United - kamikaze season

From The Journal website:

Unconfirmed reports say Clyde Kilough and Richard Thompson are resigning from the United Church of God council of elders.

The Journal, as of July 30, 2009, was hearing unconfirmed but persistent reports that two members of the United Church of God's council of elders, Clyde Kilough of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Richard Thompson of Eustis, Fla., have resigned their seats on the council but that Mr. Kilough will continue in his role as president. Both men are longtime Church of God members, and both are elders of the United Church of God an International Association, headquartered in Milford, Ohio.

The Journal has checked with UCG sources who would neither confirm or deny the reports. The 12-man council of elders in recent months, especially since the recent election during the general conference of elders in early May 2009, has moved toward what some observers see as a more progressive position on several key issues that concern the church and its governance. For example, the council is moving toward a much less restrictive position on the topic of elders discussing among themselves how to vote concerning candidates for council positions and for church policies and whether participating in informal discussions by E-mail is appropriate for elders.

Rod on Parade

No comment could do adequate justice to this video.

Pam Dewey on Misogyny (and Meredith)

(Pam Dewey comments on the recent post The Woman haters of Armstrongism?)

Does the obvious misogyny of the WCG past still exist in some or many corners of the COGs? Of course.

From my personal perspective and experience ... yes, unfortunately there are [only] a tiny handful of COG-related women who have felt empowered do anything on even the very minor level I have been able to accomplish. I've had a website that can't compete with Ambassador Watch for traffic :-) but I've had over a half million visitors. The site even garnered a mention a couple of years back by Cal Thomas, who is a well known media commentator and one of the most widely published newspaper commentators in the world. (He was looking on the web for info on groups that are big in End Time Prophecy pontifications, and came across my Field Guide. His citation of it in his international print and online column one day led to a big leap in Field Guide site visitors for a few days!)

I've been giving presentations (dubbed "seminars" ... don't dare call 'em "sermons" ;-) ) for over a decade at the Feast of Tabernacles and other COG venues, attended by both men and women. (I've even had some people say that my seminars are one of the primary reasons they chose a particular FOT site.)

I've been invited all over the US to give similar presentations at local and regional church gatherings for over a decade.

I've been an editor and writer for a number of COG publications, as well as written one book of my own and co-authored two books with Ron Dart.

So are my efforts applauded in all circles? Of course not. Even though I get along with many, many men (and am most often invited by men to speak to groups) ... it is obvious to me that I am viewed by certain men in COG leadership positions as a threat. And evidently particularly because of my gender.

I could understand if I were in their own congregation or denomination ... if so, they could bash me over the head with scriptures and make me shut up through sheer corporate authority. But you'd think what I do "outside" the confines of a particular group would have no impact or interest at all to the leaders within the group. I'm certainly no threat to their constituency, since none of their loyal members will ever be going to a place where I am speaking!

Yet some time back I got an email from some fellow who was getting tapes from Rod M. He had written to me to apologize for the beating my reputation had taken on a recent Rod tape. Now mind you, I've never had anything at all to do with Rod Meredith. I've never met him, never been part of any group he was involved with since the WCG. Nor have I corresponded with him. But he evidently named me by name in a sneering way on this particular tape that went out to his constituency around the world.

The fellow that wrote to me said that Rod had ranted something along the lines of "There is this woman out there named Pam Dewey who is trying to start a revival in the Churches of God!!" Dearie me. Wouldn't want to wake the dead or comatose. What an insidious idea. I guess I just found it amazing that such a man would find some little grandmother living in Podunk he'd never even met to be that big a threat. Only thing I can think of is that my very existence somehow threatened his masculinity.

Such as it is.

WHAM! The UCG gets blindsided!

Satan knows he has but a short time, brethren, and he's angry! Persecution is already upon God's church, with a horde of slathering, godless ATHEISTS descending on...

Oh, ooops, sorry. Caught in a time loop there. Hang on, I'll slap myself and start again.

Cop a gawk at the GN ad. It's been appearing uninvited on the blog of P.Z. Myers, one of the outriders for the Four Horsepersons of New Atheism. There's been a link to Myers' blog (Pharyngula) here on the AW sidebar for several months. Myers is articulate and entertaining, but clearly not a fan of religion in any form.

But, P.Z. - or more likely his host ScienceBlogs - makes a little extra moolah by selling advertising space on his blog via Google. And here's where the UCG comes in. Talk about niche marketing from hell!

P.Z. however has noticed, and has launched an apocalyptic plague of near-Weinlandian proportions on the lads from Cincinnati.

[H]ere's something I'd like you all to do. Go to that obnoxious creationist ad that keeps appearing here, and take them up on their offer of a FREE booklet. Order it, I did, and it really is free — they don't ask for a credit card number, there are no hidden shipping fees, but they probably will stick your name and address on a mailing list of the gullible (don't worry, though, you aren't, so you are contaminating their list).

It says it takes two to four weeks to ship. As soon as I get mine, I'll open up a thread here with the same title as the book, and we shall all join in a gleeful public evisceration of their crappy little booklet. If you've got a blog, put a critical dissection of the book there and send me the link, and I'll add it to the post. We'll give them publicity, all right, but it will be the harshest, nastiest, meanest publicity possible — we will do everything we can to make sure that when someone googles their organization or their booklet, all that comes back is a mountain of snarling contempt.

Bear in mind that Myers has what is probably the most popular science blog on the planet, the flagship for ScienceBlogs (which has a current Alexa ranking of 5,859.)

If I was Scott Ashley, I'd be shaking in my boots. Whoop, whoop; red alert. Captain Kilough to the bridge! Charge the phasers and man the photon torpedos Mr. Seiglie... INCOMING!

Hey, that's at least gotta start up a new thread on the elders' forum!

Godless atheists huh? Gotta love 'em! Now, I'm off to order a copy of that booklet... if they haven't been all snapped up already.

And stay tuned!

The Women haters of Armstrongism?

The review comments about Basil Wolverton's art and misogyny (see the previous post) set me thinking.

One of the things that puzzled me about church "literature" during my co-worker phase was the almost complete absence of female by-lines. Secular magazines included articles from talented women journalists as a matter of course, but not The Plain Truth or Tomorrow's World. Booklets were of course exclusively authored by men. I understood that the church didn't ordain women as elders (a position held by most church bodies then), but surely that needn't apply to writing articles... The hilarious part was that even articles on women and women's roles were written by men.

Fade out to a large hall in Rotorua, the year is 1975, my first Feast of Tabernacles. The numbers were impressive, but the demographic was truly remarkable. Young people like myself were strongly in evidence and, hard to believe now, the blokes heavily outnumbered the sheilas. This was no good thing, of course, as the gender imbalance put severe constraints on marriage prospects. If nothing else, it's clear WCG attracted more males than females.

Remember the make-up ruling? Ron Dart could flaunt his toupee, but heaven help a woman with lipstick. The husband was boss, and his sexuality was in doubt if he didn't make a show of exercising Godly "leadership" over the little lady and kids. Paul may have been "hard to understand" in some areas, but here he was loudly quoted with little thought to cultural nuances.

Google's analysis tools reveal that men overwhelmingly outnumber women as visitors to sites like this. Check out the comments: it's the same story. The legacy lingers even here.

Name ten prominent women in the WCG/GCI and its splinters. Tammy Tkach hardly counts - she's only in the limelight because she's joined at the hip to Joe. How about women who have made it on their own merits? Pam Dewey, Dianne McDonnell, Sheila Graham... um, um...

So here's the question. Was misogyny a major problem in WCG? Is it still a major issue in the splinters?

Of course, anyone of either gender is welcome to submit a comment, but it would be particularly interesting to get a strong women's perspective on this question. And please, even if you don't feel like posting a comment, do consider taking the poll which you'll find in the sidebar.

"The van Gogh of the Gross-Out"

Basil Wolverton's art has been admired and despised in equal measure, but few reviews have been as scathing as this one in the New York Times.

"He reserved some of his most repellent effects for images of women. Like so much of American culture in the ’50s, when a new feminist consciousness was just beginning to coalesce, his work comes across as spectacularly misogynistic. That he turns men into freaks too doesn’t really alter the impression that Wolverton’s art is a for-boys-only art."

And a certain "Protestant sect" gets a mention:

"In 1941 he had become a member of a Protestant sect called the Radio Church of God, later the Worldwide Church of God. He was ordained as an elder in 1943, and as his contribution to the sect he illustrated some of its apocalyptically minded publications, as well as the biblical account of the earth’s final days.

"Several of his end-of-the-world pictures are in the show, and they’re wild. Plagues descend on the sin-ridden human race. Bodies break out in disfiguring boils. Faces burn, shrivel and stretch into masks of fear... In those profoundly and ingeniously disintegrative images, everything inside the body — viscera, muscles, mucus, bones, brains — moves to the outside. Heads multiply; tongues turn into noses; hands become feet. Figures become dripping, leaking containers of crude matter, like the figures of sinners and saints in Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” who scowl and weep and pout as they float above the pit."

If you're in the Big Apple you can view the masterpieces for yourself through Aug. 14 at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, Chelsea. Click over and read the full review. Be sure to view the slideshow while you're there.

Krautmann book

Thanks to DP for drawing attention to a book by former WCG minister Paul Krautmann. The Rich Hiker's Guide to Walking with God was published in 2007, but I confess to never having heard of it before.

Substantial excerpts can be found on Google Books. This is apparently an evangelical Christian testimony. Click on the image for a section of the back cover blurb.

Krautmann seems to have been associated with the WCG/GCI in Perth, and John Klassek's now defunct Life Today magazine. (Since 2007 Klassek seems to have dumped WCG in favor of a relationship with Sabbatarian movements such as COG7 and Ron Dart - and his links page also appears to endorse Craig White's BI-promoting site. There is no indication that Krautmann is currently associated with Klassek.)

The Rich Hiker's Guide to Walking with Godis available through Amazon.

Journal - UCG, McDonnell & Jutsum

Dixon Cartwright has released the latest issue of The Journal, one that is sure to have high interest value for members and friends of the UCG, with major items and a comprehensive interview following recent developments at the elders' conference. For those who belong to one of the major derivative groups from WCG/GCI, the existence of an independent, objective and professional news source such as this is a huge asset, and hopefully one they avail themselves of.

Two other items particularly caught my eye. One is an essay by Dianne McDonnell, reacting to an earlier article by Sheila Graham. Mrs Graham is a prominent member of WCG/GCI, and a women's advocate within that group. Mrs McDonnell is the sole female pastor in the COG splinter tradition, serving the independent Church of God - Dallas/Fort Worth.

If Mrs McDonnell's pastorate is thought of as progressive, given her position, this doesn't seem to flow through into theology. McDonnell takes Graham to task for suggesting that Bible texts can be used to justify contradictory positions.

Brethren, that is just not true. The Bible can be bent and twisted and hammered and taken out of context to look as if it is saying something it is not. But, if you take each verse in context and check a difficult passage carefully back to the Greek words with some good software, you can stand solid on Bible verses.

When you find two verses that seem to contradict each other, one of the verses has been badly translated or is being misunderstood in some way. The Bible does not contradict the Bible when rightly understood. Beliefs that aren’t Bible-based are just the traditions of men.

Nor is McDonnell particularly enamored with Paul.

Obviously the WCG (now known officially as Grace Communion International, or GCI) is mired in the writings of Paul, as are many Protestants. The apostle Peter says of Paul, “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand,” and then he warns about people who distort Paul’s words “to their own destruction” in 2 Peter 3:16. Jude reveals the presence among Christians of “godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality” (verse 4).

If you've ever wondered what happened to Ross Jutsum, perhaps WCG's most gifted musical talent, there's a substantial article by the editor that covers his story. There's a wonderful quote from Herman Hoeh who, when first hearing Jutsum's Strine accent, remarked: “Young man, you do realize that Australia is a cultural vacuum?”

Perceptive fellow that Hoeh, and four million New Zealanders saith "amen."

There's a download of the first and last pages available free at http://www.thejournal.org/issues/issue135/jf053109.pdf

Painful Truth editor launches Sci-Fi Novel

The Painful Truth editorship has been handed down, a bit like the office of Pope, in a succession that has sometimes been smooth, and sometimes not. I'm just grateful that it endures. Among the holders of founder Ed Mentel's mantel has been John Bowers, who preceded (if I have this straight) James, the current editor.

Here's a bit of his bio: "John Bowers began his first “novel” at age 13. It took him nine months and was only 30,000 words, but he finished it. Before he graduated high school, he wrote four more. His teachers were convinced he was the next Hemingway, but it wasn’t to be.

Bowers was raised in a religious cult. Cults suppress creativity, demanding obedience and conformity. Though he wrote several more novels for fun, he never published them, and by the age of 30 he gave up writing entirely.

"At age 44 he broke out of the cult, rediscovered his dream, and began writing again. He wrote a juvenile adventure for his children, and then began a science fiction novel." (source)

That novel is A Vow to Sophia. The blurb reads:

When twelve year-old Onja Pedersen vowed before Goddess Sophia to free her mother and sister from Sirian slavery, she had no idea how to make it happen; six years later, when the Sirian Confederacy attacks the Solar Federation, she sees her chance and joins the United Federation Fighter Fleet.

From the day she enlists, Onja faces opposition — a skeptical recruiter, a sadistic drill instructor, a vengeful XO — but there are good men as well, and eventually she falls in love. Consumed by hatred of the Sirians, Onja lusts only to kill, and quickly becomes the deadliest gunner in the Fighter Service. In just two years of combat, she destroys dozens of enemy fighters, two troop transports, and faces down an enemy carrier. Then Fate hits back, and takes from Onja her most prized possession. The man she loves.

A Vow to Sophia is the story of a girl facing impossible odds in a galaxy gone mad. It’s a story of courage, bravery, passion, and single-minded determination. Onja’s hatred fuels her success, but in the end, love is her salvation.

BTW, if you haven't checked out the Painful Truth since its makeover, it's worth a look.

San Diego member faces 2nd degree murder charges

This item was forwarded with the following background info. "Virgil was known for his personal "bling" (he had two big gold rings - which are visible in newspaper photo) and the Rolls Royce he drove. His kids were very nice kids and his wife is a lovely lady.

"Virgil Gordon is a self-made man. He made a name for himself in South San Diego recycling lumber and timbers from old buildings that were being torn down. He and his crew would pick up wood, take the nails out, and re-sell the wood to people wanting cheaper lumber or lumber that had an aged look (currently very trendy and very "Green" for the environment.)

"Virgil had been known to be very active in improving his local community, an area that is predominantly Black and Latino. He was featured in one Feast film as a "Christian example". He frequently sang in a deep baritone voice at Church Holy Days and Feast days. He was very well known in the San Diego church and was an ordained elder."

Click on the image to read the text.