“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” – 2 Timothy 4:3, 4
I am sure that many of you have heard rumblings of the latest coming out of the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI. This is yet another example of the Catholic Church undermining the Bible and blurring the lines regarding what scripture teaches. Sadly, statements like these from the Catholic Church do nothing to uphold the sanctity of scripture or confirm its reliability. It is important that we understand the seriousness of the statement from Pope Benedict XVI and respond in a way that demonstrates truth, love, and biblical understanding.
On January 7th 2011, Pope Benedict XVI came out and stated that God was behind the Big Bang and the universe was no accident ... at first glance many believers might feel that this statement is positive, but I would say that the statement is tragic. Pope Benedict XVI was not making an argument for Creationism; rather he was asserting that God and evolution go hand in hand when it comes to explaining the origins of the universe. The article details that:
"Galileo was rehabilitated and the Church now also accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process in the forming of the human species."
The article goes on to point out that:
“The Catholic Church no longer teaches creationism -- the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible -- and says that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world.”
According to Webster’s 1828 definition; an allegory is a figurative description of real facts. So, according to Pope Benedict XVI, the words written in Genesis are an exaggeration of their original meaning. You, the reader, can interpret the meaning any way you see fit. Although this statement is disheartening, it should come as no surprise considering that the Catholic Church rejects the idea of utilizing Genesis as a scientific text.
It is important to underscore that this deception has not just infected the Catholic Church, but has spread across many "Evangelical" churches and seminaries. Case in point, the recent revision on August 9, 2010 by the Assemblies of God regarding the doctrine of creation. The revision attempted to “reconcile the Bible with theories and conclusions of contemporary scientists” and cautioned believers not to be “overly dogmatic about any particular creation theory.” You can read the revision for yourself by copying the following address into your browser: http://ag.org/top/beliefs/Position_Papers/pp_downloads/PP_The_Doctrine_of_Creation.pdf.
Lastly, please be warned about a new idea known as EVOLUTION EVANGELISM and/or EVOLUTIONARY CHRISTIANITY. This concept is gaining a tremendous amount of fanfare and is deceiving more and more believer’s everyday - especially our young adults. This phenomenon is a "fruit" of the Emerging Church and is being championed by a self professing evangelical and former United Church of Christ pastor Michael Dowd. Dowd is unapologetic regarding his position and offers this explanation on why he does what he does:
“So the reason I evangelize evolution is twofold. I want others who are now confused or feeling guilt, resentment, resignation, or fear, to have for themselves the joy, peace, love, trust, and gratitude that comes from growing in right relationship to Reality, or “getting right with God.” And I want to spread the good news that billions of years of patterned cosmic and biological evolution (and cultural evolution) are on our side: propelling our species to move through this crisis of adolescence into maturity.”
Dowd and his wife Connie Barlow, who is an atheist and science author, travel across the country promoting Dowd’s new book “Thank God for Evolution” and running an educational website known as “The Great Story”.
For more information regarding EVOLUTIONARY EVANGELISM and how to stand firm against it, please visit the links below:
1. Ken Silva / Apprising Ministries / Michael Dowd - http://apprising.org/?s=michael+dowd
2. Michael Dowd Website - http://thankgodforevolution.com/
3. Worldview Weekend / Brannon Howse / Dowd Speaking - http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=6763
4. Crosstalk Blog - http://www.crosstalkblog.com/2010/12/emergent-church-leaders-promote-evolutionary-spirituality/
For more information regarding the comments made by Pope Benedict XVI, the revision by the Assemblies of God, and to read commentary from Ken Ham regarding these subjects – please visit the links below:
1. Pope: God was Behind the Big Bang – http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110106/ts_nm/us_pope_bigbang
2. Ken Ham Commentary / The Pope on the Big Bang - http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2011/01/07/the-pope-on-the-big-bang/
3. Doctrine of Creation / AG – http://ag.org/top/beliefs/position_papers/pp_downloads/PP_The_Doctrine_of_Creation.pdf
4. Ken Ham Commentary / AG - http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2010/09/08/a-sad-day-for-the-assemblies-of-god-denomination/
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
MICHAEL DOWD AND DOUG PAGITT OF THE EMERGING CHURCH
Great article and information regarding the latest deception making its way into the church and sweeping across our nation. Ken Silva does a great job in documenting and calling attention to the apostasy that we are all seeing within the church today. I would encourage you to check out his website at http://apprising.org/. In the meantime, prayerfully consider the information below - Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things ... Romans 1:22 - 23
The Lord be praised that He has seen fit to open the door for Apprising Ministries to have become one of the leading voices against the sinfully ecumenical Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church, a neo-liberal cult now operating within mainstream evangelicalism.
Its primary legacy is that through its core doctrine of corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), masquerading as spurious Spiritual Formation ala Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster and his spiritual twin Dallas Willard, the Emergent Church leaders have been quite successful in taking the focus off proper Christian spirituality; and instead putting it upon mere subjective feelings.
While this was going on, circa the late 90′s, foolish evangelical leaders made the tragic decision to begin using these warped and toxic teachings within their own Young Adult and Youth ministries; and thereby opening them to a veritable who’s who of heresy, including the unholy EC trinity of apostates, Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren, universalist EC pastor Doug Pagitt, and his friend Tony Jones, the progressive “theologian in residence” at Solomon’s Porch headed by Pagitt.
You should know that this upgraded Emerging Church 2.0 now has in place its new postmodern form of “big tent” Progressive Christianity—a Liberalism 2.0—sometimes referred to as Emergence Christianity. Here’s another example of the fetid fruit of this counter-Reformation spirituality that’s now spread deeply into squishy evanjellyfish through the evolution of this postmodern liberalism.
In posts like Michael Dowd & Spencer Burke—Integrity And Evolutionary Christianity (Part 2), Michael Dowd And Science Fiction Christianity, and Mental Off-Roading Radio With Doug Pagitt And Michael Dowd I’ve introduced you to Rev. Michael Dowd, whom I first brought to your attention in Jesus Died For Our Reptilian Brain.
Now I point you to his The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity blog and Dowd’s post Doug Pagitt: Postmodern Evangelicalism Emerging:
(Online source)
But as I told Michael Dowd, whether it goes online or not, is:
(Online source)
Dowd goes on to tell us information, which only serves to further confirm these men worship a god other than the on true and living God of the Bible:
(Online source)
Straight in line with my article Toxic Theology Of Doug Pagitt, Pagitt’s far from right concerning the Christian faith. As one reviewer of one of the books written by Doug Pagitt, specifically A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-filled, Open-armed, Alive-and-well Faith for the Left Out, Left Behind, and Let Down in us All i.e. universalism, put it:
What Christianity has Pagitt presented us? We are taught that sin isn’t a serious issue, that Jesus was simply an example of what we’re meant to do, that the crucifixion wasn’t necessary in the long run, that the afterlife isn’t important, and that we can learn a lot more from holistic medicine than we can the Bible. At what point does this become Christianity? How can this be Christianity? The role of Christ is diminished and our role with God is simply played out in a post-modern ideal that borders along pantheism. You can call it spirituality, but you can’t call it Christianity. (Online source)
Um yeah, Iguess other than that, this would be a good book for your evangelical Youth and Young Adults to read, eh. O, and Fuller Theological Seminary thinks that’s a-ok as well, which you can see from Fuller Seminary Promoting Emerging Church Heretic Doug Pagitt. And how about the “Christianity” taught by Michael Dowd; try the following from his key presentation “Evolutionize Your Life: Heaven Is Coming Home To Reality” where Dowd dreams:
[F]rankly, I don’t know of any Christian, Muslim, or Jew, that is genuinely appreciative of their sinful nature; and yet, that’s what an evolutionary understanding gives us. Is we can have appreciation [of it]… And you’ve got these hundreds of differing, competing, contrdictory, stories about what God said or did; that if you interpret God as a Person, you can’t make sense of those.
But when you understand, from an evolutionary perspective, that all cultures have personified Reality; either Reality as a whole—or some significant aspect of Reality. And personification is one of the things that our brains do…when we remember that “God” is a sacred, meaningful, personification—not a person—all of a sudden, not only does that make sense of all the world’s religious traditions—and their differences—but it also allows us to see that there’s no conflict between science and religion… Nothing is driving young people away from God—away from a right relationship with Reality—faster, and further, than the Bible.
I tell you now in the Lord, if you actually think what you just read is even remotely Christian, then you seriously need to have your spiritual head examined. This includes Doug Pagitt who’s spiritually obtuse enough to say of heretical his apostate friend Michael Dowd:
I like what he’s up to…he’s written a book called, Thank God for Evolution and his argument is that there’s this big thing going on in the larger story of the cosmos and that it’s not at all inconsistent with Christianity; it’s not all inconsistent with the Hebrew faith, it’s not at all inconsistent with the other great faiths of the world.
Did you catch that; Pagitt likes “what [Dowd's] up to”; and, rather amazingly, in addition he apparently even thinks that what I just showed you above from Dowd’s teachings is “not at all inconsistent with Christianity.” In closing this, for now, Dowd’s concept of “God” is as an impersonal force i.e. Reality evolving as the universe. Do I think Doug Pagitt has become a evolutionary pantheist like Michael Dowd; no, at least not yet.
But I will say, it’s well past time for evangelical leaders to grow a spiritual spine and start pinning down these leaders in the Emerging Church like Doug Pagitt—published by evangelical publishing houses—as to what they actually believe. If not, then their own reality is going to involve sailing upon some very rough spiritual waters…
The Lord be praised that He has seen fit to open the door for Apprising Ministries to have become one of the leading voices against the sinfully ecumenical Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church, a neo-liberal cult now operating within mainstream evangelicalism.
Its primary legacy is that through its core doctrine of corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), masquerading as spurious Spiritual Formation ala Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster and his spiritual twin Dallas Willard, the Emergent Church leaders have been quite successful in taking the focus off proper Christian spirituality; and instead putting it upon mere subjective feelings.
While this was going on, circa the late 90′s, foolish evangelical leaders made the tragic decision to begin using these warped and toxic teachings within their own Young Adult and Youth ministries; and thereby opening them to a veritable who’s who of heresy, including the unholy EC trinity of apostates, Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren, universalist EC pastor Doug Pagitt, and his friend Tony Jones, the progressive “theologian in residence” at Solomon’s Porch headed by Pagitt.
You should know that this upgraded Emerging Church 2.0 now has in place its new postmodern form of “big tent” Progressive Christianity—a Liberalism 2.0—sometimes referred to as Emergence Christianity. Here’s another example of the fetid fruit of this counter-Reformation spirituality that’s now spread deeply into squishy evanjellyfish through the evolution of this postmodern liberalism.
In posts like Michael Dowd & Spencer Burke—Integrity And Evolutionary Christianity (Part 2), Michael Dowd And Science Fiction Christianity, and Mental Off-Roading Radio With Doug Pagitt And Michael Dowd I’ve introduced you to Rev. Michael Dowd, whom I first brought to your attention in Jesus Died For Our Reptilian Brain.
Now I point you to his The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity blog and Dowd’s post Doug Pagitt: Postmodern Evangelicalism Emerging:
(Online source)
But as I told Michael Dowd, whether it goes online or not, is:
(Online source)
Dowd goes on to tell us information, which only serves to further confirm these men worship a god other than the on true and living God of the Bible:
(Online source)
Straight in line with my article Toxic Theology Of Doug Pagitt, Pagitt’s far from right concerning the Christian faith. As one reviewer of one of the books written by Doug Pagitt, specifically A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-filled, Open-armed, Alive-and-well Faith for the Left Out, Left Behind, and Let Down in us All i.e. universalism, put it:
What Christianity has Pagitt presented us? We are taught that sin isn’t a serious issue, that Jesus was simply an example of what we’re meant to do, that the crucifixion wasn’t necessary in the long run, that the afterlife isn’t important, and that we can learn a lot more from holistic medicine than we can the Bible. At what point does this become Christianity? How can this be Christianity? The role of Christ is diminished and our role with God is simply played out in a post-modern ideal that borders along pantheism. You can call it spirituality, but you can’t call it Christianity. (Online source)
Um yeah, Iguess other than that, this would be a good book for your evangelical Youth and Young Adults to read, eh. O, and Fuller Theological Seminary thinks that’s a-ok as well, which you can see from Fuller Seminary Promoting Emerging Church Heretic Doug Pagitt. And how about the “Christianity” taught by Michael Dowd; try the following from his key presentation “Evolutionize Your Life: Heaven Is Coming Home To Reality” where Dowd dreams:
[F]rankly, I don’t know of any Christian, Muslim, or Jew, that is genuinely appreciative of their sinful nature; and yet, that’s what an evolutionary understanding gives us. Is we can have appreciation [of it]… And you’ve got these hundreds of differing, competing, contrdictory, stories about what God said or did; that if you interpret God as a Person, you can’t make sense of those.
But when you understand, from an evolutionary perspective, that all cultures have personified Reality; either Reality as a whole—or some significant aspect of Reality. And personification is one of the things that our brains do…when we remember that “God” is a sacred, meaningful, personification—not a person—all of a sudden, not only does that make sense of all the world’s religious traditions—and their differences—but it also allows us to see that there’s no conflict between science and religion… Nothing is driving young people away from God—away from a right relationship with Reality—faster, and further, than the Bible.
I tell you now in the Lord, if you actually think what you just read is even remotely Christian, then you seriously need to have your spiritual head examined. This includes Doug Pagitt who’s spiritually obtuse enough to say of heretical his apostate friend Michael Dowd:
I like what he’s up to…he’s written a book called, Thank God for Evolution and his argument is that there’s this big thing going on in the larger story of the cosmos and that it’s not at all inconsistent with Christianity; it’s not all inconsistent with the Hebrew faith, it’s not at all inconsistent with the other great faiths of the world.
Did you catch that; Pagitt likes “what [Dowd's] up to”; and, rather amazingly, in addition he apparently even thinks that what I just showed you above from Dowd’s teachings is “not at all inconsistent with Christianity.” In closing this, for now, Dowd’s concept of “God” is as an impersonal force i.e. Reality evolving as the universe. Do I think Doug Pagitt has become a evolutionary pantheist like Michael Dowd; no, at least not yet.
But I will say, it’s well past time for evangelical leaders to grow a spiritual spine and start pinning down these leaders in the Emerging Church like Doug Pagitt—published by evangelical publishing houses—as to what they actually believe. If not, then their own reality is going to involve sailing upon some very rough spiritual waters…
Sunday, January 9, 2011
UNDERMINING WORD of GOD by Catholic Church ... Again!
God was behind Big Bang, universe no accident: Pope
By Philip Pullella Philip Pullella – Thu Jan 6, 10:05 am ET
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.
"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe," Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star.
"Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God," he said in a sermon to some 10,000 people in St Peter's Basilica on the feast day.
While the pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.
Researchers at CERN, the nuclear research center in Geneva, have been smashing protons together at near the speed of light to simulate conditions that they believe brought into existence the primordial universe from which stars, planets and life on earth -- and perhaps elsewhere -- eventually emerged.
Some atheists say science can prove that God does not exist, but Benedict said that some scientific theories were "mind limiting" because "they only arrive at a certain point ... and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality ..."
He said scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered.
"In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality ... we can only let ourselves be guided toward God, creator of heaven and earth," he said.
Benedict and his predecessor John Paul have been trying to shed the Church's image of being anti-science, a label that stuck when it condemned Galileo for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun, challenging the words of the Bible.
Galileo was rehabilitated and the Church now also accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process in the forming of the human species.
The Catholic Church no longer teaches creationism -- the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible -- and says that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world.
But it objects to using evolution to back an atheist philosophy that denies God's existence or any divine role in creation. It also objects to using Genesis as a scientific text.
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
By Philip Pullella Philip Pullella – Thu Jan 6, 10:05 am ET
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.
"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe," Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star.
"Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God," he said in a sermon to some 10,000 people in St Peter's Basilica on the feast day.
While the pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.
Researchers at CERN, the nuclear research center in Geneva, have been smashing protons together at near the speed of light to simulate conditions that they believe brought into existence the primordial universe from which stars, planets and life on earth -- and perhaps elsewhere -- eventually emerged.
Some atheists say science can prove that God does not exist, but Benedict said that some scientific theories were "mind limiting" because "they only arrive at a certain point ... and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality ..."
He said scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered.
"In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality ... we can only let ourselves be guided toward God, creator of heaven and earth," he said.
Benedict and his predecessor John Paul have been trying to shed the Church's image of being anti-science, a label that stuck when it condemned Galileo for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun, challenging the words of the Bible.
Galileo was rehabilitated and the Church now also accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process in the forming of the human species.
The Catholic Church no longer teaches creationism -- the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible -- and says that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world.
But it objects to using evolution to back an atheist philosophy that denies God's existence or any divine role in creation. It also objects to using Genesis as a scientific text.
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
Emergent Church Leaders Promote Evolutionary Spirituality - The Crosstalk Blog
Emergent Church Leaders Promote Evolutionary Spirituality - The Crosstalk Blog
Emergent Church Leaders Promote Evolutionary Spirituality
Posted by Ingrid Schlueter in Emergent Church, New Spirituality on December 23rd, 2010 32 responses
Emergent Church leaders Sally Morgenthaler, Spencer Burke, Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren are joining “Evolutionary Evangelist” Michael Dowd in the promotion of evolutionary spirituality, long taught by leading New Age gurus like Barbara Marx Hubbard. Dowd sent out this press release yesterday about the new project.
DECEMBER 22, 2010 – This Christmas season, bestselling author and evolutionary evangelist Rev. Michael Dowd is having an online revival of sorts, and pitching what may be the biggest tent yet for fellow Christians who embrace evolution and honor science: EvolutionaryChristianity.com.
As a sequel to his breakthrough book Thank God for Evolution (Viking/Plume), Rev. Dowd is hosting and producing a living library of free podcasts and live panels with preeminent Christians on the leading edge of science and religion, where mythic beliefs and measurable reality collide.
“The New Atheists and scriptural literalists are not the only games in town,” says Dowd. “In contrast to Richard Dawkins’ God-less universe, tens of millions of us in the middle celebrate both Jesus and Darwin. For us, religious faith is strengthened by what God is revealing through science.”
Dowd will speak one-on-one with 38 religious and scientific luminaries representing Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Progressives, and both Integral and Emerging Church leaders about “how science can deepen faith, not threaten it.”
The historic dialogues, titled, The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity: Conversations at the Leading Edge of Faith, explore the emergence of a new form of religious experience that reveres what God is revealing through science and embraces all of creation. Dowd will talk with some of the most respected names in science and religion — Nobel laureates and Templeton Prize-winners among them.
His guests also include Brian McLaren, named by Time magazine as one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals; Catholic theologian John Haught and Brown University biologist Ken Miller, both key witnesses for the plaintiff at the 2005 Dover ‘intelligent design’ trial; Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly; Ian Lawton, pastor of the Michigan church that recently made national news for removing its cross; Sister Joan Chittister, co-chair of the U.N. Global Peace Initiative of Women; and Sister Gail Worcelo, co-founder of Green Mountain Monastery with Thomas Berry; Bishop John Shelby Spong, whose books on evolving faith have sold more than a million copies; Matthew Fox, defrocked by now Pope Benedict XVI for embracing Creation Spirituality; Paul Smith, a veteran pastor who was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention for blessing gay unions; and 30 other evolutionary Christians.
In the spirit of the season, Dowd and his guests are giving away free access to all the interviews. The daily dialogues were launched December 4 on EvolutionaryChristianity.com, and will continue through January 14. Already more than ten thousand Christians from around the world, including hundreds of clergy, have found the site, with many joining the conversation.
“For far too long the public debate has been a battle of extremes,” says Rev. Dowd. “After nearly a decade on the road sharing the good news of evolution, I felt called to convene a coalition of Christian leaders who embrace scientific evidence as divine communication. By focusing on values and perspectives that we all share, rather than on our differences, we are discovering extraordinary common ground. There’s more than one way to be an evolutionary Christian, but what we all share are deep-time eyes and a global heart.”
From January 15 through February 1, Dowd will host six live online seminars with an internet audience of tens of thousands who can ask questions of the panelists. In February, transcripts of all the dialogues and panel discussions will be made available to the public, along with study guides for churches, seminaries, and school boards.
A recent Gallup poll reveals that four in ten Americans still believe that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so,” or what Dowd dubs “denial about the reality of deep time and our real history.”
Dowd believes that now is the time to help fellow Christians relate to their faith within the context of a universe that he exclaims is “far more glorious and inspiring than anyone living thousands of years ago could have possibly imagined—even prophets!”
Rev. Dowd has come a long way since handing out anti-evolution tracts in his early 20s. Today, he and his wife Connie Barlow, a science writer, are itinerant evolutionary evangelists proclaiming a gospel billions of years old.
The unorthodox missionaries have spoken to more than eleven hundred audiences, from Baptists to Buddhists, about how science and religion can enjoy a happy marriage. The Dodge Sprinter they call home travels North America with a clear message on both sides, the Jesus and Darwin fishes kissing, a graphic Dowd says gets them “a lot of smiles and a few gestures.”
Dowd’s first book, EarthSpirit: A handbook for nurturing an ecological Christianity, was one of the first attempts to look appreciatively at biblical Christianity in light of what scientists have discovered about the universe.
His most recent, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, was endorsed by six Nobel Prize-winning scientists and by religious leaders across the spectrum.
Meanwhile, Barbara Marx Hubbard and her New Spirituality friends are promoting their upcoming Shift Retreat where they are also going to be addressing evolutionary spirituality. This is where all the teaching on evolution was eventually headed–not into atheism, but to this global spirituality with man at the center and on the throne. As Hubbard declares in her demonic retelling of the book of Revelation, those who will not participate will face judgment day. Doug Pagitt, Brian McLaren, Spencer Burke, Sally Morgenthaler and anyone who legitimizes them by participating with them in their conferences, books, and online seminars are helping to promote the doctrines of demons. Those who refuse to come out from among these men and women and stay clean from their lies are participants in with them.
Emergent Church Leaders Promote Evolutionary Spirituality
Posted by Ingrid Schlueter in Emergent Church, New Spirituality on December 23rd, 2010 32 responses
Emergent Church leaders Sally Morgenthaler, Spencer Burke, Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren are joining “Evolutionary Evangelist” Michael Dowd in the promotion of evolutionary spirituality, long taught by leading New Age gurus like Barbara Marx Hubbard. Dowd sent out this press release yesterday about the new project.
DECEMBER 22, 2010 – This Christmas season, bestselling author and evolutionary evangelist Rev. Michael Dowd is having an online revival of sorts, and pitching what may be the biggest tent yet for fellow Christians who embrace evolution and honor science: EvolutionaryChristianity.com.
As a sequel to his breakthrough book Thank God for Evolution (Viking/Plume), Rev. Dowd is hosting and producing a living library of free podcasts and live panels with preeminent Christians on the leading edge of science and religion, where mythic beliefs and measurable reality collide.
“The New Atheists and scriptural literalists are not the only games in town,” says Dowd. “In contrast to Richard Dawkins’ God-less universe, tens of millions of us in the middle celebrate both Jesus and Darwin. For us, religious faith is strengthened by what God is revealing through science.”
Dowd will speak one-on-one with 38 religious and scientific luminaries representing Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Progressives, and both Integral and Emerging Church leaders about “how science can deepen faith, not threaten it.”
The historic dialogues, titled, The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity: Conversations at the Leading Edge of Faith, explore the emergence of a new form of religious experience that reveres what God is revealing through science and embraces all of creation. Dowd will talk with some of the most respected names in science and religion — Nobel laureates and Templeton Prize-winners among them.
His guests also include Brian McLaren, named by Time magazine as one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals; Catholic theologian John Haught and Brown University biologist Ken Miller, both key witnesses for the plaintiff at the 2005 Dover ‘intelligent design’ trial; Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly; Ian Lawton, pastor of the Michigan church that recently made national news for removing its cross; Sister Joan Chittister, co-chair of the U.N. Global Peace Initiative of Women; and Sister Gail Worcelo, co-founder of Green Mountain Monastery with Thomas Berry; Bishop John Shelby Spong, whose books on evolving faith have sold more than a million copies; Matthew Fox, defrocked by now Pope Benedict XVI for embracing Creation Spirituality; Paul Smith, a veteran pastor who was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention for blessing gay unions; and 30 other evolutionary Christians.
In the spirit of the season, Dowd and his guests are giving away free access to all the interviews. The daily dialogues were launched December 4 on EvolutionaryChristianity.com, and will continue through January 14. Already more than ten thousand Christians from around the world, including hundreds of clergy, have found the site, with many joining the conversation.
“For far too long the public debate has been a battle of extremes,” says Rev. Dowd. “After nearly a decade on the road sharing the good news of evolution, I felt called to convene a coalition of Christian leaders who embrace scientific evidence as divine communication. By focusing on values and perspectives that we all share, rather than on our differences, we are discovering extraordinary common ground. There’s more than one way to be an evolutionary Christian, but what we all share are deep-time eyes and a global heart.”
From January 15 through February 1, Dowd will host six live online seminars with an internet audience of tens of thousands who can ask questions of the panelists. In February, transcripts of all the dialogues and panel discussions will be made available to the public, along with study guides for churches, seminaries, and school boards.
A recent Gallup poll reveals that four in ten Americans still believe that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so,” or what Dowd dubs “denial about the reality of deep time and our real history.”
Dowd believes that now is the time to help fellow Christians relate to their faith within the context of a universe that he exclaims is “far more glorious and inspiring than anyone living thousands of years ago could have possibly imagined—even prophets!”
Rev. Dowd has come a long way since handing out anti-evolution tracts in his early 20s. Today, he and his wife Connie Barlow, a science writer, are itinerant evolutionary evangelists proclaiming a gospel billions of years old.
The unorthodox missionaries have spoken to more than eleven hundred audiences, from Baptists to Buddhists, about how science and religion can enjoy a happy marriage. The Dodge Sprinter they call home travels North America with a clear message on both sides, the Jesus and Darwin fishes kissing, a graphic Dowd says gets them “a lot of smiles and a few gestures.”
Dowd’s first book, EarthSpirit: A handbook for nurturing an ecological Christianity, was one of the first attempts to look appreciatively at biblical Christianity in light of what scientists have discovered about the universe.
His most recent, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, was endorsed by six Nobel Prize-winning scientists and by religious leaders across the spectrum.
Meanwhile, Barbara Marx Hubbard and her New Spirituality friends are promoting their upcoming Shift Retreat where they are also going to be addressing evolutionary spirituality. This is where all the teaching on evolution was eventually headed–not into atheism, but to this global spirituality with man at the center and on the throne. As Hubbard declares in her demonic retelling of the book of Revelation, those who will not participate will face judgment day. Doug Pagitt, Brian McLaren, Spencer Burke, Sally Morgenthaler and anyone who legitimizes them by participating with them in their conferences, books, and online seminars are helping to promote the doctrines of demons. Those who refuse to come out from among these men and women and stay clean from their lies are participants in with them.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Is Obama a socialist? You Betcha ...
The President of the United States Is a Socialist and Some "Evangelicals" Are Helping Him
by David A. Noebel - http://www.summit.org/
It's official-Barack Obama is a socialist! Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly posed the question to Dick Morris: "In your heart, you believe [Obama] is a socialist?" to which Morris replied, "Yes, I do" (The O'Reilly Factor, December 15, 2010).
Dick Morris has made very few political mistakes in his life, and his opinion confirms my longstanding belief that our current president is a Fabian Socialist with a bias toward revolution! Anyone who counts among his associates and mentors Frank Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky, Cornel West, Jim Wallis, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Klonsky, and Bill Ayers could not come away without such a bias.
Remember John C. Drew who knew Obama when they were both students at Occidental College back in the early 1980s? Drew admits that he was at one time a revolutionary Marxist and concluded that Obama was "a pure Marxist socialist." Indeed, he also said that from his perspective Obama "had a hard Marxist-Leninist point of view." (See Stanley Kurtz, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, page 88.)
Obama's very rhetoric gives him away! He refers to opponents in the Senate and House as "enemies." He exemplifies the typical Marxist socialist who lines up in his crosshairs for destruction whatever institution he has his eye on to socialize (nationalize) in his quest to destroy capitalism in any way possible. His move to nationalize the health care industry (which will eventually make the federal government the single payer) and the student loan industry are dead giveaways of what Marxists have in mind: ultimately all Americans will be dependent on government for their health care and only radical students will be eligible for student loans! Evangelical conservative Christians need not apply!
The confirmation that Obama is swimming in Marxist waters right up to the present time is his endorsement that allowed the Communist Party USA to participate in the October 2, 2010, "One Nation Working Together" rally in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the George Soros funded Tides Center.
Andree Seu at World magazine picked up the significance of this event when she remarked, "Once Communists in America lurked in the shadows: now the Communist Party USA is an unabashed presence at the Oct. 2 'One Nation Working Together' rally" (November 6, 2010, p. 79).
John Sweeney, former president of the AFL-CIO, also allowed Communists back into his union. David Horowitz and Richard Poe in The Shadow Party say, "Much has been made of Sweeney's political radicalism. A card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America [a part of the Socialist International founded by Karl Marx], Sweeney opened the AFL-CIO's door to Communist Party organizers for the first time since the 1950s, allowing Communists to distribute literature at his conventions and recruit workers to their cause" (p. 166). President Obama plans to award Sweeney the Medal of Freedom in February.
Yes, the AFL-CIO was also one of the 400 Marxist organizations participating in the October 2 rally. In fact, the list of organizations participating in the "One Nation Working Together" rally provides a good cross section of the radical Marxist organizations operating in the United States. There were more Communists in attendance at that rally than are found in Moscow's Red Square and probably Beijing's Tiananmen Square!
Of course, Jim Wallis and his Sojourners organization were also rally goers. Wallis made recent news on another front as well. According to Newsweek's Educational Site, on November 30, 2010, Wallis was among a dozen "moderate" Christian leaders who gathered in Washington to discuss ways to "articulate a vision of Christianity that will counter a new-and newly powerful-religious-right rhetoric in advance of the 2012 election." In other words, they were plotting ways to make conservative evangelicals think of Obama as one of them. How this pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-socialist president could be "one of them" is difficult to fathom. But Joel Hunter, pastor of the Northland Church in Orlando, and Tony Campolo, sociologist and advisor to former President Clinton, were among the Christian leaders at the meeting.
Campolo set the tone for the meeting by denouncing the religious right's "vision of America as God's own country, and free-market capitalism as crucial to the nation's flourishing." He went on to elaborate that what motivates religious conservatives is this distorted vision of God and country and that anyone who disagrees with them "is a socialist or a communist."
To this group and others of like mind, the "radical right" (i.e., conservative Christians) must be demeaned if not destroyed so the new guard of evangelicals, led by the Rev. Wallis and his loyal sidekicks Bill and Lynne Hybels (Lynne writes for Sojourners magazine) of Willowcreek Church in Chicago, must emerge as the new leaders.
The truth is that Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo have been part of the religious left for years (see Ron Nash's Why the Left Is Not Right), and Wallis has been swimming in Marxist waters ever since his college days at Michigan State University when he was involved with Students for a Democratic Society.
Wallis recently showed his dialectical morality when challenged by Marvin Olasky, editor of World magazine. When Olasky asked Wallis to finally admit he was "a man of the left," Wallis insisted he was a man of the center. When Olasky insisted that men of the center don't take financial help from the radical leftist George Soros and his Open Society Institute, Wallis insisted his organization (Sojourners) never took funds from Soros. When Olasky produced evidence that Sojourners has taken tens of thousands of dollars from Soros, Wallis finally had to say "uncle." Indeed, Wallis actually apologized to Olasky for calling him "a liar." (See World magazine, August 18, 2010.)
Evangelical Christians will no doubt hear how bigoted and brain dead they are if they plan to vote against the socialist Obama in 2012. America is presently at the edge of a spiritual, moral, political, and financial abyss. Congress and the president just made the military safe for a practice that every religion in the history of the world has condemned. Stay tuned to see which evangelicals line up to push America over the edge in favor of some form of global governance and socialist paradise!
David A. Noebel, President
Summit Ministries
719.685.9103
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