Surviving the Empire

It apparently took a day to film, but the edited item on A Current Affair lasted just five minutes.  Ben Mitchell - briefly- had the chance to tell the story of what it means to be raised in a sect like the Worldwide Church of God.  Of particular note were the consequences of Herbert Armstrong's hypocritical doctrine on healing, which claimed the lives of several members of Ben's family, an aunt and two infant nephews.  Consequences too for Mitchell who, post-WCG, went "off the rails" with drugs in the midst of a promising career in television.

The piece was salted with clips from Called to be Free, the PR DVD that advertises the church's "transformation".  Herb shook his jowls on screen once again, and the smug mug of Mike Feazell briefly graced prime-time screens across Australia.

There are those who say "get over it!"  In my experience, those who say that are the ones who haven't followed their own advice, or they wouldn't be, in effect, protecting the church, or failing to share their experience so others could avoid the pitfalls.  My only criticism of the ACA item was that it was so short, and didn't provide much if any depth.  But if the publicity means more people read Mitchell's book ("based on a true story") then it won't have been in vain.

To check out The Last Great Day on Amazon (Kindle ebook), click...
The Last Great Day

Watch 'A Current Affair' Monday

Calling all Aussies.  Channel 9's A Current Affair is featuring Benjamin Grant Mitchell's account of life in the Worldwide Church of God this coming Monday night at 6.30.  Mitchell is well known to Australian TV audiences through his appearances on shows like Neighbours.  He recently 'blew the whistle' on his former faith community in the book The Last Great Day.  The trailers are already airing for Monday's show, which labels WCG as "a doomsday cult," and a review of the programme, hot off the satellite, will be available here shortly afterwards.

Mitchell, whose father was a minister in the church, apparently melds fiction with autobiography in his book, which was the number one bestseller in July at Dymocks bookstores in Oz.  For those beyond the shores of Australia, the easiest way to procure a copy is probably as an ebook from Amazon, selling for US$10.

And yes, chances are good that there'll be a review of that here too in due course.

The Tithing Trip

Living under grace, according to Michael Morrison of Grace Communion International means the end of all sorts of laws found in the Hebrew Bible.  He's probably right.

So it's bye bye Sabbath and dietary restrictions.  But what will Michael make of tithing?  Surely there's no possible confusion here.  After all, no Levitical priesthood, no temple, no New Testament precedent... no tithing. 

We might reasonably expect Michael to give us a clear message about stewardship though.  Things like; be generous, but take care where you send your money, support a variety of worthy causes, make sure they all have transparent financial accountability; you know, stuff like that.

Dream on.

In chapter 20 of Sabbath, Circumcision and Tithing Morrison gets around to tithing.  Considering how he ripped so lustily into the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments, readers may be surprised at how coy he now becomes.

Abraham "may have tithed regularly, but we cannot prove it."

Darn tootin'!

And Jacob?  "Tithing may have been a part of common worship practices of that time and culture - or it may have expressed an extra level of devotion."

Do tell!  The cautious tiptoeing continues.  Multiple tithes could be a misreading of the relevant passages, but "this assumption may be wrong."

May indeed!  Do we detect the slightest hint of prevarication on these issues?  But Morrison is just warming up, here comes the heavy guilt trip.

The Israelites were required to give 10 percent - and their blessing was only a physical one!  Christians in the new covenant have much better blessings - spiritual ones.  How much more willingly ought we to give in thankfulness for the eternal blessings we have in Christ Jesus? ...  Should we give less than a tithe when the blessings we have are so much more glorious than those of the Israelites?

Michael goes on to remind us, lest we've somehow overlooked the fact, that Christians are meant to be generous, and "shouldn't we be willing to give more than the minimum?"  Indeed, supporting the clergy is "a command for all of us."

Elders, especially those who preach and teach, should be honored financially as well as with respect... people who believe the gospel should provide a living for some who preach.  There is a financial duty and there is a promised reward... [Christians] have a duty to support the preaching of the gospel, to give financial support to their spiritual leaders...

Well, okay, but do you notice that there's nothing here, absolutely nothing, about the duty of 'spiritual leaders' to be accountable to the membership both financially and in other senses?  Nothing about church members having a responsibility to make wise, informed choices about which ministries and other good causes they choose to support?

On the other hand there is an awful lot of harping on about duty from the bottom up.  Morrison seems to think duty only flows one way, up to those 'spiritual leaders' from the lay members.  Those good folk get soundly whacked around the head by Morrison.  And the unmandated leaders of sects like GCI?  They apparently get a free ride.

Last time I checked (and please, someone tell me if it's all now changed) the sect that pays Morrison's salary consistently refused to open its books to public scrutiny.  The official line was that members could request financial statements, but strangely nobody seemed to know anyone who actually got hold of one.  I do know of one US member who naively took church PR at face value and did indeed request a copy.  Result?  Church HQ contacted the local pastor who informed them that this gentleman had been irregular in attendance for a while.  The luckless member then received a terse letter back rejecting his application and indicating that he was effectively in a state of disfellowship!

If Michael and his ministerial mates want to "be honored financially as well as with respect", wouldn't you think it might be a good idea to clean up their act first?  Honor and respect need to be earned, and GCI's record of transparency and accountability over the years (decades!) has been, to put it politely, dismal.

To throw money at an organisation which isn't totally up front with financial disclosure, or is run by a self-perpetuating cabal (including a non-elected "president-for-life") and without visible systems of checks and balances is, at least in my view, completely irresponsible, and worse, makes donors into enablers of a dysfunctional structure.  That's not tithing, it's just stupid.

Sorry Michael, this chapter is a definite 'fail'.

Sabbath salve (3)

Michael Morrison confuses me with his Sabbath rhetoric.  On the one hand we should, he seems to say, feel able to do whatever we want (more or less) when it comes to observances and special days.  On the other hand, any form of seventh-day sabbatarianiasm is a very bad idea.

I recollect the wise words of Paul Tonson, a Baptist minister who, commenting on the Sabbath question, took a 'live and let live' line.  "It's really just a matter of tradition."

Forget the proof texts (and boy, does Michael thrash those proof texts!)  We embrace a particular tradition, sometimes out of conviction, sometimes because it's a family or ethnic heritage, sometimes because we just misunderstood or were misinformed.  But the story doesn't end there.  People then imbue traditions - including dubious ones - with significance and meaning beyond what they have inherited; given time they become part of our identity, something precious.  If they're in danger of turning toxic, or they clash with emerging reality, we reinterpret them.  Only an extreme fundamentalist would find that objectionable.

Traditions, when they no longer function effectively, can be transformed to keep them fit for purpose: to unilaterally rip them out of the heart of a community (as GCI has done) involves horrendous, needless cost.   Human existence is unthinkable without traditions and identity markers.

The early church itself seems to have been incredibly diverse, judging from the documents that made it into the New Testament.  Morrison wants to put the New Testament evidence through his meat grinder and make burger patties, all nicely consistent and saying the same thing.  If Luke has Jesus say something (perhaps quite different to Matthew's Jesus) then it quickly gets dumbed down to "Jesus said."  Really?  Quick, bring over a Harmony of the Gospels...  Harmonisation is sleight of hand and a denial of distinctives, leading us to imagine an ideal "apostolic church" where everyone agreed on everything, which clearly wasn't the case.

Now I realise that Michael is talking down to the little people, and that he is a very significant person in a very important congregation of GCI.  But, y'know, that only makes it worse.  In the cause of apologetics is it okay to stretch the evidence to fit?

Isn't that what a sect does?  Is this any different from what WCG did in years gone by?

Like Michael I'm now against any wooden, legalistic form of sabbatarianism, of either Sunday or Saturday varieties.  The idiotic idea that it goes back to a literal seven day creation, for example, is both harmful and untenable.  Living in the twenty-first century with all the benefit of knowledge literally at our fingertips, that's inexcusable.  But think of it as custom rather than command.  There's a lot to recommend a form of Sabbath-observance that values a time set aside from the rat-race, time for family, reflection and rebalance.  And it's probably Seventh-day Adventists and kindred communities who realise that (in both senses of the word 'realise') rather than your run of the mill Sunday mainliners.

Maybe we could cut them some slack on that at least.

Well, maybe Michael has some valuable insights when it comes to tithing.  Let's see...

Sabbath salve (2)

Author Michael Morrison seems a well qualified man, with a Master of Divinity degree from Azusa and a PhD from Fuller.  He's an ordained minister of what used to be known as the Worldwide Church of God, re-branded in recent times as Grace Communion International.

I assume, given his academic background, Michael is up to speed with the basics in biblical studies.  Who would even consider writing a book on biblical laws - and which ones Christians should (or shouldn't) observe - without knowing something about underlying questions of authorship, for example, or the development of the canon?

So what do we do with statements like this?

The infallible Scriptures contain commands that are obsolete.

Well, obviously there are obsolete injunctions in the Bible.  Morrison accurately identifies not a few.  But what's this business about "infallible Scriptures"?  Infallible in what sense?  The author doesn't explain.

Then there's a section that delves into Ephesians 2. "Paul begins by telling his readers...", "Paul is talking about...", "Paul then summarises..."

No he doesn't.  Ephesians is, in scholarly parlance, deutero-Pauline, along with Colossians, 2 Thessalonians and the Pastoral epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus.)  A good place to review the evidence might be in The Deutero-Pauline Letters (Gerhard Krodel, ed.) in the Proclamation Commentaries series.  In fact, I'm surprised Michael doesn't have a copy on his bookshelf.  If not, he can always click across to the handy guide provided by the nice United Methodist folk.

And Michael makes the same clanger with the other non-Pauline letters: "Paul uses the word Sabbath only in Colossians 2:16...";  "Paul cited the oxen and wages scriptures again in 1 Timothy 5..."

Sorry, whatever the qualities of these text, Paul almost certainly didn't write them.  Even if you were desperate enough to pretend that Paul just might have written Ephesians or Colossians, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there is even less wiggle room with the Pastorals.  Does Michael know this stuff, or is he just hoping that his readers are completely ignorant?

Either way, it doesn't exactly make the reader brim full of confidence that their guide knows a great deal about his subject.  I suppose we might speculate that the author is trying to convince his readers by manipulating their fundamentalist assumptions against them.  If so, he wouldn't be the first.  But, honestly, how honest, how ethical is that?

But sadly, it gets worse...

Michael Morrison's Sabbath salve (1)

In a moment of giddy madness - a rush of blood to the head - I downloaded Michael Morrison's book, Sabbath, Circumcision and Tithing, onto my Kindle.  It cost 99c, and frankly that was way too much.

It seems a bit weird, having said that, but I actually agree with a lot that Morrison says.  He adopts a non-Sabbatarian (Saturday or Sunday) position.  Despite the endless posturing of Seventh-day Adventists and blue-stockinged Puritan Calvinists, the question has never been "which day is the Christian Sabbath?"  The question is, "is there a Christian Sabbath?"

And the answer is a no fuss no.  So far so good.

But the jungle paths Morrison walks down, NIV machete in hand, to get to his conclusion is full of pot holes, boa constrictors and the bleached bones of the unwary. 

Of course nobody is under the illusion (I hope) that Morrison is striking out to embrace any kind of considered, objective assessment of the evidence.  This is a blatant work of apologetic, decked out in wig and tights.  At times it even seems to read like a Chick tract.  In fact, by the last page I was almost tempted to re-embrace that peculiar variety of Christian pseudo-Sabbatarianism that Michael and I both emerged from, which wasn't nearly as toxic as Michael makes it seem, just out of sheer cussedness.

Almost.

So its time to dive back in with a series of posts that engage Mr Morrison's arguments and approach.  Nothing systematic, it hardly warrants that, but some objections along the way in the spirit of, "Oi, Michael, mate!, you can't be serious."

Life in a Pocket Universe, part 145

The latest issue of the Journal (full title: The Journal: News of the Churches of God) is out.  Front page coverage goes to the ever-unfolding developments in the various gospel-preachin' acronyms, and there's a nice selection right there to greet the backsliding, COG-deprived reader who aches for once-familiar insider-language:

• UCG
• GCE
• CGWA
• RCG
• WCG
• COG

News also that editor Dixon Cartwright is recovering from a heart attack that struck in July.  Dixon is one of the good guys, and I'm sure all of us wish him well as he recuperates.

After updates on UCG and the dear departed of the CGWA, there's more to enjoy on the inside pages.  Letters from Sir Anthony Buzzard and an uncharacteristically concise Geoffrey Neilson, a reprint of a significant article on COG history (with some enchanting photographs from yesteryear) by the late John Robinson - compulsory reading!, the usual bloated, looney-tunes ads (which thankfully pay for the serious journalism), more of Ian Boyne's excellent evangelistic adventures in Jamaica (where CGI is still entrenched, long after GTA morphed from a morally dubious televangelist into a morally dubious video game), and more.  Gotta love it!

Four sample pages are yours to read online for free.  Nothing quite like it anywhere else in the known multiverse!