Sound Off!: November 2007

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The Spitting Image

Subject: Our Schools Are Graveyards for Freedom

Yes, they are the spitting image of our country overall. Maybe Santy Claus can bring us a constitution and a bible for Christmas this year.

--A Concerned Parent

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Observer Effect

Subject: Our Schools Are Graveyards for Freedom

There is a principle in science, called the observer effect, which states that the act of observation will change the phenomenon being observed. In other words, people who are being watched, act differently than they would if they were not being watched. If you refrain from robbing me because there's a camera watching, we'd say that was a good thing, because I don't want to be robbed.

How would you feel if there was a camera on you when you raid the refrigerator at night? Or when you try on clothes at a store? Or when you vote? Or when you pass a note to your boyfriend at school? Do you remember, as a kid, geting on your bike and roaming the neighborhood? Do you remember arguments and conflicts with other children, that you had to work out for yourself because the adults were't hovering over you?

We don't know what the long term consequences of growing up under intense, constant supervision will be. But it will undoubtedly be bad. What kind of skill does a child who is always pampered, develop?

I attended a high school my father had taught at, some five or so years previously. So he had many aquaintances still working there. He had me secretly monitored throughout the day. When another teacher, who hadn't known him, told me of the constant surveillance, I transferred to another school. I then spent the next ten years of my life trying to recover from the feeling that I had no freedom or power whatsoever.

These children may replay my sad pattern, or as stated, may become so conditioned to being under surveillance that they come to depend on it. O brave new world, that hath such people in it.

--NWReader

Fleecing the flock?

Subject: Are Televangelists Fleecing the Flock?

I read your article on "Fleecing the flock" and have to say that you are correct. The only thing that I disagree with is that Jesus despised the rich. He loved them but hated how they acted and what they loved, "money". We know that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and the name it and calm it message is a true evil. I was raised in a Pentecostal home and I am a Central Bible College grad and I call tell you that these "preachers" that call themselves "pentecostal" and preach the wealth are missing the boat and are leading many people away from a God centered life to a "me" centered life. Good job.

--Doug

Friday, November 16, 2007

Obvious

Subject: Are Televangelists Fleecing the Flock?

I have found fault with this type of “religion” for many years. I live in Florida and we have many churches that totally espouse the “tithe” concept. I am Catholic and I have found this to be insulting when visiting an “evangelistic” church.

I agree that these TV preachers bathe themselves in “Gold” and ask the congregation to give as much as they can. It is such obvious hypocrisy. Yes, they should be investigated and be made accountable. People are giving in “faith” such as the Widow giving her last penny. To take advantage of pious and sometimes un-educated, is a crime.

This has been around for sometime, but since Bush has been in office with the “faith-based initiatives” we have to follow the money. The masses are suffering more because the money has been taken away from the states.

It is obvious “fleecing of the flock.”

--Janice H.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Fraudulent

Subject: Rutherford Institute Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Declare Unconstitutional an Indiana Law that Requires Voters to Produce Photo Ids in Order to Vote

You really have to be kidding! TRI now apparently supports illegals and dead people voting in our elections. The use of a real ID is one of the few ways we citizens have to make sure the vote isn't fraudulent. The Democratic political machines in places like Detroit, Chicago and New York are loving you for this. Thanks for betraying conservatives!

--SE

A Real God

Subject: Are Televangelists Fleecing the Flock?

I am just a Mom with four children in the South who believes in a real God who loves and provides for us. I do NOT adhere to the "name it and claim it" variety of the gospel, however. I am part of the Pentacostal/Charasmatic community in America. Yet, I do not agree with the STUFF that is preached in the so-called "prosperity gospel." The whole counsel of God must be taken. Yes, God does bless us, and yes, He does care about our material needs. However, it is not all about things--cars, houses, land, etc--that God is most concerned with in our lives. A $ is not a synonym for success in God's perspective. He cares about the heart of each of us--every human being who walks the face of this planet. He wants us to know Him personally. He wants to see the character of His Son, Jesus Christ, developed in us. The presence of Christ Jesus in our lives should then motivate us to reach out to others to share what He has done for us--forgiveness of sin, salvation from destruction and from an eternity seperate from Him (you know--Hell, which is not preached about much any more), and that we can go to Him with all of our needs, problems, and troubles--because, Praise God--He really cares!!! My husband, children, and I are a part of a vibrant, growing fellowship that is active in missions locally, regionally, and internationally. We have a large pastoral staff, who love the Lord and us. They are compensated well, but do not live lavish lifestyles. Our present facility is a building that was once a very large store in the heart of the city. We are multicultural--everyone is welcome--rich or poor, red, brown, yellow, black, and white. Our pastor does not want to preach or teach anything that will not "preach" in any underveloped country. The principles of God's word are universally true. We need a return to the foundational truths and hope of the real Gospel of Jesus Christ.

--Teri in the South

Performer

Subject: Are Televangelists Fleecing the Flock?

Creflo Dollar? "The first thing to realize is that an evangelist is a performer, and
as such his name is his calling card. Consider Billy Sunday. Where would he be today if he'd gone by his real name - John Davis? And what of Estus Pirkle, Rod Parsley, Creflo Dollar, and Benny Hinn? Where would they be today if they'd kept their real names: Ed Clark, Tom Johnson, Mike Smith, and Jeff Hill?"

--Rey

The Worst

Subject: Are Televangelists Fleecing the Flock?

Please tell me why TBN and Paul and Jan Crouch are not being investigated. They are by far the worst. Please contact Senator Grassley and ask him why he has not named them as well. I am a Canadian so I cannot make contact with him at all.

Thanks for making us aware of what is going on.

Bless you,

Judy H.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Shame/Sham

Subject: Are Televangelists Fleecing the Flock?

I love the fact John Whitehead doesn’t cite any scripture just his bloviating expressions of disdain and then the “Sound Off” button at the bottom of the page doesn’t work – leading you to an ERROR 404 disconnected link. What a great proponent of free speech is he! What Rutherford misses is that there IS no outcry from those giving because they WANT these people to be blessed. What shame and a sham for a man who has done such great work through TRI to suddenly turn into a liberal in deciding that those giving to these ministries need his help to decide if they are being ‘fleeced’ or not. Perhaps John should read what God REALLY says about Wealth, Riches and Prosperity. The Dollar and Meyer’s ministries literally have saved my marriage and taught me how to become giving, selfish and loving in areas I never even considered it before. God forgive you for judging and attacking another believer.

--JB

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Crazy For God

Subject: Crazy For God: An Interview with Frank Schaeffer

The entire interview is well worth reading, though this might not owe to its content so much as its text-for-the-times quality. First, Schaeffer's treatment of his father is startlingly unfilial. Things of the nature he discusses in his new book - the occasion for the interview - one might discuss with a confessor, confidant, or small circle of friends from whom one has sought counsel and prayer. To discuss them, however, in a book which will be read by tens of thousands, and to drop intimations of them in interviews which will, by the miracle of the internet, receive widespread attention - well, that strikes me as a failure to honour one's parents, and if that means that I've no real use for many memoirs, well, so much the worse for their authors.

There is also a spurious argument against the prohibition of abortion - abortion is a tragedy, and Roe established a terrible precedent, but abortion we have always had with us. Okaaayyy.

There is, additionally, much hand-wringing and finger-pointing over the stance of the Religious Right on homosexuality, some of which is apropos (Homosexuality need not be regarded as a special sin which exceeds in wickedness other, more comfortable sins, such as adultery and easy divorce.), some of which is deeply misguided (Perhaps the advocacy of the Religious Right is rooted in a perception that a defense of the ontology of marriage and sexual distinctions is now logically prior to what we do once we recognize those distinctions, and not in some irrational antipathy, as Schaeffer seems to want to have it. What, after all, is the point of attempting to shore up marriage if the institution no longer carries a public meaning?).

Finally, Schaeffer does recoil from the longing for apocalyptic vengeance that some strands of evangelicalism often manifest, not simply a magnetic attraction to the negative, but a presumptuous longing for judgment. On the whole, however, I perceive a sort of trainwreck, where those things left unsaid in the memoir and interviews are the true keys to understanding. Something has been left out.

-J. Martin

Subject: Crazy For God: An Interview with Frank Schaeffer

As for the homosexuality issue, it seems to me that the interviewer could, if he hadn't been so busy throwing softballs ("What's your legacy?" forsooth!) have pointed out that one reason people like Francis Schaeffer, Sr., probably said little about the homosexual agenda is that during his lifetime and where he was living, there was nothing remotely like the aggression of the homosexual legal and social agenda that there is now--the push for recognition of homosexual "marriage," the attempt to criminalize "discrimination," driving Catholic charities out of business if they won't place babies with homosexual couples, and on and on and on.

Schaeffer, Sr.'s, easy-goingness on the topic was in some ways typical of his generation. C.S. Lewis, too, has some quotations that can be taken in isolation as "hey, it's not such a big deal." But then it has to be recalled that Lewis referred quite directly to homosexual desires as unnatural, and he expressly (and rather foresightedly) in a letter rejected any attempt to treat them as normal through a simulacrum of marriage. It never would have occurred to him that the statement of such things might be criminalized or that children would be brainwashed otherwise in the schools. The whole thing has shifted to a different front, now, and it is actually anachronistic to point out Schaeffer's or Lewis's general lack of worry over a homosexual agenda as somehow normative for our own time when there really is such a thing as a militant homosexual agenda. This all should be obvious from a purely sociological point of view. But Frankie obviously thinks he's being so profound by saying how little his father talked about the issue and repeatedly saying he would be so "upset" to have his name associated with (gasp!) James Dobson, because Dobson is "anti-gay."

-L.

Subject: Crazy For God: An Interview with Frank Schaeffer

It is not hard for me, also the son of missionary parents, to empathize to some extent with the struggle for identity that the junior Schaeffer has experienced over the last three-and-a-half decades. It has been an undertaking that has led him down diverse paths socially, politically, and religiously, leading him out of Evangelicalism into Eastern Orthodoxy -- and whither, God only knows. Many of us knew his father much better than we knew him, even though we may have appreciated some of the work the junior Schaeffer did both in his films and books over the years. I enjoyed in particular his hilariously amusing, if slightly acerbic, autobiographical novel, Portofino (Macmillan, 1992; rpt. Carroll & Graf, 2004). Others of his books, like Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion (Regina Orthodox Press, 2002), sounded a disturbingly shrill note (see my review here), declaring that "Protestant theologians are the fathers of deconstruction," tracing pro-abortion views back to Zwingli's view of the Eucharist as mere symbol, and making him come across like a bit of a loose canon. Here, in his latest book, he sounds a bit like he looks: tired, jaded, and still a bit angry. God love you, Frank.

-P.

Subject: Crazy For God: An Interview with Frank Schaeffer

"You argue in the book that such people want the world to go badly. They want the apocalyptic view to prevail-the idea that the world will be embroiled in chaos and violence."

At sixteen, I left the Catholic church for evangelical Christianity. My differences with the Church were really only the basic Protests of Luther, but the evangelical movement was the most present and the most convincing and I permitted myself to be swept along with most of the agenda. I hesitate to blame that on being young and impressionable, as there are plenty of wiser and older men and women who hold to all the precepts of the Evangelical faith with good logical defenses.

Perhaps I should just call my move into the whole agenda which is sold with it as underexamined. Coming back out the other side, then, the main thing I have AGAINST the movement in America today is its fatalism stemming from an obsession with premillenialism. "The world is going to heck in a handbasket," the preachers shout, "it's right there in Revelation! Why worry about the environment? We are getting a new heaven and a new earth anyway!"

More insiduous and darker: "Why worry about the impact of our wars on women and children and innocent civilians? Our national security is what is important, and besides Armageddon MUST occur before the great and glorious appearing of our Savior! It's all for the greater good!"

They make these arguments seem almost plausible, and many Americans buy it, hook line and sinker. Except for their complete and utter lack of the self-sacrificing Love without which Christianity is meaningless or worse.

-AnotherBeliever

Everyone I Know

Subject: Big Brother Is Listening to Your Cell Phone Calls

Your commentary on Big Brother listening to cell phone calls should be mandatory reading for every American. Thanks for writing it. I plan on sending it to everyone I know.

--Chris

Monitoring

Subject: Big Brother Is Listening to Your Cell Phone Calls

RI: Your concerns are reasonable, but to protect this country from terrorism these has to be reasonable and effective monitoring of key communications.

--John M.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

A Good Discussion

Subject: Crazy for God: An Interview with Frank Schaeffer

John,

I am sitting in a poorly heated little vestry off the second oldest building in Cambridge, the Round Church. It dates back to 1130 AD! What I've been doing this bright autumn morning is read your interview with Frank Schaeffer. Thank you for arranging that. After reading the two awful reviews in The Nation and The New Statesman, it's helped me to be able to hear him talking through his intentions in writing "Crazy For God." Whether I agree with his presentation and intentions or not isn't the point right now. I have yet to read the book. But I just wanted to say, thank you for setting up a good discussion so that outsiders can get a better idea of what's really going on.

You might like to know that at last a small Charlotte Mason school has started in Cambridge. If you could include the website, it would help them as they market for next year, here.

--Ranald Macaulay (husband of Susan Schaeffer Macauley, Frank's sister)

Friday, November 02, 2007

Reaction

Subject: Child Porn Is Not Free Speech

Mr Whitehead, you wrote: "...The appeals court also voiced the concern that the law could be wrongly applied to an e-mail sent by a grandparent and entitled “Good pics of kids in bed,” showing grandchildren dressed in pajamas."

But you didn't really address that, other than to deride it later as "doublespeak." This seems a valid concern to me in a day and age when gov't seems to continue to expand, and civic life looks increasingly like a police state. It sounds like you're basically saying "don't worry about the gov't abusing their authority; you can trust them!" But really, I don't trust them that much. And what better way for overzealous or corrupt gov't officials to destroy someone than by trumping up false kiddie porn charges against them? A person can win their case and still have their reputation permanently ruined! I know I have heard about parents being charged with child porn for nothing more than taking photos of their kids in the tub, breast feeding, or frolicking in a yard sprinkler, etc.

Of course anyone on the side of decency wants to protect children--of course! But I think we are also protecting children by ensuring adequate checks on gov't power in the nation they are growing up in. Let's do both to the best of our abilities. Thank you.

--Mark P.

Speech is Free

Subject: Child Porn Is Not Free Speech

Great article... I normally agree with most of your articles but you have finally revealed your true lawyer stripes. Let's make "Everything" illegal... that way you attorney's never run out of work and maybe one day we'll finally be free! You are the one "using" children to push your own agenda. How long did it take you get up on that pedastool anyway? Your title is correct... Child Porn is not free speech... "saying" you have child porn when you really don't... is NOT illegal because speech IS free. People like you pick the worst stories available, and nothing is worse than abused children, to try to make their morals - the law! The way YOU have used children in this article should be illegal.

--D.

Unhealthy

Subject: Child Porn Is Not Free Speech

Child porn, or so far as I am concerned any porn, should be firmly suppressed. It is entirely unhealthy, even dangerous in the longer run, pandering to and encouraging, inciting, the worst tendencies among the marginally adult. It openly disrespects women and the family. Despite misguided USSC holdings, nothing in the US First Amendment, or any parallel state provisions, protects it. It is only promoted by greedy and irresponsible commercial elements. Porn is not free speech!!

--John M.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Absolute

Subject: Child Porn Is Not Free Speech

The First Amendment's Freedom of Speech clause is not absolute. It was intended to protect POLITICAL criticism and dialogue.

--John M.