THE CAMBRIAN PESHER
THE VOICE OF THE DESPOSYNI TO THE AMERICAN DISPERSION
The Day of Visitation,
(September, 2001)
Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed;
To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right of the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!
And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?
- Isaiah 10:1-3
. . . and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.
- Jesus (Luke 19:44)
Beloved:
Everything is connected - every atom, every molecule, every decision with its consequences. Our choices are like ripples in a great cosmic ocean which reverberate through time and return to us in the choices of others.
This summer I have labored with a sense of urgency. Now I know why.
Almost two years have passed since the Y2K crisis. Remember that? I warned then that it was the Almighty's "shot across the bow". September 11th was a broadside. Perpetrated by evil men? Yes, but permitted by the will of God. The Age of Shadows is upon us.[1]
Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson received much criticism for their now well known remarks that the recent terrorism was Divine judgment for the sins of liberalism. In classic Pharisaical form, they denounced abortionists, lesbians, gays, the American Way, etc. as having finally aroused Divine displeasure. Anti-Jewish groups say it is God's judgment for American support of Israel. Others demonize Muslims. On and on it goes.
It's an old cliche', but true, that when you point a finger at someone else, you are pointing three back at you. So it is in this case. Establishment conservatives have long supported the values of global capitalism via the banking system, etc. Its curse of compounded interest over time has strangled the economies of Third World countries, countries like Afghanistan, Palestine, Algiers, and so on - countries that, out of desperate poverty, support terrorism (Pakistan, for example, pays 60% of its GNP on interest to service its debt). Christian conservatives support Middle Class values, excusing sins of uncleanness in their churches, yet self-righteously condemning abortion and homosexuality. I have written about these matters in the past and don't desire to repeat myself here, except to say: "judgment must first begin in God's house" (1 Peter 4:17). God will judge the complacent menstruating spinster before He will the hooker on the street.[2] Now that the President is bent on a war to make "the world safe for usury", that day will surely come. And while we support the President's quest to bring these monsters to justice, we do so with the recognition that he serves, unwittingly perhaps, as the impatient tailor who will persist at pulling the loose thread until it unravels the whole garment.
What is wrong with Islam?
The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan are notorious, by Western standards, for their cruelty to women and children. Repressive customs and summary executions demonstrate their harshness. But they are little different than other Muslim countries, countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The West's hypocrisy is evident on this point. We wink at Saudi repression because we need them, their oil and their diplomatic support. The West does not need the Talibs, they are expendable as scapegoats. Left to itself and untempered by Western influence, Islam is the same worldwide. And we don't care until it affects us.
Whether they admit it or not, people act according to their religious principles. Being made in the image of God, man is first a theological creature. Mankind cannot help but image its perception of God. In the case of Islam (and in Judaism, I might add) - a unitarian religion - there is one masculine deity. It follows then that if God is masculine, anything short of manhood is less than human, since the true image of God is the adult male. Thus, women and children fall into a subclass of humanity because they are not adult males.
(Jews, of course, will protest being classified with their avowed enemies. They have been "westernized" and do not see the implications of their own theology. Like Moslem countries, the current State of Israel is less than modern in its treatment of women, e.g. divorce laws. Were it not for Western influence, Israel would probably become indistinguishable from Muslim culture).
During the Cold War, cultural commentators saw this principle operating in countries dominated by communism. Communism teaches atheism as a state religion. In this system man is merely an animal, operating according to instincts, and not made in the image of God. The result was mass murder on unheard of proportions in the 20th Century. To Communists, killing a man was no different than killing a dog, and if it served the interests of the state, people could be cruelly treated.
In Islam, Muslim men may share in some civil liberties and expect justice. In this respect it may be better than communism. But like all caste systems, infidels (non-Moslems) have no rights, and women and children do so only because of their legal connection to their husbands or fathers.
In contrast, the West has taught Trinitarianism. In the doctrine of the Trinity, God exists in three co-equal persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. As I demonstrate in my book, The Mother Heart of God, Christianity is the only religion which has elevated humanity to equal standing before its Creator. All men, women, and children are complete in their humanity. A man is not more human than a woman, nor are adults more human than children (as ancestor-worship religions would teach). Jesus, the Son of God, is fully God, and the Holy Ghost, who represents the feminine principle in the Trinity, is also fully God.
According to Grail Christianity - as says the Didache, a 1st Century Desposynic document - the unborn child is fully human, not potentially human. To kill an unborn child is an assault upon the image of God. Abortion is the work of witchcraft, while the work of the midwife is a holy vocation in the Grail Church.
It is painfully obvious that Classical Christianity (the kind which developed after the Nicene Council) has had an imperfect understanding of its own Trinitarian dogma. Unlike many of the pre-Nicene Fathers, it makes all members of the Trinity into masculine figures, including the Holy Spirit. And leaders of the Christian world have hunted down as heretics anyone who has tried to re-incorporate the feminine principle into the Trinitarian formula. Augustine was perhaps the first and greatest champion of using state power to serve the Church. With it, he expelled the Pelagians from the Empire. From that time on, society was organized around a bi-polar institutional structure of church and state. The family as a governing unit in society was progressively marginalized. It became a completely masculine system.
The ancient Celtic saints treated all life with a sacred reverence. They saw all things as both symbolic and real extensions of God's Being, and nothing as dung which could not be returned unto God's glory. They never lost sight of the feminine principle. For them, the family was the central institution of society because it imaged the Divine family of Heaven. Statecraft and priestcraft were viewed with the same suspicion as witchcraft. While midwives were hunted and burned as witches by the Inquisition, they were safe with the Celts.
Why Augustinian Christianity is Oppressive to Women and Children
If you discuss Muslim hatred of the West with many conservative Christians, you will find an astonishing sympathy. Like Muslims, conservative Christians view the West as decadent. Returning to "family values" and "law and order" are themes which express their desire that state power be used to "clean-up society". Individual freedom is too confusing and frustrating to such people, who, as churchists, only function well in a group setting where they are told what to do. They are impatient with truth and persuasion. They want to crack a few heads.
The farther Right you go on the political spectrum, the greater affinity you find. The avantgarde, such as Christian Reconstructionists and home schooling groups, have resurrected terms such as "Biblical law" and "Christian patriarchy" as new battlecries. The veiling of women, the rejection of television and music as sinful, and general isolation from the culture is enjoined. In many practical ways, Christian fundamentalism is similar in kind - although not in degree - as Muslim fundamentalism. And in the Christian Identity movement, you fill find a fanaticism and hostility which is indistinguishable from that of militant Muslims.
Conservative Christianity is an expression of Augustinianism, whether Catholic or Protestant. Although the churches of the East (such as the Orthodox) were never Augustinian, they shared a common theological perspective which came to them through different channels.
I speak not of Augustine's views on predestination, although his supralapsarianism and his doctrine of election certainly might be considered as justification for much cruelty in the world. If you are convinced that the child before you is the seed of the damned, you have no moral restraint from bashing its head against the wall.
Rather, it was Augustine's view of the moral depravity of man and its propagation by sexual intercourse which is the heart of his system. To Augustine, the passion required to ejaculate the male's semen contaminates it. Since man is inherently sexual, and sex is inherently sinful, then it follows that man is inherently evil. And since man's sexuality cannot be eradicated - it is a necessary evil for procreation, is it not? - the state is needed to tame and control man's evil ways. And the priest is needed to save the damned infant, the product of man's filthy semen. To Augustine and the monastics of his time, women were the temptresses, simply because they were women and excited sensuality in men. Feminism works from the same Augustinian premise; except that it seeks to free women from contaminated masculine sensuality. Like satanism which is an inverted parody of Catholicism, liberalism is an inversion of conservatism.
(I should add that Augustine was heavily influenced by his Manichean background. Islam is also heavily influenced by Persian Manicheanism, which views all matter as evil and "fleshly" needs as dangerous temptations.)
I discuss Augustinianism in contrast with Celtic Pelagianism at length in my book, Biblical Midwifery. I show how it is the central theological pillar for both church and state, to the exclusion of the family as a ruling institution in society.
In Defense of Sensuality
We are creatures of the earth and we live in the flesh. We are not angels. We operate in the sensory realm, not the psychic realm. Our physical and mental health depends upon the right degree and repetition of sensory stimulation. A starving child is a sad child. A woman denied the loving touch of her husband is a wounded woman. Much mental anguish and derangement in the world finds its roots in sensory deprivation.
The human organism wants color and brightness. Even groups like the Amish, who wear black and deny themselves many modern amenities, compensate in other ways. They make beautiful quilts and indulge in exquisite pastries. Elsewhere, the Fundamentalist male may avoid as sinful the dancing stripper (an event which occurred in Solomon's court, I might add), yet spend many senseless hours shooting pheasants out of the sky.[3]
There is such a thing as sensual overstimulation. And I would say that is a condition the West suffers from at the moment. We need seasons of activity and then rest. But the remedy is not found in a fanatical swing to the denial of our humanity. It does not require throwing out the television. It simply means turning it off.
Why Christianity has failed in the East
Once upon a time Christianity was the dominate religion in the Eastern world. Surprised? Westerners are so self-absorbed and insular that they do not know the Church of the East was once the largest body of Christians in the world. Encompassing much of Asia for nearly a thousand years, it represented the triumph of Apostolic missions. To diminish its significance, it is mislabeled by Westerners as the Nestorian Church, after Nestorious, a later Christian leader who was excommunicated from the West in a battle of political intrigue. But the Church of the East existed long before Nestorious and long afterwards. However, Asian Christianity was eventually destroyed by state-sponsored persecution and was replaced by Islam. Why did it not recover?
There may be three reasons why. First, doctrinally, on the person and work of Jesus Christ, His deity became fuzzy, much like the Ebionite view. They saw Him as the Messiah and a deity, but as a secondary deity and not truly co-equal with the Father.
Second, the Asian Church was compromised by Manicheanism, just like the Imperial Church of the Roman world. While it never became a state church and thus avoided the corruption that comes from being a state religion, it did abandon the family as representative of the Kingdom of God. Instead, it turned to education, the monastic life, and evangelism to spread its message. It became, like Buddhism and modern pietism, very other-worldly in its outlook. It lacked a doctrine of dominion.
For these two reasons, Asian Christianity dissolved by its own principles into Mohammedanism. Mohammedanism is more a Christian heresy than a separate religion. Mohammed was educated by Nestorian Christians. He venerated Christ as a prophet and Messiah. He believed that the Jews had had their chance and blew it. He believed that God - Allah - was turning to the Arab nations. But he rejected the Trinity and embraced a strict monotheism. He taught a continuing revelation and himself, of course, in the style of a Joseph Smith, as Allah's most recent prophet.
What gave the followers of Mohammed the cutting edge was their doctrine of dominion. The Muslims learned how to use the sword to spread and preserve their faith. That leads me to the third reason Christianity failed in the East and continues to fail today: it rejected polygamy.
In the East, polygamy is an ancient and venerated custom. Christian missionaries fail to make many converts for the very reason that they demand their converts become monogamists. In the East, missionaries have the reputation of being anti-family.[4] The early success of Christianity, especially in Apostolic times, comes from the fact that they did not attack this custom. Indeed, it lingered in the churches for centuries. But as I said, Manicheanism made its inroads and women were viewed negatively. Christians failed to propagate themselves by procreation and family nurture. The followers of Mohammed did not make this mistake. They embraced the custom and dealt with Manichean viewpoints in a different way: they veiled their women and restricted them to harems.
Rulers saw Christianity as weak and useless in making strong nations. They embraced Islam instead. The Khans of the Mongolian Empire are a case in point. There, Christianity had a strong presence and the Khan examined carefully both Christianity and Islam. He decided in favor of Islam and forced his subjects to convert. Those who refused were killed.[5]
Currently, the West is being overrun by Muslims. In Britain thhere are more people who attend mosques than churches. Germany will cease to be European in a generation. This trend is true also of the old Soviet Union. Even in the United States, Islam, especially among blacks, is making significant inroads. It is because the West has rejected polygamy.
Is all polygamy repressive to women?
Muslim polygamy is repressive to women because that religion rejects the Trinity and sees women as subhuman. Likewise, Christian polygamy is repressive to women because it is Augustinian. Women are the temptresses and must be avoided and hidden from view. Assertive, visible women are immediately labeled as harlots and witches.
What has made the difference in the West? Why has the West witnessed chivalry, the Troubadours, the Cavaliers, and the Gentry? It is because of the influence of Celtic theology upon the European aristocracy and I chronicle that influence in my study The Holy Conspiracy: Christian Druids & Cultural Alchemy.
Celtic theology is Pelagian and does not see a sexual contamination of the human race. It does not accept the doctrine of moral depravity as taught by the Latin Fathers, like Augustine. Nor does it accept their doctrine of election. It is strictly Trinitarian and never lost sight of the feminine principle until the late Middle Ages.
The Celts were a fun-loving, optimistic, and generous people and their women were respected as equals. Living in tribal groups, their children were never neglected. In regards to marriage their customs were misunderstood and scandalized among the Romans. The Roman Church accused the ancient Irish Church for being pagan, but that was only because they still followed "Christianized" versions of their folk customs and myths and still practiced polygamy. [6] In the Celtic system, polygamy was not oppressive to women and was not willingly eliminated.
Because Augustinian Christianity is too much like Mohammedanism in its effects upon women, I do not favor a revival of polygamy among conservative Christian groups. It would have negative consequences. We see this now in fundamentalist Mormon circles which impose a suffocating legalism on their families to compensate, psychologically, for the indulgence of this custom.
However, I doubt that many Christian groups will practice this custom once the anti-bigamy laws are overturned by the Supreme Court, an inevitability I might add. Its most conservative Justice, Anthony Scalia, has argued that polygamists cannot be denied their civil liberties, if homosexuals cannot. We live in a post-Augustinian culture, one which is, unfortunately, more pagan than Christian, but one which can be redeemed if the message of the ancient Celtic Church can be revived and disseminated. I do caution against a conservative backlash. Regardless, what is more likely, the Christians will grumble and start new political action committees to nominate better Supreme Court Justices. And that will be all.
I see possibilities for a new alignment of religous and cultural groups occurring in the 21st Century. Polygamy can be used to rid us of churchianity, once families become big enough and strong enough to provide many of the spiritual and social supports the church does now. This issue also provides us with an opportunity to drive a dagger in the heart of Augustinianism. Only then will we be ready to compete with Islam. Missions to that world begins here in America, where Muslims have begun to flood our universities. Muslims want the blessings of modernism, they want freedom. Given the choice, Muslim women also want polygamy, but not the repressive kind from the lands of their origin.
If the West fails to provide a viable outreach to the Muslim world with a Christianity that works in that culture, the alternative is world war. Such a war, as the terrorist attacks have demonstrated, can bring down our civilization and set the human race back centuries. That is not a worthy inheritance to bequeth our descendants.
* Now for a ministry update. There was no one available to work in the office for two months. That is changing now, but we apologize to those of you who had to wait for orders and responses to correspondence. We are trying our best. Pray that we can do better.
Our Labor Day gathering was a great blessing. We did two studies: one on the Book of Enoch and the other on Hierogamy. I don't have the opportunity to summarize our findings here, but expect to do so in new additions to this website.
We continue to make slow progress on our building projects and plan to send out pictures when we have something worthwhile to see.
Until next time, may our Lord's peace be with you.
A Servant of Jesus,
James Wesley Stivers
O God of all the nations of the earth: Remember the multitudes who have been created in thine image but have not known the redeeming work of our Savior Jesus Christ; and grant that, by the prayers and labors of thy holy Church, they may be brought to know and worship thee as thou hast been revealed in thy Son; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. AMEN.
- Collect for the Mission of the Church