THE FAMILY ABBEY

Introduction

In the old Celtic Church there was a tradition of a unique form of church organization. Unlike the Latin and Eastern traditions which centered their religious life around a place of worship supervised and controlled by clerics, the Celtic tradition provided for the abbey.

Although the abbeys later became monasteries, in the beginning they were simply the result of Christian families which devoted all or part of their estates to a spiritual mission. The heads of these abbeys, as the name suggests, were the fathers of these respective families.

At first, these fathers - later known as "abbots" - were ordained by Culdee missionaries. The Culdees were Druids who had converted to Christianity under the ministries of the Apostles and other missionaries, such as Joseph of Arimathea, who had come to Britain during the 1st and 2nd Centuries. These men not only brought the Gospel but also representatives of a Sacred Bloodline - the family of Jesus - which became mingled with certain families in Celtic lands.

The abbeys were ordained by these Culdees to be self-perpetuating spiritual entities. Unlike the Latin Church, which required the presence of three bishops at the ordination of a new bishop, the Celtic Church required only one. Thus, the earliest abbeys were Apostolic and Episcopal, and also Patriarchal, because they could be perpetuated in a succession from father to son. They could be propagated this way, as well, as men sent out their sons in a mission of colonization.

According to Celtic custom, the family abbey did not represent the conjugal or nuclear family familiar to modern times. The "family" in Celtic lands referred to the clans or family groups which represented a multi-generational extension of the family, encompassing villages of various sizes. These family clusters lived under the leadership of the leading male (or female) heir who acted as their chieftain or lord. They led, not only in temporal matters, but in worship, as well.

The Druids and Bards formed a distinct cast separate from these family groups. They provided the foundation of instruction for their future leaders. Usually, the heirs of rulers were sent to various Druidic colleges for training. As Celtic civilization matured, the Druids became identified with these chieftains who, in turn, formed their own schools within their villages.

When converted to Christianity, it was natural for these father-priests to continue leading their people in worship and in religious instruction. As time went on, they would delegate specific tasks to various local teachers, vicars, and priests, but as abbots, they retained the right of episcopal succession and ordination. This heritage remained as a viable custom in Wales for many centuries. A land dotted with family chapels and conventicles - often no more than mud huts - the Welsh stubbornly resisted the claims and dictates of the Latin Church.

During the Protestant Reformation, this tradition was revived and became the foundation for England's departure from the Church of Rome. The King, as the nation's father, claimed the right of priestly succession as well as the regal succession. Heir to the mantle from Joseph of Arimathea, the Church of England was recognized to be of greater antiquity than of all the other national churches.

Although Protestantism departed from this familial model and drifted toward individualism and sectarianism, the Church of England retained it part. The Puritans, still members of the Anglican Church, recognized the father as king and priest to his own household, but in America, lost the vision quickly as New England churches became infatuated with doctrine. They were controlled by a spiritual aristocracy which employed a thought police to eliminate dissent.

Ever since then, America has been the setting of an on-going culture war between a learned clergy protecting the ruling order and a populist rebellion which doesn't know what it wants. Seeing the right and wrong in both groups, the Grail Church does not endorse either one. Rather, it clings to its heritage in ancient Wales and points to a third way: the way of the family abbey.

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Glimpses of the Celtic Abbey

Evidence of the kind of Christianity which existed among the Celts and the other barbarian tribes of northern Europe is lacking for the earliest centuries. Folklore does exist, but the world of scholarship is not much interested in it. Of the scraps that have come down to us, we learn something peculiar: they reveal a very different ecclesiastical organization than what we see in the classical (i.e. Greco-Roman) world.

I now quote at length from Father Thomas Freeman Hudson's work, The High Age of the Celtic Church (Attic Press, 1992):

After the death of Ninian on 16 September circa 432, and Patrick on 17 March 461, darkness came upon the Church in Britain and Ireland. The barbarian invasions of the western continent began in those years and contact with Gaul became increasingly difficult. As Rome steadily withdrew from Britain, paganism reasserted itself and the Church went into eclipse in both Britain and Ireland. The next information about the Church in the British Isles was the emergence of the Celtic Church and Celtic Christianity, bursting forth without prior evidence of an active life. This new expression of the Christian Church made no use of the old Roman imperial districts in its organization. The Celtic Church was, however, always fully orthodox in doctrine.

Here, I would interject and argue that this was the original organization of the Church in Britain, prior to its first subjugation under the rule of Constantine, which was reasserting itself. Hudson continues,

The most singular difference between the Western Church and the Celtic Church was in ecclesiastical government. The church of Ninian and Patrick had monks as leaders. There also were married and celibate clergy, monks and nuns, and monasteries with abbots. The leadership in those times, however, was always episcopal. The bishop and his see and his diocese, even though in Celtic lands the territory might have been small and ill-defined. When the Celtic Church emerged, roles radically changed. Monasteries, not dioceses, formed the basic governmental unit of the church. The local church in the village became a monastic place. In place of the diocesan bishop, the abbot of the larger monastic houses, usually in episcopal orders, governed the church throughout the surrounding countryside. In some cases, the abbot was in priest's orders, as was the case with Columba, the great abbot of Iona in Scotland. Local clergy like Patrick's father and grandfather were gone. It was monks and nuns who did the missionary work and local pastoral care. The married monastic families lived within the confines of the wall and not in the local village. (page 26)

One must not read into Hudson's description of the monastery the misconception as it prevails in popular thinking. These were not places for "solitiares." The Celtic monasteries were places of scholarship and worship, yes, but they were also the places of hard work and practical living. The task of reconstruction during those violent years included the preservation of knowledge in general, whether it pertained to agriculture, medicine, the arts, and so on. In many ways, the vision of the modern homesteading movement finds its antecedent in the Celtic monasteries of the Dark Ages.

Notice that there existed "monastic families" and that the monastery had "walls", like a citadel or a fort. These were places of refuge - spiritually and physically - for the people living in the countryside.

Notice, also, that the primary leaders of these "monasteries" were abbots, a fact which made them "abbeys." The leaders were usually from episcopal orders, although sometimes, as in the exception of Columba, they were priests only.

For a further description of the Celtic abbey, I now quote from Dr. Andrew Gray's work (available on this website), The Origin and Early History of Christianity in Britain:

[Of St. Columba] He is said to have founded more than thirty monasteries, aided, no doubt, by his kinship with many of the chieftains and kings. His monastic life never severed him from the ties of clan and family. Indeed, the Irish monastic communities seem to have been incorporated with the clans, the dignity of Abbot frequently descending in the family of the founder. The communities seem, in many cases, to have consisted of a religious house, with a large outer circle of tenants, workmen, and followers, like the household of a chieftain, more or less connected by the ties of blood. (p. 95)

In this description, we see something like a commune, but not communism, since in communism, there is no patriarchal figure available for leadership. Most modern churchmen would label these communities as "cults."

Both of these authors quoted above are high churchmen. They have little sympathy for this ecclesiastical structure and only grudgingly acknowledge its existence. Fr. Hudson thinks it was the primary weakness in the Celtic system and Dr. Gray spends much time arguing that the episcopal powers were distinct from that of the abbot, even though they were possessed by one man. He does this, of course, to protect the traditional view of apostolic succession.

We are under no such reservations and can fully appreciate the value of the Celtic system. Our world is facing the prospects of cataclysm and a new age of darkness. This social structure seems to be the most practical and enduring one in the experience of our species. It deserves further examination.

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Abbey or Church?

In an age when the doctrine of the separation of church and state has served well the cause of liberty, peace, and a well-ordered society, the family abbey might be a perplexing proposition. The integrity of the church as a distinct institution in society may seem to be under assault by this kind of ecclesiastical organization. In blurring the distinction between family and church, might we be committing the same error of the past, when the church was simply an agency of the state?

It depends upon what we mean by "church." If by church we mean religious worship and observances, do we not find enough in the Bible to teach us that men are to worship God everywhere and at all times? Is there anything in our heritage that requires us to worship by proxy, that is, through a priest or mediator?

On the other hand, if by "church" we mean the building designated for religious worship, again, how is it that a family chapel would not qualify? What would make one building more sacred than another?

The word "church" as used in the Bible comes from the Greek word "ecclesia", meaning "those who are called or summoned to a meeting." It corresponds to the Old Testament word for "congregation", which refers to the gathering of the Covenant People to perform some collective task, such as a religious observance or a civic duty. We see in this the idea of a parish, that a "church" pertains to the people of a given locality who gather to their meeting house - much like the Congregationalists who founded New England - at times to worship, and then at other times to settle town business.

We can also see how the structure of such an institution might take different forms depending upon local customs. In an urban society, we can envision temples and cathedrals with an elaborate entourage of priests and other specialists who might supervise the religious activities. In a rural, tribal culture, on the other hand, the structure would be greatly simplified, in which the local chieftain would provide such supervision or appoint someone to act in his stead.

However, we cannot reduce this question to one of mere convenience. It involves the issue of spiritual authority and who has the right to speak for God. Within the church, we find the Kingdom of Christ mediated to the world. Is the family abbey a legitimate representative of the Throne of Christ?

In recent years there has been renewed interest in home churching. In part, it has grown from the phenomenon in America of home schooling. For many people, it has seemed very natural to extend the role of the family in education to include religious instruction and then religious worship. This development has alarmed many churchmen.

One prominent figure in the home schooling movement who has supported home churching has been the late Rev. Rousas J. Rushdoony. The author of numerous books pertaining to the isssues of Christian civilization, he is best remembered, perhaps, for his classic, The Institutes of Biblical Law. In that text, he recaptures the vision of independent Christian men living like Biblical patriarchs, with all that that implies. He sees the clergy as a nuisance.

His "low church" ecclessiology has solicited a hostile response from his former colleagues in the Presbyterian movement. Dr. Gary North - his very own son-in-law, no less - has led the charge, writing a blistering diatribe entitled Baptized Patriarchalism: The Cult of the Family (1994). The title says it all.

He cites Matthew 10:34-36, in which Jesus says "I am come to set a man at variance against his father" as the justification for this astonishing claim:

Jesus understood that patriarchalism was an anti-Christian force to be reckoned with in the ancient world, especially the Roman world, where the father had the power of life and death over the children of his household. He launched a frontal assault against every societal ideal of the family which would place loyalty to the family above loyalty to Him. Jesus did not identify the family as the central institution in society. Instead He identified it as the central institutional threat to the kingdom of God. Loyalty to the family rather than to Him, He said, is the great temptation. (emphasis added)

While no one can quarrel with his "Jesus first" theology - like motherhood, apple pie, and the American way - and no Christian would look to pagan Rome as a standard for family values, is North saying that the restoration of a Biblical fatherhood is a denial of Christ? If fatherhood is the greatest evil, perhaps we should promote war and castration, since these are effective weapons against fatherhood.

We might ask the good Doctor why he doesn't level the charge of paganism against the saints of the Old Testament who practiced a patriarchal religion? Philip Schaff, the great 19th Century church historian, has noted that they lived as "kings and priests to their own households." In building their own altars, were they practicing the "cult of the family"? North never says.

While we might be tempted to dismiss his polemic upon the strength of this argument alone, a review of his book would be in good order. I will avoid responding to his personal attacks against Rushdoony's marital history, a dubious tactic in any theological debate, but especially so in this case, as it seems to really portray Rushdoony as a martyr, which obviously is not North's intent.

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The Biblical Foundation

It seems straightforward enough. Jesus said, "For where two or three of you are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20). It has been a popular mantra over the last few centuries among the multitude of Anabaptist churches which have spread over the Protestant world in never ceasing sectarian divisions.

But Jesus said these things to His Apostles, not to the common people who followed Him. Jesus ordained these men and imparted judicial authority to them to act on His behalf. That is why they were called "apostles." Apostle was a term with specific legal meaning in the ancient world to refer to those who acted under a law of agency on behalf of a principal. Nowhere do we find in the Gospels or in the New Testament the right of anyone to simply assume the right to speak for God on their own initiative. Protestants argue, of course, that they hide behind the authority of the Scriptures. That seems to solve the problem until you pose the question, "Who authenticates the veracity of the Scriptures and the translations from which the preacher derives his doctrine?" The translation committees? The Pope? The printer at the printshop? Who?

William Tyndale, that earnest and capable translator of the English Bible was burned at the stake for his trouble. He felt the king was derelict - which was true - in his royal obligation to produce an English Bible for the people. His death shamed the king into action. But Tyndale was rash and impatient, as all Separatists tend to be who want "reform without tarrying for any." He saw the hunger in the eyes of the Lord's sheep and tried to do something about it, without the blessings of the church or state. Upon what authority, then, did he rely to justify his actions? Modern advocates of home churching face the same issues as did Tyndale.

I return, now, to North's book, in his condemnation of this new phenomenon in American Christianity:

The reason why this little book is necessary is that there is a professedly Christian patriarchalism being seriously proposed today as the solution to the modern messianic state. What do I mean by "Christian patriarchalism"? I mean the suggestion that a Christian father, as the head of his household, possesses the keys of the kingdom: the right to baptize his children and serve the Lord's Supper on the basis of the marriage bond, not on the basis of his membership in the institutional church.

The new patriarchalism insists that the twin sacramental monopolies that identify the institutional church as a separate covenantal jurisdiction are not monopolies of the institutional church, but in fact are family rites. This assertion, if true, would strip the institutional church of its authority to bring sanctions, both positive and negative, in God's name. (p. 3, emphasis added)

Yes, North is correct in his assumption that such a claim would strip the institutional church. As a true Augustinian, he believes that a Christian theocracy requires three covenantal institutions: the church, the state, and the family. The church is based upon the confession of faith and the promise to submit to one's spiritual rulers, namely, in receiving the sacraments, including the preached Word, and in the church's various rulings on doctrine, morals, and so on.

The state is based upon an oath of allegiance and the sundry contracts to which a citizen must bind himself. Voting is an act of covenanting. It is a word which comes from the Latin votum, to vow. Hence, when a citizen enters the voting booth and participates in the electoral process, he agress by this act to submit to whomever the majority of citizens decide should be elected.

North may be correct in saying that the family is created by the marriage vow, but he is certainly incorrect to say that a father's spiritual authority grows from it, also. The Christian religion teaches that every man must give account for himself on Judgment Day. He does not and cannot share his fate with another. Our eternal destinies are dependent upon our relationship with Jesus Christ, and Him alone. Neither your priest nor your father can stand in your stead before the Great White Throne of Almighty God.

If this is the case, then what use is any collective body or any representative of God on Earth, except to administer the sanctions of the Kingdom of God in temporal matters. If the "Word of God is not bound" - as says the Apostle (2 Timothy 2:9) - then North's notion of "the keys of the kingdom" must refer to the current reign of Christ over the temporal world and not to our eternal destinies. Spiritual truth which results in salvation can be imparted to the hungry soul at anytime and in anyplace. It can come from reading a Gideon's Bible in a motel room, a spiritual vision, or a street urchin who is parodying the parson's latest sermon. North is defending the institutional church - a concept which will be discussed later - as a dispenser of God's grace in the ordering of society and sometimes confuses that role with the authority to decide whether someone is saved or damned (excommunication). Typical of Presbyterians, North halts between two opinions: the high church claims of Rome and their denial by the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation.

Knowing that each person is accounatable to God for his or her eternal destiny, from whence does a man derive the authority to be the spiritual leader of his home? Why does he have the right and even the duty to administer the sacraments to his offspring and to teach them the ways of God?

It comes from the authority of the 5th Commandment to "Honor thy father and thy mother." Nowhere in the Law of the Covenant (Exodus 20-23) do we find the sacralizing of a relationship as we do here. Obviously, fathers are to be honored because God has entered a covenant with them and blessed them with offspring. It is inherent in the office of fatherhood to provide spiritual nurture to children. That is why we are "baptized into the name of the Father."

If Christian fathers possess lawful authority over the sacraments merely on the basis of their legal status as heads of households, then so do widows and divorcees who are heads of households. The new patriarchalism becomes the new matriarchalism. Marriage becomes the means of an implicit ordination of women as second in command. (p. 4)

I don't know why North uses this argument, except that he assumes his readers are so paranoid about feminism that he can prove his argument using it as a scare tactic.

Again, like the father, the spiritual authority of the mother does not grow from the marriage bond. She is not a priestess in her home because she is or was someone's wife. She is a mother, and the 5th Commandment imparts a dignity to her office which requires her to minister to the spiritual needs of her offspring. She cannot save them anymore than a preacher, priest, or prophet can. But she has a moral obligation to see to it that her offspring receive the sacraments and the blessings of the Covenant, even if she must administer them herself.

Because North and the high churchmen he represents have not considered the implications of the 5th Commandment as the source of spiritual authority for parents, they have committed a non sequitur in mixing the doctrine of eternal salvation with the doctrine of temporal dominion, and in so doing have failed to explain why the church has a monopoly on the sacraments.

He moves on to the issue of money:

There is an unbreakable rule in institutional theory: the source of the funding determines the structure of the system. (p. 8)

North is here preparing to attack Rushdoony's view of tithing. Arguing that "the judicial subordination of the family [to church and state] is an inescapable concept", he then defends the modern status quo which embraces the right of governments to collect taxes and the church to collect tithes.

Rushdoony believes that the tithe-payer has the authority under God to allocate his tithe as he sees fit. (p. 9)

In Rushdoony's social theory, when God's people use their tithes to fund covenant-keepers in the work of the Kingdom, it results in diminishing the tax burden. Taxes and the growing state are the result of covenant-breaking in the area of tithes. Tithing was meant to fund the social as well as the spiritual needs of a society. When the tithe is hoarded or given to agencies which are covenant-breakers, the spiritual and social needs of society are not met. This results in the breakdown of order, the increase of crime, and so on. The state then must intervene to hold society together. When people begin to tithe to covenant-keeping agencies, those needs are reduced and the role of the state diminishes proportionately.

North blindly attacks this brilliant insight by claiming that Rushdoony's "familism" teaches a "divine right of the head of the household" and "undermines the church." He never considers that Rushdoony is not opposed to the church or the state as institutions. Rushdoony doesn't think in those categories. He thinks only in terms of covenant-keeping and covenant-breaking. He would say that it borders on blasphemy to argue that any institution has the right to be funded by God's people, whether it is keeping God's Law or not. He would also argue that it is blasphemous to think in institutional categories instead of covenantal ones, as North and his allies have done. According to Rushdoony's familism, institutions represent agents which perform functions. Their offices are not sacred, except insofar as they represent the work of righteous men.

North continues with a lot of scary talk about excommunication (p. 10-12). He quotes Calvin (p. 11), assuming that his readers think Calvin was an important man and then restates (but never proves) that the institutional church holds a monopoly on the "keys of the kingdom" (p. 12). Then he shocks us with this one:

Basic to pagan familism is a theology of racism. Because the pagan family is seen by its defenders as a blood covenant, the question of inter-racial marriage becomes decisive. (p. 13)

Notice that he said "pagan" familism. Somehow, his broad strokes are meant to imply that "Christian" familism must also be racism.

He quotes verses like Galatians 3:28 ("there is neither Greek nor Jew" et al) to tear down as unchristian the notion of ethnicity. Again, a Christian familist would never argue that one's salvation depended upon belonging to the right family. It would be like a church which claims to be the one and only church, without which one is eternally damned unless he is a member. In our enlightened age, such exclusivity is considered arrogant, divisive, and a menace to the public peace.

In saying this, Christian familists would never deny the reality of ethnicity as something created by God which ought to be respected as a part of the temporal order. North, when it suits him, confuses the issues of eternity with the task of temporal dominion and uses Rushdoony's beliefs concerning hybridization, for example, as a pretext to charge him with racism.

In my opinion this tactic by North is unbecoming of a gentleman. Rushdoony would have been the first to say that a black man has the right to administer the sacraments to his family just as a white man does. And he would have also defended the right of a racially-mixed group of believers to join together in remembering their Lord in Communion.

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The Keys of the Kingdom & the Institutional Church

Another example of North's slippery logic is his repeated condemnation that Rusdoony failed to partake of the Lord's Supper for two decades, and that once he began administering Communion to his house church, he was doing so to himself (p. 59 et al):

To refuse to celebrate the Lord's Supper is self-excommunication. (p. 16)

Ministers and priests serve themselves at the Altar. We see it all the time. What difference is there in the fact that a man will administer the sacrament to his own household in his own home? Is there something magical about the steeple of a church or the vestments of the cleric?

No, North says the difference is ordination: the laying on of hands. There's the magic. And don't get the idea that he would accept the policy of a religious group which routinely ordained fathers as family pastors and empowered them with a familial doctrine of succession. In North's lexicon, the Church consists only of the "adopted children of God":

What Calvin proclaimed in the Institutes was the doctrine of the church as the ecclesiastical assembly of the adopted children of God. . . he insisted that to be so accounted, a person must be inside the institutional church. "Hence it follows, that strangers who separate themselves from the Church have nothing left for them but to rot amidst their curse. Hence, also, a departure from the Church is an open renouncement of eternal salvation." When Calvin wrote church, he meant institutional. (p. 19)

Claiming that Rushdoony is no longer a Calvinist (p. 27), he comments extensively on Rushdoony's assertion that the marks of the Church consist in four and not three criteria:

Rushdoony: Again, the true church is defined in terms of (1) the faithful preaching of the word, (2) the Biblical administration of the sacraments, (3) godly discipline by the church. C. John Miller has wisely added another, (4) the fruits of the Spirit . . .

North: The addition of this point moves the doctrine of the church from Calvin's strictly judicial definition to Anabaptism's partially mystical definition. (p. 20)

North's lucid treatment of Calvin's view is worth quoting at length:

Calvin defined the institutional church covenantally, i.e. judicially. . . [Knowing the deceitful nature of the human heart: JS], [h]e defined the church in terms of outward standards: profession of faith and conduct in conformity to God's law. . . This emphasis on external means was not afterthought on Calvin's part. He was challenging two rival views of the Church: Roman Catholic and Anabaptism.

The Roman Catholic position views the institutional church as having the power to infuse grace into people through the sacraments. The Anabaptist view denies that the sacraments are more than memorials: authority through naming (nominalism). Calvin rejected both views. In his theology, the sacraments are neither an aspect of Greek realism ("secret powers") nor Greek nominalism. They neither infuse grace, as if grace were a substance, nor do they serve merely as symbols. His theology was judicial, and so was his view of the sacraments. He said that they are signs and seals of the covenant, which is a judicial bond between God and man. . .

The element of faith is given to men through God's sovereign grace. But this is God's work, not the work of the church. The church baptizes, but it does not impart the grace of saving faith. (Emphasis added, p. 20-21)

We might wonder why North doesn't follow through with a consistent application of Calvin's reasoning. If faith is not the work of the church, then neither is damnation. That Reformed theologians (Calvinists) still want to cling to a church that has the power to damn men (excommunication) is telling of their temperment and fondness for the power of the medieval church. In that superstitious age, the people feared the Church as if it were God Himself, until Wycliffe exposed the fraud.

Of course, North would say excommunication is a judicial act, just as baptism. Yet, baptism is presumed to have eternal validity. Why not excommunication? Either we must say that they both are binding eternally or neither of them are.

If laymen could baptize in the Early Church (although it required an act of confirmation by the bishop before he administered the sacraments), why could they not excommunicate. Isn't that what Jesus implied when he said to "tell it to the church" (Matthew 18:17)?

The Christian familist would say that baptism is a ceremony for the benefit of temporal rule and the life of sanctification. It involves the redemptive rule of Christ in this world, not in the next. It doesn't save anyone. It is something that people with saving faith will do to show their unity with their Savior and the community which He founded. Not every believer in Old Testament times was circumcised, nor were they expected to be (e.g. Jethro). How can we accept the notion that baptism is necessary to salvation, except that its neglect is the sign of a disobedient heart? Many have died - millions of small children, in fact - without the benefits of baptism. Can we imagine their eternal destinies are doomed because they lacked this sacrament?

God honors His symbols and imparts His grace in every act of obedience, whether it is in worship or in the routine of daily living. The fact that Rushdoony and home churchers have no interest in the institutional church offends the pontifical urges of the clergy. It strips them of their pretended power over the eternal destinies of men.

We cannot expect that Rushdoony was able to articulate a satisfactory alternative to churchist theology. His Armenian background [not Arminian] probably accounts for his friendliness to the family church, but he cannot be described as its theological vanguard so late in his life. But he did make it as far as congregationalism: the foundation of New England's self-governing society and the nemesis of Puritan Presbyterianism. He said,

Another aspect of jurisdiction is this: every church small or great, is Christ's congregation, not man's. Its loyalty must be to God in Christ, and to His law-word, not to a denomination nor a sister church. . . There is in this an implicit and sometimes unconscious heresy. Heresy is a strong word, but nothing less can describe the problem. This authoritarian attempt to control other churches is revelatory of a lack of faith in the triune God and an unseemly faith in the power of man. It assumes virtual non-existence of the Holy Spirit. [p. 24-25]

With this kind of talk, Rushdoony has made a lot of enemies.

Given Enough Rope

North moves the debate to the issue of priesthood (p. 25 cf). He disputes Rushdoony's claim that the New Testament clergy is derived from the Levitical priesthood. He tells us that the patriarch Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, the priest of Salem. He thinks this proves that so-called "family priests" must still submit to the institutional church, because the priesthood of Jesus is one after the order of Melchizedek, and in a derivative sense, so is the Christian clergy (Hebrews 7). Abraham submitted to the sacramental meal offered by Melchizedek and so should fathers to an ordained clergy.

He is entirely correct, except that the ordained clergy of the established church has never met this description. Melchizedek was not just a priest; he was also a king. North cannot use Melchizedek as a standard for the clergy of the institutional church, unless he is willing to dissolve the separation of church and state. But he would have to abandon the classical model of the church which has prevailed since the 2nd Century. The role of the clergy in the institutional church has never been acknowledged as a function of temporal dominion, but rather, a ministry limited in its concern for the eternal destinies of men.

Also, men usually become kings through dynastic succession and the ordination of their fathers. There are ceremonies by which a new king is recognized in his office, but his subjects do not make him king. In the institutional church, no one can inherit an ecclesiastical office as a family right. A man is either ordained by persons with apostolic authority (Catholic, Orthodox, etc.) or by the vote of the laity (Protestant: "laity" includes the clergy because they lack apostolic succession).

In Grail theology, the order of Melchizedek is recognized as a Messianic office assigned to a Davidic priesthood. David, too, was the king of Salem (Jerusalem) and was "a priest after the order of Melchizedek" (Psalm 110:4). Jesus became the true anti-type of this priesthood because He was the legitimate heir of the Davidic throne. He alone holds this office. It no longer needs a succession because He has the "power of an eternal life." Hence, He still reigns as king and priest. Yet, on Earth, in terms of temporal dominion, He has assigned rulership to His heirs and kinsmen just as did David (2 Samuel 8:18). The descendants of David have legitimately received tithes of the people (Ante-Nicene Fathers,vol. 8, p. 433, "Gospel of Nicodemus"). And North is correct to challenge Rushdoony's view that the tithe served, primarily, the social needs of Israel (p. 40). The Levitical claim to the tithe was based on their task of guarding the Temple, even though that accounted for a small part of their work. The Temple was built in Zion, the citadel of King David's private estate.

The Apostles were the ambassadors of Jesus Christ who were called to establish communities of the faithful as they travelled throughout the earth. Once these "churches" were started, they would be followed by a member of the Desposyni (the ancient name for the Lord's kinsmen) who would come to rule the people in Christ's stead. This is where the idea of the episcopal office first originated. It was a familial and royal office representing the family of Jesus. The "keys of the kingdom" are the "keys of David" (Revelation 3:7).

North would likely say that there is no longer anyone who can claim to be of David's line [Are they all dead?]. So, the priesthood has been passed to the institutional church. The Grail church calls this a rogue priesthood.

It smacks of Herodianism, as well, to claim that there is no longer any descendants of David in the world. King Herod, to eliminate any rivals to his throne, had the genealogical records of the Temple burned. But there were private records that survived. We find two of them in the Gospels.

It is difficult to take North's reasoning seriously. At least the Roman Catholics can claim Apostolic succession and the Anabaptists can claim some miraculous spiritual awakening to justify their existence. The heirs of the Lutheran, Puritan and Reformed tradition have what? Scholarship? North complains that the Protestant clergy have replaced the moral and familial criteria for leadership found in the Pastoral Epistles with an academic degree from a seminary. What does he expect from a branch of the Reformation based exclusively on clever hermeneutics?

North wrestles with Rushdoony's grammatical interpretations. He argues over whether the terms elder, deacon, presbyter, minister and so on can be identified as household positions or ecclesiastical offices. Both North and Rushdoony are wrong, but at least Rushdoony tries to consider the larger historical context. He realizes that the familial culture of ancient Israel has hermeneutical precedence over the later Imperial culture of the Roman world.

Before there was the decimal system of judges set-up by Moses in Exodus 19, the Israelites were ruled by family elders. Before there was a Passover, these elders led their families in ritual remembrance of Yahweh in a sacrificial system unknown to us today. Before there was a Tabernacle or Temple, there was the "Tent of Meeting." Before there was the priestly tribe of Levi, there was the ministry of the firstborn who served the spiritual and social life of the nation.

When North argues for the model of the historic church, he is defending Rome. When a man thinks he's on the road to Chicago, but discovers he is on the road to Mexico City, when would it make sense to turn around? The high-church Protestants are wannabe Catholics who insist they are on the right road, even though they have circled the wilderness of Sinai for nearly five hundred years. The human race cannot wait for them any longer.

A Fertility Cult?

North has one more bomb to drop before he is done with Rushdoony and anyone who would dare to worship God at home. He has called them pagans, excommunicants and racists. Now, he wants to call them sexual deviates. Follow closely his charge, under his heading "Blood Covenants and Sacramental Marriage":

In his chapter on the covenant [referring to Rushdoony's Systematic Theology: JS], Rushdoony affirms: "Because of God's covenant law, blood is central to the doctrine of the covenant." This is an accurate statement. The question is: Whose blood and whose covenant?

At long last, we come to the heart of Rushdoony's new theology, which is a variation of a very old theology. It may be the second oldest theology in history. It is a theology of blood, as all of Christianity's meaningful rival religions must be. Historically, there have been two forms of self-conscious, explicit blood covenants: biblical religion and patriarchalism-familism. Biblical religion affirms the necessity of shedding the blood of a judicially clean representative sacrifice: the sovereign mediator. Patriarchalism-familism also affirms the judicial authority of a sovereign mediator: the head of the household. It places blood ties over all other bonds. You are about to read the most dangerous and misleading sentence in Rushdoony's career.

"The family is a blood tie; communion celebrates the body and blood which makes us one family." (p. 48)

Here we go again. Somehow, we are supposed to believe that worshipping at home is "a rival religion" to Christianity based upon the atoning work of the family's father.

Recall what he wrote in preparation for this announcement. He asserted the authority of the marital family over the two covenant oath signs: baptism and communion. [Not true, in my opinion. North has asserted it many times, but has not proved it: JS]. He transferred the locus of authority over the covenant signs from the institutional church to the marital family, in which husband and wife seek to produce a blood line (procreation). (p. 49, emphasis added)

Horrors! The very thought that a Christian man and his wife would want to produce Christian offspring through procreation. Isn't that what Peter promised in Acts 2:39?

For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

[See my book, Biblical Midwifery, for an extensive treatment on the subject of Covenant Lines]

Now that North has piqued our prurient interest, he proceeds:

He [Rushdoony] self-consciously and explicitly challenged the church's entire history regarding the sacraments. He did not cite a single creed, confession, or theologian to defend his position. He forthrightly announced the centrality of the marital family as the covenantal institution on which the other two rest. Now he invokes language of a blood covenant. But the judicial context of the marital family is sexual bonding! Therein lies the danger. (p. 49)

What is the danger in sexual bonding? Is North implying that Rushdoony is teaching salvation through sex? Indeed, he is:

In this context - Rushdoony's assertion of the family as the administrator of the sacraments - read his statement again: "The family is a blood tie; communion celebrates the body and blood which makes us one family." This is disastrous. With the institutional church stripped of its authority over baptism and communion, this statement opens the door to paganism. Rushdoony's theology of the sacramental marital family substitutes a blood covenant whose oath is confirmed by sexual union in place of a blood covenant whose oath is confirmed by priestly baptism. (p. 51, emphasis added)

Rushdoony's ecclesiology substitutes the physical act of sexual consummation for the physical act of the laying on of hands. (p. 65)

This is not a product of theological confusion on his part. He has been thinking about this for years. He is not some backwoods preacher who has never read a treatise on theology or a history of ancient religion. He has self-consciously transferred the covenantal authority based on the blood of Christ from the institutional church to the original Adamic bloodline: the marital family. He does define the Christian church in terms of the blood of Christ, but then he identifies the administrative agent of the church's covenantal signs: the marital family. (p. 49)

North is swinging wildly, here. Does not the atonement save the whole man? Including his sexuality and his seed (1 Corinthians 7:14)? How can he say that the Christian marital family represents the "original Adamic bloodline." Perhaps sexual bonding is the sign and seal of the dominion covenant (Genesis 1:26-28), but it certainly is not the sign and seal of the redemptive covenant. Baptism is (Mark 16:15-16). North is putting words in Rushdoony's mouth, and in citing Matthew 18:19-20, deviously and obliquely suggests that he is advocating polygamy:

How can three people be bound by a marital oath? (p. 58)

North's repeated insistence that Christian familism is based upon the marital oath is a gross error which has skewed his whole perception of the Church and the work of the Kingdom. Because of that error, he is opposing God's work in attacking people like Rushdoony. It is not the marital family which holds the keys of the kingdom; rather, it is the dynastic family, specifically, the family of the Covenant. The dynastic, patriarchal family was perpetuated through procreation and ordination. Witness the sons of Jacob receiving his blessings at his death-bed. All Christians are called to perpetuate this Covenant, the Covenant of the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." God does not call Himself the "God of the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians."

North acknowledges that "the Lord's Supper is indeed a family rite", but

It is a rite for adopted sons and daughters who have been removed, by God's grace, out of the family of Adam and into the family of Jesus Christ. The blood covenant of every human family other than the family known as the institutional church of Jesus Christ is an Adamic covenant, a covenant of judicially cursed blood. (p. 51, emphasis added)

This is why Grail theology affirms that the idea of "the family of Jesus Christ" must be interpreted literally to mean His physical descendants; for only such people have inhereted a judicially blessed bloodline. In so doing, they, and all those in covenant with them, are no longer judicially under the Adamic curse but are free to exercise dominion in Christ's stead (see Chapter 4 of Hierogamy & the Married Messiah).

But this fact requires us to keep a distinction between the natures of Christ: His divine nature, by which He is the Savior of the world, and His human nature, through which He has mediated His rule to the world. It also requires us to keep a distinction between the dominion covenant and the redemptive covenant. The redemptive covenant is mediated and can only be mediated by the Holy Ghost. We all participate in administering this covenant by proclaiming the Gospel. Its signs and seals - baptism and Communion - are redemptive, but for the purpose of righteous dominion over our spiritual natures. The institutional church has the authority to mediate God's redemptive covenant in this sense, as so do all Christians.

In terms of the dominion covenant, it has not been perfected in the Church because God's people have not completed a covenantal union with the bloodline of Jesus Christ. This is achieved sacramentally and eschatologically: sacramentally in the five rites of the Desposynic Church, and eschatologically when the Church Militant has achieved unity with Christ in a real sense, and not just in a judicial sense. When God's people share in the federal headship of Jesus Christ - as the last Adam - over their physical natures, when the whole loaf of the human race shall have been leavened, then will the Kingdom come.

North concludes his treatise with threatening anathemas against schisms and warns,

The family cannot be made sacramental without making it a cult, a substitute for the institutional church. (p. 71)

How can any Protestant charge anyone with schism and cultism? The whole Protestant movement - with its culture of splinter groups - began as a schism and a cult. The Church of Rome has spent its entire existence in hunting down heretics. Will North now take Rome's charge?

The Grail Church agrees that all groups - including home churches - need a symbol of covenant unity. We believe that unity is found in the Desposyni, the Grail family, and not in the institutional church.

* * *

The Failure of American Religion

Fathers vs. Preachers

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

- John 10:11-13

One of my alleged ancestors was William Arnold. He was one of twelve men who accompanied Roger Williams to found the Providence Plantation - later known as Rhode Island. This occurred in 1635.

Williams was one of the most original thinkers in the America of his time. His Puritan opponents marveled at his scholarship. He believed that Massachusetts was not separate enough from the Anglican Church and that it meddled too much in government matters. He opposed the compulsory attendance law (the one for church, not for school) and the use of taxes to support religion. For his trouble, he was banished from Massachusetts. He was luckier than Tyndale.

Like Tyndale, Williams was a Separatist. He thought it was a waste of time trying to reform existing institutions. He believed forming new institutions which were spiritually pure was the better course. His separatism exceeded even the separatism of the Pilgrims. At least the Pilgrims practiced a guarded commnunion. Williams would not practice communion with you at all, if your church did not meet his standards of purity.

Family histories are often sketchy, but we have an interesting account of a dispute which arose during those early years which involved my ancestor:

At Providence, also, the devil was not idle. For whereas at their first coming thither, Mr. Williams and the rest did make an order that no man should be molested for his conscience, now men's wives, and children, and servants, claiming liberty hereby to go to all religious meetings, though never so often, or though private, upon the week days; and because one Verin refused to let his wife go to Mr. Williams' so often as she was called for, they required to have him censured.

But there stood up one Arnold, a witty man of their own company, and withstood it, telling them that, when he consented to that order, he never intended it should extend to the breach of any ordinance of God such as the subjection of wives to their husbands, etc., and gave divers solid reasons against it.

Then one Greene replied that if they should restrain their wives, etc., all the women in the country would cry out of them, etc.

Arnold answered him thus: "Did you pretend to leave the Massachusetts because you would not offend God to please men, and would you now break an ordinance and commandment of God to please women?"

Some were of opinion that if Verin would not suffer his wife to have her liberty, the church should dispose her to some other man who would use her better. Arnold told them that it was not the woman's desire to go so oft from home, but only Mr. Williams' and others.

In conclusion, when they would have censured Verin, Arnold told them that it was against their own order, for Verin did that he did out of conscience; and their own order was that no man should be censured for his conscience.

- History of the State of Rhode Island, "The Verin Case", Samuel Arnold, vol. 1, p. 104-105

[One should note that the term "witty" was not used as in current vogue to mean a funny man. "Wit" is an old Welsh word meaning "wise". The Welsh expression, "nit-wit", means "no wisdom." Mr. Arnold, a Welshman by the way, was considered a wise man.]

Arnold and Verin lost their cause; for the only entry on the town books to this affair were these words:

It was agreed that Joshua Verin, upon the breach of a covenant for restraining of the libertie of conscience, shall be withheld from the libertie of voting till he shall declare the contrarie.

We see, here, that Williams, no doubt under the influence of Anne Hutchinson, pursued a course of individualism that destroyed family government. Williams, apparently, wanted everyone to come to his meetings, and he was willing for housewives, who were discontent with their husbands' instruction, to have the freedom to come to his services.

Arnold, representing the Cambrian view, defended the integrity of ecclesiastical familism. He defended the priesthood of the father to his own household and saw Williams' activities as duplicitous and destructive. He had followed Williams out of the state Church of England and then out of the mini-state church of Massachusetts. He thought Williams was restoring the old Celtic tradition of the family church. Not so. Williams had grander designs. He wanted to build a super-church around the super-spiritual leader. He would be that leader, of course. This vision became the foundation of the American congregational principle: the idea of one man, with oratorical skills, leading a flock of people through life, and then finally to Heaven.

This principle was extended a century later by Francis Asbury, the founder of American Methodism. Methodism was built upon the oratorical skills of evangelists. When the American churches were cut-off from England during the Revolution, Asbury took William's principle a step farther. He made himself bishop, much to John Wesley's consternation. (Wesley was an Anglican priest and never advocated leaving its communion.) With this move, the super-spiritual man could become not only the leader of one church, but the leader of many.

The Protestant preaching ministry quickly followed the path of the ancient rhetoricians. You have heard of the sophists. Rhetoricians and sophists were a phenomenon of classical Greece and Rome. They were advocates for hire. Rhetoric was the art of the persuasive speech. An entire sub-culture developed, especially in the legal profession, which used the techniques of rhetoric to win arguments and sway audiences. It wasn't long before the general culture was entranced by the entertainment of speech-making. Image became everything. The sales pitch was more important than the merit of the cause or the product. It destroyed sound education, as the young discovered success in sales rather than in skill and craftsmanship.

The rhetorician was a fake. He pretended to know something about his topic, much like modern day commentators who study an issue for 15 minutes before forming an opinion and providing an analysis. The modern pastor is this way. He needs something to preach on; there's a new topic that's hot in his congregation. He needs to be a leader, right? So, he visits his local Bible bookstore and buys a book. That makes him an expert.

Hugh Nibley summarizes Zellinger's study of Christian rhetoric, that

In the early church. . . rhetoric was avoided like the plague; "content was everything while its verbal presentation counted for nothing." But when the church became the Imperial Church, then the "pampered ear demanded of the preacher the same language which it was used to hearing in the lawcourts and the rostrum. And the church gave in, in spite of all theoretical insistence on preserving the old simplicity of the gospel." . . . The process began, according to him, with our dear friend Origen, and reached its full development under the great Christian orators of the fourth century. The first and foremost qualification for the office of bishop from then on was eloquentia. "In the middle of the fourth century a complete revolution took place in the language of the Christian sermon," he writes. "The earliest Church had preached in exceedingly plain and simple language, and . . . scrupulously avoided any contact with the ill-reputed rhetoric of the imperial age." But all this was suddenly taken over by the church, and, says Zellinger, "along with hellenistic rhetoric and its ear-tickling refinements there were smuggled into the churches the established techniques of applause. Approval was expressed by noisy shouts, hand-clapping, stamping of feet on the floor, jumping up and down, and the waving of handkerchiefs. The sermons were interrupted by resounding shouts of 'True Believer!' 'Teacher of the Universe!' 'Thirteenth Apostle!' 'Anathema to whoever disagrees!'" and so forth.

- The Word and the Prophets, Vol. 3, p. 112-113

This description bears striking resemblance to the circuit riders and the camp meetings which characterized the early American frontier and of the renowned New York evangelist, Charles Finney, who became the first among the nation's evangelists, but only because he was a Yankee who could preach like a Southerner.

The fault of rhetoric was not so much its polish and eloquence, as it was that it did not represent the man. The rhetorician did not speak from personal knowledge or conviction. He pretended to have personal knowledge and conviction. His feelings were affectations.

How many impassioned sermons have you heard - fire and brimstone, weeping and wailing - only to shake the preacher's hand in the foyer afterwards, as he jests and laughs? At least Finney believed his own rhetoric. He was a man given to fasting and all-night prayer vigils to the point of physical exhaustion. There are too many preachers who disprove their stern warnings with their fat bellies.

And how often have you heard a minister, to win an argument, charge his opponent with commerce with the devil or some other malevolent motive? They are rhetoricians. Rhetoricians are trained to shift the point of attack from facts and sound thinking - which he knows little about - to emotional issues of personal integrity and credibility. They are consummate existentialists.

Augustine is credited for bringing secular education into the Church. Nibley adds,

When the emperor established the great state University of Constantinople in 425 . . . he provided for one chair in philosophy, two in law, and twenty-eight in grammar and rhetoric. Augustine himself we are told "studied it [rhetoric] for ten years, taught it for fifteen, and practiced it all his life." (p. 108)

This was certainly true of Augustine in how he handled Pelagius. Both Catholic and Reformed theologians fawn over Augustine's works as if they are holy writ. Yet, Pelagius carried the day until Augustine convinced the emperor that he was a Druid and an enemy of the empire. . . Rhetoric!

The phenomenon of a religion based upon the oratorical skills of the preacher now has a scientific explanation of how it works.

I have a transcript of a valuable speech delivered by a leading hypnotist in the United States. In it, he explains exactly what transpires at a religion meeting. It is based upon the rhythm of the cant. When it matches the heart-beat of the listener, then the brain is ready for a mechanism to switch it from a beta to an alpha wave pattern. Generally, it is a jolt of some kind, such as a sudden change of inflection in the speaker's voice. When that happens, the listener is ready for brainwashing. Modern Christianity is based upon hypnotic techniques which revival preachers discovered by accident. It has been called the Spirit of God. But I have often wondered how it could be the Spirit of God, when the very same phenomenon occurs among rival denominations, even the much despised cult groups, like the Mormons.

Now, most pastors are quite boring to listen to. Their churches do not grow. So, to bring in a new flock of converts, they sponsor a crusade that will feature a man with oratorical skills, special music, and so on. At these crusades, people make a "decision" for Christ. Then, they are herded into the myriad of programs and support groups to condition them to accept a life-long commitment to a local church. When their faith and fervor begin to wane, they schedule a retreat, once again, to hear an "inspirational speaker."

I know what I am talking about. I learned how to preach in a southern, black, Pentecostal church. I love a rowdy sermon. I used to preach rowdy sermons. Why don't I do it anymore? Because the preaching culture is based upon the flesh. It is not the Spirit of God. Pentecostals call it the anointing. But popular politicians have used the same techniques. Have you ever listened to some of the old tapes of William Bryant or Howard Long? Do you remember the non-acceptance speech of Ted Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention of 1980? These men spoke like revival preachers. Jesse Jackson still does.

The Family Church or the Church Family?

19th Century revivalists complained about the Christian schools: they produced young people immune to revival preaching. What that meant was that youngsters with properly trained minds could dissect the evangelist's sermon and expose it for what it really was: a bunch of hooey. The revivalists liked the public schools because they were "non-sectarian" - meaning, they were limited to secular subjects. Doctrinal issues were not subjected to the scrutiny of reason which could be found in the classroom.

A faith which is passed on from father to son is a solid faith that will stand the test of time and produce fruit that will last. Over 70% of all converts to Christianity are the result of efforts by family and friends. Less than 10% are the result of crusades. Yet, our entire religious structure is geared to exhaust our resources in pursuing a method of evangelism from which results are a fraction of what the family structure can provide.

There is a certain phoniness to organized religion which becomes obvious with a little honest reflection. A lot of people think the problem is that they are members of the wrong church. They keep trying new churches, hoping to find the right one. The problem is not for the lack of a better church; the problem is with church.

I can cite numerous horror stories. The problem is that each religious group will say, "That would never happen in our church." Most people have not attended their current church longer than ten years to know it could happen and has happened in their church - many times.

The religious movement which grew from the ministry of Charles Finney is a case in point. Finney is remembered for his great revivals, but few people are aware that Finney and his graduates from Oberlin College were largely responsible for many of the various reform movements prior to the Civil War: movements to ban dueling, Sabbath-breaking (in a time when the poor had to work seven days a week), usury, the Masons, alcoholism, legal prostitution, and slavery. Oberlin led the charge to found free schools, orphanages (remember the Orphan Train?), mission societies, and other charitable works unheard of in its time. It was the first co-ed college which, for a generation, provided many of the school teachers and teacher's colleges in the American heartland. In almost every respect, what we call "Midwestern values" was the product of Oberlin.

Oberlin was the first to let persons of color attend its classes. For this, it was banished from the academic world until after the Civil War. It was subjected to relentless scandal-mongering. The Southern states forbade postmasters from delivering the Oberlin Evangelist, the college's principal publication, to Southern subscribers.

Oberlin was ridiculed for its doctrine of perfectionism. Finney was ever annoyed at the misrepresentations of his views; for he did not believe in perfectionism, but rather a doctrine of entire sanctification. The difference was free will. He believed that however imperfect a person may be, we are all called to be pure in our motives.

In teaching free-will to an age which embraced Calvin, he was accused of Pelagianism. It might escape the modern reader what was so bad about the Pelagian label, but we must remember that 19th Century churchmen were still scholastics who quarreled over things like the moral obligation to purchase your own pew. It shouldn't surprise us that it was a stinging vilification.

In spite of its detractors, Oberlin was held-up as a 19th Century Mt. Zion with an earnest piety and a zeal which would have shamed the Puritans. Yet, in the heart of Oberlin there was scandal.

While Finney was Pelagian in his view of free will, he was an Augustinian in everything else, especially in viewing human sexuality like it was some kind of disease. Finney, himself, enjoyed the benefits of matrimony - three times - and felt the liberty to compliment a student for her "well-turned ankle." But otherwise, strict rules applied to issues of courtship, clothing, and entertainment.

Horace Taylor, the editor of The Oberlin Evangelist, was found guilty of pilfering subscription money and of a lechery which shocked his colleagues: seducing his children's governess and procuring an abortion for her. He had been a widower eighteen months.

What aggravated the scandal was that it followed so soon after another; namely, "the Norton lynching." In that unfortunate incident, a student was caught writing obscene letters to a female student for which he had desires. For his crime, he was caught by faculty members - including Taylor - and fellow students. He was then laid on a log and given twenty-five lashes. The harsh hypocricy was inescapable, especially in the South.

At this time, the South was not yet entirely Puritan. It was still run by the descendants of English Cavaliers who were sportin' men: card-playing, horse-racing, whiskey-drinking, slave owners. They were fond of dancing with the ladies, and should they be in short supply, had no scruples with paying a visit to the slaves' quarters. To them, Oberlin was a byword.

My reason for this digression is to simply illustrate that these problems are endemic within Churchianity, no matter how earnest and pure the group may seem to be. Ignorant of our history and of human nature, we look at the scandal of philandering priests who molest little boys and think it is all something new. It's not. Whether it is the Synod of Dort and its call girls or Puritan masters demanding oral sex from their kitchen maids, the world turns on sex and the pretensions of the Church only ruin whatever healthy use that can be made of it.

Your church does not have problems with sex? Did you know that the average pastor spends 90% of his working time counseling, and much of that has to do with sexual problems? You don't know anything about it because your pastor could get sued if he made it a topic of concern at the next prayer meeting.

Your church does not have problems with sex, you insist. Well, then, what about the Church's claim to be this wonderful family of God? Let me cite two innocuous experiences that happens in Anychurch, USA, which proves the fraud.

Some years ago, a Christian woman was pleased that her husband was finally warming-up to the people of her church. There were home get-togethers which he started to attend. It came his turn to host a family gathering. He bought the food and carefully prepared for company. He was excited; he bought steaks for a cook-out.

Nobody came. Nobody bothered to even call.

A week or so later, he found out that some of these new church "friends" had gone shopping; others had gone fishing, and so on. What he thought of as real friends getting together, to them, it was just another optional church meeting. He vowed never to have future dealings with Christians.

Now, I am sure that this evangelistic error was corrected at a future "church-growth" conference or deaon's meeting. It doesn't matter. What is the difference between phoniness which is detectable and the kind that is not?

In another church I attended, I spent months trying to get together with people who held themselves out to us as our friends. It never worked out. Then suddenly, one day, they cheerfully appeared on my doorstep with groceries. Not that I needed any, but I was grateful for the gesture.

Later, I found out that they were newly-appointed deacons in charge of the Benevolence Ministry. Our names were on the roster. They were just making the rounds. Our friendship - whatever it was - was based upon a mutual, institutional commitment.

I am the father of several children. I do not have the option of ceasing to be their father.

Do pastors have the option of resigning their churches? Yes, they do, all the time.

Do I have the option of resigning my family? No, I do not.

Do members of churches have the option of leaving their church? Can they leave if the company they work for tranfers them to another place? Yes, they can.

Can I leave my family because of my career? No, it is a sin. That is the difference between shepherds and hirelings.

When we start prosecuting as sin pastors who leave their parishes and church members who put their jobs above their spiritual covenants, then I will take seriously this talk about "church families." But until then, the churchists are simply perpetrating a fraud.

Are men fathers because they are saints or are they saints because they are fathers? Historic Christianity has exalted symbolic fatherhood over real fatherhood. They have made "holy men" fathers of the Church, instead of recognizing the fathers of the Church as the real holy men.

Historic Christianity has held up a standard of effeminate piety - a standard for non-phallic men - and has honored those men who could meet that standard. In the Old Testament, the standard was much different. Fathers were honored whether they met a standard or not, simply because they were the fathers (e.g. the 5th Commandment). Men become fathers because they can get erections. Phallicism and holiness are closely related concepts in Semitic theology (Hierogamy and the Married Messiah).

What is wrong with this picture? Paul tells us that the Elect are "beloved for the fathers' sake" (Romans 11). Covenant fathers were center stage in God's plan. Today, our leaders are not even preachers. The two leading spokesmen for Evangelical Christians in the United States is a psychiatrist and a professional sports celebrity. According to the standards of the Early Church, neither one of these men would have qualified for baptism unless he had first repudiated his profession.

I do not question the good intentions of these men. I do question the claim that our churches are authentically Christian. It's comparable to a new and improved KFC Chicken Meal, only it's pork. Our Laodicean Church is quite happy with its delusion.

Jesus said that shepherds have greater care for the sheep because they have a proprietary interest in the sheep. Likewise with fathers, they have a natural concern for the spiritual welfare of their children, just as they do for their physical welfare. People who are paid to be spiritual do not.

* * *

The Abbey Defined

For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.

- Genesis 18:19

An essential difference between pastors and fathers is that fathers speak with the voice of command. Pastors plead, beg, conjole and threaten. They are salesmen. Fathers are not salesmen.

In this respect, it is impossible for pastors to represent the Kingdom of God; for the simple reason that God is a king. Kings do not plead, beg, conjole, and threaten. They command. Fathers are kings. God is a father.

In defining what is a family abbey, we must begin with the Biblical understanding of those terms. "Abba, father" said the Apostle in describing the God of Heaven. We must first define what fatherhood is and is meant to be in the Kingdom of God; then we must define what is a family.

The first thing that is immediately obvious about fathers is that they have children. Notice in the text above concerning Abraham. God had confidence that Abraham would "command his children" to keep the ways of righteousness.

At this juncture, Abraham had only one child mentioned in the Bible. But in God's mind, many more were on the way.

How many children must a man have before he can call his home an abbey?

That is an important question. Would one suffice?

It is obvious that Abraham conducted himself as an abbot - a patriarch with religious and civil authority - prior to his entrance into fatherhood. The reason this was so was because he had a "household" as indicated in the text above. He had over 300 servants who could "carry the sword." He was a sheik. And while he had no children of his own for many years, he did inherit a household from his father. Acting as his father's firstborn, he was prince and priest to those who had made alliance with his father and with him. These servants and their families were a part of the extended family over which Abraham stood as guardian and lord.

Would it have sufficed had Abraham remained childless? Apparently not. Abraham, at one point, offered his servant Eliezer to God as his legitimate heir. God rejected that proposal. God insisted that Abraham have an heir which came from his own body and from the body of his wife, Sarah. He was not interested in "symbolic" fatherhood and a "symbolic" family. He wanted the real thing.

Because Abraham's abbey was so large, it was possible for him to give it to his son Isaac as his single heir. He sent away the sons of his concubines with gifts and with the command, no doubt, to form abbeys of their own (e.g. Ishmael did and Jethro was the priest of Midian). Had Abraham's abbey been small, it would have been needful for Isaac's brethren to have stayed to help him. This fact suggests that size matters when it comes to forming an abbey and keeping it viable.

An uncomfortable fact for churchmen, yet one that is irrefutable, is the family size of the average Israelite household at the time of the Exodus. Comparing the census reports in the book of Numbers with the number of firstborn sons, and doing simple division, results in a figure of 27 sons per family (see Eros Made Sacred, Stivers, 1991 or the Appendix D in Hierogamy & the Married Messiah). These censuses excluded the "mixed multitude" who were not counted. No wonder fecundity of the Israelites alarmed their Egyptian masters!

Does God want families this large? Again, it depends upon how you define the role of fatherhood.

If fathers are expected to spend their days playing tinker toys with their three year-old sons, then it is obvious a man will not have the time for this kind of family. However, if we understand fatherhood as primarily a spiritual and judicial ministry, then we can begin to see its larger role in social organization.

How an abbey works will be explored later in this study. What is needful, at this point, is an understanding that fatherhood begins with the biological reality of virility and procreation.

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Next installment: What is a family?

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