(PDF version available here)
EC’s 2020 Octoberfest will be via the Internet due to the need for physical distancing during the pandemic, just as we met via the Internet for our 2020 ConnECtion in June. In October, we will be remembering the 400th Anniversary of the Puritan Pilgrims’ arrival in the New World.
Roy Clements, eminent UK evangelical leader and popular preacher in Cambridge, came out as gay in 1999. So, we invited him to preach at our first Octoberfest. That, was in 2003, the 300th birth year of John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards. He preached for us again in 2004, in the 400th year of the King James Bible’s launching, and again in 2005, the Centenary of George MacDonald’s Homegoing. In 2006, we noted Richard Wurmbrand’s witness through years of torturous imprisonment under Communism. In 2007, we celebrateded Charles Wesley’s 300th birthday, the 200th anniversary of Wilberforce’s victory over the British slave trade, and the 100th year of Francis Thompson’s Homegoing. In 2008, we honored the Centennials of Ira D. Sankey and Helmut Thielicke. In 2009, we celebrated John Calvin’s birth in 1509 and Jacob Arminius’ birth in 1609. In 2010 we honored Homegoing Centennials of William Holman Hunt and Louis Klopsch, the publication of The Fundamentals, and F. F. Bruce’s birth. In 2011, we remembered the Homegoing Centennials of Carrie A. Nation and Hannah Whitall Smith and birth Centennials of Mahalia Jackson and Bob Jones, Jr. In 2012, we honored Jacques Ellul’s and Francis A. Schaeffer’s birth Centennials and Lottie Moon’s and William Booth’s Homegoing Centennials. In 2013, we commemorated the Bicentennials of Jemima Luke, David Livingston, Soren Kierkegaard, and Robert Murray McCheyne. In 2014, we recalled Tercentennials of Matthew Henry, James Hervey, William Romaine and George Whitefield and Francis Scott Key’s Bicentennial. In 2015, we honored Centennials of Anna B. Warner, Fanny J. Crosby, Booker T. Washington, and William Howard Doane. In 2016, we honored the anniversaries of John Foxe, John Owen, John Berridge, Francis Asbury, J. C. Ryle, and Eugenia Price. In 2017 we recalled the 500th year of Martin Luther’s Homegoing. In 2018, we celebrated the 100th birthdays of Gardner C. Taylor, Billy Graham and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In 2019, we honored Philip Schaff, Julia Ward Howe, and Susan Warner in the 100th year of their Homegoings.
On each Ocean Grove weekend, we had Bible expositions and we examined autographical material and assorted mementoes from our historic honorees.
At each EC worship service in Ocean Grove’s Thornley Chapel, as we always do, we gave away the entire morning’s offering to another Christian ministry, without respect to their specific take on homosexuality. These included various city rescue missions, The Voice of the Martyrs, Lottie Moon Fund, George Whitfield’s Bethesda Academy, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting, etc.
Donald W. Dayton, a longtime friend of Evangelicals Concerned and an EC keynoter, has passed into the peace of Jesus’ nearer presence. Christianity Today reported: “On May 2, the theological world lost one of its most unique voices, the Wesleyan Methodist Church lost one of its most ardent sons, and hundreds of students and colleagues lost one of their fiercest friends.” He taught in five seminaries and served as president of both the Wesleyan Theological Society and the Society for Pentecostal Studies.
Whenever Don was in New York City, he’d come to EC’s Bible study and join us for dinner. As CT recalls, Don was, “by all accounts brilliant, a voracious reader and lover of books.” We in EC used to joke with Don about his car’s being literally loaded up, piled high, with his books!
The Church of the Brethren has split over homosexuality. Before the closing meeting for the separation, the moderator graciously led the remaining churches in a blessing for the withdrawing churches and graciously led the withdrawing churches in a blessing for the remaining churches.
“The religious landscape of the United States has undergone major changes since 2008”, according to Pew Research. “As the share of registered voters who are religiously unaffiliated has increased, the share who identify as Christian has declined. Today, Christians make up about half of Democrat voters (52%); in 2008, about three-quarters of Democrats (73%) were Christians. Over that same period, the so-called “nones” have doubled as a share among voters who are Democrats, from 18% to 38%. The changes among Republicans have been far more modest: Christians constitute 79% of Republican voters, down from 87% in 2008.”
“White evangelical Protestants have seen one of the largest moves toward the GOP over the past 25 years – 78% now identify as Republicans, up from 61% in 1994 – and white Catholics also have become more heavily Republican. Religiously unaffiliated voters have been trending toward the Democratic Party over the past few decades, and two-thirds are now Democrats.”
Some 150 progressives and classical liberals have spoken out against the Cancel Culture. Harper’s Magazine published their concerns, “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”. It says: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”
“Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement”.
Signatories include Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, Salmon Rushdie, J. K. Rowling, Katha Pollett, Khaled Khalifa, Orlando Patterson, Jonathan Haidt, Jonathan Rauch, John McWhorter, Garry Wills, Beri Weiss, Fareed Zakaria, Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker, David Frum, Jeet Heer, Wendy Kaminer, Margaret Atwood, Randi Weingarten, Laura Kipnis, Kian Tajbakhsh, Zephyr Teachout, Susannah Heschel, et al.
Andrew Sullivan, veteran gay and contrarian columnist, even conservative, has signed off at New York magazine. He says, since Vox Media took over, it’s become more and more hostile to voices like his. New York magazine, launched in 1968, was, from the first, promoted as “with it”. Yet, in 1971, New York rejected a classified ad for our Homosexual Community Counseling Center for services from pro-gay psychiatrists, psychologists ,social workers, etc.
“ ‘Critical’ Bunk: The worst campus ideas are sweeping America” is Sohrab Ahmari’s view of America’s current tragedy. This Iranian immigrant graduated college in 2005, as, he says, “self-righteous and half-erudite (which is worse than being illiterate) … I regarded moral order, beauty, human nature, even truth itself as the impositions of power – specifically white, male, ‘hetero-normative’, colonialist power.” Instead of going for a Ph.D. in so-called “critical theory”, he spent two years “as a rookie, lefty-minded” teacher in the Rio Grande Valley. “I watched the best of my fellow teachers run tight ships, with clear expectations for behavior, systems of reward and punishment and a general ethic of uprightness pervading their classrooms.” He followed their lead with great approval from kids and their parents. Now, a Law School grad, a convert from atheist to Christian, he’s The New York Post’s op-ed editor.
The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture has removed its troubling “whiteness” graphic after waves of negative criticism. The graphic had ascribed traits like “hard work”, “self-reliance”, “delayed gratification”, “being on time” and “politeness” to “white culture”, as if these are not universal “basics” for successful human life.
Chicago public schools have Hindu meditation with candles, incense and chants in two daily 15-minute time-outs. A lawsuit has been filed, noting that the ritual violates the 1st Amendment.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal law forbids job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Twenty-eight states already had laws prohibiting some such cases of job discrimination, but now, given the Court’s fuller ruling, protections are nationwide. The 6-3 decision was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
When President Trump nominated him, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and other mainstream media warned that he’d be a foe of “gay rights”. But, his Bostock v Clayton County, Georgia decision is another proof that politically correct “seers” don’t see so clearly. Gorsuch, followed Scalia’s trademark traditional approach, the plain text of the law, going back to the use of the term, “sex”, as used at the time of that 1964 decision, 3 years before Gorsuch was born.
But while the intervening decades have produced a clearer understanding of homosexuality, they have led to less clarity about what had been called “transsexual”, now, “transgender” matters. Issues over demands that biological males who identify as females should have the right to compete against biological females in sports raise problems of fairness.
“Supreme Court strikes perfect balance between LGBT rights and religious freedom” is the headline of Brad Polumbo’s report in the conservative Washington Examiner,July 8, 2020. He states: “Level-headed voices on both sides of the debate over religious freedom and gay and transgender rights have always acknowledged that we have to draw the line somewhere between opposite extremes. We can’t have zero civil rights protections for gay or transgender people, nor should we enact such expansive protections that females could be forced to wax a transgender person’s testicles against their will.
Federal regulations permit schools to have separate-sex athletics based on biological differences, according to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, with reference to controversies over who may compete in women’s sports in Connecticut schools. “This separation does not discriminate against transgender students under Title IX and the Connecticut schools remain out of compliance with the law for their policy allowing transgender girls to compete with cisgender girls.
In an interview by a Washington Examiner journalist, a TCK who grew up in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, India and Singapore, his final question for the 35-yearold Tyler Goodspeed, Harvard and Cambridge educated economics scholar, historian and Acting Chair of the Trump White House Council of Economic Advisors, was about Goodspeed’s being openly gay. Goodspeed replied: “To be honest, it hasn’t come up at all in the workplace environment. It just means that I have a very supportive spouse who appreciates it when I let him know when I’m going to be late for dinner. I can definitely relate to a minority experience – not the minority experience, but a minority experience.”
Rob Smith is a gay African-American Christian, Iraq War veteran who opposed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and was a guest of President Obama’s when the repeal was signed. Smith, an outspoken conservative Republican, says: “Honestly, coming out as conservative has been more of an earth-shattering, life-altering move for me, personally, than coming out as gay.” Always a Soldier, his Iraq War memoir, expands on this experience.
The Orlando Magic’s Jonathan Isaac became the first player in this NBA season to stand for the national anthem. He explained that, as a Christian minister, “a lot went into my decision. … For me, black lives are supported through the gospel. All lives are supported through the gospel. … that we all fall short of God’s glory, and that at the end of the day, whoever will humble themselves and see God and repent of their sins, that we could see it in a different light … see people’s evil in a different light … it would help bring us closer together, and get past skin color, get past anything that’s on the surface that doesn’t really deal with the hearts.”
A children’s book author, comes out as gay. Matthey Paul Turner and his wife are divorcing and remain friends. “While we’re best friends and thoroughly love doing life, parenting, and pursuing our dreams together, ending our marriage is necessary because I am gay.”
Turner, who wrote When God Made Light, When God Made You,and other titles, said he’s struggled with same-sex orientation for decades. “As someone who spent 30-plus years in fundamentalist/evangelical churches, exploring God through conservative theologies, I lived many days overwhelmed by fear, shame, and self-hatred. … Though my own faith evolved long ago to become LGBTQ+ affirming, my journey toward recognizing, accepting and embracing myself took much longer. But for the first time in my life, despite the sadness and grief I’m feeling right now, I can say with confidence that I’m ready to embrace freedom, hope, and God as a gay man.”
He says his situation would have been unbearable without the “undying grace and support” of his wife. He and his wife’s “utmost desire is to move forward in love and compassion for each other and put the well-being of our kids first.”
From the 1960s through 2019, fewer Americans, age 23 to 38, have lived with a family of their own. Pew Research finds that living with families of their own decreased from 85% in 1968, to 69% in 1987, to 66% in 2003, to 55% in 2019.
Some women are looking for non-romantic ‘co-parents’. Impatient over all the time it might take to find someone to marry, some women are searching “co-parenting” websites for someone with whom to have a baby and rear a child. Traffic has doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic. Most searchers are women but some 20 percent are gay men. Others are single, straight men.
The topic of sexless marriages is popping up, even as full-page ads in the Religious Right’s World magazine. Dubbed, “intimacy anorexia”, it’s said to be a disorder in which one person in a relationship withholds emotional and sexual intimacy from the spouse or partner.
Jerry Falwell Jr. is no longer president, chancellor or a board member of Liberty University, founded by his father who also started the Moral Majority. His severance package is $10.5 million.
In 2012, he and his wife, met a 20-year-old pool boy at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. Falwell’s invested $1.8 million in launching a gay-friendly youth hostel with the pool boy in 2013. Politico called it, “a cesspool of vice”. Falwell’s wife had a protracted extramarital affair with this pool boy who claims Falwell watched their sexual encounters.
The New York City Council votes $4 million for prostitutes’ medical care and legal services in the new budget. The director of an LGBTQ Center says: “Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an influx of sex workers who are reaching out asking for assistance with paying rent, utilities and food.”
California’s General Assembly, with a supermajority of Democrats, eases criminal punishment for LGBT adults who engage in sex with underage teenagers. The bill gives judges discretionary ability to evaluate whether or not to require the LGBT adult to register as a sex offender.
Public corporations headquartered in California must now, by law, appoint minority or gay representatives to their boards of directors. Companies that don’t comply with this law could face fines between $100,000 and $300,000. “Corporations have money, power and influence,” according to the law’s author, Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena. “If we are going to address racial injustice and inequity in our society, it’s imperative that corporate boards reflect the diversity of our state.”
The Black Christian News Network’s Samuel Brooks claims: “As most people know, homosexuals and lesbians are some of the most vindictive and vengeful people on earth.” He warns: “Whether you are for Trump or against Trump, you need to be aware that according to Wikipedia, Mary Trump [niece of the President] is a lesbian and was married to a woman”.
African Americans have the highest level of Scripture engagement among racial groups in America. Around 27 percent of African Americans are Bible engaged, compared with 24 percent of Hispanics, 18 percent of Asians, and 17 percent of Anglo-Americans.
Shaun King, a major Black Lives Matter leader, calls for the destruction of all statues and stained-glass windows that depict Jesus as “white.” He says these are all, “tools of white supremacy”. So: “They should all come down!” With over a million followers on Twitter, Time magazine calls him one of the 25 most influential people on the Internet.
“Allah’s messenger (may peace be upon him) had an elegant white face.” The Qur’an and Hadith repeatedly describe Muhammad as white: “I could see the whiteness of the leg of Allah’s Apostle”, “I saw the whiteness of the thigh of the Prophet”, “I still seem to see the whiteness of the forearms of the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) when he rolled up his sleeves”, etc.
Egyptian lesbian activist Sarah Hegazi fled to Canada in 2018 after months of torture in an Egyptian prison. She told CBC News: “I want to get over it and I want to forget. But no, I’m still stuck in prison.” In June, her body was found in her Toronto apartment – suicide, at age 30.
In a survey of Muslims in America, none identified as lesbian or gay. This is not surprising. It does not mean there are no lesbian or gay Muslims in America. It does mean that the danger of admitting that one is gay or lesbian within the Muslim community, even here in America, is far too high to risk. Even one’s family members see it as their sacred duty under Allah to commit “honor killing” if a family member so shames the family’s honor.
Chicago’s ordinance against Wheaton College students sharing their Christian faith in a public park is unconstitutional, a Federal judge ruled. The City won’t appeal. John Mauck, the students’ attorney, says: “This is a win, not only for our evangelists who want to share the message of new life through Jesus but also for people of all religions and political persuasions,”
University of Massachusetts’s faculty and administrators smeared a conservative Jewish student as a “racist” for speaking up against the hostile BDS mobs. Such college students in America today are regularly publicly shamed and cyberbullied by faculty, the administrators and peers. Louis Shenker was called a dangerous “racist” and falsely charged with hate crimes in order to get rid of him, claiming his “views are not the kind we want to cultivate”. A grandson of Holocaust victims, he was called “a Nazi”! As an outspoken Zionist, conservative and a Trump supporter, he’s anathema in academia today. At a BDS rally he was physically assaulted for just trying to dialogue. Hundreds of big flyers with two photos of his face and the big block letters: “ALERT! WHITE SUPREMACIST LOUIS SHENKER” went viral on the campus. Professors across the country joined radical black race agitator Cornel West in signing onto the crusade against him. UMass has expelled him.
D.C. Police arrest students for writing “Black Preborn Lives Matter” in chalk on the sidewalk at a Planned Parenthood center. These students are upset about the 350 black babies who are aborted every day. Meanwhile, killings and serious injuries, looting, destruction of private and government property and historical sites continue in major cities while their officials restrain the police and push to defund police departments. These cities had more shootings and killings by August, 2020, than they had for the entire year of 2019.
In 2018, according to the FBI, 2,925 African-Americans were murdered and about 2,600 of their murderers were also African-Americans. Cal Thomas reasons: “Given these figures, it would appear that the problem goes deeper than racism and that dismantling the police invites more crime.” He notes, as well, that, “almost three times as many abortions involve preborn black babies as involve preborn white babies. Do ‘Black Lives Matter’ in matters of abortion?”
Fr. James Martin at the Jesuits’ America magazine says: “I am pro-life.” He explains what “pro-life” positions should be: “I believe that all life is sacred, inviolable and a gift from God. That reverence for life includes a desire to care for the unborn child in the womb, the elderly person in danger of euthanasia, the refugee starving on the border, the LGBT youth tempted to suicide and the inmate being readied for execution on death row.” He asks: “Why aren’t all Christians convinced that wearing a mask, maintaining social distance and taking the necessary precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus are pro-life moves?”
In his benediction to end 2020’s Democrats’ Convention, he prayed: “Loving God, open our hearts to those most in need [and again, he included] the unborn child in the womb.” …
Boston’s Berklee College of Music permitted police to use its toilet facilities during citywide anti-cop demonstrations. Students were outraged over this courtesy. The College president, Roger Brown, duly apologized, saying he was “deeply sorry for the impact of this on our college community. This should not have happened, and going forward, it will not happen again.”
New York City’s “taxpayers on ‘hook’ for sex-worker aid” (as a headline put it) – to the tune of over $4 million. The director of The Bronx LGBTQ Center says that, since COVID-19, “there’s been an influx of sex-workers”, i.e., hustlers and prostitutes, needing financial aid.
Generation Z is irritated by the use of periods in grammar, according to a study at SUNY’s Binghamton University. Habituated to smartphone messages without periods, they’re upset.
“Chief” must no longer be used in leadership titles in Duluth. It’s said to be “a racial epithet and turns into a microaggression”. The mayor calls for “more inclusive language” to stop the “hurt and offensive, intentional marginalization.” Duluth’s flag wasn’t “inclusive”, so its new flag reads Umoja, an African word for unity. Appropriation?
AND FINALLY:Adam’s Apples and Achilles Tendons must be cut out – i.e., cut out of our vocabularies. Australian OBGYN specialists are pushing “decolonization” of “misogynist” medical language for human body parts. Everybody has a larynx, but in boys it grows bigger than in girls, so in boys, it’s more noticeable. Women and men, too, (Dare we say, “both genders”?) have that largest of all our tendons. But especially offensive is the fact that, as a female OBGYN doctor gripes about it, too much of the female reproductive system is named “after dead dudes”.