyung Jin Moon held a town hall meeting at the Unification Bay Area Family Church. Sun Myung Moon recently died, but in 2008, he appointed Hjung Jin to be the leader of the church.

The full three hour video is here. Below is a brief excerpt of Hyung Jin’s answer to a question about homosexuality (at about 2 hours and 40 minutes into the session):

Moon says:

Richard Cohen is a member in our movement who has worked on this tremendously, the whole issue. Even as you mentioned, you said that people are gay through no fault of their own. But of course this is debatable; that’s an assumption. Richard Cohen actually debates that assumption. He’s actually an expert on this issue and so maybe we can connect you to him, Richard Cohen. If you could, give your contact information to Dr. Grubb, we will try to connect you to Richard Cohen. I think in our movement he is probably the foremost expert on that whole issue, and hopefully he can contribute and helping us with programs in the future as well.

I have asked IHF for comment with no immediate response. The mention of Cohen by Unification Church President Hyung Jin Moon does not conclusively prove that Cohen is member of the church. Perhaps Cohen is the only person Hyung Jin knows who claims expertise regarding homosexuality. However, the way he describes Cohen and the ease with which he indicates he can connect the questioner with Cohen again raises questions about Cohen’s earlier denials.

Cohen said he left the Unification Church in 1995. Hyung Jin was about 16 years old at the time.

The Founders’ Bible: Did Thomas Jefferson Base the Declaration of Independence on the Bible?

The authors of the Founders’ Bible want readers to believe that America was established to be a Christian nation. By that, they mean that the basis of civil law is Christianity. One important claim in support of the Christian nation theory is that the Declaration of Independence was based on the Bible.

In an article titled “Inseparably Linked: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” editors Brad Cummings, Lance Wubbels and Paul Jehle describe their view of what Thomas Jefferson did when he wrote the Declaration.

In writing the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson staked the legal claim for lawful separation from England on “the Laws of Nature,” which were widely understood as the will of God revealed in nature, “and of Nature’s God,” being God’s will revealed in the Bible — those two entitled America to be a free and independent nation. The Declaration is America’s birth certificate and legal basis that is bedrocked in Christian principles.

Also, in the Declaration’s second paragraph, Jefferson declared that we “are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Clearly, he was stating facts the Founders already knew. God’s charter for the nations via Creation (Genesis 1:28; 9:1), with mankind’s God-given rights of life, liberty and property, is the foundation upon which the charter or the mission statement for the United States stands.

Perhaps you can see where this is going. The Founders’ Bible authors want you to believe that Thomas Jefferson was writing in code. Instead of explicitly basing the Declaration on the Bible, he wrote general words that really meant something else. The authors conclude:

As was true for the Jamestown Charter and the Mayflower Compact, the same is true for the Declaration of Independence — the basis of law in our civil society is Christianity, as based on the Word of God. This is the foundation and blueprint that informs our purpose and destiny. It is out nation spiritual birthright. To conclude otherwise is to ignore the basic history anchored in fact. (p. 1248)

What is ignored by the Founders’ Bible is Jefferson’s own words about the Declaration. He wrote several times about the reasons and source of the document. When Jefferson wrote about the Declaration, he did not credit the Bible or Christianity.

First, to Henry Lee on May 8, 1825, Jefferson wrote:

But with respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles or new arguments never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before: but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c. The historical documents which you mention as in your possession ought all to be found, and I am persuaded you will find to be corroborative of the facts and principles advanced in that Declaration.

Who wrote the “elementary books of public right?” Moses? The Apostle Paul? No, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney contributed to the “harmonizing sentiments of the day.” A case could be made that some of that harmonizing sentiment derived from religious sources with religious references, but Jefferson did not mention them or appeal to them as primary influences.

In 1823, Jefferson told James Madison (referring to Lee’s theories about the source of the Declaration):

Richard Henry Lee charged it as copied from Locke’s treatise on government. Otis’s pamphlet I never saw, and whether I had gathered my ideas from reading or reflection, I do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it. I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before.

According to Jefferson (and in contrast to what the authors of the Founders’ Bible want you to believe), he did not turn to the Bible when writing the Declaration of Independence. Christian historians Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden got it right when they wrote in 1989:

Here then is the “historical error”: It is historically inaccurate and anachronistic to confuse, and virtually to equate, the thinking of the Declaration of Independence with a biblical world view, or with Reformation thinking, or with the idea of a Christian nation. (p. 130).

The Founders’ Bible is full of these kind of errors. While I don’t know if the authors intend to do so, it seems clear that the idea of Christian nationalism has so captured them that claims are assembled (some with some truth, some completely false) in order to prove an ideological position.

Related posts:

Founders’ Bible Rewrites Exodus 18 to Fit Christian Nation Narrative

Confirmed: David Barton’s Founders’ Bible Cites Pro-Slavery James Hammond as Proponent of America as Christian Nation

David Barton’s Founders’ Bible is Wrong about the Aitken Bible

Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President

Who Are the Paleo Evangelicals?

Last week, historian Thomas Kidd described a subset of evangelicals who are reluctant Republicans. Inspired by the term paleoconservative, he calls them paleo evangelicals. These evangelicals, according to Kidd, are suspicious of American civil religion, and skeptical that much good comes from allegiance to any political party. Although conservative, paleos do not agree with the modern GOP on all issues. On balance, the GOP may be the party that gets their votes, but they are not enthusiastic that voting one’s values is the salvation of the nation.

Kidd specifically raises the differences between paleo evangelicals and the Christian nation movement led by David Barton. He writes

Our faith needs to be focused on Christ, the paleos say, and rooted in the deep, wide tradition of orthodox church history. We do not base our faith, in any sense, on the personal beliefs of Jefferson, Washington, or Adams. Especially when viewed from the perspective of the global church, American civil religion looks peculiar, at best. Yes, Christianity played a major role in the American founding, but that fact does not place the founding at the center of Christianity. The paleos admire many of the founders, but do not wish to read the founders alongside Scripture, as Barton would have us do in his new Founders’ Bible.

Kidd does not speculate about the size of this group but I think he is correct that such evangelicals exist. I certainly would be close to this camp. Picking up on his ideas, Bart Gingrich and Anna Williams see paleos as being more prevalent among younger people.  I hope they are correct.

One leading voice among evangelicals in the younger generation is Jonathan Merritt. His book A Faith of Our Own finds fault with the culture war and the conflation of Christianity with politics. Merritt’s experience may give insight into the making of paleos. About his peers and the church, Merritt writes

Having come of age during the first aftershock period, young people today seem especially dissatisfied. A culture-warring church is the only one they’ve experienced, and they are running away as fast as they can. (p. 77)

Merritt seems to be describing paleos when he writes:

Today’s Christians are rising up to rediscover the faith in a world that is, not a world that was. They desire to reclaim the faith from the partisan spirit so pervasive among some Christians in America…These Christians aren’t consumed with a platform or a party or a policy; they are devoted to a person who emptied Himself to rule supreme over a new kind of kingdom. (p. 86)

I hope Merritt and the others are correct about a rising group of evangelicals who reject the conflation of religion and politics and who want to reclaim the faith. To me, it is interesting to consider what it would look like for this group to become the majority within evangelical circles. Would new leaders take existing groups (e.g., Family Research Council, Focus on the Family) in a new direction? Or would these groups disband? Currently, evangelicals are known more for what evangelical para-church organizations are against than what they are for. Surely, the paleos would go in a different direction.

Although leaning toward cynicism, the following serves as the soundtrack for this post:

When the GOP promoted secular public schools

Texas Governor Rick Perry is supporting cheerleaders at a middle school in Beaumont who want to lead cheers with Bible verses.  According to the Houston Chronicle, the cheerleaders post banners with verses and Christian phrases during sporting events. One such verse is “if God is for us, who can be against us?” I wonder if the team has lost any games this year.

A complaint has been lodged in court by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Yesterday, a judge handed down a temporary injunction allowing the girls to continue displaying their Bible banners.

Perry is a Republican and it is generally true that Republican leaders have favored mixing religion in schools. At least that is often true of current Republican leaders. However, it was not always so.

Researching the GOP through the Reconstruction era, I was surprised to see the GOP on record against sectarian aims in public education. For instance, in the presidential campaign of 1876, President Grant said in a speech in Iowa

Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian schools.*

The Republican platforms were quite clear in this regard through this period. Here is the 1876 platform statement on public education:

7. The public school system of the several states is the bulwark of the American republic; and, with a view to its security and permanence, we recommend an amendment to the constitution of the United States, forbidding the application of any public funds or property for the benefit of any school or institution under sectarian control.

Then again in 1880:

3. The work of popular education is one left to the care of the several States, but it is the duty of the National Government to aid that work to the extent of its constitutional power. The intelligence of the Nation is but the aggregate of the intelligence in the several States, and the destiny of the Nation must be guided, not by the genius of any one State, but by the aggregate genius of all.

4. The Constitution wisely forbids Congress to make any law respecting the establishment of religion, but it is idle to hope that the Nation can be protected against the influence of secret sectarianism while each State is exposed to its domination. We, therefore, recommend that the Constitution be so amended as to lay the same prohibition upon the Legislature of each State, and to forbid the appropriation of public funds to the support of sectarian schools.

And then in 1892, the platform became quite specific about not mixing church and state in education (or anywhere else for that matter):

The ultimate reliance of free popular government is the intelligence of the people, and the maintenance of freedom among men. We therefore declare anew our devotion to liberty of thought and conscience, of speech and press, and approve all agencies and instrumentalities which contribute to the education of the children of the land, but while insisting upon the fullest measure of religious liberty, we are opposed to any union of Church and State.

Now GOP culture warriors go to court to allow sectarianism in the schools. I think the GOP had it right the first time around.

*Charles Calhoun. Conceiving a new republic: The republican party and the southern question, 1869-1900.  Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006, p. 84.

Nicolas Cage to remake the Left Behind series: Spoof or not?

I really can’t tell if this article is a spoof or for real.

The breathless beginning:

Once in every generation, a moment comes that is so defining, so paradigm-altering, so world-shaking, that you spend the rest of your life telling people where you were when you heard it. It goes beyond making history to shaping the future, and yes, even giving a generation a rallying point and identity. For our generation, that moment came today when Variety announced Nicolas Cage is in talks to star in the reboot of the apocalyptic Left Behind film franchise.

If I start telling people in my circle of friends where I was when I heard this, they will think I had brain surgery not heart surgery.

If true, then a sure sign of the apocalypse.