Category: Warren Throckmorton

Ed Cash, prominent Nashville Christian music producer and a former leader in the mind-control group The Gathering, was not supposed to appear on stage at last week’s Young Life conference. According to Young Life’s Director of Communications Terry Swenson, Cash spontaneously and without the endorsement of Young Life joined David Crowder during a performance on stage. On behalf of Young Life, Swenson said he was sorry to family members who have loved ones in The Gathering.
The Gathering was once the religious home of Cash, best known for co-authoring “How Great is Our God.” On December 30, 2015, Cash and his brother Scott Cash posted a letter on their website proclaiming that they had left The Gathering.  In the light of that letter, many family members and ex-members expressed hoped that Ed Cash would contact them or their loved ones still in The Gathering to urge them to leave or to reconcile with families due to his prior support. According to some parents and siblings I spoke with, Cash was involved and aware of Jolley’s command to some members to cut off contact with their family outside of The Gathering. Cash has not replied to several questions I have posed regarding his current relationship to The Gathering.
Young Life is involved because Ed Cash has led worship at their annual conferences in the past but was asked not to do so this year. Instead, the Cash brothers were invited as guests with the provision that they would not participate upfront in the conference. However, Ed Cash joined David Crowder onstage during a worship set/concert and performed briefly.
Through a source related to a current member of The Gathering, I have learned that Young Life responded to Cash’s appearance and provided the following statement from Terry Swenson, Director of Communications:

I do want you to know the circumstances that led to Ed Cash’s appearance on stage Wednesday night. First, what we communicated earlier about the Cash brothers’ presence at the Celebration was and remains true: they have no on stage role and are absolutely not “featured,” as was unfortunately communicated. They were guests in the audience and, to our complete surprise and without our endorsement, David Crowder invited Ed on stage. This was not planned and we don’t take what happened lightly. We understand the hurt this has stirred and I’m sorry for that!

Mr. Swenson confirmed this statement later this morning.

This post is inside baseball for those who are keeping up with the controversy surrounding David Barton’s history writing.
One of David Barton’s frequent claims is that John Locke referred to the Bible 1500 times in his Two Treatise on Government. He said this to a Ukrainian audience and claimed it again in his new edition of The Jefferson Lies. From the new edition:

And in his Two Treatises of Government (1689 – a work about the proper role of government that was openly praised by Jefferson and other Founders39), Locke invoked the Bible over 1,500 times.
Barton, David (2015-12-22). The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson (Kindle Locations 1766-1768). WND Books. Kindle Edition.

Barton’s footnote on this point reads:

John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London: Awnsham & Churchill, 1689), passim; the number of verses was documented by the author’s staff, in individually identifying and counting the Bible verses in this work.
Barton, David (2015-12-22). The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson (Kindle Locations 5811-5812). WND Books. Kindle Edition.

In a previous post, I asked Locke scholar Greg Forster to evaluate this claim. Forster declared it to be completely false. In fact, Locke did not refer to the Bible 1500 separate times nor did he invoke 1500 Bible verses, as Barton sometimes claims. Apparently, Barton’ staff had to count all 900+ verses from the books of Proverbs to get to 1500. See this prior post for what it appears Barton had to do to get to the 1500 number. It should be clear that Barton’s claim is wildly inflated.
While this is one small fact claim, it is indicative of the real reason Thomas Nelson pulled The Jefferson Lies from publication. This same error was in the first edition as well. There are many such exaggerations and errors in The Jefferson Lies. Taken individually, many aren’t vital to the points Barton attempts to validate. However, taken together, they make the book unreliable.
 
 
 

Twitter said:

@JohnFea1 Oh boy! Michele Bachmann! Now we'll finally be learning something!

— John Haas (@haas1235) January 9, 2016

@AndrewLSeidel @JohnFea1 As if @wthrockmorton didn't have enough to do already! Is Barton's show on the Sci-fi channel?

— Rob Major (@RobMajor4) January 9, 2016

@JohnFea1 "Noted historian David Barton." Yes, noted for having a book recalled by the publisher because it was filled with fabrications.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) January 9, 2016

Here is the press release for Barton’s new TBN dramatization.
Oh and here’s the trailer:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfUvhqezBtE[/youtube]

Gospel for Asia, the second largest mission organization in the U.S., has been sanctioned by the Office of Personnel Management for lack of compliance with charity guidelines and banned from participation in the 2016 federal charity campaign.
In October 2015, the Office of Personnel Management received complaints from former donors and other observers regarding Gospel for Asia’s compliance with OPM guidelines for participation in the Combined Federal Campaign. The CFC involving federal workers is one of the largest workplace fund raising campaigns on the planet. At that point, OPM began an investigation that led to a December 2015 warning of possible sanctions on GFA’s ability to participate in the campaign.
Late yesterday, I learned that the OPM decided to sanction GFA for lack of compliance with OPM guidelines. According to a spokesperson from the OPM’s Office of Communications, “the Gospel of Asia charity has been sanctioned and will no longer be affiliated with the Combined Federal Campaign for the 2014 and 2015 campaigns.” 
Furthermore, according to the OPM spokesperson, “GFA is banned from the CFC for one year, then they will need to reapply.”
The sanctions appear to be the strongest allowed by law.
Not only will GFA not be allowed to participate in the 2016 campaign, they will not receive funds currently deducted from employee paychecks still outstanding from the 2015 and 2014 campaigns. Federal workers who pledged to GFA in 2015 will be contacted and allowed to redirect their pledges to other approved charities.
According to an OPM spokesperson, allotments to GFA were still coming out of employees pay checks in 2015 for pledges made at the end of 2014. Those funds have not yet been delivered to GFA. The OPM spokesperson said, “OPM directed campaigns and the federation to cease making further payments to them and discontinue processing pledges made to them at the end of 2015 that would have started being withheld from employees checks staring this pay period for the 2015 period that just closed.”
OPM told local and regional groups like Christian Charities USA to “cease making further payments” to GFA and to stop processing any employee pledges. Independent Charities of America and the related group Christian Charities USA had already denied membership to GFA for 2016 because GFA failed to provide an audited statement.
According to the most recent 990 form filed by Christian Charities USA, GFA received just over $150,000 from federal workers through CCUSA in 2013.
OPM guidelines require an independent board of directors, clean financial audit, and truthful communications about the use of donations. Upon scrutiny by the OPM, GFA did not comply.
In early October, GFA was terminated from membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability for similar violations of standards. The report issued by ECFA was made public by former board member Gayle Erwin in early December and contains numerous concerns and indications of financial mismanagement.

World‘s J.C. Derrick has an interesting article out today on the reaction of some evangelicals to the growing media narrative that Ted Cruz has the evangelical vote locked up. Not so, says Sam Rodriguez, Rick Warren and Jim Daly.
What really caught my eye was Derrick’s citation of a National Review article which detailed how a group of evangelical leaders met behind closed doors and voted until over 75% voted for the same GOP candidate. Ted Cruz eventually won out over Marco Rubio. The group, led by Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, gave some thought to how to roll out the consensus. According to NR,

Cruz this week surged to the top of several polls in conservative-friendly Iowa, and a string of soon-to-come endorsements should only help to cement that standing. A decision was made before the vote that members would roll out their endorsements individually rather than issuing a collective statement. This approach, they decided, would help create a perception that the conservative movement was uniting behind a candidate organically while dispelling images of political horse-trading occurring inside smoke-filled rooms.

While there probably wasn’t smoke, there was political maneuvering behind closed doors. If this NR piece is accurate, the good Christians in the room decided to make up a reality so it wouldn’t look like what it was. The insiders decided to roll out the endorsements gradually as if they came via some natural and spontaneous groundswell of support and good will for Cruz. Sounds like astroturf to me.
Now, finally, other evangelicals are coming forward to say those endorsers don’t speak for all of us. This is good.
I am looking for a candidate who has ideas I can get behind about how to keep us safe, keep our economy healthy, protect our rights and work with Congress. We are going to elect a president not a pastor.