30 September 2009
Presbyterians Week Headlines
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[1] Faith-Based Fraud May Amount to US$ Hundreds of Millions Annually
[2] Covenant Theological Seminary President Dr. Bryan Chapell Writes on Women’s Roles in the PCA
[3] Dissident Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church Members Organizing New Church
[4] Presbyterian Lay Committee Reveals PCUSA Funding of ACORN
[5] ACLU to Receive US$196,500 in Legal Fees from Santa Rosa County, Florida, for Forcing Halt to Christian Activities in Schools
[6] New White House Science Czar Co-Wrote Science Text Advocating Forced Abortions, Compulsory Sterilization, and Planetary Regime to Oversee World Population
[7] White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Director, Cass Sunstein, Believes Laws Against Abortion “Co-Opt Women’s Bodies for the Protection of Fetuses”
[8] NARAL Honors UCC Official and UCC Member as “Champions of Choice”
[9] New Jersey Elementary School Children Forced to Sing Rap Song in Praise to U.S. President Obama to the Tune of “Jesus Loves the Little Children”
[10] Beverly, Massachusetts, High School Principle Warns Students about Confrontations during Gideons Bible Distribution
[11] Federal Appeals Court Overturns Verdict against Westboro, Kansas Church’s Picketing of Westminster, Maryland Soldier’s Funeral
[12] Christians React to Muslim Prayer Rally at U.S. Capitol
[13] 2009 Pulpit Freedom Sunday Draws Eighty Pastors Willing to Preach about the Biblical Perspective on Elected Officials
[14] South Carolina Supreme Court Rules for Pawleys Island Church in Property Dispute with Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina
[15] Erskine Seminary Colombia, South Carolina Campus Professor Dr. Mark Ross on the Ligonier Ministries Blog Writes About EPC Motto “In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity.”
[16] Growing Mosques and Dwindling Churches in Scotland
[17] Free Church of Scotland Pastor Writes that Jesus is the God of the Psalms [18] ”Building Old School Churches” Conference 17 October 2009 at Providence PCA in Fayetteville, North Carolina
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[1] Faith-Based Fraud May Amount to US$ Hundreds of Millions Annually
Warren Cole Smith, in the 10 October 2009 Issue of World Magazine, writes in the article “Faith-Based Fraud: Indiana Increases Penalties for Con Artists Who Use Religion to Target Victims,” describing the Indiana-based investment firm Alanar, which sold at least US$120 million in investment bonds to thousands of church members that were told that the investments would be supporting church programs, but in actuality was operating an elaborate Ponzi scheme where the Alanar founder, former pastor Vaughn Reeves and three of Reeves’ sons, diverted at least US$6 million for personal use, including what Huntington County, Indiana prosecutor Robert Hunley II describes as, “expensive homes, fancy cars, airplanes, and swimming pools.” Reeves and his sons have been indicted on ten felony charges related to their management of Alanar.
Smith describes how the Alanar sales force was trained to sell investments to their fellow church members, by advising to, “open meetings with prayer, quote Scripture during the sales call, and “never sell the facts, sell warm stewardship and the Lord.”” Alanar investors were told that their investments would be used to help build churches.
Smith interviewed Bob Webster of the North American Securities Administrators Association, who told Smith that faith-based fraud may amount to US$ hundreds of millions annually, and Smith related that Indiana is the first state in the U.S. that has passed laws involving fraud to seniors or through religious affiliations, raising the crimes to Class B felonies with a minimum prison penalty of three years.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission described the Alanar Ponzi scheme as an “affinity fraud investment scheme.”
+ World Magazine, 85 Tunnel Road, Suite 12, Asheville, North Carolina 28805, 828-232-5415, Fax: 828-253-1556, mailbag@worldmag.com
+ U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 100 F Street, Northeast, Washington DC 20549, 202-942-8088, help@sec.gov
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[2] Covenant Theological Seminary President Dr. Bryan Chapell Writes on Women’s Roles in the PCA
In a 25 September 2009 article in byFaith Magazine, Covenant Theological Seminary President Dr. Bryan Chapell’s article “A Changing of the Guard Will Guide Us: A New Generation Takes Up the Debate on Women’s Roles,” provides his impressions of the 2009 Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) General Assembly (GA) meeting, and specifically what Chapell’s thoughts are on the vote on whether or not to establish a committee on women’s roles within the church. Chapell writes that he favored a modified version of the committee proposal where only a pastoral letter on the subject may have been created, but Chapell expresses his satisfaction that the proposal was defeated, saying: “I believe that a sovereign God directed His people in a close vote that was best for His church at the time.”
Chapell concluded that the net result of all 2009 PCA GA actions on the role of women in the church was that no changes were made in the status quo, but Chapell did express satisfaction that there “…was a changing of the guard. Beneath the notice of most was the clear evidence of a generational shift in those pastors and ruling elders who were serving on the Overtures Committee and many of the Committees of Commissioners. This can only spell good things for our church’s future as those who have often felt left out of denominational efforts clearly made an effort to make a difference with active participation, persuasive words, and significant numbers. Such efforts will guide where we ultimately go.”
+ Presbyterian Church in America, 1700 North Brown Road, Suite 105, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30043, 678-825-1000, Fax: 678-825-1001, ac@pcanet.org
+ Covenant Theological Seminary, 12330 Conway Road, St. Louis, Missouri 63141, 314-434-4044, Fax: 314-434-4819, president@covenantseminary.edu
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[3] Dissident Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church Members Organizing New Church
A service was held 27 September 2009 in Coconut Creek, Florida by more than 400 people, including the former CRPC choir leader, the former CRPC organist, and sixty-five choir members, most having previously been CRPC choir members. The choir sang Restore My Joy, which it had previously rehearsed at CRPC.
The sermon was preached by the Rev. Gary Cass, who had been Coral Ridge Ministries‘ Center for Reclaiming America director from 2004 until closing in 2007. Cass is the founder of the California-based Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.
The fledgling congregation, which has the working name of “The Church,” has applied for 501(c)3 nonprofit status, and is considering such things as having adequate meeting space and what denominational affiliation “The Church” may seek.
As reported in the 12 August 2009 Presbyterians Week, CRPC Choir members were addressed at their 5 August 2009 evening rehearsal by church officials, and told to consider resigning if they signed the petition calling for CRPC Senior Pastor the Rev. W. Tullian Tchividjian’s ouster.
+ Sun Sentinel, 200 East Las Olas Boulevard, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33301, 954-356-4000, afins@sun-sentinel.com
+ Presbyterian Church in America, 1700 North Brown Road, Suite 105, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30043, 678-825-1000, Fax: 678-825-1001, ac@pcanet.org
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[4] Presbyterian Lay Committee Reveals PCUSA Funding of ACORN
Editor Emeritus of The Layman Parker T. Williamson, in a 21 September 2009 article in The Layman Online titled “ACORN Received PCUSA Grants,” describes the multiple grants provided to what the Associated Press calls the “scandal tainted,” Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) by the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), including a 2008 US$35,000 grant to a Bridgeport, Connecticut ACORN office and a US$20,000 grant to an ACORN neighborhood organizing project in Providence, Rhode Island.
Williamson reminds readers of 2008 accusations of ACORN voter registration fraud in low-income areas, and of the recent hidden-camera “sting” operation in Baltimore, Maryland and in Washington DC where a couple posing as a prostitute and her pimp were given advice by ACORN employees “…on setting up a house of prostitution and transporting young girls from El Salvador to serve their purported clients,” and “…on ways to lie about their profession and launder their earnings.”
+ Presbyterian Lay Committee, Post Office Box 2210, Lenoir, North Carolina 28645, 828-758-8716, Fax: 828-758-0920, laymanletters@layman.org
+ Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202, 888-728-7228, Fax: 502-569-8005
+ Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), 739 Eighth Street Southeast, Washington DC 20003, 202-547-9292, Fax: 202-546-2483, dcacorn@acorn.org
+ Associated Press, 450 West 33rd Street, New York, New York 10001, 212-621-1500, info@ap.org
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced 22 September 2009 that Santa Rosa County, Florida will be paying the ACLU US$196,000, reduced from the ACLU’s original claim for US$400,000, in legal fees for the ACLU’s efforts to force Santa Rosa County, Florida to sign a consent decree forbidding teacher and staff-led prayer in the schools.
The Liberty Counsel and the Association of Christian Schools International are disputing in the courts the consent decree, which establishes guidelines for teachers and staff.
The ACLU precipitated federal criminal contempt of court charges to be filed against two administrators of Pace High School in Santa Rosa County, Florida, after the two requested and said grace before a January 2009 school luncheon for parents and other adults who had contributed to the building fund for a new athletic field house. After being threatened with prison and with losing their pensions, the two administrators were eventually acquitted of the charges in federal court when the judge ruled that the pair had not deliberately defied the earlier consent decree.
+ Liberty Counsel, Post Office Box 540774, Orlando, Florida 32854, 800-671-1776, Liberty@LC.org
+ Association of Christian Schools International, 731 Chapel Hills Drive, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80920, 719-528-6906, Fax: 719-531-0631, acsi_email@acsi.org
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The U.S. Senate unanimously on 19 March 2009 confirmed the nomination of John Holdren to become Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Holdren in 1977 coauthored a textbook with environmentalists and population control activists Paul and Anne Ehrlich titled “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,” which states the principle that “To provide a high quality of life for all, there must be fewer people,” and goes on to describe several ways in which the government could accomplish lowering the population. These measures include forcing abortion or adoption on single women, implanting sterilization devices in pubescent youths, and placing sterilizing chemicals into water and food supplies. To carry out the depopulation programs, the trio then describes a “Planetary Regime” to administer the world’s resources and population growth through an armed international police force.
The only program the trio specifically endorses in the textbook is the forced sterilization of a woman after her second or third child, upon which they comment, that because of the lack of an attending physician at most third-world births: “Unfortunately, such a program therefore is not practical for most less developed countries.” The International Criminal Court considers involuntary sterilization to be a crime against humanity. The Ehrlichs strenuously deny that either they or Holdren have ever been advocates for draconian population control.
Additionally, Holdren is known for his long-time advocacy of global warming measures, including a 1986 prediction that global warming would kill one billion people by the year 2020.
+ Fox News, 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10036, 888-369-4762, Fax: 212-462-6127, yourquestions@foxnews.com
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During 10 September 2009 confirmation hearings for White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions stated:
“Professor Sunstein has taken an extremely aggressive position with respect to abortion. Under his views, laws restricting access to abortion “co-opt women’s bodies for the protection of fetuses.””
“According to Professor Sunstein, such laws “selectively turn women’s reproductive capacities into something for the use and control of others.” In [Sunstein’s] view, “abortion should be seen not as murder of the fetus but instead as a refusal to continue to permit one’s body to be used to provide assistance to it.” Failure to accept this view, [Sunstein] wrote, is simply a product of one’s accepting the preexisting baseline of women as child-bearers. The role of involuntary child-bearer, [Sunstein] argued, results “only from government interference limiting the capacity to choose not to bear a child involuntarily.””
Americans United for Life places Sunstein on its “short list” of President Barack Hussein Obama’s probable U.S. Supreme Court nominees.
+ C-SPAN, 400 North Capitol Street Northwest # 650, Washington DC 20001, 202-737-3220, viewer@c-span.org
+ Americans United for Life, 655 15th Street Northwest, Suite 410, Washington DC 20005, 202-270-9962, heather.smith@aul.org
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[8] NARAL Honors UCC Official and UCC Member as “Champions of Choice”
The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) Pro-Choice Ohio, at a 25 September 2009 breakfast in Cleveland, Ohio, honored the Rev. Lois M. Powell, a team leader with the United Church of Christ (UCC)’s Justice and Witness Ministries, and Ohio State Senator Dale Miller, a member of Archwood UCC in Cleveland, as being “Champions of Choice.”
Powell is the immediate past chair of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive
Choice in Washington DC. A longtime advocate for legal and accessible reproductive services, she has spoken openly about her own decision to have an abortion in 1970, three years before the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, and her own experience of traveling to New York to have one.
Miller’s attributes his commitment to protecting a women’s right to choose as being rooted in honoring the dignity of women, respecting their decisions, and being concerned about the health and well-being of women and children. Miller added: “It is important that we bring children into this world that, as Jesus said, not only have life but have it abundantly.”
Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, is a
member of First Grace UCC in Akron, Ohio.
+ National Council of Churches, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 880, New York, New York 10115
+ United Church of Christ, 700 Prospect Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115, 216-736-2100, ogm@ucc.org
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In God We Trust (IGWT), a special project of the Alliance for Health, Education, and Development (AHEAD), announced 24 September 2009 their condemnation of the B. Bernice Youngs Elementary School (BBYES) in Burlington Township, New Jersey for forcing children to sing a rap version of the hymn “Jesus Loves the Little Children” in which references to Jesus were replaced with name of U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama.
The video of the schoolchildren singing the song was recently posted on the Internet. BBYES officials released a letter stating that the activity was officially sanctioned.
Bishop Council Nedd, Chairman of IGWT, stated: “What this school did with these children is deplorable. It is bad enough that children are being forced to sing the praises of a politician, but to also take lyrics from a Christian hymn and replace Jesus with “Obama” makes this even worse. In New Jersey kids can no longer pray to God but they are required to praise the President. The principal of this school and every official associated with this nightmare should be dismissed.”
+ Alliance for Health, Education, and Development, 1934 Old Gallows Road, Suite 350, Vienna, Virginia 22182, 703-752-6242, info@InGodWeTrustUSA.org
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Representatives of the Gideons International made a courtesy call to the Superintendent of Schools and the Police Chief of Beverly, Massachusetts, to let them know that sometime during the fall of 2009, the Gideons were going to give away Bibles to students at Briscoe Middle School and Beverly High School from the adjacent public sidewalks and walkways, and that the Gideons would call to notify the school administration on the day of the Bible giveaway.
Beverly High School Principle Sean Gallagher took to the school phone tree and called parents to tell them of the upcoming Bible giveaway, then requested for parents to discuss with their children what to do when someone wants to give them a Bible, “I encourage you to discuss this scenario with your son or daughter and determine how you wish them to handle the situation. Thank you and have a great night.”
When asked why the Gideons Bible giveaway was singled out for parental warnings when during the past three years no other group handing out literature to students merited a parental warning, Beverly School Superintendent Dr. James Hayes said that the concern was because the giveaway was occurring near the schools, saying: “They’ll be confronting students and trying to pass out the Gideon Bibles….Our reason for emphasizing that is only to make sure that students have some forethought as to how to deal with that interaction….I wouldn’t want there to be some difficult situation for kids that they’re caught by surprise. So that’s purely the reason why—that [the students will] know how to graciously deal with that situation.”
+ The National Free Press, 149 York Street, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7K 1R3, general_inquiries@nationalfreepress.org
+ The Gideons International, Post Office Box 140800, Nashville, Tennessee 37214, 615-564-5000, tgi@gideons.org
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A 25 September Religion News Blog article titled “Hate Group Cult Free to Abuse Army Families,” tells of the 24 September 2009 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals decision throwing out a US$5 million verdict against members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, who picketed the 2006 funeral of Iraq war casualty U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder of Westminster, Maryland, carrying signs reading, “Thank God for dead soldiers,” “America is Doomed,” “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,? “Priests Rape Boys,” and “Thank God for IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices].” A jury in Baltimore, Maryland, had awarded the dead soldier’s father Albert Snyder damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy.
The appeals court reasoned that the signs contained “imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric” protected by the First Amendment, and therefore ruled that such messages are intended to spark debate and cannot be reasonably read as factual assertions about an individual.
+ Apologetics Index, Contact Form
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[12] Christians React to Muslim Prayer Rally at U.S. Capitol
The Muslim prayer rally at the U.S. Capitol on 25 September 2009 drew less than 3,000 participants after rally organizers predicted 50,000 Muslims would be in attendance.
Prior to the rally, a letter from The Ad Hoc Committee of Americans for Transparency and Honesty in Religion was sent to rally organizers, which said: “Around the world, the overwhelming number of terrorist acts are carried out by Muslims, that many Muslim-American groups have terrorist ties and that justification for acts of violence against ‘infidels’ is found in the Koran,” then asked the organizers to disavow a lengthy list of terrorist acts committed around the world by Muslims in the name of Islam.
Meanwhile, Operation Save America (OSA) held an eight-hour 25 September 2009 Gospel proclamation at the U.S. Supreme Court. OSA director the Rev. Flip Benham said of the Muslim prayer rally: “They will make this statement of faith that will echo off the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial: “There is no God but Allah, and his prophet is Mohammad.” This last statement demands a rebuke from the people of God. We are headed to D.C. to do just that with our faces low to the ground and our hearts filled with the Gospel of Christ that made this nation free and made this nation great….Islam…has been at war with Christianity for fourteen centuries. There is no dialogue, no common ground, no reaching across the aisle in this battle. We are not called to build bridges to Islam. We are called to storm the gates of hell — to defeat the false god of Islam with the unsheathed Word of God and to set people free from the monstrous tyranny and bondage of this religion birthed in the deepest pits of hell.”
+ Christian News Wire, 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington DC 20006, 202-546-0054, newsdesk@christiannewswire.com
+ Operation Save America, Post Office Box 740066, Dallas, Texas 75374, 704-933-3414, 704-932-3361, orn@bigplanet.com
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Pulpit Freedom Sunday 2009, 27 September 2009, drew eighty preachers across the U.S. willing to defy the unconstitutional 1954 [then-Senator Lyndon Baines] Johnson Amendment to the U.S. Tax Code that limited the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment’s free speech rights of pastors when speaking from the pulpit. Groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State attempt to cower preachers into not addressing the moral issues surrounding elected officials by threatening to report the church to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in order to have the church’s tax-exempt status yanked.
Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley explained that tax-exempt status is not a “gift” or “subsidy” bestowed by the government, saying: “Churches were completely free to preach about candidates from the day that the Constitution was ratified in 1788 until 1954. The real effect of the Johnson Amendment is that pastors are muzzled for fear of investigation by the IRS. Rather than risk confrontation, many pastors have self-censored their speech, afraid to be critical of blatant immorality in government and foregoing opportunities to praise moral government leaders. The participants in Pulpit Freedom Sunday refuse to be intimidated into sacrificing their First Amendment rights.”
Stanley added: “Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit without fear of punishment. No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights…. The IRS should not be the one making the decision by threatening to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status. We need the government to get out of the pulpit.”
+ Alliance Defense Fund, 15100 North 90th Street, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260, 800-835-5233, Fax: 480-444-0025
+ Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 518 C Street Northeast, Washington DC 20002, 202-466-3234, Fax: 202-466-2587, americansunited@au.org
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Members of All Saints Church (ASC) of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, on 8 January 2004 voted overwhelmingly to modify its 1902 parish charter to delete any reference to The Episcopal Church in the United States of America (TEC) and the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina (EDSC), effectively severing the church’s ties with TEC and the EDSC, then transferred the church’s allegiance to the Anglican Mission in the Americas, which is under the oversight of Rwandan Anglican leaders.
The EDSC subsequently filed suit, claiming that a rule codified in 1979 and called the Dennis Canon makes it impermissible for congregations to assume ownership of church property. The initial circuit court trial agreed with the EDSC, and ruled that the church property belonged to the diocese. On appeal, an 18 September 2009 decision by the South Carolina Supreme Court (SCSC) overturned the earlier verdict and ruled that the church property belonged to the church, citing several laws and principles.
The SCSC decision stated that the court could not resolve religious or doctrinal disputes, but said that the property case was corporate in nature and therefore the charter changes made by ASC in 2004 fell under the South Carolina Non-Profit Act, saying, “We find that the Articles of Amendment were lawfully adopted and effectively severed the corporation’s legal ties to [TEC] and the [EDSC]. Therefore, we find that the members of the majority vestry are the true officers of All Saints Parish…” The court decision included a title search beginning with a 1745 deed of trust that culminated in a 1903 quit-claim deed in which the EDSC specifically made clear that the property belonged to the congregation.
+ Post and Courier, 134 Columbus Street, Charleston, South Carolina, 29403, 843-577-7111, torockey@postandcourier.com
+ Anglican Mission in the Americas, 297 Willbrook Boulevard, Pawleys Island, South Carolina 29585, 843-237-0318, Fax: 843-237-4008, info@theamia.org
+ Episcopal Church Center 815 Second Avenue New York, New York 10017, 800-334-7626, cdawkins@episcopalchurch.org
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[15] Erskine Seminary Colombia, South Carolina Campus Professor Dr. Mark Ross on the Ligonier Ministries Blog Writes About EPC Motto “In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity.”
Dr. Mark Ross, Professor of Systematic Theology at Erskine Theological Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina has written a Ligonier Ministries Blog column about the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) motto: “In Essentials Unity, In Non-essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity.” Dr. Ross has attended prior EPC General Assemblies as the fraternal delegate from the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP).
+ Evangelical Presbyterian Church, 17197 North Laurel Park Drive Suite 567, Livonia, Michigan 48152, 734-742-2020, Fax: 734-742-2033, webmaster@epc.org
+ Associate Reformed Presbyterian Center, 1 Cleveland Street Suite 110, Greenville, South Carolina, 29601, 864-232-8297, Fax: 864-271-3729
+ Ligonier Ministries, 400 Technology Park, Lake Mary, Florida 32746, 407-333-4244, Fax: 407-333-4233
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[16] Growing Mosques and Dwindling Churches in Scotland
Foreign Correspondent Colin Randall of the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National in a 26 September 2009 article titled “Empty Churches, Full Mosques,” describes how churches in Glasgow, Scotland, and other parts of Scotland are being converted into mosques as Christians congregations dwindle in numbers while the growing Muslim population desire places of worship, illustrated by the growth in Glasgow from one mosque in 1984 to fourteen in 2009, currently serving a city population of 33,000 Muslims.
General Secretary of the United Free Church of Scotland (UFCOS), the Rev. John Fulton comments: “Within our denomination, I guess there would be varying views. Some would be reasonably happy to see a church maintained as a place of worship; others might have reservations….I suppose it is part of a fairly common trend in which many churches are experiencing declining attendance. I don’t believe demographics are involved. There is still quite a large population in the area [of a closed UFCOS church], but for whatever reasons, the church was failing to draw folk in.”
+ The National, Post Office Box 111434, Abu Dhabi, 971-2-4145328, newsdesk@thenational.ae
+ United Free Church of Scotland, Rev. John O. Fulton – General Secretary, 11 Newton Place, Glasgow G3 7PR, Scotland, 41-332-3435, Fax: 41-333-1973, gensec@ufcos.org.uk
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[17] Free Church of Scotland Pastor Writes that Jesus is the God of the Psalms
Pastor Iain D. Campbell of the Free Church of Scotland in Point on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, in a 20 August 2009 essay on the Creideamh (Scots Gaelic for ‘Faith’) Blog, references recent reoccurrences on several blogs of the argument that by confining worship music to the Psalms, the name of Jesus is never sung.
Campbell emphasizes “…the legitimacy, supremacy and finality of every part of the Bible rightly interpreted,” reviewing several Old Testament passages clarified in the New Testament as to Jesus’ participation therein, then posits, “…for some strange reason, we believe that the divinely inspired songs which Jesus and the apostles used in their worship, somehow fall short because they do not contain Jesus’ name.”
Campbell then describes the serious matter of the proper worship of God according to God’s commands, as quantified in the Reformed Principle of Worship, concluding that we “worship [Christ] not because of the name he was given in his humility, but because he carries the name of God, and, in the mystery of the Trinity, is himself God. There is nothing in God that is not in Jesus….if Jesus is not the God of the Psalms, I do not know who he is at all.”
Campbell concludes the essay by writing: “The Psalms are not anachronistic, even although they belong to the progression of Israel. Like the ten commandments, they are given to Israel for the world. They celebrate God’s saving acts in biblical history, as they point us backwards and forwards to the person and work of the Saviour. They register God’s saving acts in human life as they give us, to quote Calvin…, an ‘anatomy of all the parts of the soul’. And they raise questions that modern hymns, for all their use of Jesus’ name, fail to ask – like why, if we are Christians, do we sometimes feel so alone? The charge that Psalm-singing churches do not worship Jesus is unfounded. It is a man of straw. Jesus is the God of the Psalms, whom all the world will acknowledge one day, as psalms like Psalm 150 make abundantly clear.”
+ Creideamh Blog, Point, Isle of Lewis, Scotland
+ Free Church of Scotland, 15 North Bank Street, The Mound, Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LS, 0131-226-5286, Fax: 0131-220-0597, catherine@freechurchofscotland.org.uk
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A one-day conference on “Building Old School Churches” is scheduled for 17 October 2009 at Providence PCA in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Speakers are church planters and pastors Bill Harrell, Irfon Hughes, and Andrew Webb. Topics to be covered include:
— What is an Old School Church?;
— Things I wish I’d Known Before I Began a Church Plant;
— The Importance of Pastoral Visitation in Building a Church; and,
— Pitfalls in Church Planting and How to Avoid Them.
+ Providence PCA, 2801 Ramsey Street, Fayetteville, North Carolina 28301, 910-630-1215, Fax: 419-730-5385, ajwebb@providencepca.com
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