Big Bangs and Magic Wands

If the stuffy old Roman Catholic church can do it, how come the trendier, more rabid American fundamentalist sects don't catch on.

The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared. 

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Yup, the winds of change are blowing through Catholicism, hallelujah.

But those wacky Southern Baptists, Missouri Lutherans and assorted "bah-bull" sects just zip their fleece-lined wind-breakers all the way to the neck and pretend it's just a bit of a breeze that will pass quickly.

“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.

You likely won't hear misanthropic old Franklin Graham saying that.

Giovanni Bignami, a professor and president of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics, told the Italian news agency Adnkronos: “The pope’s statement is significant. We are the direct descendents from the Big Bang that created the universe. Evolution came from creation.”

 Earth calling Vic Kubik and the gang at UCG; listen up dudes.

(Quoted passages from The Independent.)

Tobey Maguire as Bobby Fisher

Bobby Fischer may have been the greatest chess champion of all time. Certainly he was in a category of his own among American players. He was also a recruit to the teachings of Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God.

His period of attachment wasn't to last, but there was little doubt that - at least for a while - he was a prize trophy for the one true church.

Tobey Maguire - a past embodiment of Spiderman - plays the chess grandmaster in an upcoming movie Pawn Sacrifice. The question many of us will be wondering about is if and how WCG's role will be portrayed. Surely they've gotta slip in at least a reference, huh? These comments from the LA Times.

Documentary footage is interspersed with the chess-playing dialogue-free scenes as [director Ed] Zwick aimed to shift between Fischer's private hell and the media circus he lived. The effect is "a fragmented portrait that wasn't dissimilar to what his life might have been," said Zwick. 

Fischer joined the apocalyptic cult Worldwide Church of God for a time, then ended up in Pasadena, consumed by paranoia and living under a pseudonym. In 1992, he replayed Spassky in war-torn Yugoslavia. But the match violated U.N. sanctions and the U.S. issued an arrest warrant for Fischer. The chess champ lived the rest of his life in exile, occasionally coming out of seclusion to issue venomous attacks, particularly aimed at Jews.

The trailer is up on YouTube.

And while we're at it, check out this article in the San Francisco Chronicle about pianist John Khouri, a Lebanese New Zealander living in the US who made his mark in the world of classical music. I'd no idea that he too spent time in the Herbal Empire.

Khouri went off to Switzerland as a teenager to study piano, but his music career was sidetracked when he joined the Worldwide Church of God, an international evangelical denomination. For four years, he stopped practicing at all as he was sent on ministerial missions to Canada, England and Hawaii.

An "international evangelical denomination"? Uh, well. That's an interesting, if not particularly accurate description of the church Khouri wisely left in 1974. (I'm unsure whether he's related to the well known New Zealand clarinettist Murray Khouri.)

Live and learn.

I’m Christian, But I’m Not

Clearly none of these people are members of Rod Meredith's Living Church of God!

It's nice to hear Christian voices that stand out from the ugly evangelical stereotype. But is this enough? Hemant Mehta offers these comments.

If more Christians were like the people in this video, we’d be having a very different conversation about faith in this country... It’s obviously unfair to lump together all Christians as anti-gay, anti-women, anti-science bigots… but we’re not talking out of our ass when we say a whole bunch of them really do fit in that category. Forget the people on the fringes; Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and Franklin Graham are no better on these issues. 

That raises another major problem with this video. While I appreciate the sentiments, the people speaking in it don’t actually distance themselves from the Christians who usually come to mind when we hear the C-word. 

They may not like the reputation they have, but until more of them speak out against the so-called leaders of the faith and tell the world why they’re wrong, it’s a reputation that’s not going anywhere.

I agree with him to this extent: so many Christians of the thoughtful and caring variety simply fail to call out the bigots and the brainless who strut and preen in the media, posturing as the genuine voice of Christianity. They don't want to offend people they think they have a shared identity with, and so they abdicate the opportunity - the responsibility - to contest the moral ground. The result: Warren, Osteen, Graham and their ilk win by default.

If they want to be taken seriously, surely it's time for progressively-minded Christians to ditch the sham solidarity with those cultural conservatives who use the same label to promote their own compassion-free agendas.

Frank Schaeffer on Billy Graham and Trump

I've got a lot of time for Frank Schaeffer, son of apologist Francis Schaeffer, now a born-again non-evangelical. His recent comments on the much ballyhooed Billy Graham are definitely worth reading, and his observations on Christianity Today (and yup, I too was once - in my immediate post-WCG years - a CT subscriber) are right on the mark. This is an op-ed piece that will probably raise hackles, but that doesn't make it any less pertinent.

The Journal - Kobayashi Maru issue

The latest Journal has a few items other than the Sexton piece (see previous post) that might be worth noting. These include:

* A letter from James Bandy inviting Journal readers to experience the "exquisite delight" of visiting the Jehovah's Witness "offices, printery and education center" in New York! Cheeky bugger.

* An article by Robin Wansley with the intriguing title, Just What do you mean Kobayashi Maru? Star Trek fans will get the reference immediately. It turns out, though, that Mr Wansley ("a longtime member of the Church of God") simply wants to discuss the Hebrew calendar, postponements and suchlike. I cried bitter tears of disappointment.

* Ray Daly ("a longtime reader of the Journal") wants us all to know that the apostle John didn't write the book of Revelation. Well done Ray, it's about time you caught up. But then he spoils it by opining that the real author was John the Baptist. Don't give up your day job Ray.

* The list of upcoming 2015 Feast of Tabernacles sites now stands at 221, including those sponsored by the following alphabet soup: CGI. ICG, LCG, CCG, UCG, CGMI, CGWA and RCG. Not included above (but listed) are the single Feast site groups of which there are a surprising number.

* The Obedient Church of God is back with one of its tastefully written and designed full page ads, as is Willie Dankenbring with two pages promoting his latest $20 (plus postage) books - one on the Holy Days and another called America and Britain in Heraldry and PROPHECY! (the capitals and exclamation mark are his). Oh yeah, and Willie has his own Feast site in Omak, Washington and wants you to know that "It could be the final Feast before the Great Tribulation starts in earnest." Got to hand it to Dankenbring... he's never bothered by disconfirmation.

* There is also a lengthy follow-up interview worth reading with Patt McCarty regarding the pre-1974 Divorce and Remarriage doctrine - now there was a real Kobayashi Maru predicament.

I think it's fair to say that you won't read stuff like this anywhere else! 

The Journal - 176th issue

The latest issue of The Journal (August 31) is now out. A few things particularly caught my eye, foremost being the opinions of Leon Sexton of the Legacy Institute on tyranny and the suppression of freedom.

Legacy Institute operates a Church of God ministry in Thailand, having had a presence there for many years. It had its genesis in the jet-setting world tours of Herb Armstrong to glad-hand any world leaders that would give him a nice photo opportunity. In a remarkable set of circumstances Herb cultivated a relationship with the Wat Thai Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles, which helped then open doors for him in Nepal and Thailand. Herb later met Thailand's King Bhumibol and greased the wheels with fulsome praise and dollars. Legacy appears to now carry the baton for the former WCG charity Ambassador International Cultural Foundation. It claims not to be a church, but behaves very much like one, holding Sabbath services and sponsoring a Thai Feast of Tabernacles.

If you follow international news you'll know any criticism of Thai royalty can land citizens in very hot water. Here's the lead from a recent BBC report.

Two military courts in Thailand have sentenced a man to 30 years in prison and a woman to 28 years for insulting the monarchy. The sentences are the harshest ever given under Thailand's lese majeste law, which prevents criticism of the king, Bhumibol Adulyadej. The convictions relate to articles posted on Facebook. 

Prosecutions for lese majeste in Thailand have surged since last year's military coup. According to iLaw, a Thai rights group, there were only two ongoing prosecutions for the crime before the coup. That number is now at least 56, the group says.

Lese majeste?

Article 112 of Thailand's criminal code says anyone who "defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir-apparent or the regent" will be punished with up to 15 years in prison. This has remained virtually unchanged since the creation of the country's first criminal code in 1908.

The ruling has also been enshrined in all of Thailand's recent constitutions, which state: "The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action." (BBC report)

Journal editor Dixon Cartwright asked Sexton to comment. What emerged was an apologetic for oppression. Sexton noted that Armstrong "said the king and queen were the finest examples of righteous leadership in the world" (as if he knew anything about that subject), and reminded Dixon that - according to the particularly wooden reading of biblical eschatology favoured in the Armstrong churches - "the kingdom of God on the earth will be ruled by a King, and He will be an absolute monarch." (Perhaps we should be grateful he didn't add something about breaking kneecaps to ensure "every knee shall bow.")

So that's all right then!

And in a lengthy panegyric Leon mentioned that little matter of a military coup how many times?

Zero, zip, nada.

Now we can all probably understand that Legacy, in order to protect its interests, has to play a careful diplomatic game in order to stay in favour with the bully boys. But that hardly means this kind of obsequious endorsement of vicious injustice. It isn't good enough to say that "American ideals are the problem". Listen up carefully Leon, these aren't just American ideals, they underlie human rights across the world. Nor is it acceptable to babble on about "righteous leadership". The real leadership in Thailand isn't that of a sick old man who is regarded with idolatrous awe (literally worship) by the less educated people. The real power is in the hands of the military.

Sexton needs to think again.

Four Flags

Not that it matters greatly beyond the shores of Aotearoa, but the four contenders for the new national flag of New Zealand have been selected, the winner to be determined by referendum, then a final choice between the pretender and the current flag.

There's an irony in the much repeated complaint about our flag looking too much like Australia's. The Kiwi flag was in fact first off the block, with the Ockers - as they so often do - snatching it (with modifications) for their own. Pavlova, Phar Lap... it's a common thread in the relationship with that noisy, big island to our west. And of course the confusion cuts both ways. The Canadians once raised the NZ flag for former Aussie Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

Personally I'm fond of the original, but would have been happy to go with the original United Tribes flag which preceded British annexation and is still proudly displayed by Maori in Northland.

Out of the new designs I prefer - I think - the red, white and blue fern and stars design.