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12:56:00 AM EST
Diversions of All Kinds Occuring in Our Lives
Since my last entry almost 2 years ago, many things have happened, no doubt to all of us. Some of my own diversionary happenings have been: the complete writing of the book on our work in Lahore, Pakistan, and Tehran, Iran. I am calling it "Rising Heat in Tehran." It will be published when I can do it right.
I have given many speeches in many places. I have been heavily involved in a study of church decline in America....an extremely serious turn in the 3rd millennium. The intense study was conducted by some 60 conservative Christians digging to find why membership has declined and what to do to turn that trend around. I have been involved in some serious spiritual music-writing for congregational worship.
It was a privilege of mine to give some stand up comedy routines during the past several months. One at Texas Stadium in Dallas (Irving) Texas. This talk was for a convention of hispanic contractors, who heard me talk about my career and work as snack food consultant in a piece I call "I Put Bubbles in Tortilla Chips."
My wife and I made an 8 day cruise to Alaska from Seattle aboard the Princess Lines ship named the Dawn Princess. Do That!! That cruise was a gift to my wife and me for our golden wedding anniversary from our four children, three of whom reside in Texas, near Dallas, while the fourth daughter with her family live in Coronado, California . Do That!! If you make any pleasure cruise, do the Alaska trip. You will see why only if you do it....Do That!!
Our travels have taken us to the South of France - Lyon, Marseille, Aix en Provence, to Singapore, El Salvador, and many states west from Texas and East from Texas, to the midwest, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alabama, for a talk to a group of some 87 missionaries, and to San Diego, to Winona, Mississippi to offer counsel and input on the establishment of a School of World Evangelism.
We have visited grandaughters in college in Abilene, TX, in San Marcos, TX, and the one in Aix en Provence. With ten grandchildren there is promise we will see other campuses before long. We will see Nutcracker again this year as one grandaughter performs in Irving; this will be our 14th or 16th or 18th Christmas season to see at least one grand child perform in the Nutcracker.
On top of all the travel and recreation we have done, I have tried to run my company helping snack food manufacturers improve their snackfoods. We have done that in 23 countries and in over 110 companies.
I now hope to make more journal entries in the Citizens Line blog, as the writing of the book on Tehran and much required travel is finished. I am not attempting to make an entry each week, but only when I have something I want to write about. You feel free to add an entry whenever you choose.
Thanks for rejoining the readers of the Citizen's Line. Signed, ManWalking50.
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Pt. 2
But Lipscomb died, and there eventually rose a person who was the exact opposite of Lipscomb in character and morals to replace Lipscomb as most influential preacher and writer in the CoC, namely Foy E. Wallace. Wallace was openly racist and opposed whites even listening to a black CoC preacher, and supported strict racial segregation of congregations. Wallace adopted all the major planks of the KKK including racism, prohibition, militarism, and nationalism, everything that Lipscomb opposed. On other issues, Wallace would flip flop to support what ever would end up with the most financial support in the CoC, such as on institutions. Wallace worked especially hard to make the CoC one-with-America and fully supportive of worldly politics and war.
The CoC did grow enormously for a time under Wallace, but it was like the growth of a cancer... a foreign growth from the inside. People wanting easy materialistic growth from all the money and financial connections that come with being pro-government now joined the CoC, and that became the dominant strain of CoC starting in the 1940s. Yes, there were still CoC people persecuted for opposing the draft in WW2, but they were the minority by then. Further, the pro-war CoC got tons of worldly financial compensation after WW2 in the form of the GI Bill. With this massive subsidy to Christian colleges, the Christian colleges stamped out the remaining pro-peace elements within the CoC establishment -
I know why the church has declined. The only reason it seems hard to answer is if you don't want to accept the obvious answers and the idolatry at fault.
To start with, you must know CoC history, American history and all relevant intersections. We were pacifist and opposed to participation in government and politics. We were truly "separate from the world". The best representation of this is David Lipscomb's book "Civil Government." However, the spirit of this was well visible in A. Campbell's "Address on War of 1848" and in the writings of Barton Stone and Tolbert Fanning. David Lipscomb died in 1917, and then immediately after his death, the US Government threatened the Gospel Advocate to stop printing pro-peace, anti-war, and anti-draft articles. Lipscomb's replacement McQuiddy gave in to the persecution from the federal terrorists and stopped printing articles on war and peace.
By this lukewarmness, the CoC was susceptible to the influences of the world. In 1913 the movie "Birth of a Nation" (BoaN) came out as an attempt to reconcile the South to Federal totalitarianism in Washington. It used racism as a scapegoat as blame for the civil war and a twisted conciliatory move towards the South. It promoted the rise of the KKK who stood for racism, prohibition, militarism, and nationalism. It was, sadly, one of the most influential movies of all time.
Now BoaN and the KKK were the exact opposite of the CoC and Lipscomb's ethics of peace and separation from the world. In 1878, Lipscomb had called a McKinney, TX's CoC's refusal of membership to a black person blasphemous. Lipscomb argued that churches were not part of the world and should not be segregated. -
Don, I'm looking forward to reading your book. Sounds fascinating.
Gonna do a comedy routine for us at the retreat in Hamilton?
And show us some photos as well.
Blessings,
Randal Matheny
http://randalmatheny.com
4/30/08 5:19 PM
But by the 1970s, the mainstream CoC had become so one-with-the-world, that it became obvious that the difference between one church that would pledge allegiance to the flag and all such openly idolatrous acts, is no different than another denomination that does the same thing. After all, they are all pro-American government, right? That was the only religion that matters to most people. People had forgot what Lipscomb recognized. Civic religion is a religion too, and a Christian cannot be apart of another religion. The difference was that civic religion allows any religion under its rule as long as it places de facto authority in the civic religion. The CoC, starting with McQuiddy, was not willing to admit that it was giving in to persecution in order to gain security from the American state. It had not only sacrificed liberty for security, it sacrificed Christianity itself for nice secure middle class jobs.
The racism of the Wallace influenced CoC has changed, but that was really just a scaffold. Similarly, racism was a means to convince the South to accept pro-government centralization. The government later dropped official racism, but that does not mean it repents. One evil was used to build a greater evil, but the biggest tower of Babel of history, the US government, will fall too. The handwriting is on the wall, visible even for those without formal education in economics. May the Messiah bring justice and mercy to everyone in proportion to that which they are due.
References:
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www2.sjsu.edu/stringha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmo