TRICKLE DOWN INDOCTRINATION: HOW SOCIAL JUSTICE CURRICULUM IS INVADING CHRISTIAN EDUCATION INCLUDING HOMESCHOOL.

By Rev Thomas Littleton                                                             12/10/2018

(A godly homeschool mom who does very thorough research provided the findings detailing the infiltration and source of the social justice contaminations of home school and Christian school curriculum in this article. She and others like her are working faithfully to serve their families, raise their children, and guard them from the leaven of corruption invading evangelical circles. The church owes a debt to all the parents and grandparents who are wisely discerning the times and vetting what influences their families and faith. It is this writer’s prayer that many more join their ranks – our ranks and begin to “buy the truth” through Berean fervor and shout it from the rooftops.)

The hottest topic in evangelical circles today is the concern over social justice perverting the mission of the church and distorting the Gospel.The issue is nothing new but actually a retreading of the “social gospel ” of liberal Christianity that impacted mainline denominations decades ago. This issue has become divisive especially after the Dallas Statement signaled a potential split among some of the top tier evangelical leaders. What is not included in the Dallas Statement or any of the current conversations about these concerns is the major source of much of the influence and funding which is flooding social justice into the church nor the pathway through which it is entering which is our own seminaries. Now, as you will see, the same organizations are taking aim at your high school aged child with organizations like the  Acton Institute and Oikonomia Networks views on faith, work and economics.

You can find more on the infiltration of Evangelical Seminaries linked, sourced and explained in detail in these articles. With concerns over Social Justice (formerly called “Social Gospel “ when the liberal influences flooded mainline denominations in the past decades ) on the rise , many believers have begun to be aware of its buzz words and phrases which   have become part of the everyday language – the language of – The Evangelical Deep State.

https://thirtypiecesofsilver.org/2017/12/18/is-this-the-evangelical-deep-state/

http://sbctoday.wpengine.com/is-this-the-evangelical-deep-state-part-two/

Below is an excerpt from these articles to help refresh the memory on the source of social justice curriculum in the evangelical seminaries. The problems resulting from social justice indoctrination through curriculum in our seminaries have brought unprecedented concerns in 2018 which helped inspire the Dallas Statement and massive amounts of writing on the dangers of critical theory and Cultural Marxism influencing the church.

(From Evangelical Deep State Articles)

Acton in Evangelical Seminaries

[Acton Institute, mentioned in Part One of this research, is headed by Father Robert Sirico, who has a history as a radical “homosexual faith activist.” Acton Institute is celebrated by Philanthropy  Roundtable as a key player since the 1990s in synthesizing religion and democratic capitalism. Acton’s blog boasts such bold goals as rethinkingLiberation Theology and Marxism from updated and fresh approaches of application, while oddly accusing Trump supporters of folk Marxism. The ironies run much deeper.

According to the “The New Evangelical Social Engagement” by Brian Steensland and Philip Goff, Acton Institute founder Father Sirico, “’combining free market approaches with Catholic social thought,’ argues that ‘there is no social justice without economic freedom …Instead of a vast welfare state,  social justice is about people fulfilling their responsibilities in justice to their neighbor.’ Therefore, with the support of the Kern Family Foundation, Acton has sponsored curriculum initiatives at thirteen evangelical seminaries.” (p. 63)

These seminaries include Dr. Albert Mohler’s Southern Seminary which sponsors The Commonweal Project.  Note the “Social Gospel” with a strong emphasis on “Social Justice” in this initiative in the videos by Mohler and Os Guinness.  With the help of Acton Institute and over a dozen partners of the same persuasions, Dr. Mohler appears to be endorsing a Rethink of Marxist social policy, while partners like “Poverty Cure .org” – an Acton offshoot – are marketing a RETHINK of Missions to a ”Social Justice” mandate.

Other Reformed seminaries, including the PCA’s Reformed Theological Seminary and Beeson Seminary (now on itsthird Kern grant since 2015), are also using the Acton-inspired, Kern-funded Social Justice curriculum programs which are designed around the “Faith and Work” ideology famously touted by Tim Keller. Some seminary partners have possibly jumped on board with the popular ideology and trendy nature of the Social Justice mantra; however, “rethinking Liberation Theology” and a fresh approach to “Marxist-inspired ideology” on the part of Sirico / Acton and Mohler / Commonweal Project is a bridge too far to simply dismiss as poorly thought out eagerness for cultural engagement on their part.

The Kern Family Foundation

The Kern Family Foundation which is very active in funding education at every level is considered to be a well-anchored Christian funding source. However, the Kern website shows that their partners in K-12 “Bright Minds Good Hearts“ program funding include organizations like Teach for America, whose work in K-12 public education includes a well-defined  focus on pro-LGBTQ policy with radical LGBTQ organizations  like Human Rights Campaign, Campus Pride, The Trevor Network and the most radical Gay and Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Teach for America also promotes Gay Pride Month with GLSEN in public schools each June, even celebrating the notorious “Dear Colleague Letter” – the pro- transgender bathroom directive from the Obama Whitehouse in May 2016. The current focus of all such pro-LGBTQ efforts in public schools is on showcasing LGBTQ History.

Kern also shows its partnership with liberal education giant Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and the Frankfurt School inspired “Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture,” which is a major influence on Tim Keller and others in the Civilitas Group and Cultural Engagement camp. When asked about the funding in an email exchange on January 15th, the Kern Family Foundation denied the funding in the thirteen evangelical seminaries though it is widely touted in the news, press releases and on the websites (of Southern Seminary’s “Commonweal Project” for example) but Kern contacts did link us to Acton University’s site and confirmed the Acton / Kern Curriculum is in five evangelical universities as well.]

HOME SCHOOLERS BEWARE

The very same sources involved in both promoting and providing curriculum for the seminaries and hard wiring our pastors to both be and birth social justice warriors is now coming at our children through homeschool, private, and Christian school high school economic curriculum.

What is critical to note is the 2013 discussion of the goals of the curriculum in 13 evangelical seminaries at the time (this now numbers 23 seminaries plus undergrad in Christian universities) is that the goal is “Social Engagement “. The Faith and Works focus is driven by seeking “Common Ground for the Common Good”.

Acton’s work in economics discusses The Humane Economy and notes “The notion of a “humane economy” has existed since the time of Karl Marx. Indeed, it was Marx, and Catholic social thinkers of the late nineteenth century that gave birth to the term….  we are still in search of the humane economy. We are moving ever so slowly toward this goal.”

 “Oikonomia:  Economics for Life and Purpose”

LEARN MORE

BUY NOW

A 16-week Economics course for private schools, home schools, and cooperatives

 

http://www.economicsinabox.com/index.html

Austrian School of Economics
“Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions…He who wants to deal with [these meanings] must not look at the external world; he must search for them in the meaning of acting men.”

—Ludwig von Mises, father of the Austrian School of Economics”

 

“Economics is about us—how we, as human persons, act and interact everyday—how we make choices, buy, sell, trade and work. With this understanding, it is easy to see why it is important for the Christian to approach economics in light of biblical truth—the ultimate authority on who we are, and why we act the way we do. Because of this, Oikonomia focuses on finding God’s design, glory, and purpose in every economy of life: our families, communities, churches, and work.

 

This understanding of economics removes the veil that often shrouds complex, political or societal problems we see dominating today’s headlines, e.g., poverty, income inequality, wealth distribution, globalization, environmentalism and climate change. By combining a Christian worldview with a thoughtful study of economics, we prepare students to take their place in God’s economy.

 

Oikonomia challenges students to become men and women of character, to recognize their God-given talents and skills, to promote human flourishing through thoughtful, common sense approaches based on sound economic principles and, most importantly, it inspires students to take their part in God’s design for transforming their communities and culture—by God’s grace and for His glory.”

 

“It might come as a surprise, but poverty rates in the developing world are dropping dramatically. In fact, economic growth in developing nations has far outpaced the growth of high income countries. Thus, not only has the world experienced a historic reduction in poverty over the last twenty-five years, but global income today is much more equal than at any time in the last 100 years. Join Acton for a lively pub lecture on the good news about poverty alleviation.”

THE EVER PRESENT INFLUENCE OF TIM KELLER AND THE GOSPEL COALITION -SAMPLE COURSES INCLUDE THE GOSPEL COALITION-ACTON INSTITUTE-FATHER SIRICO -AND MORE

http://www.economicsinabox.com/course-description.html

ONLINE Resources Include:

42 Articles

Written by famous economists and influential writers ranging from Brooks, Friedman and Hazlitt to Olasky, Corbett and Fikkert and from sources as diverse as The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), The Wall Street Journal, The Gospel Coalition, The Heritage Foundation, The Acton Institute, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics. These articles help students make the connections between key economic principles and the public policy issues dominating today’s headlines.

and over 100 edited and engaging video clips

Selected video clips reinforce learned economic principles and show how they are a part of everyday life. From the commerce of Hong Kong to the slums of Kenya’s Kibera, from John Stossel’s humor and cynicism, to Reverend Sirico’s passionate praise of entrepreneurship as a spiritual vocation—these video clips take students on an unforgettable journey around the world that not only entertains and informs, but inspires.

 

“Whether you are working individually at home, as part of a local homeschool co-op or tutorial, or as one of the many small Christian Classical or hybrid schools popping up all over the country, the Oikonomia Road Map makes it easy to integrate this course into a variety of educational environment”

STUDENT AND LEADERS SAMPLE COURSES

For those who want to research some of samples of the curriculum and how the Austrian Economics is presented you can do so at these links.

http://www.economicsinabox.com/assets/e4l-week-3-student-sample.pdf

http://www.economicsinabox.com/assets/e4l-week-11-teacher-sample-updated.pdf

The Oikonomia curriculum is also being used by other homeschool publishers like My Father’s World  https://www.mfwbooks.com/item/60281/Economics-Package/

“This semester-long course will ground the student in understanding the basic principles of economics. Includes online access to additional assigned materials.

Contents:

• Economics for Life (includes one Student Guide)
• Common Sense Economics
• Money, Greed, and God

All items in this package are included with the U.S. History 1877 to the Present package. One semester credit.”

 

TEMPLETON FOUNDATION

Home

Funding of Acton Institute Programs

Economic and Religious Liberty – Making and Magnifying the Intellectual and Practical Connection for Present and Future Global Catholic Leaders

Templeton funding for The Gospel Coalition

In Latin America

Strengthening Protestant Theology & Science Engagement in Latin America

Children’s Catechism for TGC

The New City Catechism: Forming virtue in the hearts and minds of children – Product Development

Templeton Foundation is also focusing it funding on Economics and in particular an modern view of the work of Austrian School and Hayek . https://www.templeton.org/grant/f-a-hayek-program-for-advanced-study-in-philosophy-politics-and-economics-at-the-mercatus-center-at-george-mason-university

And

https://www.templeton.org/grant/austrian-economics-in-the-21st-century

Austrian School of Economics has many critics and basis for criticism. Without giving exhausting detail it helps to understand two things that inspire concern here. Austrian Economics is as much political theory as it is economics and betrays this fact by the reality that it does not engage the science of mathematics in its approach at all. It is theory and it is coming from the realm of thinkers who have influenced the development and spread of communitarianism and socialism. In the case of Acton Institute curriculum for evangelicals – now for high school homeschooler- the problems /concerns only compound. The Common Good, Faith and Work focus carry many influences and share many goals outside Biblical conservative Christian faith.

Co -developer of the Oikonomia Curriculum is Joseph Conners

http://myweb.fsu.edu/jsc07e/   &   http://myweb.fsu.edu/jsc07e/research.html

Conners is an Acton partner and speaker

https://acton.org/event/2018/08/08/acton-tap-dont-look-now-poverty-falling-across-globe-joseph-connors-phd

Connors also works with The Institute for Faith Work and Economic https://tifwe.org/about/

Which is funded in part by The Templeton Foundation ( more information under Tim Keller/ TGC New City Catechism ) https://www.templeton.org/grant/religious-freedom-communicating-the-moral-foundations-of-freedom-and-human-flourishing

Its mission – “The Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (IFEW) is a Christian organization advancing a free and flourishing society by revolutionizing the way people think about the purpose of our work and how to make wise decisions with all that we’ve been given. When Christians understand and live out the biblical meaning of work, then lives, societies, and nations will be transformed for Christ”

These are lofty promises for saving society and setting up Christ dominion for evangelicals through the use of Austrian economics and Catholic/ Jesuit social policy.

INSTITUTE FOR FAITH, WORK, AND ECONOMICS DEFINING YOUR CHILD’S “CALLING” WITH HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM AND MORE

https://tifwe.org/student-life/

https://store.tifwe.org/collections/curriculum/products/understanding-gods-calling-a-high-school-homeschool-elective-course

Teaching the Next Generation about Whole-Life Stewardship

At the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, it’s our goal to equip the next generation with the biblical and economic principles that will help them make an impact in this world for Christ. We work directly with students, professors, Christian schools, and homeschool parents through programs, events, and resources .

OIKONOMIA IS BECOMING A BRAND

Acton’s Oikonomia Curriculum developer Joseph Connors research papers primarily focused on global poverty.

Acton is merging Austrian Economic theory and Hayek with Catholic theology and social policy with espoused Libertarian politics for the Evangelical market in Seminary, undergrad and now High School students / homeschoolers. Acton in reality is pushing Communitarian ideology and adds a heavy dose of Thomas Aquinas where both Catholic and Protestant ideas may freely merge in a pre – Reformation historical context.

Acton celebrates its hero Friedrich A. Hayek who moved across the ideological spectrum of Fabian Socialism of the London School of Economics where he lectured in the early 30s and like Hayek Acton appears fluid in its politics and to whose ideology it actually subscribes. https://fee.org/articles/friedrich-a-hayek-1899-1992/  .In chapter 10 of Brannon Howse recent book “Marxianity” Howse quotes Erik Angner of George Mason University concerning Hayek mixture of socialism and free market capitalism. Angner points out that Hayek favored minimal income, redistribution of wealth, and universal healthcare.

A recent Acton event marks more of the Catholic social policy contribution to its work. This again makes for an odd fit for reformed theological and evangelical institutions.

https://acton.org/event/2018/10/04/freedom-virtue-good-society-dominican-contribution

As well as in Acton’s  2017 event celebrating the Jesuit contribution

https://acton.org/Rome2017

“On Wednesday, 29 November 2017, the Acton Institute and the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Faculty of History and Cultural Heritage of the Church will hold an afternoon conference in Rome on Globalization, Justice, & the Economy: The Jesuit Contribution at the Pontifical Gregorian University.”

Acton’s own influences and range of promotional materials and events certainly make for a mixed bag for a Presbyterian Church of America or Southern Baptist parents in their church school or homeschool covering. It is a disturbing realization that when a PCA or SBC pastor places his church in affiliation with Tim Keller and D A Carson with The Gospel Coalition or other organizations like it- the parents would have little reason on the surface to question or doubt the broad influences coming into their child’s economics curriculum.

The work Acton and Oikonomia are undertaking in Christian higher education is now making its way down the line into High School curriculum and if successful they will no doubt continue to move to target younger and younger ages. If the product has a truly biblical application and backed by conservative convictions on both the political and moral issues such policies impact – then perhaps the materials could have application. However given their source and the merging of Catholic social policy and libertarian ideals – the narrative appears very problematic and so might we expect the outcomes to be troubled as well.

 

Greg Forster who is the head of Oikonomia Network (the Greek word meaning Stewardship) is promoting more materials for congregations concerning giving – for Church giving targeting – not Gospel Missions but Acton / Kern Family Foundation funded wisdom as a “primer for Stewardship, Poverty and Flourishing. This Tim Keller style mantra is the heart and soul of the troubling and much opposed Social Justice false gospel. The high school curriculum looks to be simply working to prime your teen before their careers even begin.

Greg Forster works with Kerns Oikonomia Network and with Acton’s project for the evangelical market. Greg is writer for The Gospel Coalition. In this interesting take on the Tower of Babel Forster provides parents with good reasons for concern on the Oikonomia view of the Word of God as Forster “frames things a bit differently” as he takes license with the Biblical view of the Tower of Babel.

http://blog.acton.org/archives/104774-from-babel-to-babylon-how-god-is-redeeming-our-work.html?fbclid=IwAR0TZEKGJDd3Pkn_OBsTzDm8H1dtI2uTPG1ITlbrWjayQHs38zzanRotgyc

In the painfully twisted article Greg Forster makes his redeeming history case for the judgement of God on ancient Babylonian defiance.

“From Babel to Babylon: How God is redeeming our work”
“In our Sunday-school retellings of the Tower of Babel, we are often fixated on themes of human pride and failure, shrugging off the aspirations of the builders as frivolous or far-fetched. In a recent series at The Green Room, Greg Forster frames things a bit differently, highlighting the story’s hidden lessons about human destiny and redemptive purpose in a fallen world.

Far from being a story about the limitations of human power, Forster argues, Babel is a story about humanity’s limitless co-creative potential and how it ought to be guided and constrained. As such, it holds a significant place in the broader Biblical story about human work and cultural engagement.”

Taken together, we still operate in a fallen world, but we return to that mix of powerful co-creative capacity and close cooperation with neighbors. Close in covenant—freed by the finished work of Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit—we build yet again.

“Israel, and then the church, stands both for and against Babel/Babylon,” Forster concludes. “For, in that we love our fallen neighbors and have a mission to work for their flourishing; against, in that on some level we must reorganize socially – which in practice means reorganizing economically as much as it means anything – in faithfulness to that mission and in opposition to much of what the world around us does. “

OIKONOMIA AND ACTON PRIMING YOUR TEEN FOR PURPOSE

Acton is priming the church and community as well as your child who uses their curriculum for “Purpose Built Communities “ https://acton.org/event/2018/12/05/purpose-built-communities                       “How does holistic community revitalization work? What does it require? Tackling such complex, deeply-rooted issues as intergenerational poverty, unsafe environments, high crime, and failing schools presents many challenges.  One solution- and the basis for the Purpose Built Communities model—is a coordinated holistic approach based on quality and focused on sustainability.”

How does Oikonomia and Acton’s work of merging socialism with capitalism, global justice with gospel mission, evangelical with Catholic theology and social policy and the call of God with secular humanitarian vision help students of any age understand Biblical mission? In light of Biblical commands to recognize the idolatrous influences of the world and culture around us ,young Christians students would be better served by understanding God’s call to make a distinction of the holy from the profane and to flee from man centered systems like Socialism and Marxism -not co-mingle their faith with them.

In 1^st Corinthians 10 we are instructed that dining at both tables is not permissible .

Flee from Idolatry

¹⁴ Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. ¹⁵ I speak as to wise men; judge for yourselves what I say. ¹⁶ The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the ^[e]communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? ¹⁷ For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.

¹⁸ Observe Israel after the flesh: Are not those who eat of the sacrifices ^[f]partakers of the altar? ¹⁹ What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? ²⁰ Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. ²¹ You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons. ²² Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?

 

 

PURPOSE DRIVEN FALLACY

Rick Warrens Purpose Driven ideology has crept into Christian curriculum for years and its problems have not gone unnoticed.

Using Rick Warrens Purpose Driven book

https://www.mfwbooks.com/item/16805/What-on-Earth-Am-I-Here-For-/

Warrens materials proved controversial in Homeschool materials as far back as 2007

https://board.mfwbooks.com/viewtopic.php?t=8417

“Occasionally we hear concerns about the use of The Purpose Driven Life in our curriculum. We have seen opinions on both sides regarding this book. We do not want to defend or condemn Mr. Warren. Much of what is written on the Internet appears to be with great bias and little context. We do not completely agree with Rick Warren any more than we do with any author of the books used in our curriculum” …  ”If someone is uncomfortable using The Purpose Driven Life, they may substitute another book”

DARE TO QUESTION. IT’S YOUR CHILD’S FAITH AND FUTURE

Now the work of Acton and Oikonomia have contributors from The Gospel Coalition as shown above and it appears that no one is expected to question these influences or to raise a single objection. Very few will because of the trust afforded many TGC leaders like Tim Keller simply because he (they) are allowed to operate and continue such influences within the framework of Reformed Theology (albeit not historic Reformed) and within denominations like the PCA and SBC.

TIM KELLER AND TGC GO WOMB TO TOMB WITH THEIR NEO-CALVINIST INFLUENCE -OTHER STRANGE BEDFELLOWS IN CHRISTIAN CURRICULUM

Keller’s Redeemer Church and TGC have obtained grant funding to produce The New City Catechism (NCC). It is also now being made into a devotional and Homeschool curriculum. The New City Catechism is funded by John Templeton Foundation. Templeton’s work is product of concern from Social Scientist.

“In the last decade, social scientists have documented a shallow understanding among youth of Christian faith and virtue. We contend that a contributing factor is limited knowledge and practice of virtue formation in Christian communities. We propose to address this challenge through the development of a curriculum and tools that pair a child-sensitive catechism with childhood virtue development wisdom. In this project, our hope is to answer the big question: Can the applied science of virtue development be joined with historic Christian teaching in order to deepen faith and virtue formation in the next generation? The project is based around a widely trusted catechism adapted from traditional Christian teachings by Pastor Tim Keller and others.”

USING TGC REPUTATION

“This curriculum and tools will take advantage of the trusted platform and reputation of The Gospel Coalition among evangelical church leaders to lead a retrieval of catechesis and virtue. The result will be a renewal of society at large through the hundreds of thousands of next generation children who will be formed in Christlike virtue.”

 

TEMPLETON FOUNDATIONS VISION IS NOT GOSPEL DRIVEN

OUR VISION

We take our inspiration from the intellectual legacy of Sir John Templeton. Our vision is one of infinite scientific and spiritual progress, in which all people aspire to and attain a deeper understanding of the universe and their place in it. We look forward to a world where people are curious about the wonders of the universe, motivated to pursue lives of meaning and purpose, and overwhelmed by great and selfless love.

“We encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians, as well as between such experts and the public at large. In all cases, our goal is the same: to spur curiosity and accelerate discovery.”

• Templeton Charitable Trust clearly states “projects that only involve the study of religious texts;

 

Templeton funds research on Atheism as a religion. So why is it funding Keller’s Catechism and Sunday School/ Homeschool curriculum and devotional?

Perhaps a better question is “why are TGC and Keller not simply promoting a Bible Study?“

Funding Areas

Again TGC and Keller promote the Templeton Foundation funded New City Catechism as a modern-day resource,

The New City Catechism: Forming virtue in the hearts and minds of children – Product Development

“Throughout the history of the church, Christians have used catechisms—collections of questions and answers designed for memorization and recitation—to teach others the core doctrines of the faith. The New City Catechism is a modern-day resource aimed at reintroducing this ancient method of teaching to Christians today”

The New City Catechism Devotional has the TGC gang helping your child learn neo-Calvinism

“Each question features a relevant Scripture reading, a short prayer, and a devotional commentary written by contemporary pastors, including John Piper, Timothy Keller, and Kevin DeYoung, and historical figures, such as Augustine, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and many others. Designed for use in a variety of contexts, The New City Catechism Devotional is a valuable resource for helping believers learn and meditate on the key doctrines that stand at the heart of the Christian faith.”

The New City Catechism curriculum provides study guides for 8-11 Sunday School and Homeschool.

“The New City Catechism Curriculum features 52 engaging lessons developed from the questions and answers of The New City Catechism, designed to help children ages 8–11 learn the core doctrines of the Christian faith in a Sunday school, classroom, or homeschool setting.

Each lesson includes three different outlines for 30-, 45-, or 75-minute sessions, a Bible passage and memory verse, a list of suggested materials, detailed instructions for activities, suggested prayers, and activity pages available for digital download—all created so that teachers can help children better understand the truth of God’s Word and how it connects to their lives”.

New City Catechism for Kids is for 4-11

“The New City Catechism for Kids is a modern-day resource aimed at teaching the core doctrines of the Christian faith to children ages 4–11. This 64-page booklet contains each of the 52 easy-to-understand questions and short answers found in The New City Catechism designed to help children understand who God is and what he has done. With answers that are short enough for children to read, understand, and memorize, this low-cost booklet is designed for bulk distribution and is ideally suited for Sunday school classes, Christian schools, and homeschooling families. This resource is sold both individually and as part of the curriculum kit.”

THIS TREND NOW HAS SOME MATERIALS PROMOTING “SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY FOR KIDS”.

“Kids4Truth Clubs”

https://learnabout.kids4truth.com/

Presents 12 Doctrinal Themes

Each of the 12 doctrinal themes has 10 key truths for the children to memorize for a total of 120 key truths. Each child will review the 120 truths four times as he moves through the four levels. The key truths become more in-depth with each level.

 

MORE SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY FOR CHILDREN

https://newgrowthpress.com/the-ology-ancient-truths-ever-new/#endorsements

A children’s book titles The  Ology

“Arranged within a traditional systematic theological framework, each truth in The Ology is also connected to the larger redemptive story of Scripture. This storybook of systematic theology takes abstract concepts in the Bible and makes them easier to understand with the use of creative examples, illustrations, and analogies.”

Endorsed by Albert Mohler

“Few tasks are of greater importance than the discipling of children. Christian parents and Sunday school teachers, committed to biblical fidelity, cannot neglect the tremendous task of teaching children the great truths of Scripture. Marty Machowski’s The Ology: Ancient Truths Ever New is a wonderful new book that will equip parents for the task of discipleship and also help children immerse themselves in the Christian worldview.”
R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

PONDER IF YOU WILL

The questions Christian parents need to ponder is at what age is systematic theology more vital to our child’s faith than the Bible? Is the Systematic Theology of TGC/ Keller / Mohler helping make better disciples of Seminary students in their institutions or is it simply advancing the Neo- Reformed ideology of TGC? Do you want your children to be accessed starting at preschool age with curriculum designed by the modern thinkers helping turn our pastors into social justice warriors?

The stealth project to invade our seminaries with social justice false gospel appears to be also focused on our children in our Sunday Schools, Christian and Private Schools and even in our homes as many Christians leave the public school indoctrination and seek refuge in “Christian Education”. The Gospel Coalition and its leadership appear to be willing to invade every refuge to influence the hearts and minds of our children.

Do denominational and church leaders we trust with our faith and our families have the God given authority to mingle influences like Socialism and Marxism into curriculum marketed to disciple our children? Can the theology of Luther or Calvin be “remixed and remastered” to suddenly be compatible with Acton / Jesuit theological social policy? Can we assume that from this mixture our children would emerge with a clear understanding of God’s calling on their lives or clarity on the churches true mission? It is highly unlikely. A clear Biblical admonition for separation from the world for our children would serve them much better.

2^nd Timothy 2

Approved and Disapproved Workers

¹⁴ Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers. ¹⁵ Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. ¹⁶ But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. ¹⁷ And their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, ¹⁸ who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some. ¹⁹ Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”

²⁰ But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. ²¹ Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. ²² Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. ²³ But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife. ²⁴ And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, ²⁵ in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, ²⁶ and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

How a wonderful Christian legacy was devoured through the corruption of a Georgia Republican Congressman -greed, the funding called Creative Placemaking and  fearful and apathetic Church leaders .

This story first ran in Summer of 2016 in Life Site News. It is more than an objective set of observations but a deeply personal first hand experience . This writer watched the lifetime of ministry and the joys of thousands in a small prayer garden filled with Scripture and Southern folk art work -turned into a platform for promoting the NPS and millionaire activist LGBTQ agenda. A decade of my own hard work evaporated and gave way to the anguish of watching the God honoring life and work of Rev Howard Finster trampled as his “Garden of Paradise” turned into a living hades on earth. Finster’s boast was “I never met a person I didn’t love “. Following in his footsteps to preserve a small testimony to Jesus in the hostile world of secular art was in many ways a fools errand -but God loves those willing to be considered fools for Christ sake. Seven years later this is not yet a story of redemption but of endurance  and we have set our faces to endure and allow Gods hand to work His will for His glory and namesake.

 

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/is-the-national-park-service-queering-history

Is the National Park Service ‘queering’ history?

 Georgia, Lgbt, National Park Service, Paradise Gardens, Stonewall Inn

 

by Rev Thomas Littleton                                                                                12/14/2018

On November 27th 2018 the article  linked below was published  concerning the racial hypocrisy of two central Southern Baptist leaders both with career ties to the flagship Seminary SBTS.

THE GLARING RACIAL HYPOCRISY OF AL MOHLER AND RUSSELL MOORE

 

Yesterday on December 13th SBTS – released their report on the racism  in the seminaries history both on their website and to secular media including the Wall Street Journal .

Here is the WSJ article

https://www.wsj.com/articles/southern-baptist-seminary-acknowledges-past-ties-to-white-supremacy-11544658144

NPR has also picked up the story

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/13/676333342/southern-baptist-seminary-confronts-history-of-slaveholding-and-deep-racism

Here is the SBTS link – Moler Letter and document .

http://www.sbts.edu/southern-project/

Click to access Racism-and-the-Legacy-of-Slavery-Report-v4.pdf

 

WHAT IS NOT ADDRESSED IN THE REPORT AND PUBLIC CONFESSIONAL

Dr Mohler has ordered the report be complied and is featured fronting its release into the public “confessional” . The report does mention the horrific history in great detail of Joseph Emmerson Brown  a long time Georgia politician and judge during the Civil War and reconstruction era.  Brown is creditied with ahving “saved SBTS from finnacial collapse twice by his large financial gifts and as part of honoring him a Chair of Theology was named in honor of  Brown   What neither Mohler nor the report point out is Mohler 2005 ascended the Joseph E Brown Chair of Theology with great pomp and pride  including accolades from Russell Moore then Dean of Students now head of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of the SBC . Mohler paid great honor to Brown and  his history and the chair in 2005 ceremony .

PROUD MOHLER KEEP ON TURNING

In November of 2018 the Baptist Press announced that Albert Mohler was elected Vice President of the Evangelical Theological Society. In that article, a brief bio of Mohler noted that “Mohler, now in his 25th year as president of Southern Seminary, has been at the forefront of public theological dialogue in evangelicalism. In addition to his responsibilities at Southern, Mohler also is the seminary’s Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology.”

“LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)–Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s board of trustees has elected President R. Albert Mohler Jr. to the Joseph Emerson Brown Chair of Christian Theology.

“The chair has been held by other giants on the landscape of Southern Seminary’s history such as founding President James Pettigru Boyce and E.Y. Mullins, seminary president from 1899 to 1928. Mohler was elected the seminary’s ninth president in 1993.”

Fellow Southern Baptist Race Baiter, Russell Moore, now head of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission, had the greatest of praise for Mohler’s ascent to the esteemed position in 2005:

“It is an historic chair in systematic theology and we believe an historic president like Dr. Mohler deserves to be teaching from this chair,” said Russell D. Moore, Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration, after the Seminary Trustee action on April 26. “This will be a great and momentous act in Southern Seminary history.”

“The chair is named in honor of Joseph Emerson Brown, who served two terms as governor of Georgia during the Civil War and played a critical role in keeping Southern Seminary from closing on two separate occasions.

“The first came during Reconstruction in the 1870s. The seminary, then located in Greenville, S.C., emerged from the Civil War financially destitute and faced closure. Brown, a seminary trustee, donated $50,000 which kept seminary doors open and left the institution in sound fiscal health for many years.

“In the 1870s, $50,000 was worth what is now several million dollars in constant cash,” Mohler said. “It answered the question as to whether the seminary would survive. It actually allowed the seminary to go from a question of survival to the reality of thriving.”

Mohler was equally proud of the honor bestowed on him as he assumed the staunch advocate of slavery SBTS chair:

“This means more than I can say,” Mohler said of the trustee action.

“Especially with Dr. Boyce and Dr. Mullins holding that chair during their presidencies, it is an historical connection that speaks to my heart and to the sense of calling.

“It also is a reminder that the Lord has used significant individuals [such as Brown] to make this institution what it is. Some of these names are inscribed on buildings, some are memorialized in scholarship and professorships, and it is easy for us to forget what they meant and who they were.

AGAIN WHO IS JOSEPH E. BROWN? ANSWER FROM THE SBTS ARCHIVES AND OTHER HISTORIC SOURCES

Joseph E. Brown

The SBTS archives and special collections reveal the pivotal role played by Joseph Emerson Brown in the history of SBTS.  “After the Civil War, the seminary faced closure. “The seminary community faced other challenges. The faculty carried out constant fundraising efforts in the 1880s and traveled extensively to solicit donations. Notable successes included fifty thousand dollars from U.S. Senator Joseph E. Brown of Georgia and twenty-five thousand dollars from prominent Baptist oilman J. D. Rockefeller.”

“Joseph E. Brown made a fortune in the growth of the Railroad industry after his term as Governor of Georgia, during the lead up to and the duration of the Civil War. He was Georgia  Governor and served 2 terms after which he went on to be elected senator and serve on the supreme court of Georgia. According to his biography Brown was ‘A former Whig, and a firm believer in slavery and Southern states’ rights, he defied the Confederate government’s wartime policies…. He denounced Confederate President Jefferson Davis as an incipient tyrant, and challenged Confederate impressment of animals and goods to supply the troops, and slaves to work in military encampments and on the lines. Several other governors followed his lead.”

According to Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008), p. 347, Joseph E. Brown owned slave mines of the cruelest sort:

“The most powerful politician in Georgia from the 1860s until his death in 1894, Brown, still contemptuous of the Emancipation Proclamation, filled his mines with scores of black men forced into the shafts against their will. A legislative committee visiting the sites the same year [Brown sold] them said the prisoners were ‘in the very worst condition…actually being starved and not having sufficient clothing…treated with great cruelty.”

 

WHAT DOES THE NEW SBTS REPORT SAY ABOUT JOSEPH E. BROWN IN POINT NUMBER 7  ON PAGE NUMBER 8 OF THE SBTS REPORT ?

7. Joseph E. Brown, the seminary’s most important donor and chairman of its Board of Trustees 1880-1894, earned much of his fortune by the exploitation of mostly black convict-lease laborers. Joseph E. Brown’s coal mines and iron furnaces coerced the full extent of labor from Georgia convicts by employing the same brutal punishments and tortures formerly employed by slave drivers. The legal system entrapped thousands of black men, often on trumped up charges and without any due process protections, and earned money for sheriffs and state treasuries by selling their labor. It was worse than slavery. Investigations of Brown’s Dade Coal operation concluded that “if there is a hell on earth, it is the
Dade coal mines.” Brown reaped enormous profits from his coal and iron businesses. His 1880 gift of $50,000 was instrumental in saving the seminary from financial collapse. At his death, the seminary honored him for his service as a trustee and for the generous financial support he had provided.”

EXPANDED PROFILE ON BROWN

While this page gives an overview of Joseph Browns radical racism -even for his time ,his extreme cruelty and profiting on prison labor “worse than slavery ” is address in detail on starting at page 34

Read as far as your heart and  constitution will allow you and then recall Albert Mohler still sits on this Joseph E. Brown Chair of Theology – has accepted it with honor – making no mention of that fact in his letter or in the SBTS report .

SBTS REPORT PAGE 34-38

7—JOSEPH E.BROWN AND THE CONVICT-LEASE SYSTEM
In 1880 Joseph E. Brown saved the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He offered to give $50,000 without any conditions. Boyce made the gift conditional on the success of raising an additional $150,000. And he did succeed. Brown’s gift was so evidently an answer to the specific prayers of Boyce, the faculty, and the students, that none doubted that it was God’s extraordinary work of provision. Before Brown’s gift, he had already served on the seminary’s board of trustees from 1872 to 1877.

After his $50,000 contribution, he naturally was nominated and elected to the board of trustees again in 1880. He served on the board until his death in 1894, and was its chairman 1883-1894. Brown was, as the most extensive study of his life noted, the most influential man in Georgia from 1857 until the late 1880s.93 Brown grew up working his family’s farm in the mountainous terrain of northeast Georgia. He borrowed money to gain three years’ of formal education in South Carolina.

He taught school in Canton, Georgia, to repay the debt and began studying law. A benefactor noticed his hard work and intellectual gifts and paid his way to Yale Law School. Brown returned to establish a prosperous legal practice in Canton. He won election to the state legislature in 1849 and as a circuit judge in 1855. He was elected governor and served from 1857 to 1865. After the war, Brown served five years as
chief justice of Georgia’s Supreme Court and two terms as a United States Senator.
Brown’s views on the politics of slavery were apparently similar to those of Boyce and Benjamin C. Pressley. He had always opposed the 1850 compromises. He opposed prohibiting slavery from California and from other parts of the Union. On the day of the 1860 election and before the results were known, he asked the legislature to set a date for an election of delegates to a secession convention and he asked for an appropriation of one million dollars to begin military preparations. He believed that these
actions would help secure a negotiated resolution of the political conflict and thereby preserve both slavery and the union. The legislature granted both requests.94
When Lincoln’s victory was announced, Brown immediately published his arguments in favor of Georgia’s secession from the United States. Lincoln represented a political party, Brown wrote, whose 92 Edwin C. Dargan to John A. Broadus, 9 Feb. 1891, box 16, Broadus Papers, SBTS. 93 Joseph H. Parks, Joseph E. Brown of Georgia (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 578. 94 Derrell C. Roberts, Joseph E. Brown and the Politics of Reconstruction (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama
Press, 1973), 11-13. THESOUTHERN BAPTISTTHEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 34 principles were “deadly hostile to the institution of slavery and openly at war with the fundamental doctrines of the Constitution.” The Lincoln presidency would result in “the total abolition of slavery and the utter ruin of the South.”95
During Reconstruction, Brown, like Boyce in South Carolina, advocate  quick reconciliation with the North and submission to its terms of reunion. He even became a scalawag—he joined the Republican party and identified with its moderate members. He advocated submission to the terms dictated by the president or by Congress, which
meant accepting the legal equality of the freed slaves, but he did not believe that full equality could actually exist. He qualified his advocacy of accepting the Republican terms of reunion: “I did not say that the negroes are equals of the white race. God did not
make them so; and man can never change the status which the Creator assigned to them. . . . They will never be placed upon a basis of political equality with us.”96 Brown personally held that blacks should not have the right to hold political office—that was the birthright of whites—but as the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, he ruled that according to the law, black legislators must be allowed to serve in their duly elected positions.97
In 1881 Brown expressed concern that white rule could be overthrown in a new campaign to unite black voters with white independent voters to defeat Democratic candidates in the South. “I thank you for your kind note just received,” Brown wrote James P. Boyce. “I am glad you take what seems to me to be the proper view of the situation here. If it were the small matter of a few offices and who should
fill them from now to 1st Dec. the Democrats would have less excuse and not so full a justification of their conduct but this matter is intended to go far beyond that. The contract with Malone looks to the reconstruction of Va. first and then of the whole South by taking the negro element and putting it with what is known as the independent element and forming a party of it stronger than the democratic or white party. There is going to be a very serious effort made to put it into execution all over the south
which would virtually put the white race back under the domination of the colored.”98
When Brown died in 1894, the faculty, students, and trustees adopted resolutions in honor of him. The faculty sent Franklin H. Kerfoot, Boyce’s successor in the chair of theology, as the seminary’s representative to the funeral, since Broadus, who was by then president, was too ill to attend. Kerfoot expressed the seminary’s gratitude for Brown’s close relationship to the seminary: 95 Brown’s public letter was dated 7 Dec. 1860 and was published in the leading newspapers and as a broadside. See Parks, Joseph E. Brown, 114-115. 96 Roberts, Joseph E. Brown, 33-59, 78-79; quote from the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel, 11 June 1865, quoted in Roberts, 40. 97 Roberts, Joseph E. Brown, 66-68. 98 Joseph E. Brown to James P. Boyce, 8 Apr. 1881, box 16, Broadus Papers, SBTS.
Joseph E. Brown (1821–1894)
THESOUTHERN BAPTISTTHEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
35
Governor Brown was a friend and helper of our Seminary. . . . He has been for years, and was at the time of his death, the honored president of our Board of Trustees. When his pressing duties and the condition of his health permitted he was with us at our annual meetings. He presided with dignity and grace, and courtesy to all, and by his earnest belief in an educated ministry, and his wise counsels, and his abiding interest in the Seminary, and his repeated gifts, he continued to contribute to its prosperity.99
Brown’s name has endured in memory for another reason—he earned much of his vast fortune by leasing convicts from the state of Georgia. His exploitation of black convict laborers made his Georgia and Tennessee coal and steel operations notorious as places of suffering and hopelessness. This legacy endured in southern folk songs.
Joe Brown, Joe Brown,
He’s a mean white man,
He’s a mean white man.
I know, honey, he put them shackles around,
Around my leg.100
In 1932 folklorist Lawrence Gellert transcribed the songs of a convict chain-gang near Augusta, Georgia.
One song recalled the experience of convicts who were leased by the state to Brown’s Dade Coal Company.
Says I’m bound to Joe Brown’s coal mine,
Says I’m bound to Joe Brown’s coal mine.
And it’s Lordy me and it’s Lordy mine,
Says I’m bound to Joe Brown’s coal mine.101
In his 1958 recording, “Beat It on down the Line,” Jesse Fuller, who grew up in Georgia in the early twentieth century, evoked the memory of Joe Brown to represent the bleak prospects of blacks who decided to return to the South: “Lord, I’m going back to my ‘used to be,’ down in Joe Brown’s coal mine.”102
Before the war, Brown was an upcountry attorney and planter who won election as a state senator representing Cherokee and Cobb counties, and as a circuit court judge. He won election as governor of Georgia in 1857 and led Georgia to secede from the United States. Throughout his life, he bought land when he saw a good value and sold it for profit whenever he needed capital for another good opportunity. He made a great deal of money buying and selling mineral rights in north Georgia in the 1850s.103 He was a slaveholder. His wife, Elizabeth Grisham Brown, brought several slaves into the marriage.10 She recorded in her diary that her husband bought at least eight slaves between 1853 and 1855, 99 Franklin H. Kerfoot, “Hon. Joseph Emerson Brown,” Seminary Magazine 8 (1894): 130-131. 100 Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (New York: Verso Books, 1996), 105. 101 Gellert cited in Matthew J. Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 81. 102 Jesse Fuller, “Beat It on down the Line,” The Lone Cat LP (Good Time Jazz Records, 1958). 103 Parks, Joseph E. Brown, 16-17. 104 Parks, Joseph E. Brown, 5.
THESOUTHERN BAPTISTTHEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 36 and that they often had large numbers of slaves at their place.105

William Ward, one of Brown’s former slaves, recalled many years later that Brown held fifty to seventy-five slaves, most of whom he hired out to other farmers and businesses who paid him for their labor. Brown may have bought and sold slaves as
investments the same way he did land and mineral rights. Elizabeth Brown recorded in her diary that her slave “Celia gave me some insolent jaw for which her master whipped her.”106 She recorded that on another occasion he “whipped Emma [Celia’s daughter] for nothing to show me he was master.”107
Ward remembered Brown as “a kind person” who “never mistreated his slaves,” but who had them whipped for such infractions as fighting, stealing, and visiting other plantations without permission. Ward said that “one of the soundest thrashings he ever got was for stealing Mr. Brown’s whiskey.” Few of Brown’s slaves attempted escape, partly because of his mildness and partly because Brown kept “a pack of blood hounds.”108

Both the Republican and the Democratic governments in Georgia leased state prisoners to repair the railroads that Sherman’s troops destroyed and to construct new lines. In 1873 it became apparent that the legislature was going to expand convict leasing to other industries and Brown established the Dade Coal Company.109 In 1874 the state of Georgia granted a lease to Brown’s Dade Coal Company for 88 of the state’s 616 convicts. By the end of the year, the state had sent 152 convicts to Dade Coal, which paid the state less than $800 for their labor. Many, perhaps all, of Brown’s convicts were leased from the state of Georgia. It is possible however that his businesses leased others convicted of minor offenses in county and local jurisdictions, often on fabricated charges in sham legal proceedings—sheriffs rarely recorded the names of the victims of such proceedings and were not required to report them to state authorities.110
The Dade Coal Company formed the nucleus of Brown’s enterprises. With Dade Coal’s profits and capital investment raised by Boston financier Jacob Seaver, Brown established a conglomerate trust, the Georgia Mining, Manufacturing, and Investment Company, comprising six distinct corporations engaged in coal and iron mining, coke furnace operations, and pig iron production. For two decades these enterprises helped drive industrial and economic growth in Georgia. Convict-lease laborers extracted the
coal that fuelled Georgia’s expanding railroad network, powered Georgia’s industries, and fired Brown’s iron furnaces. By the time of Brown’s death in 1894, Dade Coal worked 550 convicts, by far the largest number of any lessee. And it was all enormously profitable for Brown, who personally netted $98,000 from Dade Coal Company in 1880 alone.111 Convict labor was intended for blacks. Southern state and county governments used the convict lease system to provide a reliable source of cheap labor especially for mining, manufacturing, railroad construction, and turpentine extraction. By 1876 nearly all of Georgia’s coal miners were convicts, and the vast majority were black. Of the 371 convicts working in the Dade coal mines in 1880, 340 were black, 92 percent. Southern legislatures drafted harsh penalties for new regulations against loitering,
105 Parks, Joseph E. Brown, 16. 106 Parks, Joseph E. Brown, 16, footnote. 107 Parks, Joseph E. Brown, 11, 16. 108 William Ward, Works Progress Administration Slave Narratives, Georgia, vol. 13, pt. 4, 128-33. 109

For an account of convict leasing in Georgia, and Joseph E. Brown’s role in it, see Mancini, One Dies, Get Another, 81-98; and Lichtenstein, Twice the Work, 105-25. 110 See Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Anchor Books, 2008); David M. Odinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); Mancini, One Dies, Get Another. 111 Mancini, One Dies, Get Another, 86.
THESOUTHERN BAPTISTTHEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 37 breaking a labor contract, and carrying a weapon, such as were suited to special enforcement to entrap blacks in the convict-lease system and as a means of social and economic control of blacks.112
White judges and juries tended to convict and punish black defendants on severe charges with harsh sentences, and to acquit white defendants or relax their punishments. Many black defendants were innocent or had committed minor infractions. White sheriffs and employers colluded to contrive charges against blacks who came to their attention because they were not sufficiently deferential to whites, or because an employer needed a new supply of convict laborers, or to reinforce the policy that blacks must do what whites tell them to do.113
The convict-lease system of penal labor was better suited to abuse than slavery itself. Lessees paid such small sums for each convict that they had very little economic stake in the health or survival of the convicts. As one lessee in North Carolina phrased it, “if one dies, get another.”114 Convict lessees generally overworked convicts, punished them with cruel severity for any failure to perform at high efficiency, held them in wretched conditions, and fed them poorly. These conditions and the inherent dangers of mining coal led to a high death rate—thirteen of Dade Coal’s convicts died in the first nine months. The Dade Coal Company mines required each convict to mine a specified number of tons each day. The number differed for each convict. Any convict who failed to make his quota would be whipped severely. Some “whipping bosses” whipped newly arrived convicts daily upon their arrival to “break them in.”115

Quotas were deliberately kept beyond the reach of reasonable labor, to extort from convicts the maximum effort possible. Those who made their daily quota too easily or regularly, would have their quota increased. Since convicts’ chief motivation was to make their quota to avoid being whipped, they did not have time to take safety precautions, and convicts died in convict mine accidents at twice the rate of free labor mines.

Brown claimed that the work was quite “moderate,” and that the convicts were well treated. He held that blacks would not work effectively or even take adequate care of themselves unless they were compelled to do so. The forced labor of the convict leases was therefore beneficial to black convicts.116 Grand juries and legislative committees investigated the conditions of the convict camps and mines periodically, and varied wildly in their evaluation of the conditions there.

The record is clear enough—the camps were places with poor sanitation, poor food, excessive labor, unsafe conditions, and brutal punishments for the least infractions. Georgia legislator W. H. Styles investigated the conditions at Brown’s mines in 1892 and concluded that “if there is a hell on earth, it is the Dade coal mines.”117 In 1886, 109 convicts refused to work at Brown’s coke furnaces to protest their wretched working conditions—the excessive labor required, the brutal punishments, and the poor food. They said that they “were ready to die, and would as soon be dead as to live in torture.”

The keeper of the convicts isolated the men and starved them until the strike collapsed a few days later.118 Brown was no outlier. His views of white superiority and his easy defense of the convict-lease penal system were fairly common. Henry H. Tucker, a member of Southern Seminary’s board of trustees 112 See esp. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 1-83. 113 See esp. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 117-54. 114 The quote is from a southern delegate to the 1883 National Prison Association meeting, cited by Hastings Hart in Mancini, One Dies, Get Another, 3. 115 Lichtenstein, Twice the Work, 134. See similarly, Mancini, One Dies, Get Another, 51, 75-76, 93-94. 116 See Lichtenstein, Twice the Work, 126-51. 117 Cited in Lichtenstein, Twice the Work, 142. 118 Mancini, One Dies, Get Another, 90.
THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 38
1880-1889 who had served as president of Mercer University and chancellor of the University of Georgia, defended the practice of convict leasing in Georgia when the National Prison Association met in Atlanta in 1886. He claimed that Georgia’s convicts were well cared for because they were fully protected by laws that guaranteed humane treatment and access to good food, rest, clothing, and healthcare. The laws were sure to be honored, Tucker argued, because the men who paid the state treasury for the leases
were “sure to be men of character, . . . worthy of respect and confidence,” who would have an interest in the welfare of the convicts. Tucker concluded with the absurd claim that the system was not really even punishment for black convicts, since they were suited to this kind of labor and enjoyed better food and clothing in the camps than they did in freedom.119

The corruption, the cronyism, and the bald brutality of the convict-lease system made it sufficiently unpopular among voting whites in the South that Progressive political leaders came to oppose it. In Georgia, governor Hoke Smith won election on a Southern Progressive platform of statewide prohibition of alcohol, constitutional disfranchisement of black Georgians, and abolition of the convict-lease system, and accomplished all three in 1908. It is impossible to know how many of the seminary’s donors and trustees were involved in the convict-lease labor system, but given its extensive implementation throughout the South, it is reasonable to conclude that Joseph E. Brown was not the only one. Donors were donors because they engaged in a range of business operations of such scale that they could not have avoided all involvement in the common business and labor practices of the day.
Some donors no doubt profited from businesses predicated on slave industries in Latin America. Cuba abolished slavery in 1886. Brazil was the last nation in the Americas to abolish slavery two years later. Slave labor undergirded the economically efficient production of sugar and coffee. Both nations benefitted from the steep decline in sugar production in the United States as a result of emancipation. The Levering brothers in Baltimore were two of the seminary’s most important donors and played leading
roles as trustees. Much of their fortune derived from the coffee business. When coffee prices collapsed in 1889, one result was that the Leverings would probably be unable to contribute to the seminary’s critical building campaign that year.120 It is likely that their fortune derived in significant measure from slave labor in Brazil and Cuba”

End of Report on Joseph E Brown.

Dr Albert Mohler removing the stain of racism from the SBC and SBTS starts with yout.

Matthew 7 New King James Version

Do Not Judge

7 “Judge not, that you be not judged. ² For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. ³ And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? ⁴ Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? ⁵ Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

 

 

WHAT DO THE WORLD GLOBALIST CHRISTIANS WANT? : ADVENTURES IN SEPARATING CHRISTIANS FROM THEIR MONEY

Rev Thomas Littleton                                                                                                          12/5/2018

 

It should come as no surprise that today Globalist dreams run headlong into the fulfillment of Psalm 2 on the front lines of secular politics and culture. The Psalmist tells us speaking by the Spirit of God this will be the case for a rebellious world

Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
² The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed,saying,
³ “Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”

 

The real shock for some will come from seeing the promotion of “Global Goals “ of  The World (They) Want in and by the Evangelical church  leadership . This includes in the areas and, in many cases horrific and failed efforts to address global health, global poverty, global human rights -especially in the area of harnessing philanthropy to address these issues with the questionable wisdom of the elitist who driven them.

THE CHURCH DANCE PARTNERS WITH GLOBALISM

No one has played a more vital role setting the evangelical church on this trajectory that a Texas millionaire named Bob Buford. His Leadership Network selection, training and resourcing of carefully selected innovative pastors has worked for over three decades on the down low helping build the mega church movement – emergent church movement and fuel the church planting craze. Some of LNs key leaders in in the church include Tim Keller and Rick Warren both of whom are helping further the global focus with organizations like Keller’s Redeemer City to City and Warren’s PEACE Plan.

Half-Time is Buford’s brainchild to package the Great Society visions of its architect John Gardner ( who served in the LBJ administration launching the largest progressive expansion of government and the welfare state in history at the time) . The idea is taken from Gardner’s concept of Repotting oneself at mid-life and finding purpose not in gaining but in giving back. i.e. philanthropic social responsibility for individuals who have achieved success. The goal is to consider the greater good and disperse ones wealth for the benefit of society and the “Common Good” . This mantra is now everywhere in the church thanks to people like Buford (who was a great admirer of Soviet leader Lenin as “one of the two greatest thinkers of the last century) and to pastors like Keller and Warren who have helped sell his ideology to the church.

SHOCKING ADMISSIONS GLOBALIST PETER KAROFF – THE WORLD WE WANT  ON BUFORD AND HALFTIME

In the Peter Karoff book “The World We Want “ New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change “ Karoff talks about the work of Buford and Halftime in the chapter “Generosity and Sacred Search: Motivation  .On page 215 Karoff says “I listened to Bob Buford and I am not alone. Half a million people bought his book Half-Time. Bob defies the stereotype of the evangelical Christian when he preaches about the centrality of community and citizenship .The strategy of singling out the latent energy in American Christianity comes straight out of his success as a cable television entrepreneur. (Buford says ) ”It’s because we have the biggest market share  . Among American Christians 85 percent identify themselves as Christian. It just makes sense to go where the Market is.”

So Karoff tells us of the work of Buford and Half- Time (page 215 ) and its motivation being to target the latent energy, i. e. the wealth of Christians for the “World  We ( the Globalists ) Want “. He then says the most revealing statement of all when Buford invited the Jewish Karoff to come to attend his evening “Vespers service “ at a high end financial planning meetings where Buford was plying his trade among well endowed Christians. “Peter” he (Buford ) tapped me after my speech “if I could deliver you legions of very wealthy Christians primed to become big time philanthropist, Would you consider converting ? Why don’t you come to my service ?”

Karoff tells us Buford- the guy who has discipled and resourced many of evangelicals biggest name leaders and promoted them through media he controlled like Christianity Today – has openly admitted his work has been to “prime Wealthy believers” to fund the globalist dreams of Those who boast in the “World We Want “. This would appear to plainly assert that  the greater goal of Rick Warren whose work even included a”Pastor of Generosity” on his Saddleback staff and Keller who is now the lead prophet proclaiming the “Gospel of Generosity “ or the “Theology of Generosity” are in fact seducing the church into funding global goals in the name of “redeeming culture” and gospel mission. Perhaps those big name evangelicals like Keller and Warren and others like them ( there are hundreds from the Lead Net stable ) can come forward and clarify their means and motivations- before we GIVE.

 

LOOKING BRIEFLY AT THE WORLD WE WANT MOVEMENT :IN THEIR OWN WORDS

https://www.theworldwewant.org/files/gates_foundation_presentation_february_08_final.pdf

About the Author

Peter Karoff founded the Philanthropic Initiative (TPI) to help donors increase the impact of their philanthropy and at the same time make ‘giving’ more meaningful in their own lives. President of TPI from 1989 to 2002, he is a senior fellow at the College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. Jane Maddox is an editor and writer at TPI who has worked with public agencies, companies, and nonprofits in communicating their missions, programs, and ideas.

“These were the questions my eclectic group of heroes were asked to consider: What is your vision of a better world? What are the obstacles that need to be overcome to realize it? What parts of the vision are realistic, and what ideas, strategies, and plans, can make it so? How much fun it would be to hear your answers to these tricky questions. It would be a great conversation, and without a doubt there would be material for another chapter or two in another book, perhaps one you will someday write or are even writing right now. The end results are stories from an extraordinary group of practical visionaries. Some are dreamers, others realists, entrepreneurs, activists, spiritualists, secularists, ethicists, critics, cynics, and reluctant seers.

 

At the other end of the spectrum is a world where silos are broken down – where all the sectors, Civil Society, government, and the market economy, work together to harness and integrate their resources.

Of special interest is how to integrate the unlimited capacity of the market economy. What Steve Case, co-founder of AOL calls creating a “new paradigm that bridges business and the social sector.”ix Bill Gates’ speech on Creative Capitalism three weeks ago in Davos builds on that theme.

They will, for all intents and purposes, fulfill many of the functions of regional associations of grantmakers – and community foundations, but few would become one or join one. In fact, many would not even know such entities existed. They may reside in organizations like financial institutions, YPO, Chambers of Commerce, Rotary Clubs, churches and temples or come roaring out of the Blog-blue. These hybrids of for-profit and nonprofit endeavors will increasingly look and feel like social movements”

KELLER FRIEND AND INFLUENCER JAMES DAVISON HUNTER SURFACES AGAIN.

Tim Keller and Rick Warren have worked closely with some groups influenced by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture “. The work has included many from the evangelical circles including the leader of the Lausanne Movement Doug Birdsall and the heads of several Christian universities along with the sociology departments of Yale and Princeton on developing a “Theory of Social Change “ . This movement also includes the Global Generosity focus.

In previous writings we have looked at the description of Hunters organization which is partnering throughout these circles as the key thought leader and coordinator -especially and specifically focused on the evangelical church. Until recently the website for IASC included its inspiration comes from the origins of Cultural Marxism , The Frankfurt School .

https://web.archive.org/web/20170619010841/http://iasculture.org/about

“Our institutional inspiration comes from the close-knit intellectual fellowships of the past (such as the Frankfurt School and the Vienna Circle); our philosophical inspiration comes from a thoughtful re-appropriation of the theologies and classical philosophies which characteristically champion the dignity of the person, the pursuit of the just life, and the flourishing of the human community.”

 

Very recently, however, the “about IASC” page has been changed to make no mention of the Frankfurt School

https://iasculture.org/about

 

HUNTERS IDEOLOGICAL WORK WITH “THE WORLD WE WANT “

The influential work of IASC is included as a resource in the “World We Want “  project “Catechism of Philanthropy “. His book discussed below echoes the message for world societal change and the use of the social sciences to bring this change about within the church.

“The World We Want xii See Randall Collins’ “Global Theory of Intellectual Change” and James Hunter’s work “To Change the World xiii See the 1974 essay by Stephen Jay Gould: “This View of life:Size and Shape. Nat Hist 1974:83:20-26 xiv Reference to the concept of Appreciative Inquiry that asks unconditional questions with the aim of discovery of what gives life to a living system.

https://www.amazon.com/Change-World-Tragedy-Possibility-Christianity/dp/0199730806

 

The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive–and provocative–answers to these questions.

Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire. Because change implies power, all Christians eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles W. Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas. Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls “faithful presence”–an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of “faithful presence.” Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be.

Q: Why did you write To Change the World?

Hunter: I wrote this book because I saw a disjunction between how Christians talk about changing the world, how they try to change the world, and how worlds –that is culture–actually change. These disparities needed to be clarified.

Q: How does this build on your previous work?

Hunter: One way it builds on my earlier work is that it provides a bigger picture of the nature of cultural conflict, why Christians seem to be neck deep in it, and why the approaches that they take in cultural conflict are so counterproductive. This is a response to some of the earlier work that I have done on the nature of culture wars and alternatives to them.

Q: Who do you hope reads this book?

Hunter: The audience I had in mind was the diverse communities that make up American Christians and their institutional leaders–those who think about the world we live in today and how best to engage it. Those who think about these matters will find here a useful guide.

Q: What three things do you want readers to take away from reading this book?

Hunter: The primary ways of thinking about the world and how it changes in our society are mainly incorrect. There is an answer to the question of how to change the world, but how it actually changes is different from how most people think.

Most people believe that politics is a large part of the answer to the problems that we face in the world, and so a second insight would be the limitations of politics. Political strategies are not only counter-productive to the ends that faith communities have in mind, but are antithetical to the ends that they seek to achieve.

A third thing that I would like for readers to take away is that there are alternative ways of thinking about the world we live in, and engaging it, that are constructive and draw upon resources within the Christian tradition. In the end, these strategies are not first and foremost about changing the world, but living toward the flourishing of others.

Hunter’s book and work is part of Karoff and the World Changers “Catechism For a Great Foundation

 “https://www.theworldwewant.org/   Click to download on this page.                                                    Peter Addresses The Gates Foundation

Catechism for a Great Foundation:

On February 14, 2008, Peter Karoff gave a presentation for staff of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation entitled “Catechism for a Great Foundation,” drawing on themes from his book, The World We Want: New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change.  In the presentation, Peter discussed the increasing intersection between the social and private sectors as a promising philanthropic model.  He also addressed some of the challenges facing a great foundation, as well as its remarkable potential to transform philanthropy and effect societal change.

 

The language of the Catechism is totally about the social sector and private sector partnerships to “transform philanthropy and effect societal change “. With the furtherance of Government sign on both national and international levels – the Three Legged Stool is complete.

THE CATECHISM

The Philanthropic Initiative or TPI is Karoffs organization which has overseen Billions in global philanthropy over the years. TPI ,since at least 2008  has been working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as outlined in the Catechism.

“The World We Want book is about three big things. The first is a vision for better world. The second is doing the work. And the third is what this means – for you, for me, and for the people we love. The book itself is an extension of the TPI experience, and my own 35-year journey into the heart, soul and process of philanthropy, that by the way began at a memorable evening in the early 60’s when the president of the Boston NAAC was so upset at my hubris, he literally threw a chair at me!

Put simply, philanthropy – whether the issue it presumes to address is homelessness, global health, or poverty – can not do it alone, and in fact that realization has been the guiding principle behind any successful public policy work. While philanthropy’s limited financial resources are a challenge, even more it is the sheer complexity of solving social issues – complex problems can never solved by any one, single, actor. And that is one message the Gates Foundation has understood from inception

These were the questions my eclectic group of heroes were asked to consider: What is your vision of a better world? What are the obstacles that need to be overcome to realize it? What parts of the vision are realistic, and what ideas, strategies, and plans, can make it so?

The end results are stories from an extraordinary group of practical visionaries. Some are dreamers, others realists, entrepreneurs, activists, spiritualists, secularists, ethicists, critics, cynics, and reluctant seers

At the other end of the spectrum is a world where silos are broken down – where all the sectors, Civil Society, government, and the market economy, work together to harness and integrate their resources. Perhaps the biggest take-away from the book is the growing impact of what is called the Open Source phenomenon which resonates so totally with the concept of an ‘open society.’

Of special interest is how to integrate the unlimited capacity of the market economy. What Steve Case, co-founder of AOL calls creating a “new paradigm that bridges business and the social sector. ” Bill Gates’ speech on Creative Capitalism three weeks ago in Davos builds on that theme.”

A DISTURBING NEW MAINSTREAM SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR THE CHURCH

Since at least 2007 Southern Baptist Rick Warren has been working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on programs like the World Health Organizations Global Health Initiative, Now we see indications of the Gates Foundation and influence spreading among evangelical ministries though organizations like The Gathering https://thegathering.com/  which is a clearing house for Christian Philanthropy and which connects donors who give over $200,000 per year to ministries in need of funds.

The 2018 meetings of the Gathering reveal the growing ties between The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Christian Philanthropy and ministries, This is despite huge difference in moral issues like Abortion and human sterilization which are far from Christian conviction of mission. The Gates Foundation and other global partners focus intensely on their shared concerns of population growth and limiting it as the “address global issues”

Fred Smith ,long time president of the Gathering has also served as co-founder and for many years as a board member for Bob Buford’s Leadership Network driving the Evangelical church toward “The World We Want “.

http://praxislabs.org/mentors/individual/fred-smith

“Fred Smith is a graduate of Denver University and Harvard Divinity School. Fred spent several years as teacher and administrator at Charlotte Christian School in North Carolina and The Stony Brook School in New York before moving to Tyler and joining Bob Buford in founding Leadership Network, where he served as President for 12 years.

Additionally, Fred is the Founder and President of The Gathering, connecting an international community of givers focused on the support of Christian Ministries.”

 

THE GATHERING  STAFF AT GATES FOUNDATION HEADQUARTERS IN OCTOBER 2018

 

The Gathering

October 23 ·

Great morning with @johnkeithsage at the @gatesfoundation. #gathseattle

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ANOTHER SOUTHERN BAPTIST, ERLC / RUSSELL MOORE TIES INTO THE GATES FOUNDATION AND THE GATHERING.

The Gatherings 2018 event included Southern Baptist ERLC President and lead progressive  mouthpiece Russell Moore    https://thegathering.com/event/speakers/

RUSSELL MOORE

 

Russell Moore is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

 

Later on Facebook The Gathering Fred Smith voiced high praise of Russell Moore

The Gathering

September 21 ·

“He is iraenic and a peacemaker because he is at peace himself.” Fred Smith Dr. Russell Moore #gathkeybiscayne

 

 

THE FORGOTTEN TRUTH OF GLOBALIST CHRISTIANITY

We find in the Word of God in plain view- the glorious truth that the “Globalist” Christians thinking that their partnership with the world and global goals are the work of the gospel or have any lasting value is pure modern myth. How fool hearted for evangelical ministers to think these efforts to ally with a system hostile to God can constitute the establishment of His Kingdom  or that working for the betterment of a world under Divine judgement is in keeping with the commandment not to love the world and for those who use its systems ,we warned  not to be caught up in them.(1 Cor 7:31)

Psalm 33

4 For the word of the Lord is right,
And all His work is done in truth.
⁵ He loves righteousness and justice;
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

⁶ By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
⁷ He gathers the waters of the sea together ^[b]as a heap;
He lays up the deep in storehouses.

⁸ Let all the earth fear the Lord;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
⁹ For He spoke, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast.

¹⁰ The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.
¹¹ The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
The plans of His heart to all generations.
¹² Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
The people He has chosen as His own inheritance.

¹³ The Lord looks from heaven;
He sees all the sons of men.
¹⁴ From the place of His dwelling He looks
On all the inhabitants of the earth;
¹⁵ He fashions their hearts individually;
He considers all their works.

¹⁶ No king is saved by the multitude of an army;
A mighty man is not delivered by great strength.
¹⁷ A horse is a vain hope for safety;
Neither shall it deliver any by its great strength.

 

 

Psalm 2 continues and  offers us in no uncertain terms the outlook of God and mankind’s rebellious efforts to save himself or his world – and directly points out who and how His Kingdom is established .

He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
⁵ Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
⁶ “Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.”

The best we hope for our herd of global pastors and Evangelicals is that the failure of their plans and seduction of the church will dawn on them before the house of cards they are helping to build collapses on their heads. Let us pray to that end.

Have Mercy O Lord  and awaken the sleeping giant of the real global church .

On December 2nd Brannon Howse and I discussed the Authoritarian movement among evangelical churches starting at minute 13 on the first link and then move into detailed discussion of the globalist, social justice , Marxist infiltration into  our seminaries ,  denominations and church planting/ missions organizations

FALSE AUTHORITY : DON’T SURRENDER YOUR PRIESTHOOD AS A BELIEVER ( MINUTE 13 )

 

VIDEO 2 DISCUSSION THE DECEPTIONS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE INFILTRATION