09AR14-33

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Subject line:

AR 14:33 - Is Latin Pentecostalism becoming hopelessly corrupted?

In this issue:

HOMOSEXUALITY - reinvigorating religious activism to gain ground

LATIN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY - strange brew continues to grow

MORMONISM - Slate speculates on the LDS apocalyptic influence

Apologia Report 14:33

August 27, 2009

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HOMOSEXUALITY

"Activists Work to Show Gays Are Not Anti-Religious" by Dan Gilgoff -- a June 20 Barna Group survey notes that the gay and lesbian population only "constitutes about 3% of adults." U.S. News & World Report comments on the survey which finds that "58 percent [of gays and lesbians] say they've made a personal and ongoing commitment to Jesus Christ.

"And though they are much less likely than straights to share the beliefs of born-again Christians - which comes as no surprise, since most churches in the born-again tradition condemn homosexuality - the Barna survey found that 27 percent of gays do hold those beliefs. 'Many in the Christian community assume there's this significant gap between heterosexuals and homosexuals in terms of faith beliefs and activities,' says George Barna, the country's top pollster on religious issues, who supervised the survey. 'While there are statistically significant differences, it's the narrow size of the gap that's most surprising.'

"The poll unleashed a torrent of hate mail, mostly from believers furious with Barna's conclusion: that many gays are Bible-believing Christians. ...

"Some gay rights leaders objected to the idea of building bridges to faith groups and leaders. 'For as long as there has been an anti-LGBT [lesbian gay bisexual transexual] movement, the language and organizations behind it have been religious,' says the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, who spearheads faith outreach for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. ...

"A recent National Gay and Lesbian Task Force analysis of gay activists' failure to stop California's ban, known as Proposition 8, concluded that the movement 'has a problem with religion.'

"'The voices of conservative religious leaders,' the report read, 'must be responded to by the voices of progressive faith leaders whose religious beliefs and traditions allow them to speak to people of faith as moral equals.' ...

"While enlisting religious leaders in political fights, gay rights activists are also working to make churches and denominations more gay friendly." <www.tinyurl.com/mfos35>

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LATIN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY

"Power Pentecostalisms: The 'non-Catholic' Latin American church is going full steam ahead - but are we on the right track?" by Milton Acosta -- another dire warning of theological danger ahead. Acosta is alarmed that in Latin America, "the non-Catholic church is growing - often without any connection to historical Protestantism. ... With hardly any Christendom left to speak of, the future of Christianity is wide open for new and unexpected developments." This sort of open environment has historically resulted in widespread aberration.

Acosta tends to support this observation. "Many of these [non-Catholic Christian churches in Latin America], often called 'neo-Pentecostal,' are self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating without any historical connection to classical Pentecostalism.

"Despite their similarities, these churches are not unified. Some experts say non-Catholic Christianity in Latin America is best described as 'neo-Pentecostalisms' - plural. ...

"[T]he neo-Pentecostalisms may be based on neither Protestant nor Catholic core doctrine, but on a convergence of popular Catholic religiosity with popular Protestant religiosity. In that case, we are likely witnessing a new form of post-, neo-Christianity.

"The future of Latin American theology concerns some theologians for three reasons: faulty theology, divisionism, and the proliferation of sub-international-standard theological institutions along with a cheap 'degree fever.'"

Acosta comments on the lack of descriptive consensus on the part of those watching and reporting on the situation which is due largely to the movement's diversity. In this essay he focuses on a subgroup that he calls "the apostles and prophets movement." He also refers to Latin American church historian Arturo Piedra, who "says that the 'religious space of "prophets and apostles" is dominated by an anachronistic Protestant shamanism, made up of individuals (actores) who pretend to save the world through an animist manipulation of evil spirits.'" Acosta concludes that they "focus more on the fear of spirits than on the hope that Christ gives" and are "not teaching the central message of the gospel, but a gospel of prosperity.

"Television is a powerful influence on Latin American theology. The TV channel Enlace (owned by the Trinity Broadcasting Network) has become 'a true magisterium' beyond denominational beliefs and practices. It is available in most Latin American countries. Most evangelicals turn it on several times a week. No matter what topic Enlace is dealing with, the message boils down to making 'pacts' with God, wherein a person must demonstrate the seriousness of his prayer request by sending money along with it. Pastors with little or no training imitate Enlace preachers, and the effect intensifies."

Piedra sees this as "religious consumerism." Acosta adds that the result is one in which "Christian ethics have been replaced by magic, [and] Christ has no humanity."

It doesn't help that "Latin American institutions that somehow grant the highest academic degrees in theological education have proliferated. More than 60 percent of our pastors have no theological education. When they join a church's staff, they often go on to get degrees from institutions that they themselves started." Consequently, "We end up in 'the perverse circle of mediocrity,' says Lausanne International Deputy Director for Latin America and seminary founder Norberto Saracco."

Acosta concludes: "Bad [and/or neglected] theology harms people. Sometimes they see that what they have been taught doesn't match up with the truth. Often, they reject God because of it." Christianity Today, Aug '09, n.p. <www.ow.ly/jaDX>

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MORMONISM

In his essay "How Is America Going to End?" slate.com senior editor Josh Levin argues that as the Catholic Church helped preserve Roman civilization, Mormonism might do the same for America. In Levin's view, "the Catholic Church was the one entity that maintained Roman hierarchies, Roman thought, and the Latin language as the rest of the continent descended into illiteracy.

"A religion is also a good candidate to keep America alive. The history of Catholicism shows that religious movements can outlast the political systems in which they arose. ...

"What religion might serve as America's preservationist?" Levin says, "A better candidate [than the Catholic church] to serve as America's time capsule: the Mormons. In an aside in 2007's Are We Rome? [1], Cullen Murphy posits that Salt Lake City could become 'the Vatican of the third millennium,' with the Mormon Church 'propagating a particular, canonical version of America.' Orson Scott Card, the Mormon science-fiction writer, lays out a similar premise in the 1989 short-story collection The Folk of the Fringe [2]."

In support of this proposition, we read that according to "LDS scholar Michael Austin ... 'pretty much every generation of Mormons has perceived itself as the last generation before the end times.'" Levin goes so far as to say that "the Mormons have transformed, incredibly, from vagabonds to the epitome of old-fashioned American values. ...

"In the event of a collapse at home, the Mormons won't take over America or the world by sheer numbers. In 1984, sociologist Rodney Stark projected that if the Mormon Church grew 30 percent a decade - less than the 53 percent rate from 1940 to 1980 - the Mormon population would be 60 million in 2080. With the LDS fertility rate declining, Stark's projection now seems like pure fantasy. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the LDS Church had roughly 12 million members worldwide as of 2006, with 4 million of those active churchgoers. The farther you get from Salt Lake City, the more likely Mormons are to fall away from the faith. The Tribune reported that around 200,000 Brazilians called themselves Mormons in 2000, while the church claimed 750,000 members in Brazil. ...

"In the event of the American end times, Card continues, the church would likely continue to 'regard the Constitution of the United States as a divinely ordered document - including a reasonable separation of church and state. There would be no Mormon Taliban, no Mormon equivalent of sharia imposed on non-Mormons.'" <www.slate.com/id/2224050/>

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Sources, Monographs:

1 - Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, by Cullen Murphy (Mariner, 2008, paperback, 272 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/nncobm>

2 - The Folk of the Fringe, by Orson Scott Card (Orb, 2001, paperback, 272 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/ngnp4o>

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