CommonSense

Hello.... Hi there... I'm Cynthia Gee, and I'm creating this as a mirror of my other CommonSense blog at HomeschoolBlogger. I am copying the first several articles from over there, and moving them here in their entirety, complete with reader's comments. So if you see your comment HERE, and remember posting it over THERE, relax. You're sane.

Monday, June 25, 2007

And Now For Something Totally Different.....

I think it’s the same in small towns everywhere. Something breaks down, or something unusual happens, and the locals (the elders at the gate? ) have a conference about it.....

I remember in the Kansas town where I grew up, when one of the local boys, Denny “P”, got arrested. Now, Denny came from a big hillbilly family across the river in Missouri, and his mother ran a restaurant/beer joint. Mrs. P’s boys were known for getting drunk and coming over to the Kansas side of the river and raising H--- (she didn’t allow them to raise H--- in her restaurant), and getting arrested and thrown in jail.

Well, one weekend Denny had a snootful, and came over into town. He got stupid — moreso that usual — and as usual, he got arrested, and the newspaper where I worked published the fact in the police news, in embarrassing detail. Now, Mrs. P didn’t like that, and Denny’s brothers didn’t like it either, and the newspaper started to receive threatening phone calls.

I was at my desk, the day that it all came to a head. One of the ad clerks went outside to the newspaper-selling box in front of the building to get a copy of the previous day’s paper (we were sold out inside) and she came back in, white as a ghost, and told us that there was a rattlesnake in the paper-box. Sure enough, someone had put what turned out to be a nearly 6-foot rattlesnake in our paper-box.

The editor called Animal Control, but before the officer could arrive on the scene, a crowd of locals had gathered, pulling at their overall suspenders, eyeing the paper-box, and opening it a crack to peer inside and confirm that, yep, sure enough, that was a rattler inside, and a big one, too.

When the animal control officer arrived, an even bigger crowd gathered to watch her catch the snake and to offer advice, but catching a snake in a paper box is no easy task. Everybody had an idea for getting him out, but somehow nobody really wanted to be the one to try it. Eventually, the editor and the animal control officer managed to open the box slightly, tilt it forward, and slide a stick with a noose on one end into the box to catch the rattler. You should have seen them jump back when she pulled it out and held it up — and then everybody had an idea of what to do with it. A couple of people offered to fetch their gun and shoot it (but that was illegal, since we were in town), someone else wanted to make a belt out of its hide, and a couple of other more soft-hearted folks thought that someone ought to take it out into the country and turn it loose (but not on THEIR property, thank you very much!)

Eventually, the snake was put down, and I believe it was stuffed and used as a display in the biology department of a local school.

But OH, what a morning!

.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Behind the HyperPatriarchs...(new links, AGAIN)

It has come to my attention that people have been coming to my blog looking for this posting from January 2007, and have been unable to find it in the archives; and I have been told that not all of the links are working, due to the reorganization of the Patriarch's Path website. So, here it is again, new and improved, with working links....

Lately, there has been a lot of talk around homeschooling/religious circles about Doug Phillips, founder of VisionForum, and pastor of the Boerne Christian Assembly, a hyper-patriarchal non-denomiational group where women are relegated to virtual slavery in their own homes, denied higher education, and are not permitted to participate in prayer in the church services, make prayer requests in church, or even receive communion unless it is served to them by their husband or another male member of the congregation.

Phillips stands accused of the abusive treatment of several members of his congregation:

http://ministrywatchman.com/?p=50

http://jensgems.wordpress.com/2006/12/10/the-search-for-the-perfect-church/

Other charges last year led to the defrocking of Phillip's longtime associate, R.C. Sproul Jr.:

http://ministrywatchman.com/?p=35

A website, The Patriarch's Path, formerly owned by James Mcdonald, used to expound at length on Patriarchal views, among them the idea that only landowners should vote.
On my original article, "Behind the HyperPatriarchs", I linked extensively to The Patriarch's Path site, but those links were broken when Rev. McDonald disabled the site last March. I susequently linked to the webachived versions of the PP articles, but those links were disabled only one day after I published them, presumably by the folks at Patriarch's Path.

Apparently they didn't appreciate the publicity, but here are the same articles, as found on other sites:

http://www.covenanthome.com/document_detail.asp?document_id=51

http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/03/stndisob.html
(scroll to the bottom of the page for the text)

http://www.bibletopics.com/BIBLESTUDY/92b.htm

http://www.preterism-eschatology.com/Daughters%20and%20Marriage.htm

http://www.vision-harvest.com/articles/CollegeAtHome.php

http://www.proveallthings.org/articles/hidden_costs_of_doing_business_outside.htm

This one, NOT from PP, is also an eye-opener:
http://www.biblicalexaminer.org/w199709.htm


But did you ever wonder what is BEHIND the extreme patriarchy movement?

It's not limited to the evangelical Protestant churches. Consider this: traditionally, Calvinists andCatholics don’t see eye to eye (to say the least!!!), but there has been an almost identical movement growing within the Roman Catholic Church since about 1980. These schismatic Catholics do not get along with the Catholic powers-that-be at all — they claim that the Pope is an impostor and that THEY are the only true Catholics left:

http://sspx.agenda.tripod.com/id52.html

http://www.mgr.org/TraditionIsNotFascism.html

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:Nq9ijiHmTKoJ:tcrnews2.com/name.html+%22Left,+Marian+Horvat,+Atila+Sinke+Guimaraes%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Now for the interesting thing: ideologically, Phillips’ Protestant patriarchalists and their Catholic counterparts are coming to have more in common with each other than they do with either traditional Protestantism or orthodox Catholicism. To begin with, both Protestant and the Catholic patriarchalists tend to be Dominionists/Reconstructionists (note that not all Dominionists are hyperpatriarchal, though most do espouse patriarchal ideology to a greater or lesser degree), and Dominionists tend to be quite involved with politics and finance. Some of the biggest names in this movement are also big names in finance and politics: think Pat Robertson, Greg Ahmenson, Marion T. Horvat, Anne Coulter, Christopher Ferrara, Roberto Fiore, Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, Greg Bahnsen, Gary North, Gary DeMar, Kenneth Gentry, JimBob Duggar, David Chilton, Howard Phillips, D. James Kennedy, Marvin Olasky, etc.

In addition to their conservative stance on politics, a very significant number of these folks share rather similar ideas about the role of women, homeschooling, the Quiverfull movement, etc; AND, similar movements have also arisen within Judaism and within the Latter Day Saints.

It is this very fact -- that the same movement has also apparently infiltrated Catholicism, Mormonism, and Judaism -- which leads me to think that something other than religion is at work here, something not particularly concerned religious belief or practice at all — I say this not to cast aspersions upon the beliefs of non-Evangelicals, but the simple fact that Catholicism is very different from Calvinism shows us that whatever is driving this movement is not so much concerned with religious doctrine as it is with working to achieve its agenda through religious channels.The thing is organised like a corporation, or a hydra, and appears to be umbrella group which is trying to absorb MANY denominations, and bring them round to a certain common way of thinking, under the auspices of evangelism -- Phillips, et al are merely the corporate heads of the Protestant division. It’s almost like radical patriarchy is a religious theme in itself, and the Christian, Jewish and even the Moslem versions of it are mere variations on that theme; and, the Unification Church (Moonies) is dancing to this exact same tune, though to be fair, one must admit that the Unification Church has been hyper-patriarchal from the beginning.
Check this out:

http://www.divineprinciple.com/1_10_comm/10com_web_all.pdf

Another thing that ALL of these “patriarchs” share is their claim to be restoring their respective religions to a purer form that was practiced in the past — with the Evangelicals it’s the 1800’s, with the Catholics it’s pre-Vatican II, etc; but in the past that they claim to be attempting to re-create, their respective denominations NEVER taught the kinds of things that these fellows are preaching now!

Of course, we should remember that at least some, if not most, cult leaders are not deliberately evil men: many sincerely believe they are doing the work of God. Usually they started out by trying their very best to serve God, but got sidetracked somewhere, often by their own egos and by a faulty understanding of Scriptures. We should pray for false teachers, love them, forgive them if they have hurt us or our loved ones, and help them to see the error of their ways and return to God.But until they do repent, we have a grave responsibility to warn our brothers and sisters away from them.