A Commonsense "Mission Statement"

Hello there! Today, Zan made an interesting observation.
She wrote,
Reply to CJ: I thought it would be OK to just come out and ask you. There seems to be a lot of whispering around the internet. I think it is just logical to come out and ask people instead of assuming the worst. The worst you were going to say is that you DID hold to that T2A statement and then I would reconsider my opinion of you. If you have questions: ASK THEM. What were you going to do to me? Come through the internet wires and get me because I asked you a question? :-) Yesterday, I read this article on some blog by someone who took another blog article and disected it and came up with the idea that this guy did not believe the Bible was inspired. *sigh* Before the critical blogger did this, he should've asked the guy what he believed concerning the origin of scriptures. If the guy pussyfooted around and wouldn't give him a straight answer, like a politician, then I could justify the blog article. Make sense?
Can't their be civilized honest debate?

(Note... a couple of days ago, I posted an article to the liberal website, Talk2Action, which has led many around the blog-o-sphere to wonder, without asking me, if I share Talk2Action's stance on abortion, same-sex marriage, etc. I DON'T. I am pro-life, period. I believe that homosexual activity, as distinguished from homosexual orientation, is a sin; I also believe that persecuting anyone on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation is likewise a sin.
I believe in racial equality; I believe in separation of church and state; I am unopposed to homeschooling, provided the homeschooling parent is literate him or herself and uses honest, fact-based curriculum; I am adamantly opposed to capital punishment; and I am in favor of universal healthcare.)

That being said...

Zan.... I like the way you think.
Please come right out and ask me anything, and please come right out and TELL me anything, including the fact that you think I am full of baloney, should that become the case. :)

And, that goes for everybody, not just Zan.
I may not agree with you, and you may not agree with each other, but discussion is a good thing, always. There's no topic so bad, that two Christians can't discuss it here in a civilized fashion. Debate is fine, and passionate, even heated debate is fine, as long as we respect one another's right to disagree.

The things that I don't like, and won't tolerate on my blog, are name calling and strike-and-run guerilla tactics, where someone throws out a bunch of accusations but will not back them up with dialogue, like this:

http://0rz.com/?gqg9N

That will never happen here. Period.

'Dooney with an "E"

I was notified this morning that Chris Ortiz at the Chalcedon Foundation has become aware of my writing, and doesn't like it:
http://0rz.com/?AMfYd

It also seems that Ortiz doesn't like the fact that I have been deliberately spelling Rushdoony's name with an "e" about half of the time. It's rather childish, I know, but I wondered how long it would take one of these fellows to finally notice it and make a big point of pointing it out.

Chris writes,

"Oh, dear me, if I had a dollar for every time a secular critic misspelled a reconstructionist's name, I'd be a wealthy man. Here's the latest from a silly woman who thinks she can discuss the issue of slavery with the likes of Rushdoony and North:
Lately I've been reading about a still darker side to the Reconstructionist/Patriarchy movement.Quite simply, it is this:There are those among the movement who claim that since SLAVERY is not condemned in the Bible, it is a perfectly legitimate thing, and advocate a return to the same.
J.R. Rushdooney, the father of Reconstructionism, advocated a return to debtor slavery. So does his son-in-law, Gary North.LOL! Oh, man. That's too funny. I love it. I absolutely love it. How can she possibly understand the doctrine of a man who's name she does not know? She's never read a single page of "J.R. Rushdooney.""

Now, it seems that Chris can't be bothered with comments at his blogsite, so I guess I'll answer him here.

First of all, Chris, I am not a secular critic. I am a Christian critic, and I am rather tired of seeing "the name of God blasphemed among the Gentiles" because of theonomists such as North and Rushdoony and yourself. Your Dominionist heresy is giving Christianity a bad name.

Second, if you wish to call me a "silly woman", you have a perfect right to do so. I've been called far worse, and it's really rather a privilege to be ridiculed for telling the truth.
But if you disagree with what I or other persons have said, why not refute it, point by point, on a blog that allows public commentary? It's easy to simply call names.

In other words, if I am wrong, prove it. But if I'm speaking the truth, why are you mocking me?

And third, Chris....
Whether you are writing of Rushdoony or anyone else:
"Whose" is the possessive form of the pronoun "who." "Who's" is a contraction of "who is".

And Hacked Again...

An hour or so ago, I reposted the three articles at my Homeschoolblogger page that the hacker had deleted.

As I finished reposting the third one, a comment appeared, from "anonymous", saying,
"So you were hacked, and only three articles were removed. Why didn't the hacker delete the whole thing? Do the three articles have anything in common? Does that tell you anything?"

Well, I just went back to my Homeschoolblogger page, to find that the three articles which I had reposted, have been removed again, and my account there has been disabled by the administrator.

(Note: the links in the comments section of this posting may be viewed by cutting and pasting them into your browser. They will take you to a site which will redirect you to the appropriate page. Sorry for the inconvenience, but Blogger does not allow the editing of comments, so I can't go in and fix them directly.)

Hacked....

Well whaddaya know... James McDonald's name has disappeared from the letter he left me here in the comments section of "Behind the HyperPatriarchs," just like GenerationKeeper's name disappeared from several of her comments here a couple of days ago.

And my other CommonSense blog at HomeschoolBlogger has just been hacked.

Three postings were removed (those postings also appear here, complete with comments) :

"Behind the HyperPatriarchy II", which contains information linking James MacDonald to secessionist Steve Wilkins;
"Matthew 18, John 3:20", which discusses letter which James MacDonald wrote to me;
and
"Matthew 18, John 3:20", which contains my response to MacDonald.

It seems that whoever is hacking my blogs is better at accessing them than I am. I can't even get Blogger to let me edit my own postings in the comments section of my own blog...

"Defender of the South"?

I recieved this letter in my mirror Commonsense site at Homeschoolblogger,

http://0rz.com/?mTpJe

Jan. 29, 2007
Posted by ConcernedabouttheGossip
"I wonder is you are aware that RC Sproul Jr. has an adopted son who is black.
And are you aware that he and his wife were having trouble financing the adoption due to medical bills I believe, until one of thier friends stepped in and paid the bill. This friend was Douglas Phillips. I heard him tell this story at a HS conference. I do not know either of them. Now why would he do this if he is such racist? Pay for his friend to adopt a black boy? I don't think so! Does not sound like racist act to me. Just a thought!. Now I am not a big RC fan but I think too many people are making too many accusations lately without proof. I am sure it is grieving God, shouldn't we just go about our buisness homeschooling our own kids and mind our own famlies affairs. If you do not go to their churched or live next door to them why point your finger at them?
http://0rz.com/?rC85f

The above is a link Mr. Sproul's blog telling the story.

Please be careful with your accusations ! "

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, even racists can be nice once in a while, and do things like lend money to friends, even though they disapprove of the use to which the money will be put, but in case you haven't noticed, Doug Phillips praises Dabney not only as a theologian but as the "Defender of the South"!!!

Dabney defended enslavement of all Blacks, and he believed that slavery was the only appropriate station in life for Black people.

He wrote:
"It is enough for us to place ourselves on this impregnable stand; that the relation of master and slave is recognized as lawful in itself by a sound philosophy, and above all, by the Word of God. It is enough for us to say (what is capable of overwhelming demonstration) that for the African race, such as Providence has made it, and where He has placed it in America, slavery was the righteous, the best, yea, the only tolerable relation."

This is the man of whom Phillips says, "And so with joy we doff our hats and shout from every mouth:Hail Dabney, wise apologist, defender of the South!"

If Phillips is not a racist, I'd say he is either an expert spin-doctor, or a hypocrite, or one very, very confused young man, who is idealized by other confused young men.... you tell me which:
http://stillfedup.blogspot.com/2007/05/wrestling-with-epsteins-lies-is-like.html



... and, another thought came to me, in re-reading "Concerned's" letter -- why do people who are uneducated themselves attempt to homeschool their children? This trend worries me -- Heaven-knows-how-many barely literate homeschooling parents, teaching VisionForum's revisionist curriculum to who-knows-how-many kids apiece....

Homeschooling is a very fine option for families, provided the parents who choose to do so are up to the task. But I'm afraid that what we are seeing is the birth of a new underclass, marginally literate, passionately Dominionist, and thoroughly indoctrinated into the worldview and the Cause of the men who idolize Dabney.

Why Aren't These Guys in Jail?

In a story at "Talk to Action", http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/2/5/165221/5311 , Kathryn Joyce reports:

"United States Senate Chaplain Barry Black announced on Thursday that he was canceling an appearance and speech at a March conference of religious right leaders, "Reclaiming America for Christ Conference," which will feature speakers including Rev. D. James Kennedy, anti-abortion activist Frank Pavone, anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and Ann Coulter, with whom Black was pictured in a brochure promoting the conference. Black received a letter from Americans United for Separation of Church and State arguing that the conference was at odds with the necessarily "non-sectarian, non-partisan nature of Black's office and the religiously diverse constituency he must serve," and warning him that James Kennedy's followers believe "that certain types of Christians -- those who agree with [Kennedy's] interpretation of the Bible -- are the rightful owners of the country and that the nation must be 'reclaimed.'"

Joyce goes on to add that "Black later told Reclaiming America organizers that the partisan nature of the conference conflicted with his duties as Senate chaplain."

Three cheers for Black.

Jeff Sharlet points out that Black's predecessor, Richard Halverson, "was for decades also one of the two leaders of the Fellowship, a group that doesn't believe separation of church and state really exists.", and asks, "How come this wasn't a problem for a man on the gov't payroll?"

Good question, Jeff.

And I have another, somewhat related question:

When it comes to Dominionists serving in government positions, why aren't these guys being brought up on charges?

Dominionists define "reclaiming America" as taking over the government, abolishing democracy, and replacing the Constitution with Mosaic Law. Last time I heard, that would be considered treason.

So why are we allowing members of a group whose avowed goal is the destruction of the United States Constitution, to hold public office in the first place?

I believe we have an oath that civil servants must take, in order to prevent just this sort of thing: Every officer in the executive branch (and indeed all employees in the federal government, save a few rare instances that are Constitutionally or otherwise statutorily differentiated -- i.e. the President, and Supreme Court justices) recites the following oath:

"I (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Of course the Dominionists excuse lying for a "good cause" by referring to the Biblical story of "Rahab's Lie", but the part in the oath about "mental reservation or purpose of evasion" pretty much closes that loophole. What Dominionists are attempting is treason, in no uncertain terms, and they have no qualms about perjuring themselves by swearing to defend the Constitution of the United States.

R. J. Rushdoony maintained that treason implies disobedience to an oath. In Dominionistland, that would be a stoning offense.

Personally, I think that life in prison would be sufficient.

I received an anonymous comment in Relativists, Revisionists, and Reconstructionists,...": yesterday, that I am going to post here. Anonymous, you said a mouthful......

Anonymous said...
So many comments, so little time!

GenerationKeeper has said many things that I agree with as well as many things that I don't. Children are a heritage of the Lord and the word "heritage" implies that we will pass along our own family culture, values, and beliefs to our children. If we are not doing those things, we are not really living as a family, especially as Christian parents.

That being said, even pagans and cult members do those things. Just because we believe in passing along what we perceive to be truth to our children doesn't always mean that what we are teaching our children is correct. And, what we believe at one stage of our Christian walk might be entirely different at another stage so what we teach our children might take 180 degree turns by the time they are raised. And this is where grace comes in, does it not?

Herein lies the problem with Phillips in that regard. He is portraying a way of life that is of little earthly good in the 21st century. Christians are called to engage the culture of today, not the culture of 200 years ago. If you really look at what is encouraged in the noveau patriarchal society, there is little that can actually be done today.

For example, how many families can (or should) return to an agrarian way of life? How many families can afford for the father to work from home, thus having older sons only taught by dads? How many families can purchase all the amenities from the Vision Forum catalog in order to teach Phillips' brand of history? And how many women, even in the broader evangelical or reformed worlds, are going to buy into women not voting or having a say in the politics of the day?How many are going to embrace the extra-biblical views of submission that are taught?

You see, this notion that they are going to redeem the culture by promoting these views is absurd and delusional. Even within their positive-view-of-the-endtimes camps, there are those who do not go along with many of their extreme views. And that is true for the children as well. Written off as rebellious, some of the young people who were "trained" (I hate that word, sounds like what you do with a dog) are finding their own paths when they are older. They are burned out from being the oldest siblings who were given too much responsibility so they want few or no children. They want to listen to music other than older hymns not because they are rebellious but because they find blessing and encouragement in contemporary worship music. The girls wear pants not because they are immodest tarts but because they do not agree with someone else's standards for what modesty is or isn't. And on and on the list goes. It the same sort of legalism that has been taught for years in the fundamentalists circles, only with different items on the lists.

Now, as far as the race card is concerned, I don’t know how someone cannot be considered to be a racist if he continually promotes people like Dabney or talks about how we would have a truly Christian nation today had the south won the war etc. So the south was fighting for their families and for the rights of their states. The rights they wanted for their families was the right to own people as property so they could maintain their southern culture. The bottom line is that they wanted to keep their slaves, people who were purchased after they had been kidnapped. When you study the decades prior to the Civil War, you can read all about what the southern congressman wanted. They were a deceived people.

Which brings us to the treatment of those under authority. Once you go down that path of hierarchy, there are those who “are_____” and those who “are not____.” You fill in the blank. Wilkins and others who have written with a pro-south orientation see a manner of feudalism as the norm for life. This carries over into the elders vs laity mentality, the parents vs children or husband vs wife discussions etc. The notion of each as God’s image bearer is forgotten. There becomes no priesthood for the believer. Those very people who are forbidding the liberties of others, accusing them of being libertines, are, themselves, trampling anyone in their paths for the sake of their own liberties.

The details of the Epsteins and their situation are really not the issue and dwelling on it has caused the central concerns we should have about these patriarchs to be ignored. It’s too bad. If we could just take the teachings themselves and examine them, we wouldn’t have to wonder what happens to anyone who comes under their authority.
We would just run!