Month: September 2015

Rod Dreher on Doug Wilson’s Scandal in Moscow

UPDATE: Doug Wilson has responded to Dreher’s article at American Conservative. Dreher then provides a helpful analysis.

In response to several requests, I have been researching Christ Church in Moscow, ID. As time permits, I have read blogs, court docs, and emails from concerned brothers and sisters about the church pastored by Doug Wilson. Most of what I have reviewed has been extremely disturbing.

With the publication of an article by Rod Dreher today, I may not need to do much more. On the American Conservative website yesterday, Dreher brought together many of the facts of the situation which involves child abuse and what appears to be a dysfunctional church in Moscow, ID.

In essence, it seems that the leadership at Christ Church in Moscow, ID have exercised extremely poor judgment in encouraging a serial abuser to pursue a kind of therapy via marriage. In the face of evidence that Christ Church’s pastor, Doug Wilson, provided remarkably unwise advice to the abuser and a young woman who married the abuser, Wilson has gone on the defensive. Cited by Dreher, Wilson said in defense of conducting this ill-fated therapy by marriage:

 Moreover, if everything is on the table, we do not believe the church has the authority to prohibit or “not allow” a lawful marriage.

To which Dreher countered:

Really? The church has no authority to prohibit a lawful marriage? I suppose same-sex couples in Idaho can show up at Christ Church and expect Pastor Wilson to marry them, then. This, and the claim that the church can’t withhold marriage from anybody, as long as both parties know what they’re getting into, is a pretty shameless example of passing the buck for a disaster. Wilson subsequently praised himself for the way he’s conducted himself in this matter, saying that persecution is a sign of his righteousness, and sneering that his wife celebrated the criticism coming their way by buying him a bottle of single-malt Scotch.

Wilson’s brazen self-defense is in contrast to a former pastor of Christ’s Church daughter church, Peter Leithart, who has apologized for his part in another case involving abuse.

Wilson has helped pioneer the classical schooling movement and has some disturbing views of American slavery. Wilson believes slavery, while not a moral good, was more benign than American abolitionists depicted. Lost causers and Confederate sympathizers love it.

According to some near the situation (speaking to me anonymously), things are getting more and more unsettled in Moscow with some of the empire unraveling. There might be more Scotch in Wilson’s future.

On a related note, Wenatchee the Hatchet has a post on connection between Mark Driscoll and Doug Wilson.

Vatican Confirms that Kim Davis Met with the Pope (UPDATED)

UPDATE: According to NY Times reporter Laurie Goodstein, the Vatican has now confirmed that the meeting between Davis and the Pope took place. While I still think Davis is wrong in her stance, this has to be considered a major PR win for her and her team.
On the other hand, this may compromise positive feelings surrounding the Pope’s visit here. I don’t understand the secrecy. Her lawyer Mat Staver said she disguised her hair style on the way to the meeting. Why did the Vatican neither confirm nor deny the meeting initially? Why not let people know while he was here that he supported Davis? I suspect one answer might be that he would face questions about it during the rest of the trip. Makes him look less than Papal to me.
Back to Davis, I puzzled by what violates and doesn’t violate her conscience. She refuses to affix her name to a same-sex marriage license in her official capacity as clerk but she will in her personal life accept a blessing and rosaries from the Pope which would appear to violate her religion as well. The founder of Apostolic manifestations of Christianity such as hers S.H. Froehlich has very little good to say about the Pope.
Her position has been that she doesn’t want anyone to think she supports gay marriage. However, she seems less concerned that people will think she supports Catholicism.
I suspect some of her supporters will not care how consistent her actual beliefs are, but rather that she sincerely holds them. Other supporters might draw the line if she starts to balk at issuing marriage licenses to divorced Christians.
———-(original post)————–
In an odd turn of events, the Vatican press office won’t confirm or deny that the Pope met with Kim Davis during his U.S. trip. According to a tweet from the NY Times Laurie Goodstein, verification is in limbo.


According to ABC News, the Vatican Press Office released this statement:

The Holy See is aware of the reports of Kim Davis meeting with the Holy Father. The Vatican does not confirm the meeting, nor does it deny the meeting. There will be no further information given.

Given the exaggerations which regularly come out of the Liberty Counsel camp (e.g., Peru, Mat Staver thinks David Barton is a credible historian), confirmation is necessary. In essence, the Vatican is tossing her under the bus at this moment.
Davis claims to have photos. If those surface, then the Vatican may need to say something or could just let them speak for themselves.
To me, if he did meet with Davis, he has undone a lot of the bridge building image he has cultivated. Davis is a divisive figure right now and by aligning with her, he will appear to lack consistency and genuineness.

Twitter Reacts to Attorney's Report that Kim Davis Met with the Pope

Yeah, that Pope.
Did the Pope really meet with Kim Davis? There is still doubt about it, but Davis’ lawyers claim it is true. It was reported by Inside the Vatican which has crashed. Update: The page on the Inside the Vatican website is back up.
The Vatican has not commented and the story now rests on what Robert Moynihan says Kim Davis told him.
Twitter reacts to the news:


David Gibson at RNS:


Brandon Ambrosino is skeptical:


Michael Dougherty:


More to come.

Some Smart People Think He's Coming Soon But Don't Set Dates: Gateway Church Teaches About the End Times

Lots of end times teaching these days. September seems to be an important month. Jimmie Evans is an apostolic elder at Gateway Church and he has had a lot to tell the flock there about the end time. Since Summer, he has had them all ready for the end but September is about over. In fact, a website he referred them too is now down, possibly because nothing’s happening.
Here’s an excerpt of one of the videos followed by the transcript where he points people to a date at the same time he says he isn’t setting a date.

But let’s look at another way we can prove it and that is by counting the years…If we’re in the end times and there are 6,000 years of human history followed by a thousand year millennial rule of Christ, we should be somewhere around the year 6,000. Let’s look at this in several ways. Let’s look at three calendars. First, let’s look at our Gregorian Calendar. This is the year 2015 on the Gregorian Calendar. We have a solar calendar and Israel has a lunar calendar well that’s 2015 AD. That’s since Jesus was killed. Well, how many years were there before Jesus? Well, thankfully in Luke chapter 3 there’s a genealogy that goes from Jesus to Adam. We know exactly how many generations were between Jesus and Adam and Bible scholars say there were 4,000 years in the Old Testament. So let’s do some deciphering. (Jimmy holds up 4 fingers then 2 more) Four plus two equals six. K. So If we’re supposed to be around the year 6,000, according to the Gregorian calendar we’re around the year 6,000. Give or take a few years.
Okay, Jewish civil calendar. K, the Jews have two calendars. The civil calendar and the religious calendar. According to the Jewish civil calendar this is the year 5,775. Now remember, they don’t have AD and BC. They just have from creation. So 5775 which would tell us that there’s 25 years left until 6000 comes. The only problem is there’s a lot of disputes about that calendar. And we know historically that there were changes made to it and a lot of Jews dispute 5775 being correct. But again, it’s close to 6000.
But there’s a Jewish religious calendar. The civil year of the Jews begins in the Fall, the religious calendar begins in the Spring. And there’s a group. I’m gonna tell you about this group and I’m gonna give you a disclaimer here in just a minute. Torahcalendar.com. These are Messianic Jews who don’t believe that the Jewish Civil Calendar is correct and they are very intelligent people and they have done exhaustive research trying to find out what year is this since creation. The actual year since creation that we’re living in. K, and they believe in the 7,000 year calendar of God. So they took scripture, history, science and astronomy not astrology, astronomy. And they took all of those things exhaustively and looked at what year it is. By the way, NASA has the lunar or all the activity of the moon for thousands of years. So scientifically you could, their calendar’s a lunar calendar. So they looked at the Bible, history, science and astronomy of all that’s happened and here’s what they believe. After all of their study, and this is on their website, they believe that they year 6000 ended in March of this year. They believe we are living in the year 6001, according to their religious calendar. And this is my disclaimer, they believe that Jesus is returning in September. So when you go to that website. I’m I’m giving you a warning that they write it down, they have the date that Jesus is going to return.
Listen, I don’t ever set dates for two reasons. First of all, when people set dates, people stop living their lives. Okay. The second thing is when that day comes and goes you get your ya know you get disappointed and become cynical. Cause I’ve lived to see a lot of dates set that people said Jesus is going to come on this date. Whenever someone tells me they know when Jesus is coming I always have the same answer, ‘I hope you’re right’. But I’m not going to live any differently just because you say you know when Jesus is coming. So this is a smart group of Jews. That they wanted to know what the right calendar is. They did exhaustive research. You can see their research on their website. And they believe we are living just after the end of the year 6000 and Jesus is about to return. I don’t set dates. But be ready whenever Jesus comes, okay.

FEC Launches Inquiry Into Donation from Ted Cruz Super PAC to Carly Fiorina's PAC

For reasons not clear, one of Ted Cruz’s Super PAC gave $500,000 to Carly Fiorina’s Super PAC back in June. And because “other disbursement” is not particularly clear, the FEC has launched an inquiry:

FEC Fiorina Inquiry by The Conservative Treehouse


In the letter above, the FEC analyst referred to line 21b in Schedule B of the mid-year report. However, I learned today from the FEC that “21b” is a mistake and line 29 on Schedule B is the donation is question.  See the image below:
KeeptPromiseCarlyFEC
Neither Keep the Promise nor Carly for America have responded to requests for comment.
Some tweeters and emailers have wondered if this somehow connects Glenn Beck, David Barton, and Ted Cruz with Carly Fiorina. First, I have no idea why a Cruz PAC would give money to Fiorina. Second, Barton was not a part of the Keep the Promise Super PAC family of PACs until very recently. This disbursement to Fiorina’s PAC was made in June.