Wall to wall Greg

Once upon a time there was a magazine. It was called The Plain Truth. This free magazine had many faults, not least some very questionable content. The people whose names topped the editorial masthead were, with few exceptions, not particularly nice. Nor, one suspects in hindsight, particularly sincere. However the magazine was, for its time, lavishly produced. Countless children cut it up to illustrate school projects. Some adults, under the spell of its glossy pages and simplistic messages, took it seriously enough to become enmeshed in its sponsoring church. They then discovered that 'free' could be a relative term.

Then along came Greg. Greg Albrecht. Exactly how the ownership of The Plain Truth passed to Greg is not entirely clear to me. Why it was offered up in a church 'fire sale' of assets is also unclear. But it was. Greg quickly drove down circulation, which probably wasn't his intention. Greg also relaunched himself, no longer a senior minister in an abusive sect but, believe it or not, an advocate of niceness-saturated, religion-free Christianity.

Even unto this very day, the Albrecht Plain Truth endures. Not so glossy. Eight pages long. Published six times a year, circulation undisclosed. Fair to say, I suspect, that it's widely ignored and a mere shadow of its former self.

What is striking about the January/February PT is just how much of the entire issue is written by Editor-in-Chief Greg. Ruth Tucker has a one page column, and the back cover is the usual pot pouri of fluff, leaving six pages. How many of these are written by Greg Albrecht?

All of them.

Even in the days of Herbert Armstrong it would be hard to find this level of journalistic narcissism.

Available in flipping format (to keep Douglas happy) and - for the rest of us - PDF.

As for whether the Albrecht-sodden PT has equally questionable content as its predecessor, I'll let you be the judge.

Eric on The Friendly Atheist

Egad, the sky is falling.

Eric, a Chicago based writer, is the latest guest on the Friendly Atheist podcast. Eric was raised in some kinda weird sect called... hang on, let me check, um... the Worldwide Church of God.

Hemant Mehta writes: "We'd love to hear your thoughts on the podcast."

There's a link on the Twitter feed above or go to the web page direct. The show is just over 45 minutes long. I'm not sure Eric actually knows a lot about the background to his subject (he seems to think it's possible Herb had a military background), but the value isn't in bald, objective information, but in how the whole Herbal experience seems to someone who spent their childhood in the cactus patch.

To be honest, for me the interview is just a little too loose and informal to appeal overmuch - but then I'm an antiquated old codger and not given to chatty podcasts in the mold of commercial breakfast radio - and be advised, there are occasional lapses into expletives. It should however really speak to a younger demographic (Eric was born in 1986). If you can put up with the banter, perhaps there's actually some real insight to be gleaned.

Beyond the Good News

For the record, the lads at UCG have launched out into an exciting new era of magazine publishing.

Not.

In fact, The Good News has simply been re-branded as Beyond Today.

Think of it as putting lipstick on a pig.

If this seems rather harsh, consider what the theme of the first BT magazine is.

Prophecy.

You'd think the lads would learn. Prophecy isn't exactly a subject they have a successful record in. Same old, same old, regurgitated endlessly. And in this first issue, predictably (no pun intended) they've got absolutely nothing new to say.

Gary Petty asks: "The Bible's Prophetic Puzzle - Can You Put It Together?" The artwork shows a jigsaw. Well, one thing I'm sure of, Gary can't put it together. Problem one, it isn't a jigsaw. But the lads have this thing about jigsaws, because on the next page there' s a picture of Nebuchadnezzar's famous image - superimposed on a jigsaw.

In UCG the Bible is one big jigsaw made up of proof texts that have to be slotted in 'just-so' to achieve 'understanding'. Earth to UCG, that's not how biblical exegesis works. Think hermeneutics instead of Herman Hoeh.

And lo, there's a silly little feature entitled "Why we watch world events - and why you should too." Nice. UCG (and before it WCG) have always made a big thing about watching world events (largely sourced from right-wing pundits), and with an astonishing record of consistency they've always misunderstood them. Just check back on one of those 1930's issues of The Plain Truth, or think about the hogwash Garner Ted Armstrong spouted on The World Tomorrow during the Nixon presidency. You'd think they'd have wised up decades ago. If that sounds like ancient history, consider the age of the lads who sit in their padded chairs at Milford Head Office.

Maybe it would be more tolerable if they tried, just a little bit, to give some balanced analysis instead of the usual myopic baloney. If that's your hope, probably best not to hold your breath.

One final observation. Until now the magazine has had the subtitle "a magazine of understanding" ('borrowed' from the old Plain Truth). Now it's "Help for Today, Hope for Tomorrow".

The irony is that it delivers neither.

Mythmaker: Paul, who art thou?

Chapter 10 of Mythmaker raises the question of just who Paul thought he was. Clearly, as he dusted himself off after his Damascus Road experience, he wasn't just any old convert.

A convert is a person who humbly approaches the authorities of the religion which he wishes to join and submits himself for instruction. Paul denies such a description of his entry altogether... instead he goes off 'to Arabia'.

There's more than one resonance in the official story with Old Testament precedents.

Just as Moses, on receiving the tablets of the law, stayed in the Arabian wilderness for forty days and forty nights (Exodus 34:28), so Paul retired to the desert to assimilate and meditate on the new revelation before returning to impart it to mankind.

Once he has cogitated the situation thoroughly, Paul comes out with some astonishing claims, for example speaking of  "my gospel".

Paul is claiming a much higher authority than that of the Jerusalem apostles, Peter, James and John; for their claim derived from acquaintance with the earthly Jesus, while Paul's claim derived from acquaintance with the heavenly Jesus...

Then there's Galatians 1:16.

... what the Greek actually says is '... to reveal his Son in me', as the Revised Version says. Paul is saying, quite straightforwardly, that he is himself the incarnation of the Son of God. He is thus claiming to have even higher status in his new religion than was claimed for Moses in Judaism.

But wait, there's more. Paul gets plugged in to the magic revelation machine again, being caught up to the third heaven and hearing secret stuff that simply cannot be repeated to mere mortals (2 Cor. 12:2-3).

But wait, there's even more. Galatians 6:17 is all about the holy stigmata. Protestants tend to react by seeing this reference as mere metaphor, but perhaps not.

The stigmata of Paul, whether self-inflicted or psychosomatically produced, made him, in his own eyes and those of his followers, the supreme embodiment of the power of the mystery of god, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It all makes Joseph Smith's claims seem utterly credible. Can't you just see N. T. Wright choking on his communion wine? Paul isn't just adding a few more spices to the stew, according to Maccoby, he's cooking up a whole new dish.


(This is the latest part of a review of Hyam Maccoby's 1986 book Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity.)

Flag it!

I'm a Kiwi. New Zealanders differ from their American cousins in a number of ways, not the least in how we regard our flag.

From a Kiwi perspective, Americans are weird about their flag. Hands on hearts, kids reciting pledges, salutes, displayed in all kinds of unlikely places - sometimes including churches; completely "out there".

Not so in Godzone. Patriotism is an understated thing in Aotearoa. I was in high school before I consciously noticed the difference between our flag and the Aussie knock-off (yep, those Ockers rarely have an original idea). My parent's generation still regarded "God Save the Queen" as the national anthem and referred to the rain-sodden fields of Old Blighty as "the old country", despite both being born half a world away.

For people of my generation the nuclear-free legislation was a first taste of national self-assertion, beginning years earlier with opposition to nuclear testing. New Zealand sent a frigate to monitor French nuclear tests in the Pacific, bringing down the ire of France. Later France, in an illegal act of state-sponsored terrorism, sank the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour. How soon we forget.

The tea towel

Then there was the decision to bar nuclear armed ships from our harbours. Margaret Thatcher sent a high ranking women apparatchik, a toffee-nosed baroness, to tear strips off our then Prime Minister, David Lange, apparently under the illusion that the colonies must still conform to Downing Street. In a press conference following the meeting, fronted by the PM with the lady diplomat nowhere in evidence, Lange remarked that the British rep had probably left by broomstick.

Ah, the good old days.

Then, while our best buds, the craven Canberra crowd, huffed and puffed about our responsibility to do as we were told by the US, we were kicked out of the ANZUS defense pact. The result? Never had Kiwi patriotism been as prominent in peace time. Even today the conservative National coalition government cannot bring itself to repeal that legislation.

The bombed out hull of the Rainbow Warrior

But flag waving was never part of that. That was something other people did.

On the weekend, driving around the local area with some old friends, we saw flags flying in what, by Kiwi standards, can only be described as profusion. Today I counted three flags flying within a just block of home.

The reason? We're gearing up for a flag referendum. The choice is between the current flag and a tea-towel design.

What fascinates me is that every flag I've seen flying in recent days is the one we have now.

I don't know what this augurs for the final referendum. Public opinion is always a fickle thing, and I fear time will favour the tea towel (and in the upper-income LOMBARD* suburbs of Remuera and the North Shore I suspect the tea towel is indeed in evidence). But, as I pondered those flags proudly fluttering from nearby houses, I had to wonder whether the combination of Southern Cross and Union Jack meant something more than a backwards nod to our colonial heritage. Perhaps it's also the flag we associate with the progressive policies that have set us apart as New Zealanders over many years.

I don't have a flagpole. But if I did, I know which one I'd be flying.


(* LOMBARD: alternative to Yuppie; "Lots Of Money But A Real Dick".)

Are You an Evangelical?

'Evangelical' means many things, and in the best of worlds it would reflect the Reformation definition which basically means, to quote the words Bob Brinsmead used to devastating effect in his critique of Seventh-day Adventism, "judged by the Gospel".

But the buffoons at America's National Association of Evangelicals couldn't have that. In partnership with something called LifeWay Research they've cooked up their very own four-point formula.

1. The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe. 

2. It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.

3. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin. 

4. Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.

All of these statements are problematic. Worse, they run contrary to anything that might be described as genuine Christian theology; Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox. For these folk the Bible is their "paper pope", hallelujah, and their lives are circumscribed by sin and guilt passed down from imaginary forebears in a mythical garden. Worse, they turn faith into an act of assent that merits "eternal life"... like a bad TV offer, "free", but subject to conditions.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that this perversion of Christian faith is as big a "heresy" as any of the usual suspects. Indeed, maybe more-so.

It's not so much who's included in this definition, but who's excluded. But then 'evangelicals' have always been keen to reassure themselves that they're in the community of the saved by building walls to keep the riff-raff out; especially those who ask irritating questions.

More than a century ago a group of goofballs got together to publish "The Fundamentals", a series of papers published in twelve volumes and funded by a couple of oil company executives, thereby giving us the term fundamentalism. A hundred years later it seems nothing much has been learned by their spiritual descendants.

ISSUU: Lapland, Europa's Oceans, the Celts

For anyone who hasn't yet been seduced by its allure, issuu is a fantastic way to enjoy publications, mainly magazines but also a range of books (some full, others samplers), both well known and obscure. This week, in the first of what might become a semi-regular series, here are a few of my recent discoveries.

BBC History: Vikings vs Anglo Saxons, Who were the Celts?, The Royal Navy's American Disaster. What's not to like in the full 100 page November issue? There might even be a few BI devotees who could profit from that Celts article.

Australian Geographic: Now that Rupert Murdoch has set about gutting National Geographic, it might be time to explore alternatives. The November-December issue of Australian Geographic has a distinct Aussie focus, but also some intriguing features for those beyond the Lucky Country, including Alien Oceans - love the artwork!

Blue Wings: The magazine of Finnair, helpfully published in English. The complete September issue has been uploaded featuring the violin makers of Cremona; the beaches of Brittany; Hoi An in Vietnam and the joys of pedaling through 21st century London. On a more Finnish note, trekking tours through Lapland. Airline magazines aren't to everyone's taste, but hey, how many people do you know who've thumbed through a copy of this one?

issuu takes a bit of getting used to, the search function is - shall we say - idiosyncratic, and the "suggestions based on everything you read" can often be eye-brow lifting, but it's nonetheless a great way to stay up to date with more magazines than you'll find in all the dentist's waiting rooms within a 100k radius. The iPad app is just brilliant.