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Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts

Friday, August 9, 2013

Wannabe Cool Christianity

The Perils of 'Wannabe Cool' Christianity

"Biblical Oral Sex" and "Pleasuring Your Spouse."
"Many other churches now encourage texting, Twitter and iPhone interaction with the pastor during their services."

BRETT MCCRACKEN

(Please see Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

'How can we stop the oil gusher?" may have been the question of the summer for most Americans. Yet for many evangelical pastors and leaders, the leaking well is nothing compared to the threat posed by an ongoing gusher of a different sort: Young people pouring out of their churches, never to return.

As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment.

Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn't megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.

Increasingly, the "plan" has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called "the emerging church"—a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too "let's rethink everything" radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it—to rehabilitate Christianity's image and make it "cool"—remains.

There are various ways that churches attempt to be cool. For some, it means trying to seem more culturally savvy. The pastor quotes Stephen Colbert or references Lady Gaga during his sermon, or a church sponsors a screening of the R-rated "No Country For Old Men." For others, the emphasis is on looking cool, perhaps by giving the pastor a metrosexual makeover, with skinny jeans and an $80 haircut, or by insisting on trendy eco-friendly paper and helvetica-only fonts on all printed materials. Then there is the option of holding a worship service in a bar or nightclub (as is the case for L.A.'s Mosaic church, whose downtown location meets at a nightspot called Club Mayan).

"Wannabe cool" Christianity also manifests itself as an obsession with being on the technological cutting edge. Churches like Central Christian in Las Vegas and Liquid Church in New Brunswick, N.J., for example, have online church services where people can have a worship experience at an "iCampus." Many other churches now encourage texting, Twitter and iPhone interaction with the pastor during their services.

But one of the most popular—and arguably most unseemly—methods of making Christianity hip is to make it shocking. What better way to appeal to younger generations than to push the envelope and go where no fundamentalist has gone before?

Sex is a popular shock tactic. Evangelical-authored books like "Sex God" (by Rob Bell) and "Real Sex" (by Lauren Winner) are par for the course these days. At the same time, many churches are ﬁnding creative ways to use sex-themed marketing gimmicks to lure people into church.

Oak Leaf Church in Cartersville, Georgia, created a website called yourgreatsexlife.com to pique the interest of young seekers. Flamingo Road Church in Florida created an online, anonymous confessional (IveScrewedUp.com), and had a web series called MyNakedPastor.com, which featured a 24/7 webcam showing five weeks in the life of the pastor, Troy Gramling. Then there is Mark Driscoll at Seattle's Mars Hill Church—who posts Q&A videos online, from services where he answers questions from people in church, on topics such as "Biblical Oral Sex" and "Pleasuring Your Spouse."

But are these gimmicks really going to bring young people back to church? Is this what people really come to church for? Maybe sex sermons and indie- rock worship music do help in getting people in the door, and maybe even in winning new converts. But what sort of Christianity are they being converted to?

In his book, "The Courage to Be Protestant," David Wells writes:"The born-again, marketing church has calculated that unless it makes deep, serious cultural adaptations, it will go out of business, especially with the younger generations. What it has not considered carefully enough is that it may well be putting itself out of business with God.

"And the further irony," he adds, "is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them."

If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that "cool Christianity" is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it's easy or trendy or popular. It's because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It's because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It's not because we want more of the same.

Corrections & Amplifications

Pastor Mark Driscoll at Seattle's Mars Hill Church has talked about sexual topics in church services but says he has not delivered sermons with sex-themed titles. An earlier version of this column mistakenly used the word sermon.

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

THE WAGES OF SIN - A Very Wealthy Church

Wages of Sin

The UK Anglican Church earned £4.4 billion in 1999 (Daily Telegraph).

The Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), seventh largest US church, in 1997 possessed a minimum of $30 billion in assets and had an annual gross income of $6 billion(Time, July, 1997).

Between 1985 - 1998 the Mormon church spent $162.5 m on various humanitarian aid projects – around 0.21% of the Church's reported non-taxed annual revenue!! Christian charity, eh?!

The earnings and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church are notoriously difficult to estimate. A single sale of bank shares in 1971 netted the Vatican Bank $115 billion (at 1984 values). (David Yallop, In God's Name, p143)

Accumulated wealth of Christendom would be measured in thousands of $billions – most of it thoroughly hidden from public scrutiny.
In comparison, the Mafia is a local pick-pocket.

Catholic Crime Syndicate – 'Purgatory Inc.'

'As the penny in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs.'
The weak and gullible were fleeced by papal agents – such as Dominican friar Tetzel – who sold papal releases for dead loved ones 'suffering the cleansing fire'.
16th century woodcut Jan Breu the Elder

SIN

God's Work?

The Wages of Sin – A Very Wealthy Church

"The money from the guilt offerings and sin offerings was not brought into the temple of the LORD ; it belonged to the priests."

– 2 Kings 12.16.

After deliberating on sin at synods in Rome and Carthage (251/252 AD), the Church decided that no one could avoid venial sin, and therefore all needed the intercession of the Church. But it also ruled that "all sins were forgivable with sufficient penance."

“Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered."

– Romans 4.7

Here, potentially, was a vast business in forgiveness– But who had the right to absolve sin?
Certain sharp clerics saw the opportunity and declared themselves to be "Confessors". Filled, as they said, with the Holy Spirit, they claimed the right to absolve sins (particularly the sin of apostatising during the Decian persecution) – and just as surely availed themselves of recompense for their efforts.
The appearance of this rash of competitive charlatans set alarm bells ringing among the bishops who responded by declaring their own exclusive right to forgive sin. The lucrative sin business was being parceled out among the operatives.
Towards the end of the 4th century Augustine made clear that it was only the Catholic hierarchy that could forgive sin:

"Since the days of Adam, all have sinned; only a few with 'God's Grace' can rescue sinners."

– On Predestination.

Augustine waged a brutal campaign against the followers of Pelagius, a monk who had the temerity to believe that man hadan innate ability to live by God's commands and could thereby avoid sin.

In the late 6th century, Pope Gregory, an enthusiastic follower of Augustine, codified sins into seven types, folding "vainglory" into pride, "acedia" into sadness, and adding envy. His ranking, from most serious to least was: pride, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony, and lust. In the 17th century, the Church replaced the vague sin of "sadness" with sloth.
The list of sin crimes set the stage for centuries of ecclesiastical extortion: the sale of remissions from sin!
The Church had devised the most successful protection racket in history.

God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany." --Hermann Goering, from Louis L. Snyder, "Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen", Berkley Books, 1990

"How shall we tie down this wild beast? How shall we put a bridle on it? I know none, save only the restraint of hell fire."
Saint John Chrysostom rages at sex

"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." -

--Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo

Fast forward to the 21^st Century

[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism -- everything that the Bible condemns.

-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, April 9, 1991

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

-- Pat Robertson, fund raising letter, 1992

Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.

-- Pat Robertson, interview with Molly Ivins, 1993.

Little history lesson for Pat Robertson:

Christian Persecution in the modern USA. Little history lesson - since 323 AD it's been the Christians doing the persecuting. Being told to mind your own business is not persecution. Being persecuted is not having someone roll their eyes at you for wearing a big crucifix around your neck - it's being required to wear it so that the government knows who you are and can find you anytime it decides to get rid of you. Get over the martyrdom, and stop pining for a world where nobody can question your right to tell them what to do.

Pimping Priests

Common venial sins could be remitted by prayer, confession to the clergy, contrition, fervent communion, and other 'pious works', all of which required frequent attendance at Church and appropriate service or recompense to the officiating clergy.
Having transformed even a Christian marriage bed into "whoredom" the Church could extract its penance for every act of copulation that involved "lust". Clerical abuse of the institution of "confession", originally made at the feet of the priest, obliged the Church to introduce the confessional box for decency's sake.
The saintly Augustine had also provided the dubious theology of purgatory, a holding pen where even compliant Christians would find themselves after death, a place where 'fire might wash them free of sin'. Picking up the message, said Pope Gregory:

"As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that before the final judgement, there is a purifying fire (purgatorius ignis) ..."

– Dialogia !V, xli.3.

The popes were subsequently to generate a vast income by selling indulgences which would 'free souls from purgatory'. The living – filled with anxiety for their deceased relations – could offer prayer, service and payment to the Church, so that those in purgatory could move more quickly through their chastisement!
Source:

Sunday, March 11, 2012

The Best Unintentionally Sexual Church Signs.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

THE CHURCH OF SEX

Exclusive: David Kupelian challenges Pastor Mark Driscoll about his 'obsession'

Warning: The following column contains sexually explicit language.

Being pastor of one of the fastest-growing mega-churches in the country and announcing that, out of the entire transcendent Bible – which holds the secrets to heaven and hell and eternal happiness or eternal darkness – your favorite part is about stripping?

There’s a new form of Christianity sweeping the U.S. Its main focus: sex.

Don’t be surprised. We already have a Christian denomination catering to every other worldview, comfort zone and obsession, so why not sex? As I said in “The Marketing of Evil”:

“No matter what kind of person you are, a form of Christianity has evolved just for you. There’s a politically liberal Christianity and a politically conservative Christianity. There’s an acutely activist Christianity and an utterly apolitical Christianity, a Christianity that holds up a high standard of ethical behavior and service, and a Christianity for which both personal ethics and good works are irrelevant. There’s a raucous, intensely emotional Christianity drenched in high-voltage music, and there’s a quiet, contemplative Christianity. There’s a loving Christianity and a hateful, racist Christianity, a Christianity that honors Jews as God’s chosen people and a Christianity that maligns Jews as Satan’s children.”

So, it was just a matter of time before we got a version of Christianity for people obsessed with sex.

Pastor Mark Driscoll

And while there is a surprising number of preachers, teachers and Christian websites today whose main focus is sex, the most prominent is Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of the wildly popular Seattle mega-church Mars Hill Church. According toMars Hill’s website, Driscoll’s mostly youthful flock has grown from a handful of people in a home Bible study to over 19,000 people meeting across 14 locations in four states.

“One of the world’s most-downloaded and quoted pastors,” says Driscoll’s official bio, “his audience – fans and critics alike – spans the theological and cultural left and right. He was also named one of the ’25 Most Influential Pastors of the Past 25 Years’ by Preaching magazine, and his sermons are consistently No. 1 on iTunes each week for Religion & Spirituality with over 10 million of downloads each year.”

By the way, as runner-up for top mega-church pastor in “The Church of Sex,” I’d nominate Ed Young, senior pastor of Dallas-based Fellowship Church, who recently staged “a 24-hour bed-in with his wife atop his church,” a stunt designed to publicize his just-released New York Times best-seller, “Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy With Your Spouse.”

But back to Driscoll: I have nothing personal against this popular, hip, tough-talking young pastor in blue jeans, and I totally understand the appeal of his blunt, masculine, passionate style – a refreshing respite from all the stuffy, pretentious and cowardly pastors out there.

However, let’s just state the obvious: Mark Driscoll is utterly obsessed with sex.

He tells, for instance, the following story of one female member of his congregation who – and I quote – “brought her husband to Christ” by giving him oral sex, in accord with Driscoll’s specific pastoral advice to her. Here’s how Driscoll, during a Nov. 18, 2007, sermon in Edinburgh, Scotland, described this particular husband’s “conversion”:

She [the wife] says, “I’ve never performed oral sex on my husband. I’ve refused to.” I said, “You need to go home and tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus and you’ve been studying the Bible, and that you’re convicted of a terrible sin in your life. And then you need to drop his trousers, and you need to serve your husband. And when he asks why, say, ‘Because I’m a repentant woman. God has changed my heart and I’m supposed to be a biblical wife.’” She says, “Really?” I said, “Yeah. First Peter 3 says if your husband is an unbeliever to serve him with deeds of kindness.” [Laughter from audience] How many men would agree, that is a deed of kindness. He doesn’t want tracts. Those won’t do anything. What we’re talking about here could really help.

Really, people? Is this what we now stoop to in our efforts to make the magnificent Christian faith – the moral foundation of Western civilization – more appealing to a rudderless, confused and sex-drenched generation? Is this what now passes for pastoral counseling and preaching the Bible? I call it abuse and exploitation. I would even call it blasphemy (“… tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus … And then you need to drop his trousers …”).

Driscoll was “preaching” the Song of Solomon, which he has said repeatedly is his favorite part of the Bible and about which he preaches often. It’s also a major focus of “Real Marriage,” his brand-new No. 1 New York Times best-seller – which is mostly about sex – co-authored with his wife, Grace.

For Driscoll, the Song of Solomon amounts to a soft-porn sex manual, which inspires him to admonish women – those who aspire to be “biblical wives” – to awaken their husbands each morning by sexually servicing them in the same way the aforementioned wife “converted” her husband “to Christ.” (Actually, I’m not really too sure she converted him to a deep Christian faith, but no doubt he was converted into an enthusiastic member of Driscoll’s fast-growing church.)

To his credit, Driscoll condemns fornication, adultery and homosexuality. But for married folks, Driscoll – citing his chief inspiration Solomon, who had 700 wives – promotes sex toys, imaginary sexual role-playing, cybersex, what used to be called “sodomy” (both oral and anal) and wives becoming strippers for their husbands.

In fact, the wives-should-become-strippers teaching is not only in the Bible, gushes the enthusiastic Driscoll, it’s in his favorite part of the Holy Scriptures.

“This is my favorite chapter in the whole Bible!” Driscoll exclaimed during the same 2007 sermon. “I believe in the resurrection of Jesus. It’s great too. But this is an amazing chapter of the Bible: [Song of Solomon] Chapter 6 verse 13. It’s awesome. It’s awesome. … Now, what do you think the dance ofmah haneim is? It’s an ancient strip tease. Stripping is biblical. You’re welcome. [Laughter from audience] It’s biblical.”

I am not a Bible scholar, far from it. But it’s fair to say the Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) – a short love poem of only eight chapters – is probably the most controversial book in the Bible. It is never quoted in the New Testament. Because of its often erotic language, “ancient Jews and Christians alike rejected its literal interpretation and allegorized it,” explains the editor’s note in my King James Bible: “For the Jews, it referred to God’s dealings with his bride, Israel. The early Christians saw it as representing the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church.” This spiritual interpretation pretty much held sway for the first 19 centuries after Christ.

But in modern times, of course, we like to think we understand such things much better than those ignorant, superstitious, early Christians who knew Jesus and the apostles. Kind of like the way today’s judges see things in the U.S. Constitution – gay marriage, abortion, banishing the Ten Commandments from courthouses – that jurists in all previous generations somehow missed.

In any event, however you interpret the Song of Solomon, it’s undeniable that weird and sometimes disastrous things happen when you base your worldview and ministry on one or two allegorical and controversial scripture passages. I mean, check out this YouTube video of a room full of “Christian worshipers” ecstatically handling multiple poisonous snakes. That’s right, there are some churches, mostly in the Southeastern U.S., that believe handling venomous snakes and drinking poison are an important biblical test and proof of their faith. Why? Because in the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus said: “And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18).

Common sense tells us – however we interpret Jesus’ actual meaning – that He didn’t intend for the faithful to “tempt God” by drinking strychnine and strutting around on stage with rattlers and cottonmouths, practices that every year result in one or more deaths being reported from these churches. But to proponents of snake-handling and poison-drinking, “it’s biblical.”

In the same way, common sense tells us God did not create women – including married women – to have to compulsively service the needs of oversexed, insecure, angry, egotistical men at all hours of the day and night. And women definitely shouldn’t be psychologically manipulated by authority figures into believing they are disobeying God, Jesus and the Bible if they don’t become sexual Stepford wives.

Which brings me to this question:

Why has Liberty University – a great Christian college, and one of the few schools in the nation that doesn’t infect students with a highly sexualized culture the moment they set foot on campus – agreed tobring Driscoll to its campus in Lynchburg, Va., next month to teach and preach – twice – to all the young Christian students entrusted to that school’s care?

Are the students’ parents cool with making their kids a captive audience for Driscoll’s sex-book tour? And what are the decision-makers at Liberty thinking? It’s not as though I’m the first person to point out Driscoll’s weird overemphasis on sex. The Christian blogosphere has long been fired up over Driscoll. The Baptist Press reported that a major Christian radio network, the Bott Radio Network, canceled Driscoll because of his over-sexed sermons. Even a recent Seattle TV news story about a controversy at Mars Hill Church revolves around – you’ll never guess – sex.

Or check this out: Driscoll tells his congregation he has spiritual visions – which he calls a divine “gift of discernment” – but guess what he spiritually discerns with this sixth sense? Right. As this rather creepyYouTube video reveals, Driscoll has detailed and graphic visions of sexual sins involving his flock, including (in this particular clip) molestation and adultery.

Or how about this story Driscoll told during the same sermon from which I’ve been quoting:

We were in a grocery store recently, and my wife and I were holding hands and just, you know, shopping. I said, “Why don’t you walk ahead of me for awhile.” She said, “What for?” I said, “I just want to watch your butt for a while.” She said, “Watch my butt?” I said, “Yeah, I like your butt. I like you and I like walking with you. But I’d like to watch your butt for a while, at least through the vegetable section. I want to watch your butt.” [Laughter] … Let her know.

Supporters of Mark Driscoll (including the decision-makers at Liberty University), it’s time to wake up. This is not normal. Asking your wife to walk ahead of you in public so you can ogle her rear end is not normal. Having mystical visions of parishioners in sex acts is not normal. Counseling female members of your church to bring their husbands to Jesus through sex acts – that’s not normal. Being pastor of one of the fastest-growing mega-churches in the country and announcing that, out of the entire transcendent Bible – which holds the secrets to heaven and hell and eternal happiness or eternal darkness – your favorite part is about stripping?

That’s not normal.

Modesty, moderation, self-denial, humility, patient endurance – remember that old stuff? Those are the spiritual qualities of a Christian, which are consistently extolled throughout the entire New Testament. “For to be carnally minded is death,” warns Paul; “but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6 KJV). The apostles constantly admonish believers not to get too caught up with “the lusts of the flesh.”

In “real marriage” – that is, a marriage made in heaven between sincere and spiritually seeking men and women – wives actually appreciate a little nobility, patience and self-restraint on the part of their husbands. Without the manly virtue of self-control and even a little self-denial in their relationship, women can feel trapped – like they have no choice but to become seductive sexpots to keep their husband happy. And if perchance this creates conflict within her own conscience – conflict with a part of her that is not so sensuous, but more angelic and childlike and innocent – her husband has no clue what is happening. But she suffers the conflict nevertheless, perhaps dealing with it by pleasing him more and more, in the vain hope it will relieve her conflict. It doesn’t.

Friends, one of life’s great challenges for fallen, broken beings like each of us is that we somehow, through God’s grace, eventually rise above all the various temptations and pulls of “the world” and livesolely unto Him. It would really be nice if our pastors and other spiritual authorities, who claim to represent God, would exemplify and exhort us along this high road – rather than lead us in the opposite direction. source:

Twistianity Today

Friday, August 9, 2013

Wannabe Cool Christianity

The Perils of 'Wannabe Cool' Christianity

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

MISS USA, WHORES and THE BIBLE SEX QUIZ!?

SAY WHAT ...?! MISS USA GETS 'PRETTY' IDIOTIC

THE BIBLE SEX QUIZ