It was a quick campaign, but scrappy.
It appears that our five candidates standing for moderator of the PC(USA) have chosen their mates. Yes, I know it is a shock, but none chose me. I just want to thank all who worked so tirelessly for my campaign. Please don't think your hopes are dashed. There is always tomorrow. We gave it a go, didn't we? Yes, we did, Beloveds. Yes, we did.
I received an email from someone who thought I was mocking the church, its candidates and what all. No. I think the candidates are all fine folks and I like our system of government. I am happy to be a participant and delighted to be a commissioner.
I was mocking something, however.
This was all in response to Parker Williamson's trash talk regarding me and a candidate for moderator, Rev. Janet Edwards. I don't know of a person who is more gracious, more willing to dialogue across divisions, and more sincere in her faith than Rev. Edwards. She is more than qualified to be moderator and if elected will represent the PC(USA) well. When Williamson has the gall to imply that the "once-esteemed office of moderator" is no longer esteemed because Rev. Edwards is standing for it, he needs to be called out.
It would be good for the denomination if the other media outlets would call him out. Since they won't, I guess I will. The LayMAN is a multi-million dollar media enterprise. By PC(USA) standards, an empire. Williamson can afford to put his trash and slander in the mailboxes of every Presbyterian member. He smears people and seeks to ruin careers. He "parades with impunity" his meanness and bullying. That is what I was mocking.
On to General Assembly.
2014! 2014! 2014!
ReplyDelete...save the hat...
Alas...
ReplyDeleteBut there's always next time! Perhaps now is a good time to start running for the next GA. Build a support base, get a PAC funded, etc.
With time it will be shown how much of the ills of the PCUSA were really just Parker's fabrication.
ReplyDeleteWe are a big tent. And as such we have a wide distribution of beliefs and cultures in our church.
What Parker has done is routinely portrayed 3 sigma samples as the norm. And as other evil propagandists of his century pointed out, you tell a lie often enough and loud enough people start to believe it. And the best lie is one that is mostly true. The lie is not in the facts of the matter, but in the spin. The fabrication of the significance of the facts.
"there goes the neighborhood"
The man spent his life away trying to destroy a Church that was too effective at building churches, schools and hospitals, spreading the Gospel around the world. He was good at it.
Some people even think he's a Saint.
While he's the most obvious and most well-funded of the BFTSs, he's hardly the only one ... just the model on which the others are built, well, him and Gladys Kravitz. See, for example, any number of other BFTSs in the PCUSA (and outside it, which is just .... weird) who spend ridiculously inordinate amounts of time on random vendettas, personal attacks, and bizarre concern-trolling -- not to mention the most important thing these Inquisitors all have in common: an almost fanatical obsession with John Shuck.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I fully expect that the ever-expanding list of fundamentals to which these folks regularly pledge their allegiance, devotion (through the signing of yet another useless 'Document' or 'Proclamation' or 'Declaration') will have it's own anti-John Shuck bullet point added to all the others about requiring a literal reading of Scripture, belief in young Earth creationism, hating teh gays, premillennialism, redefining pi, etc...
(In the end, the heirs of Machen are just a bunch of cranks and busybodies, proving what even Machen himself knew: If you can add any minutia you want to a list of fundamentals, then they're not really fundamental. He must be rolling over in his grave.)