Heretics R Us
As y’all probably know, some folks out there (perhaps you are one of them) have accused the Emergent/PostModern church of being chocked full-o-heretics. And with a name like Monkfish Abbey even non-Christian folks look at ‘cha kinda funny. Why, just last week an Jew-ish friend said to me ; “Oh right, you have your own cult.” My immediate indignant reply? “It’s not a cult!” Followed quickly by the little voice in my head which said, “I bet all the cult leaders say that. I bet Jim Jones said that!” Then my inner voice laughed. 
I discussed this with our local theologian, Lindell Alderman and he says that technically, Monkfish Abbey is more like a sect than a cult…though we do have lots of rites and rituals which may give us a little bit of a cultish flavor. Sigh. What are you gonna do?
Anyway, in the (modified) words of Kermit the frog, it’s not easy being heretical. In fact some people pay great big $30,000 a week penalities for it. Like the
Reverend Carlton Pearson, of Higher Dimensons Church in Tulsa, OK. He found his theology tipping away from hell and even his mentor, Oral Roberts, considered him as good as dead.
This American Life, my favorite radio show of all times and my constant companion during bookeeping, did a bang up full-hour show on Reverend Pearson. If you think maybe hell is of our own making…if you think maybe, just maybe Jesus died for everyone…then you should really listen to this amazing broadcast. I can’t link you directly there, but if you got to TAL and check out the real audio cast for 12/16/05 you’ll hear it loud and clear. The best part is at the end, and if you can listen to it all the way through without crying…well, wow, I’ll be surprised.
Happily boo-hooing all the way to the altar call,
Rachelle
…I believe in the kingdom come, then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one. ….You know I believed it…
So far, this is interesting.† Carlton was a part of St. Stephens church, of the
Church of God in Christ (a conservative Pentecostal church), where Bishop
McKinney (PhD) was one of his mentors.
speakers> Bishop George McKinney
http://www.intervarsity.org/bcm/conferences/atlanta2002/speakers/mckinney.html
Bishop George Dallas McKinney
Bishop George Dallas McKinney was born August 9, 1932 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Bishop McKinney is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff where he received a BA degree. He received his MA degree from Oberlin College, School of Theology in Ohio; a Ph.D. from California Graduate School of Theology in Glendale, California; and received an honorary D.D. from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Bishop McKinney is the founder and pastor of St. Stephen’s Church of God in Christ (COGIC) in San Diego, California. He and his wife, Jean, are also the founders of the St. Stephen’s Nursery School; Southeast Counseling and Consulting Services; American Urban University; and the St. Stephen’s Retirement Center, located in San Diego. Since 1985, Bishop McKinney has served as Jurisdictional Prelate of the Southern California Second Ecclesiastical Church of God in Christ. In November 2001, he was elevated to the General Board (the presidium) of the Church of God in Christ. A former probation officer and a renowned licensed Marriage, Family and Child Counselor, Bishop McKinney is internationally known for his dynamic preaching and teaching ministry which places him in constant demand as a conference and convention speaker. Bishop McKinney is the author of numerous books, including Cross the Line: Reclaiming the Inner City for God, which he co-authored with William Kritlow in 1998. He served as the senior editor for the African American Devotional Bible, published by Zondervan in April 1997. Currently, he serves as publisher for the San Diego Monitor Newspaper. He has received numerous honors in the fields of religion and community service. In 1995, the San Diego Rotary Club named Bishop McKinney “Mr. San Diego”. On March 7, 2001, the National Association of Evangelists (NAE), presented Bishop McKinney with a Racial Reconciliation Man of the Year Award in recognition of all the work he has done for many years in the area of racial unity. Bishop McKinney has been happily married to Jean Brown McKinney for 44 years. They are the proud parents of 5 sons and the grandparents of 13.
This sounds like an ignorant store front pastor to me.
Every member of McKinney’s family advanced degrees. Carlton and the bishop are still good friends, so it’s interesting that he would describe his world as being so closed.
God is not the author of confusion.
Also, so far, they are not describing how he confessed that he had been
deceiving his church about being a virgin. The confession and his marriage had something to do with him losing his congregation.
Anyway, Carlton is being deceptive.
An article on Carlton’s former Bishop pastor, who still happens to be a friend of his.
Bishop’s book puts blame for society’s ills squarely on shoulders of Satan
By Sandi Dolbee
UNION-TRIBUNE RELIGION & ETHICS EDITOR
February 17, 2005
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
For Bishop George D. McKinney, founder of St. Stephen’s Cathedral Church of God in Christ, attending church is part of the solution.
Not all chains are made of metal. Some are made of drugs and gangs, of the mindless pursuit of happiness and the quest for instant gratification. For Bishop George McKinney, these are some of the things holding African-Americans captive today.
They are, he says, the new slave masters.
After a lifetime of ministering in one of the toughest sections of San Diego, McKinney thinks he knows who is to blame.
The culprit, he says, is Satan.
“I firmly believe the reason our precious African-American families were enslaved centuries ago, and the reason they experience enslavement today, is that Satan wants to see us alone and weak,” he writes in his new book, “The New Slavemasters.”
Published last month by Life Journey, an imprint of Cook Communications Ministries in Colorado Springs, the book may surprise people looking for more complex answers to our social ills.
But McKinney is unwavering in his conviction.
“Satan really is the embodiment of all evil,” he says, sitting in an upstairs library at St. Stephen’s Cathedral Church of God in Christ in Valencia Park. “Just as God is the source of all good, Satan is the source of all evil.”
“The New Slavemasters” was released in time for Black History Month, traditionally observed in February. It’s a fitting tribute to a pastor who at 72 is one of the godfathers of San Diego’s African-American Christian community.
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
From rage to gangs and families to divorce, McKinney’s book uses an an evangelical lens. “Satan doesn’t need us to embrace him,” he writes. “He claims victory if he merely drives a wedge.”
The walls of the church library bear testimony to McKinney’s honors. There’s a certificate of commendation from U.S. Congress in 2003, as well as the California State Assembly in 1985. There are awards from the National Association of Evangelicals (”Racial Reconciliation Man of the Year” in 2001) and the Rotary Club (”Mr. San Diego” in 1995).
Nationally, he sits on the Church of God in Christ’s General Board. He was senior editor of the African American Devotional Bible, published by Zondervan in 1997. And two years ago, he was a finalist to become U.S. Senate chaplain (”If this kind of offer comes to people who are economically and socially struggling, it’s a very encouraging example of what can happen in America,” he told a reporter).
Not bad for the great-grandson of a slave and son of a sharecropper. McKinney, one of 12 children in his family, went to Arkansas State College and did graduate work in theology at Oberlin College and California School of Theology in Glendale.
He worked as a chaplain at a state mental hospital in Ohio before coming to San Diego. He served as an assistant pastor here and then, in 1962, started his own congregation in the basement of a pizza restaurant. St. Stephen’s, on a corner of Imperial Avenue, has about 1,200 families.
In 1985, McKinney became a bishop in his black Pentecostal denomination founded in 1907, and now oversees some 40 churches in the Second Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of Southern California.
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He and his late wife, Jean, raised five sons, four of whom work at St. Stephen’s (one son lives in North Carolina).
McKinney is an evangelical Christian who believes in God, Jesus and Satan. And he thinks that if you don’t believe in the devil, you are only kidding yourself. “He’s very, very real, and he doesn’t mind people denying his existence,” he says. “That way, he’s able to do what he does with greater freedom.”
Early buzz
This is McKinney’s eighth book, and it’s a mixture of old-fashioned fire and brimstone and modern-day culture.
“In the spiritual war for our youth, gangs are Satan’s nuclear bomb, one of his ultimate weapons against the most vulnerable among us, our confused and searching teens,” he writes. “Through lies, coercion, intimidation, and brutality, by appealing to pride and a hunger for power and purpose, this New Slavemaster draws these poor souls in and binds them there.”
His solution? “Fortunately, God can break those bonds.”
The human soul is the battleground for this war of good and evil. “In my theology, God uses people to promote justice, peace, fidelity in marriage, citizenship,” he explains. “The enemy of God uses them to promote war, abortion, indecency.”
Satan, he adds, “operates through people who have resisted being open and under the authority of God.”
The book also is a social polemic for conservative family values – advocating, for example, that single mothers give their babies up for adoption so they may be raised by two-parent families.
And he argues for the importance of going to church and nurturing a faith. That, he writes, is where real freedom comes from.
Deception, confusion
Western religions – including Judaism, Islam and Christianity – traditionally regard Satan as God’s adversary. The New Testament describes the devil as a fallen angel, who eventually will be banished, along with his followers, to “the eternal fire.” In Buddhism, the tempter and the lord of destruction is known as Mara.
Polls show that about two-thirds of Americans believe in the devil, though they’re not really clear about whether Satan is a symbol of evil or a real being.
But like McKinney, there is a legion of religious leaders who are more certain. For them, the devil isn’t just a Hollywood plotline. As one Vatican official put it: “The existence of the devil isn’t an opinion, something to take or leave as you wish.”
Nor is McKinney the only one writing about the Prince of Darkness lately. Earlier this year, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, best known for his book, “The Road Less Traveled,” came out with “Glimpses of the Devil,” chronicling his own acknowledgment of the existence of the evil spirit and his experiences as an exorcist.
“There is this notion that it’s sort of anachronistic and not proper to think about the devil as a real being,” says McKinney.
But not for him. “Part of his strategy is to cast this web of deception that he’s a non-being; meanwhile, he goes about this dastardedly work of destroying families, lives, relationships, futures.”
McKinney hopes the book will enlighten people about what’s at stake. “I want them to have a better understanding of the nature of our journey, and we are in fact engaged in a journey.”
His own journey continues. St. Stephen’s is about to open a second senior citizen housing complex. The church also operates a preschool, a counseling center and a university. He himself has cut back some. He preaches at only one of the three Sunday services, and he’s thinking about retiring in three years, when he is 75.
He misses his wife of 47 years, who died last June, and he writes a moving dedication to Sister Jean McKinney in “The New Slavemasters.”
In a note that he encloses in the book, McKinney speaks of making a difference “in the eventual eradication of these self-imposed chains that enslave us today.”
And the eventual eradication of Satan.
“For Satan,” he writes, “the stakes couldn’t be higher. When he loses this war, he and his followers will be tossed into an eternity of complete darkness. . . . Therefore, for him, this is total war.”
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Oh yeah, Pearson and Carlton may still be good friends.
It’s sad that he feels that he needs to manipulate people.
oh yes, i listened to that broadcast on rev. pearson. and yes, i wept. i can’t even put into words the feelings that it stirred in me.
looking forward to visiting your little “cult” very soon!
Certainly Christ died for all, and His salvation extends to all. That’s the meaning of the Incarnation. Certainly hell is of our own making. Hell is to stand in the presence of the God’s Love eternally and to be able to offer nothing but hate in return. This is what the Orthodox Church has always taught.
http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html
Okay this is just for fun, but if you think you might not be Chalcedon-compliant and you want to find out what kind of heretic you are, take the quiz!
http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=131773
DI,
This looks interesting, but it seems to me that no one is really reading or at least responding to this blog much. Let’s see if any one takes the test. I will try later?
heck rachelle, if we were to start a cult we sure would have a bunch more money than we do right??
i actually always joke to liam that we should start a cult to raise the money we need to plant our community!
[…] A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity (one of my favorite postmodern church type books…but then you know how I feel about heretics.) […]