TLW's Fundamentalistscope™ (Fundamentalist Historyscope) |
By T.L. Winslow (TLW), the Historyscoper™ |
© Copyright by T.L. Winslow. All Rights Reserved. |
Original Pub. Date: May 8, 2020. Last Update: Dec. 20, 2021. |
Westerners are not only known as history ignoramuses, but double dumbass history ignoramuses when it comes to the history of Christian fundamentalism (fundamentalist Christianity), Christian fundamentalist denominations, Christian fundamentalists, and Evangelical Christians. Since I'm the one-and-only Historyscoper (tm), let me quickly bring you up to speed before you dive into my Master Historyscope.
In 4004 B.C.E. at nightfall (6:00 p.m.) before Oct. 23 (Sun.) (autumnal equinox) is the date of the Creation, according to Protestant Bible fundamentalists, based on the work of Irish Anglican Archbishop James Ussher (Usher) (1581-1656), who in "The Annals of the World" (1650) dates the birth of Christ in 4 B.C.E. (so Darwinian evolution is the Fall of the House of Ussher?); end of the Sixth Day (land animals and man created); Adam (d. -3074) (Heb. "red", as in dirt or maybe blood, the sacred mojo of Jehovah?) is created from the dust of the Earth (Gen. 2:7); Noah's birth is 1,056 years ahead (-2992); (the original think outside the bun wasn't a good idea?) the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of the human race, is the source of four rivers, the Euphrates (Prath), Gihon, Pishon (which encircles the entire land of Havilah), and Tigris (Hidekel), indicating either that it is in the snow-covered mountains or that there is no snow but that it receives a constant source of rainfall, making it a lush garden where food and medicine grow on trees and all humans have to do is tend them and live practically forever, as long as they don't disobey God (i.e. sin), which he tests them by telling them that one special tree is not to be eaten from, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad (Evil), which is not necessarily special in itself but is just an easy-to-obey test, which doesn't stop them from doing it anyway, introducing Sin into the world, causing God to instantly judge them as worthy of death and have them expelled from Eden so they can be die eventually despite any and all technology they can come up with to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves in the cruel world, while being barred from directly talking with God anymore, leaving them to their new god, I hope you know my name, please allow me to introduce myself, Satan, Heaven's Top Model, originally the 2nd of God's sons (the Logos being the first), who was originally given the prestige job of "covering angel" for newly-created humans, the first material creatures created in God's image (hence all the complicated gray junk in our skulls), and are given God's blessing of living forever while multiplying and filling the Earth and subduing it through the seed of the original perfect sinless man Adam, who can talk directly with God if he wants to and doesn't need a Savior yet? Too bad, Satan gets tired of working in the department store and letting little humans sit on his knee, and grows envious of God, figures these inferior humans can be subverted to worship him instead, and goes to work with the Great Deception, appearing in the form of a naughty girl's toy and getting a little too friendly with "weaker vessel" Eve (the first cunnilingus?), after which "the Serpent beguiled me and I did eat" of the fruit of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and sin (disobey an order of God, who made sinning both so easy and so hard, depending on whether you love him); then, even worse, she leads her lawfully-married-under-God husband Adam to do it for fear of losing his helpmate (tailor-made just for him out of his rib) and ending up as a lonely people counting crows again? Too bad, this leaves God standing in the wind, as sin is the ultimate grief man can give their all-loving Creator, who, as an all-just judge, must reverse the Blessing and institute the Curse, kick them out of the Garden of Eden (where life is easy and food and medicine grow on trees, and animals are all tame and vegetarian), and bar them from the gates by an angel with a flaming sword (Gen. 3:24), after which the area turns into a sour grapes forbidden zone overgrown with vegetation? Once he's past that problem, the fallen angel Satan (opposer) (serpent) (Rev. 12:9), AKA Lucifer (Light-Bringer, appearing to be Light) (Isaiah 14:12-13) and Devil (liar, slanderer) (1 Peter 5:8) (the original Elvis?), who sinned first, before Eve and Adam, and who is himself doomed to die and knows it, decides he'd rather rule in hell than serve in heaven, and keeps his new groupies deceived that the world is still their oyster, death is natural, but that if they stick with him and do his walk they're going to become as gods and know right from wrong on their own outside of God's favor, therefore stayin' alive, stayin' alive forever, when actually they're his slaves, told what to think and do, and led down the er, garden path as they are under judgment of eternal death by their wronged Creator and Supreme Court? So what do they do? The wrong thing? Instead of repenting, telling Satan to stuff it and trying to get right with God, they continue to sin and let themselves be used, abused and losed by Sick Santa, spreading their sin to their children, and filling a fallen Earth with fallen people more and more openly worshiping Satan as their god after totally alienating themselves from the Real Thing Big J (Jehovah)? Never fear, God-And-Man-No-Religion-Modern-Love, the Sun's coming up, as Big J knows the End from the Beginning, and is already an infinite number of moves ahead of his opponent Jim the Bow Snake, and has already put a Redemption Plan (Gen. 3:15) in place to turn the Curse back into the Blessing, after man earns it, not by doing good works expecting to pay the fine and avoid the death sentence, but by being faithful to the Invisible God no matter what bull Satan can tempt him with, and paying the one and only ransom God will accept, namely, not all of Nature Talks To Me, but Jesus swinging in the breeze? But that's where you come in? As a day is as a thousand (or thousands) of our years with God (2 Peter 3:8, Psalms 90:4), it will end up taking 4K+ years to implement, as humans reproduce into the billions and all the variations on the board get played? Meanwhile, God makes the Earth livable, but with no free lunch, i.e., only at the expense of eternal toil, pain in childbirth, sickness and disease caused by the loss of perfection (Gen. 3:16-19)? You got X-ray eyes? Too bad, until the game is played out this is Satan's world now, and he keeps accusing God of being unable to maintain the loyalty of man without giving him everything for free, and even appears in his court (Job chap. 1) to make a motion to allow him to have a free hand to afflict him with curses to show God he's right that even a righteous man will blame and curse God instead of him? Yi yi yi, Little China Guy TLW isn't anywhere near being born yet, but when he is he finally figures out that his sources for GTT are untrustworthy, and worse, that that gut feeling that the truth is horrible, horrible keeps bugging him, because maybe it's all true, and nobody knows me, nobody knows my name not, and Bad S has really been from Day One eternally working to keep all of Adam's seed separated from and not right with God with a legion of deceptions, using the carrot and stick approach to trap them into worshiping idols and false gods (really Satan's demons behind phony masks, with whom it is a giant mistake to even attempt to communicate with), using any trick to win the million tax-free bucks in Survivor: Earth, incl. taking credit for luck and coincidence, posing as dead souls to trick their dupes into thinking they're communicating with the dead after they sell their living souls first, and low blows forever, doing what he did with Eve, perverting gift of fertility along with his command to be fruitful and multiply, don't worry, be happy, you're been given everything and it works, and warping it into addictive, self-destructive, super-sinful lust fulfillments, holding up a mirage of an Edenlike state of happiness, when the con is that Satan is a piker, and God decreed death as the ultimate wages for sin, and everybody from Adam and Eve down knows it whether they want to admit it or not, and being Chinese is no excuse? You're so pretty? Those are excellent words and your long tongue what? But Shake-It-Shake-It-What's-My-Line Wiley Coyote even tries to make that judgment into a lure to do it now while one can, for tomorrow you die and living too long is a drag, so party hearty and leave a good-looking corpse, and, like a chess game, the Devil works on each and every human mind 24/7 to bring him/her down from their original perfect relationship with the Creator, constantly trying to make them vulnerable, then finding their price, be it human sacrifice, sexual appetite, gluttony, astrology, magic and mediums, wealth and power, the Rolling Stones and Elvis, or above all, mass organized team-playing war (mass slaughter and rape, always pushing technology for more kill for the buck oh shut your mouth), ever seeking to make crime and sin a legal right and lifestyle; thus, history after Eden is a story of Good vs. Evil, White vs. Black, Christ vs. Antichrist, God vs. the Devil, and so it's to Beelzebub's advantage to twist history any way he can, and substitute his own, which makes two shiny pictures of himself, one in each of our eyes? But God is Good, and is always quite close at hand if you get Satan behind you, and being invisible and unable to communicate with sinful you directly because he's too holy (separate), he's already covered that base and directly inspired a tiny number of truly faithful down through the centuries with his Word, and insured that it has been transmitted and preserved, call it a miracle? So, listen to my heart beat, knowing what he has to cover up, the Genius Mister Sharky gets seriouser, says let's dance and fills up every program on the radio, twisting the Great Track of Time like a roller coaster, causing a strong deception that can fool even the wise and deceive even the very elect of God, because after all, ricochet, face the wall, Old Scratch and His Band are a higher form of life and keep concentrating despite our own chess players having to play tag team, ever coming and going, and therefore all of the Great Track of Time prior to the Fall, however scientific it appears, is actually sad Satanic fiction foisted on learned idiot-savants who are deceived into thinking they have a way to see backwards in time by looking at an endless coverup actively foisted on them by their former covering angel, who is actually covering his own tracks in maneuvering to become their total master and god, even though he knows that he and all his fellow fallen angels and human dupes will end up in the Galactic Computer's Bit Bucket when God calls the game and does a new Sysgen, with a lucky few saved for the New World, namely those supposed squares who took his word seriously and realized that all along it is checkmate in one move, God to Armageddon-1, if only we get humble, give up our seat and let him send in his you know what Son to play for us? Satan, I dedicate this Great Track of Time to you? Or is it all just a fairy tale and we came from da monkeys? Don't ask me I'm just doing my best to not have an opinion?
The infallible Word of God of Protestant Bible-thumpers gets off to a fallible start? In Oct. 1516 Dutch Roman Catholic scholar-priest-monk Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) pub. ("rushes out rather than edits") ("praecipitatum verius quam editum") the Textus Receptus (Lat. "received text") of the New Testament (Novum Instrumentum Omne), with side-by-side Greek and Latin text, becoming the first Bible divided into verses; the first ed. uses the Latin Vulgate, which the Church considers as "their" Bible, but in later eds. he pisses-off Roman Catholics by using his own Latin trans. of the Greek in its place; he uses a small set of late medieval (12th cent.) mss. found in Basel, plus a ms. of St. John's Revelation borrowed from friend Johannes Reuchlin, which is hard to read and is missing the final six verses, causing him to fill in from the Latin Vulgate, creating a bastard Greek ms., which is later used to prepare the King James version; he pisses-off the Trinitarians by not incl. the Johannine Comma (Comma Johanneum) (Heavenly Witnesses) in 1 John 5:7-8: "There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on Earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one", because it is not found in Greek mss., only "There are three that bear witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one", but later tickles the Trinitarians pink by incl. it in later eds. after they give him a fake Greek ms. in which they insert it themselves?; he goes on to pub. four more eds. by 1535, which become the "editio princeps" used by W European printers for the next three cents.; English royal physician Linacer (a Roman Catholic) gets and reads a copy, then exclaims "Either this book is not true, or we are not Christians" (a true Protestant in the making?). In Jan. 1548 Erasmus posth. pub. The First Tome or Volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus Upon the New Testament ed. by Nicholas Udall; pub. by Edward Whitchurch; Erasmus' trans. of the New Testament interleaved with an English trans.; vol. 2 pub. in 1549; a royal injunction orders copies to be kept in every parish church in England.
With Catholic indulgences, crime does pay? The papal quest for filthy lucre finally reaps public reaction, creating the Protestant schism? On Oct. 31, 1517 (Wed.) (Halloween or All Hallows' Eve) German Roman Catholic Augustinian friar Martin Luther (1483-1546), after becoming sick of the indulgences peddled by Dominican friar Johann Teufel, er, Johann Tetzel (1465-1519) et al., and convinced that 1517 marks the end of the Babylonian Captivity of the Congregation, nails his Ninety-Five (95) Theses (Disputation on the Power of Indulgences) (written in Latin) to the door of the Wittenberg Palast (Palace) (Castle) Church in Saxony on the Elbe River (known for housing 5K+ holy relics, which he detests), arguing against indulgences and other Roman Catholic Church abuses, starting out pulling his punches then within a few years claiming that the pope is the Antichrist, "and his seat is that of Satan himself", and that "The treasures of indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the wealth of men", igniting the already-smoldering Protestant Reformation (he could have picked a more PC date than Halloween?); he really just sent them to Mainz archbishop Albert of Brandenburg that day, then posted them on the church door sometime in mid-Nov.?; his offer of a public debate is declined, but his theses are soon translated from Latin to German and pub., causing the German middle and merchant classes, who are already chafing at Italian efforts at domination to rise to his support in reaction to the fugging Fuggers (successor to the Medicis) and other papal bankers who are draining Germany of gold for Rome with this holy racket (the Fuggers are behind the loans made by Albert of Brandenburg to the pope); the big revelation to Luther that gave him strength was from the Bible, incl. the Seven Trumpets in Rev. Ch. 8, and Rev. 13:5, where it says that the Antichrist will rule the world for 42 mo., which he turns into 1260 years instead of days, setting year 1 in 539 C.E., and claiming that Christ will therefore return in the year 1799, thus it's time to get started whipping things up? - the wildlife experience, more than a museum?
In 1525 English scholar William Tyndale (1495-1536), fulfilling his vow "If God preserves my life, I will cause a boy that driveth a plow to know more of the Scriptures than the pope", finishes his trans. of the New Testament into English from the original Greek (instead of the Latin vers. used by John Wycliffe in 1381), then has it printed in "safe" Germany by Peter Schoeffer (Schöffer) (1425-1503) (apprentice of Johannes Butenberg) in Worms before being smuggled into England; he then begins work on the Old Testament. In 1530 William Tyndale coins the word "Passover" followed next year by "Evangelical"; he also claims that "the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin".
In 1531 freethinking Spanish physician Michael Servetus (1511-53) pub. On the Errors of the Trinity, containing the soundbytes: "In the Bible there is no mention of the Trinity... We get to know God, not through our proud philosophical concepts, but through Christ"; "How much this tradition of Trinity has alas, alas! been the laughing stock of Mohammedans only God knows. The Jews also shrink from giving adherence to this fancy of ours, and laugh at our foolishness about the Trinity, and on account of its blasphemies, they do not believe that this is the Messiah promised in their Law. And not only the Mohammedans and the Hebrews, but the very beasts of the field, would make fun of us, did they grasp our fantastic notion, for all the workers of the Lord bless the One God. This most burning plague, therefore, was added and superimposed, as it were, on the new gods which have recently come, which our fathers did not worship. And this plague of philosophy was brought upon us by the Greeks, for they above all men are most given to philosophy; and we, hanging upon their lips, have become philosophers, and they never understood the passages of the Scriptures which they adduced with regard to this matter"; too bad, he makes himself a target for the Catholic Inquisition and Protestants both. In 1540 after being forced to flee to Paris and change his name to Villanovus, Servetus discovers the Pulmonary Circulation of the Blood. On Oct. 27, 1553 French-born Protestant leader John (Jehan) Calvin (1509-64) of Geneva Switzerland, founder of Calvinism, known for the doctrine of Predestination burns his theological enemy, Unitarian (non-Trinitarian) Catalan scholar Michael Servetus (b. 1511) (who was captured while fleeing to his protection after escaping a prison of the Spanish Inquisition) in Geneva, executioner Guillaume Farel warning the audience: "(Servetus) is a wise man who doubtless thought he was teaching the truth, but he fell into the hands of the Devil... Be careful the same thing doesn't happen to you"; liberals lose their illusions about Bible-thumpers ever lightening up anything but a faggot, and a corner is turned in the fight for freedom of conscience? at his trial Servetus is ridiculed for describing Palestine as a sparse, sterile land when the Bible says it's the land of milk and honey; noted noble Paris-educated French Protestant ex-humanist poet Theodore Beza (1519-1605) backs Calvin up, as does #1 learned scholar of the age Sebastian Castellion (Catellio) (Chateillon) (Chataillon) (Castello) (1515-63), who in May 1554 pub. the pamphlet "Should Heretics Be Persecuted?" under the alias Martinus Bellius, containing the soundbyte: "When Servetus fought with reasons and writings, he should have been repulsed by reasons and writings", and throws Calvin's words back at him when he was being persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church: ""It is unchristian to use arms against those who have been expelled from the Church, and to deny them rights common to all mankind", ending with an argument for separation of church and state, with the soundbyte: "We can live together peacefully only when we control our intolerance. Even though there will always be differences of opinion from time to time, we can at any rate come to general understandings, can love one another, and can enter the bonds of peace, pending the day when we shall attain unity of faith" - I look bad, feel bad, which is most important?
In 1557-60 William Whittingham (1524-79), Myles (Miles) Coverdale (1488-1569) et al. pub. The Geneva Bible in London, an inexpensive portable English Bible with extensive Calvinist-slanted "annotations upon all the hard places" (marginal glosses), which piss-off Anglican prelates, who associate it with Presbyterians, who wish to abolish the Episcopalian form of govt. by bishops and replace it with govt. by lay elders; it's also furnished with instructional aids, becoming the first study Bible, and the first using verse numbering by Robert Estienne (Stephanus) of Paris; dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, it is often used and/or quoted by John Knox, John Bunyan, John Donne, Oliver Cromwell, and Shakespeare, and later preferred by Puritans over the King James Bible, dissing the divine right of kings and always translating the word king as tyrant, causing Charles I to ban it in 1644, leading to Puritan takeover of the govt. and his beheading, even though they later realize the superiority of the 1611 KJV.
In 1568 Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504-75) (ed.) pub. The Bishops' Bible; rev. eds. in 1572 and 1602; supersedes the Great Bible of 1539, and the Geneva Bible of 1557-60; trans. by a committee of bishops appointed by Elizabeth I to supposedly be free of political influence, producing an uneven product that satisfies nobody, spurring production of the 1611 King James Bible?; produced by the Church of England to succeed the Great Bible of 1539 and the Geneva Bible of 1557-60, with the Old Testament and Apocrypha translated from the original languages instead of the Latin Vulgate like the Geneva Bible.
In 1590 Spanish Jesuit theologian Francisco Ribera (1537-91) pub. In Sacrum Beati Ioannis Apostoli, & Evangelistiae Apocalypsin Commentarii, which uses Daniel 9:27 and its week #69 of 70 to interpret the Bible Book of Revelation as predicting a coming Antichrist who will lead the Roman Catholic Church away from the pope into apostasy, reign for 3-1/2 years (1260 days), rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, deny Christ, claim to be God, and conquer the world; Cardinal Robert Bellarmine adds that he will be a Jew; written to oppose Martin Luther (1483-1546), who has been claiming that the papacy is the Antichrist and that it has already been 1260 years and is already happening, starting an eternal war between the two Antichrist camps; founds the Biblical doctrine of Futurism, which interprets the Book of Rev. and other Bible books as prophesies of coming events right before the Second Coming rather than as past events, foreshadowing Premillennialism and Dispensationalism - when opportunity comes knocking, the whole neighborhood starts walking?
In 1611 English King (1603-25) James I (1566-1625) (ed.) pub. the King James (Authorized) Version of the Holy Bible (66 books), commissioned in 1604 (lucky that the 1605 Guy Fawkes Plot to replace the govt. with Roman Catholics didn't succeed), with the work divided between 47 translators (47 Anglicans, 0 Puritans, 0 Roman Catholics, 0 Separatists) in six committees with 15 rules to follow, using ancient mss. for reliability, and deliberately preserving ambiguities, e.g. Romans 5:12: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (can mean that all men die because of sin, and/or that all men sin because they are under God's judgment of death); most of the language is William Tyndale's, but without the pesky marginal notes challenging the divine right of kings; James I's planned royal authorization of the final work never happens?; the intent is to make "of many good translations one principal good one", according to translator Miles Smith (1554-1624) in Preface to the Translation; it takes its place beside the Bishops' Bible (official vers. for use in Anglican churches, original ed. 1568, revised ed. 1602) (basic source for the King James Bible?), the Geneva Bible (1575) (known for Calvinist-slanted footnotes dissing the divine right of kings, always translating the word king as tyrant), and the 1582 Rheims trans. of the 5th cent. Roman Catholic Vulgate; too bad, the King James Bible is initially universally panned, and the Puritans continue to use the Geneva Bible, causing Charles I to ban it in 1644, leading to the Puritans taking over the govt. and beheading him in 1649, later realizing the superiority of the KJV; translator Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), master of Pembroke College, Cambridge U. is appointed bishop of Winchester in 1619, becoming the mentor of Reformed Roman Catholicism in the post-Reformation Anglican Church, and the translator of the 23rd Psalm; Thomas Bilson (1547-1616), bishop of Winchester oversees the final edit and printing; the notes on the trans. process are stored in Whitehall, and are destroyed in the 1598 Whitehall Fire; in modern times the Ruckmanists (Ruckmanites), founded by Am. Baptist pastor Peter Sturges Ruckman (1921-2016) claim special divine inspiration for the translators, even though they were govt. employees told what to do by the hardly saintly king, and explicitly deny special inspiration; a case of disguised Am. WASP racism?; Psalm 46 features word 46 from the beginning "shake" and word 46 from the end "spear", and of course William Shakespeare (b. 1564) is 46 the first part of this year; a tribute, or did he translate it? - it's a pajama people special?
In 1666 Elstow-born Congregationalist minister John Bunyan (1628-88) pub. his spiritual autobio. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, or a Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ to his Poor Servant John Bunyan. On Feb. 18, 1678 he pub. The Pilgrim's Progress, Pt. 1 (first English novel?), which becomes a super-hit, translated into 200+ languages, never going out of print; uses the Hebrew term "Beulah" (married) to refer to the Promised Land, causing it to become popular as a girl's name - Beulah Ballbreaker? In 1684 he pub. The Pilgrim's Progress, Pt. 2, which causes the female name "Christian" (Gk. "anointed") to become a popular boy's name, since he's the hero?
In 1707 Oxford prof. John Mill (1645-1707) pub. Novum testamentum græcum, cum lectionibus variantibus MSS. exemplarium, versionum, editionum SS. patrum et scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, et in easdem nolis (Ocford); pub. after 30 years of work, documenting over 30K discrepancies between 100 extant New Testament mss., shocking the Christian world that had relied on Erasmus' 1516 Textus Receptus; he dies of a stroke 2 weeks after pub.
In 1727 French scientist ("Father of Natural History") George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-88) discovers the Binomial Theorem. In 1749-89 he pub. Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roy (36 vols.) (8 more vols. pub. posth.), which becomes an internat. hit, shocking Bible-thumpers with the claim that the Earth has been developing for at least 75K years via "organic particles", pointing out similarities but not the common ancestry of humans and apes while entertaining it as a hypothesis, preparing peoples' minds for the advent of Darwinism, Anthropology, etc.; too bad, he views the Caucasian race of Adam and Eve as the pinnacle, and all other races as a degenerated version caused by climate, etc. - if they only coulda seen U.S. Pres. George W. Bush?
About 1730 English Bible-thumping brothers John Wesley (1703-91) (of Lincoln College) and Charles Wesley (1707-88) (of Christ Church) found the Protestant sect of Methodism at Oxford U. in England, turning the taunts of fellow students into their name; their views are soon taken up by "Calvinistic Methodist" George Whitefield, and spreads to the U.S. and other countries via outdoor preaching, reaching 80M followers by modern times; their theology focuses on sanctification and the effect of faith on character (people are dead in sin by nature, hence children of wrath, and are justified by faith alone, with the love of God reigning supreme in their hearts, giving them outward holiness and allowing them to experience Jesus Christ personally), with the main doctrines incl. the primacy of Scripture, assurance of salvation, imparted righteusness, the possibility of perfection in love, and works of piety, clinging to the Arminian doctrine that salvation is available to all and rejecting the Calvinist doctrine that God has pre-ordained a select group of people to be saved, becoming popular with the worknng class and black Am. slaves; Methodists go on to engage in charitable work for the sick and poor, and to get deep into music and hymns.
In 1735 Jonathan Edwards discovers religious brainwashing techniques during a religious crusade in Northampton, Mass.; "Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored as to have their hearts touched."
In 1736 tall handsome cross-eyed Oxford-educated English Methodist preacher George Whitefield (1714-70) (pr. WHIT-field) begins preaching in England at age 22, wowing huge crowds with a booming voice that doesn't need to be raised even in front of a crowd of 30K; actor David Garrick ("the George Whitefield of the stage") claims he'd pay a thousand pounds to be able to say the word "oh" as good as him; his mere pronouncing of the word "Mesopotamia" causes women to weep?; his sermons are all based on the text "be born again" (John 3:3). Some things you just can't copy, except your own birth? Born once, die twice, born twice, die once? In spring 1738 Oxford-educated itinerant evangelist George Whitefield visits British Am., starting in Ga., where he converts Anglican priests John Wesley and Charles Wesley, both of whom have religious experiences on May 24; in Dec. Whitefield launches the First Great Awakening in Mass. (ends 1755), reaching 10M listeners via 18K sermons after becoming the first speaker to speak in all 13 Am. colonies; his disciple Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) stages a mini spiritual awakening in Northampton, Mass. this year and next.
In the 1740s the Old Lights and New Lights split over the emotionalism of the Great Awakening rivals, with 200+ congregations splitting to found their own New Light churches; in 1741 the Presbyterian New Lights split, founding their own colleges incl. Nassau Hall in Princeton, N.J.
On hot-hot-hot July 8, 1741 the Great Awakening reaches a peak as Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) delivers his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God speech in Enfield, Mass., featuring lurid word pictures of Da Judge Bible God Jehovah, who "holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked... He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire"; the Great Awakening splits New England Puritanism into the "Old Lights" and the "New Lights", who go over to the Baptists, Presbyterians, or Methodists; the Am. colonies are prepared for rev. by the Great Awakening?
On Mar. 1, 1768 German Enlightenment philosopher Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) dies in Hamburg after founding Deism, which denies the existence of the supernatural and considers God to be the Great Watchmaker of the Universe, who created it and set it in motion then left it alone; he also leaves the first critical historical analysis of Jesus Christ, arguing that he simply wanted to found a godly state, and died in despair when he failed, with the idea that he died to atone for mankind's sins attributed to St. Paul, making Jesus the teacher of a "remarkable, simple, exalted, and practical religion"; in 1774 he posth. pub. posth. pub. Criticism of the Gospels, questioning their historicity and authenticity, launching theology-and-doctrine-free Higher (Historical) Criticism; Thomas Paine takes on the job of bringing it down to the masses?
In Feb. 1779 Wapping, London-born abolitionist evangelist Anglican clergyman (converted infidel and slave trader for 20 years) John Newton (1725-1807) and Berkhamsted, Hertfortshire-born evangelist poet-hymnodist William Cowper (1731-1800) pub. The Olney Hymns; composed in Olney, Buckinghamshire by Newton, who wrote it in 1772 and is forever haunted by 20K souls; incl. the original form of Amazing Grace; in 1835 it is coupled with the tune "New Britain"; "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,/ That saved a wretch like me!/ I once was lost, but now am found,/ Was blind, but now I see./ Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,/ And grace my fears relieved;/ How precious did that grace appear/ The hour I first believed."
On Oct. 31, 1780 21-y.-o. Kingston upon Hull-born William Wilberforce (1759-1833) is elected to Parliament, becoming an evangelical Christian in 1785 , hooking up with anti-slave-trade activists Thomas Clarkson, Charles Middleton, Hannah More, Granville Sharp et al. in 1787 and silencing chuckles about his 4'11" hunchback frame with his deep religiousness and eloquent oratory, which makes him seem a giant. In 1804 William Wilberforce finally gets his slavery abolition bill passed in the Commons by 124-49 votes, but the House of Lords gets it adjourned till next year, when the Commons flops, rejecting it by seven votes. In Sept. 1805 at the urging of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), PM William Pitt (b. 1759) finally issues a formal document in favor of the slavery abolition bill, 4 mo. before his Jan. 23 death. On Feb. 4, 1807 (Wed.) after a month-long fight, the English House of Lords passes the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), followed by the Commons on Feb. 22 by 283-16 (as Wilberforce sits in his chair weeping?), which is given royal assent on Mar. 25, but the law has no teeth, and the light fines and nonexistent jail prospects make scofflaws out of ship captains, who often chuck slaves overboard to avoid paying; Wilberforce spends the next 18 years of his career in the House of Commons fighting for the total emancipation of existing slaves; meanwhile the U.S. Congress bans the importation of slaves beginning Jan. 1, 1808; the U.S. now supplies 60% of Britain's cotton - you can't flag the king, or, illegal use of a hand truck?
About 1790 the Second Great Awakening begins in the U.S., ramping up about 1800 and peaking in the 1820s, increasing membership in Baptist and Methodist congregations by millions before fizzling by 1840; the Holiness movement, that a second work of grace leads to Christian perfection, whose roots are in Methodism gets a big boost; in 1817-25 the burned-over district of W. N.Y. between the Erie Canal and the Finger Lakes incl. Palmyra, N.Y. area hosts several camp revival meetings, and 12-y.-o. Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-44) gets religion, attending church classes and reading the Bible, getting interested in Methodism and engaging in religious folk magic with family members incl. parents and maternal grandfather, who report visions and dreams from God; Smith's education never incl. history, philosophy, lit., or science, just the Bible and popular historical moose hockey?; the burned-over district goes on to spawn religious nonconformist sects. incl. Latter Day Saints, Millerites, Adventists, Internat. Bible Students (Jehovah's Witnesses), the table-rapping Fox Sisters, Shakers, and Oneida Society, and social radicals incl. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Fourierist utopian Socialist movement, the Skaneateles Community, and Walter Rauschenbusch, leader of the Social Gospel.
In 1790 after Pope Clement XIV's 1773 bull "Dominus ac Redemptor" dissolves the Jesuit order, reducing him to secular status, Santiago, Chile-born former Jesuit priest Manuel De Lacunza (1731-1801) completes his magnum opus The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty (La venida del Mesias en gloria y majestad), which is printed secretly in Cadiz in 1810-11 under the alias Rabbi Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, backing Francisco Ribera's Biblical doctrine of Futurism; too bad, on Jan. 15, 1819 the Spanish Inquisition orders it suppressed, and in Sept. 1824 Pope Leo XII places it on the Index of Prohibited Books, which only makes it more popular, causing eds. to be pub. in Paris in 1825 and London in 1826?
Hey now, you're an all-star, get your game on? In 1793 Thetford, Norfolk, England-born Am. Founding Father Thomas "Tom" Paine (1737-1809) pub. The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (1794, 1795, 1807); bestseller in the U.S. written just before being thrown into prison in France, pub. with the help of his friend Joel Barlow; a rabble-rousing Rationalist Deist attacks the divine origin of the Bible, becoming the Infidel's Bible, setting the 19th cent. up for secularism and belief in scientific progress as a replacement religion for Christianity, with pithy soundbytes incl.: "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man"; "One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests"; "I do not believe in the creed professed... by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church"; "The story of the whale swallowing Jonah... borders greatly on the marvelous, but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale"; "It is wrong to say that God made rich and poor; he made only male and female, and gave them the whole earth for their inheritance"; he gets widely accused of being an atheist, when actually he attacks atheism in the book and supports Deism, but the bigoted religious reaction (which incl. most of his old Am. friends, incl. Washington) causes his place in the pantheon of Am. Founding Fathers to get tainted, and later the infidels strike back by attempting to paint all the U.S. Founding Fathers (incl. Bible-thumping Washington) as Deists and overdo separation of church and state? - was Paine their "rabbit", writing what they all believed but couldn't openly express, or was he just out on a limb, too extreme but holding onto the Founding Father main trunk for support?
In 1802 Petersborough-born English Anglican clergyman William Paley (1743-1805) pub. Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, based on The Religious Philosopher: or, The Right Use of the Contemplation of the World, for the Conviction of Atheists and Infidels (2 vols.) (1715), by Dutch theologian Bernard Nieuwentyt (Nieuwentijdt) (Nieuwentjit) (1654-1718), introducing the watchmaker analogy of God.
On Sept. 7, 1809 after being infused with the Enlightenment of John Locke at the U. of Glasgow, seeing his Presbyterian credentials suspended before emigrating to the U.S. in 1807, County Down, Ireland-born Scottish Presbyterian minister Thomas Campbell (1763-1854) pub. The Declaration and Address of the Christian Assoc. of Washington in Washington, Penn., which becomes the founding document of the Christian Assoc. of Washington, which seeks to simplify Christianity to a common form that everybody can agree on, based on the Bible alone, with the motto: "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; and where they are silent, we are silent"; on May 4, 1811 after trying to avoid becoming a church, then being refused fellowship with the Pittsburgh Synod of the Presbyterian Church, it goes congregational, founding the Brush Run Church in Brush Run, Penn., soon going Baptist and joining the Redstone Baptist Association in 1815-24, switching to the Mahoning Baptist Association in 1824; on Jan. 1, 1830 after rejecting the name "Christian Baptist", his County Antrim, Ireland-born son Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) founds The Millennial Harbinger mag. in Bethany, W. Va. (until 1870), claiming to help readers handle the approaching Millenium, founding the Restoration Movement (Campbellism), which seeks "the unification of all Christians in a single body patterned after the church of the New Testament"; on Mar. 2, 1840 the Va. legislature charters Bethany College in Bethany, Va. (modern-day W. Va.), with Alexander Campbell as pres. #1, becoming the oldest higher ed. institution in W. Va., becoming the birthplace of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity; meanwhile in 1832 the Campbellites and Stoneites join in fellowship with a handshake, becoming known as the Stone-Campbell Movement and calling themselves the Church (Disciples) of Christ.
In 1812 Presbyterian Princeton Theological Seminary is founded in Princeton, N.J., becoming known for Bible-thumping Calvinist Princeton Theology; in 1910 they issue a list of five dogmas deemed essential to defend the infallibility of the Bible, incl. inerrancy of scripture, the Virgin Birth of Christ, Christ's atonement for our sins on the cross, Christ's bodily resurrection, and the objective reality of Christ's miracles; the last one is later replaced by the doctrine of premillennialism, that Christ will physically return to Earth in the Second Coming to inaugrate the thousand-year golden age of peace AKA the Millennium; too bad, in 1929 after the theological liberals take over the school, the last Bible-thumping Princeton theologians leave to found Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Penn.
In 1825 Warren, Conn.-born 6'2" blue-eyed abolitionist anti-Mason atty. Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875), ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1824 begins a 7-year series of "repent-and-be-saved" revivals in Oneida County, N.Y., pioneering citywide campaigns and gaining nat. fame as "America's foremost revivalist", converting 500K+ while preaching against slavery and advocating equal education for blacks and women; in 1847 he pub. Systematic Theology (2 vols.) (revised eds. in 1851 and 1878), which becomes a seminal work for Am. evangelicals.
In 1827 Irish-born Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) of Bethany, Va. splits with the Baptists and founds the back-to-the-New-Testament Am. Restoration Movement (Campbellism), becoming the oldest ecumenical movement in the U.S., resulting in the creation of the Churches of Christ, which pub. the Millennial Harbinger (1823-63).
In 1827 after falling from a horse in Oct., the Plymouth (Assemblies of) Brethren (named after Matt. 23:8) Bible-only Christian denomination is founded in Dublin, Ireland by Westminster, London-born John Nelson Darby (1800-82), who popularizes Pre-Tribulation Rapture theology, Dispensationalism, and Futurism, later calling the invention of the telegraph an invention of Cain and a harbinger of Armageddon.
On Dec. 31, 1831 (Sat.) (Jan. 1, 1832?) the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church) is formed at the High St. Meeting House in Lexington, Ky. by a handshake between Port Tobacco, Md.-born Barton Warren Stone (1772-1844) and Sullivan County, Tenn.-born John "Raccoon" Smith (1784-1868) to go back to the Biblical roots, merging the Second Great Awakening Restoration (Stone-Campbell) Religious Reform Movement of County Down, Ireland-born Am. Presbyterian minister Thomas Campbell (1763-1854) and his County Antrim, Ireland-born son Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), composed mainly of Bible-thumping Baptists.
We Americans don't have the amenities at home that you Brits afford us here? On July 26, 1833 while white Americans cower in fear of freeing black slaves for fear of racial amalgamation, the Whig-dominated British House of Commons, enjoying a comfortable remoteness from its black slaves passes the Slavery Abolition Act (introduced by colonial secy. Lord Stanley and supported by Lord Brougham), giving all British slaves their freedom starting next Aug. 1 and compensating slave owners to the tune of £20M, which takes 40% of Britain's nat. budget, and the loan isn't paid off until 2014; it is given royal assent on Aug. 28; the British Anti-Slavery Society is disbanded; lifelong English abolitionist leader William Wilberforce (b. 1833) hears the good news before dying on July 29, his last words being: "Thank God that I should have lived to witness a day in which England was willing to give twenty millions sterling for the abolition of slavery"; too bad, the law is initially applied only in the West Indies, and it goes on in Sierra Leone until Jan. 1, 1928; on Dec. 4 William Lloyd Garrison, returning from a trip to England with his batteries recharged helps found the Am. Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, Penn., and becomes its pres. in 1843-65.
In 1833-5 Swiss theologian David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) pub. The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (Das Leben Jesu, Kritisch Bearbeitet) (2 vols.) (4th ed. 1840, tr. into English by George Eliot in 1846 in 3 vols.), which says what all the Rationalists have been thinking, rejecting the miracles and Virgin Birth of Christ as myths, and showing that there is no way to construct a historical image of Jesus from the New Testament to serve the Christian faith, although the myths they are based on may contain a kernel of truth, causing a giant reaction in Germany; claims that the Gospels were written late in the 2nd cent. C.E.; "The most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell" (Earl of Shaftsbury); Albert Schweitzer later writes that Strauss' works "filled in the death-certificates of a whole series of explanations which, at first sight, have all the air of being alive, but are not really so", dividing the Quest for the Historical Jesus into "the period before David Strauss, and the period after David Strauss"; spawns disciples incl. Bruno Bauer (1809-82), who concludes that Jesus was a 2nd cent. myth stolen from Greek and Roman mythology, with Judaism thrown in; too bad, Strauss couches his book in terms of Hegelian philosophy, causing the Young Heglians to chew him up, and academia to bury Bauer's works.
On June 6, 1844 the Young Men's Christian Assoc. (YMCA) is founded in England by draper's shop mgr. Sir George Williams (1821-1905) as a way to get men off the streets and into nice rooms where they can read the Bible and figure out when the Second Coming is going to be; his boss George Hitchcock is one of his first converts; he is knighted in 1894 by Queen Victoria.
When does a fashion statement make a bank statement? On Oct. 24, 1844 the Millerites, followers of Pittsfield, Mass.-born Baptist preacher William Miller (1782-1849) begin to face the Great Disappointment of 1844 when the 2,300 Year-Days of Daniel 8:14 don't jive like they thought, and the world doesn't end with the Second Coming of Christ; never fear, in Dec. Maine-born Ellen Gould White (1827-1915) begins having the first of 2K personal visions, causing the true believers to regroup and form the Seventh-Day Adventists, who claim that Christ didn't make his Second Coming because he entered the Holy of Holies in the Heavenly Sanctuary to begin the Investigative Judgment, and that they should worship on Saturday not pagan Sunday - Sunday didn't work so why not go back to the Jewish sabbath?
In 1847 London-born Am. Restorationist John Thomas (1805-71), friend of Restoration Movement founder Alexander Campbell founds the crypto-Anabaptist Unitarian (anti-trinitarian) Christadelphian (Gr. "brethren in Christ") sect in America, claiming to be a return to first cent. apostolic Christianity, going on to promote a nat. homeland for Jews in Israel, claiming that Britain would play a leading role; by modern times there are 50K members in 120 countries.
In 1848 John Humphrey Noyes (1811-86) of Brattleboro, Vt. founds the Oneida Community of Biblical Communist Perfectionists in Putney, Vt.; after being expelled, it settles in Oneida, N.Y. (until 1880); its members believe that Christ has already returned, and that true believers should renounce private property and marriage, although they are permitted "complex marriage", i.e., sleeping around, with conception controlled by the leaders using eugenic principles; the group establishes several successful manufacturing enterprises, which raise their capital from $67K to $600K by 1880, when they are again expelled, and most members quit, marry, and form the joint-stock Oneida Community Ltd., while the remainder move to Canada.
In 1851 the Landmarkist Movement is founded in the Am. South by James Robinson Graves (1820-93) and Benjamin Marcus "Ben" Bogard (1868-1951), reacting to religious progressivism by claiming that the Baptist movement began in Apostolic times, and has continued in unbroken continuity to the present despite massive persecution by the Roman Catholic Church, Lutherans et al.; too bad, in 1859 the Southern Baptist Convention repudiates it, causing a schism by the Am. Baptist Assoc. (1924), Baptist Missionary Assoc. of Am., and the Interstate and Foreign Landmark Missionary Baptist Assoc.; in 1928 Bogard successfully lobbies for an Ark. state law banning the teaching of Darwin's Theory of Evolution in public schools, which is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968; in 1931 Ark.-born Tex. Baptist minister James Milton Carroll (1870-1931) pub. the booklet The Trail of Blood: Following the Christians Down through the Centuries; or, The History of Baptist Churches from the Time of Christ, Their Founder, to the Present Day, a bestseller promoting Landmarkism, which is used to modern times.
About 1855 the Third Great Awakening begins in the U.S. (ends 1930), based on the postmillennial belief in the Second Coming of Christ and fueled by the Social Gospel Movement, spawning the Holiness Movement, the Nazarene Movement, Christian Science et al.
The Book That Shook the World? Big year for Bible skeptics, secularists, atheistic scientists, anybody against the ancien regime, as Jehovah, the Source of Life Breathed Into Mud is challenged by Godless Evolution, Mud Coming to Life by Itself After It Bubbles Long Enough? The biggest V for the Devil since Eden? The new 95 Theses, but Darwin is smart enough not to publish it on Halloween? On Nov. 24, 1859 (Thur.) English naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82) pub. On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life; the 1st ed. sells out in 1 day; the 1872 6th ed. shortens the title to "The Origin of Species"; the decider, which causes evolutionary "survival of the fittest" theory to triumph among the intelligentsia; English Anglican minister and Cambridge U. prof. of modern history Charles Kingsley (1819-75), who received an advance copy on Nov. 18 writes that he had "long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of the species", which Darwin adds to the next ed. of his book in a modified form: "He had gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws"; Darwin pub. it after spending eight years dissecting barnacles in his basement, then inexplicably switching to the Galapagos finch?; catches on first in Germany among atheists?; "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down"; Louis Agassiz of the U.S. opposes Darwin, preferring a theory of "Epochs of Creation", based on the absence of missing links between layers of well-formed fossil ecosystems; the phrase "I'll be a monkey's uncle" is coined by Darwin skeptics; "There is a grandeur in this view of life that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved"; what was that about "my theory would absolutely break down" if anything is found that can't be explained by "numerous, successive, slight modifications"?; in practice Darwinism becomes a religion which denies that there is intelligent design in Nature, and therefore tries to deconstruct any evidence of it they find as they go along, yet clings to the notion of common descent, almost as if there was some original, er, accident, and ends up turning into a narrow naturalistic dogma by the end of the 20th cent., taking over U.S. and other Western educational systems with a chilling priesthood? In 1860 after failing to fit it into his Theory of Evolution, Darwin writes the immortal soundbyte: "The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail makes me sick." On Feb. 1, 1871 he writes a Letter to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, with the soundbyte: "It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were found." On Feb. 24, 1871 he pub. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, which applies his theory of evolution to humans; "The Simidae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and the Old World monkeys; and from the latter at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the universe, proceeded"; "We civilized men... do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment... Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed"; attempts to scientifically establish white racial supremacy, with the soundbytes: "Western nations of Europe immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the summit of civilization"; "American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named"; "Looking to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance... [so that] virtue will be triumphant"; "It is the most closely allied forms... which, from having nearly the same structure, constitution, and habits, generally come into the severest competition with each other; consequently, each new variety of species, during the progress of its formation, will generally press hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them"; "This is the book that contains the foundation in natural history for our view" (Marx to Engels); this book is later used by Eugenicists to justify euthanasia of misfits, using soundbytes incl. "We civilized men... do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment... Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.... All do good service who aid toward this end."
In 1859 Westminster, London, England-born Anglo-Irish evangelist John Nelson Darby (1800-82) (co-founder of the Plymouth Brethren and founder of the Exclusive Brethren) tours the U.S., spreading his Dispensationalist Doctrine, which claims that Jehovah deliberately divided time into periods or ages, each of which is administered in a different way, also Pre-Tribulation Rapture Theology and the Scofield Reference Bible.
In Mar. 1860 English publisher John William Parker (1792-1870) (ed.) pub. Essays and Reviews, a collection of seven articles by six evolution-infected Oxford and Cambridge Anglican clergymen (Benjamin Jowett, Mark Pattison, Baden Powell, Frederick Temple, Rowland Williams, Henry Bristow Wilson) and one layman (Charles Wycliffe Goodwin) that sells 22K copies in two years (same that Darwin's book sells in 20 years) and stirs up a 5-year controversy over religious faith in Victorian society by publicizing the German Higher Criticism of the Bible incl. how Moses didn't write the Books of Moses, and David didn't write the Psalms, recommending that the Bible be read like any other book and denying the possibility of miracles and calling belief in them atheistic, and slamming the cosmogony in Genesis; appears 4 mo. after pub. of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species"; Bible-thumpers incl. Oxford Bishop Samuel Wilberforce get pissed-off, calling the authors "the Seven Against Christ" and getting two of them charged with heresy, causing Darwin, geologist Charles Lyell, and mathematician William Spottiswoode to sign an open letter supporting the book as trying to "establish religious teachings on a firmer and broader foundation"; "Let E = Essays, and R = Reviews: then the locus of (E + R), referred to multilinear coordinates, will be found to be a superficies (i.e., a locus possessing length and breadth, but no depth)" (Lewis Carroll); "Outwardly, the conflict ended inconclusively, with the acquittal of Williams and Wilson by the courts and the condemnation of the volume by the clergy in Convocation. At a deeper level, it marked the exhaustion both of the Broad Church and of Anglican orthodoxy and the commencement of an era of religious doubt." (Josef L. Altholz)
On June 30, 1860 English biologist ("Darwin's Bulldog") Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) (who coined the term "agnostic") debates with liberal Anglican divine (bishop of Oxford since 1845) Lord Samuel Wilberforce (1805-73) (a fellow of the Royal Society and son of abolitionist William Wilberforce who is known as Soapy Sam from his holy hand-washing gestures) on Darwinian evolution at Oxford U., helping to push it over on the public, although Wilberforce held his ground and got off a good one by asking Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or grandmother that he claims descent from a monkey, to which he replies that he would not be ashamed to have a monkey f or his ancestor, but would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth; blind economist Henry Fawcett (1833-84) shouts out that Wilberforce must have never read a word of Darwin's "Origin of Species", and gets away with it because Bewildered Force knows he's blind? - he didn't respond that all Bible thumpers are apes, he just hoped to be understood that way?
On July 2, 1865 the Christian Mission of the Revival Assoc., later renamed the Salvation Army is founded in the East End Whitechapel section of London by English Methodist evangelist (former Nottingham pawnbroker and circuit preacher) William Booth (1829-1912) and his wife Catherine Booth (nee Mumford) (1829-90) to help the "submerged tenth" of "disinherited" people who endure a much lower standard of comfort "than the London cab horse, unable to buy as much food as given to the worst criminals in our jails"; in 1878 they reorganize military-style, with William Booth becoming gen. #1; they cheerfully brave hecklers and also crusade against prostitution; their motto is "blood and fire"; Booth sends a telegram to members reading "Others!"; by 2020 it reaches a membership of 1.7M in 131 countries.
In 1865 Lutzen, Saxony, Prussia-born German theology student Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900 suddenly quits and gives up his faith, writing to his sister Elisabeth the soundbyte: "Hence the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire", going on to study philology and philosophy and soon discovering atheist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Representation", Friedrich Albert Lange's "History of Materialism", and Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species", getting an appointment as the youngest prof. of classical philology at the U. of Basel in 1869 at age 24, later reaching the pinnacle of philosophy and calling himself the Antichrist before becoming a partial invalid in 1874, turning into an opium addict, then collapsing in 1889 and becoming demented for the rest of his life. In 1882 he pub. The Joyful (Gay) Science (Die Frohliche Wissenschaft), which introduces the Death of God, Eternal Recurrence (Return), and the Ubermensch (Übermensch) (Superman) (Overman). In 1883-5 he pub. the novel Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and for None (Also Sprach Zarathustra), which expands on the ideas of the Eternal Recurrence, Death of God, the Ubermensch (Übermensch) (Superman), and the Will to Power, promoting the idea that one value system is no more worthy than the next, with the aphorism "On the Thousand and One Goals": "A thousand goals have there been so far, for there are a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking. H umanity still has no goal." In 1886 he pub. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Jenseits von Gut and Bose: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft), which argues that the evil man isn't the opposite of the good man, but a different expression of the same basic impulses. In 1889 he pub. Twilight of the Gods (Idols); or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Gotzendammerung) (Götzendämmerung), which disses modern German culture as suffering from "cultural decadence", pointing to Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Thucydides, and the Sophists as the way to go, promoting the Transvaluation (Revaluation) of All Values, touting the ancient Romans as superior to the ancient Greeks. In 1895 he pub. The Antichrist, about how Christianity teaches a "slave morality", and holds back the yah-baby dream-is-back Superman and his Will to Power (Der Wille zur Macht); "Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war"; "The real philosophers are commanders and lawgivers; they say: 'Thus shall it be!' They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labor of all philosophical workers...; they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their 'knowing' is creating, their creating is a lawgiving, their will to truth is Will to Power." On Jan. 3, 1889 so-called "Superman" German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (b. 1844) freaks at the flogging of a horse in the Piazza Carlo Alberto in Turin, Italy, and suffers a mental breakdown, moving in with his mother near Weimar, and is cared for by his sister until he crocks on Aug. 25, 1900 in Weimar, Saxony, leaving Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is (pub. in 1908) (signed "Dionysus versus the Crucified").
On Oct. 8-10, 1871 the Great Chicago Fire destroys the church bldg. owned by Northfield, Mass.-born fundamentalist Christian evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-99), after which wealthy John V. Farwell finances a bigger better church there, going on to go on a tour of the U.K. in spring 1872, preaching to audiences of 2K-30K along with hymnodist ("the Sweet Singer of Methodism") Ira David Sankey (1840-1908), causing him to make fans of U.S. pres. Grant, who attends his meeting on Jan. 19, 1876 after he returns to the U.S. and goes on tour, preaching hyis last sermon on Nov. 16, 1899 in Kansas City, Mo. after founding the Chicago (Moody) Bible Inst. in Chicago, Ill. for training missionaries for foreign lands, funded by John Wanamaker et al.; it goes on to offer a Bachelor of er, Science degree in Biblical Studies.
In 1871 Hartford, Conn.-born philosopher-historian John Fiske (1842-1901) (big believer in evolution) pub. The Progress from Brute to Man, folowed by Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (3 vols.) (1874), which claims that "in reality there has never been any conflict between religion and science, nor is any reconciliation called for where harmony has always existed", adding: "We arrive at a deeper reason than has hitherto been disclosed for the difference between our position with reference to Christianity, and that which has been assumed by Radicalism and by Positivism. It is not merely that we refuse to attack Christianity because we recognize its necessary adaptation to a certain stage of culture, not yet passed by the average minds of the community; it is that we still regard Christianity as, in the deepest sense, our own religion"; The Unseen World and Other Essays (1876), Darwinism and Other Essays(1879) (rev. ed. pub. 1885), Excursions of an Evolutionist (1883), The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of His Origin (1884), The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge (1885), Origin of Evil (1899), and Through Nature to God (1899), denying any enmity between science and religion because God is immanent everywhere.
On Sept. 1, 1873 The Truth Seeker is founded by Springfield, N.Y.-born DeRobigne Mortimer "D.M." Bennett (1818-82) in New York City, soon becoming the leading Freethought periodical in the U.S., championing the cause of Thomas Paine and helping launch the Golden Age of Freethought (ends 1914), which smugly champions science and rationality as all that's necessary for civilization to advance out of the Dark Ages of Religion, and begins to dissipate after merely rejecting religion doesn't form a reason to unite in an org., and the horrors of WWI and rise of atheistic Communism freak them out, after which the mag. is taken over by pseudo-scientific white supremacists and anti-Semites.
In 1873 Laleham, Middlesex-born English poet-critic Matthew Arnold (1822-98) pub. Literature and Dogma: An Essay Towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible; "It is clear that dogmatists love religion; for else why do they occupy themselves with it so much, and make it, most of them, the business, even the professional business, of their lives? And clearly religion seeks man's salvation. How distressing, therefore, must it be to them, to think that 'salvation is unquestionably annexed to a right knowledge of the Godhead,' and that a right knowledge of the Godhead depends upon reasoning, for which so many people have not much aptitude; and upon reasoning from ideas or terms such as substance, identity, causation, design, about which there is endless disagreement! It is true, a right knowledge of geometry also depends upon reasoning, and many people never get it; but then, in the first place, salvation is not annexed to a right knowledge of geometry; and in the second, the ideas or terms such as point, line, angle, from which we reason in geometry, are terms about which there is no ambiguity or disagreement. But as to the demonstrations and terms of theology we cannot comfort ourselves in this manner. How must this thought mar the Archbishop of York's enjoyment of such a solemnity as that in which, to uphold and renovate religion, he lectured lately to Lord Harrowby, Dean Payne Smith, and other kindred souls, upon the theory of causation! And what a consolation to us, who are so perpetually being taunted with our known inaptitude for abstruse reasoning, if we can find that for this great concern of religion, at any rate, abstruse reasoning does not seem to be the appointed help; and that as good or better a help, - for indeed there can hardly, to judge by the present state of things, be a worse, - may be something which is in an ordinary man's power! "
Throw realism out the window, it's Jeeezus? In 1873 Brookville, Ind.-born former Union Gen. Lewis "Lew" Wallace (1827-1905) pub. The Fair God, which claims to be a ms. from the time of Cortes written to HRE Charles V. On Nov. 12, 1880 he pub. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (Heb. "Ben Hur" = "Son of white linen"), which becomes the bestselling Am. novel until "Gone With the Wind" (1936), and the first work of fiction to be blessed by a pope, Leo XIII; conceived after meetings with famous Am. agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll on a train in 1875, also inspired by Alexandre Dumas pere's "The Count of Monte Cristo" (1846); mainly written in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, N.M., where he met William Bonney AKA Billy the Kid, its success turns Christian audiences on to theater and film; Judah Ben-Hur, his enemy Messala, Valerius Gratus, his adoptive Roman father Quintus Arrius, his babe Esther, his house servant Simonides, Sheik Ilderim of Antioch, Balthasar and his daughter Iras, Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ, Egyptian maid Amrah.
In 1874 Am. Presbyterian theologian, head of Old School Princeton Theological Seminary (since 1851) Charles Hodge (1797-1878) pub. What Is Darwinism?, which attacks newfangled Darwinism as atheism, becoming the first sustained religious attack, pooh-poohing the notion that blind chance independent of God gave rise to the intricate design of Nature; "To any ordinarily constituted mind it is absolutely impossible to believe that the eye is not the work of design"; Presbyterians have the duty to oppose "all spectacular hypotheses and theories which come into conflict with well-established truths"; God gave us "intuitions which are infallible", but thanks to the unbelief rampant in the scientific world, "Religion has to fight for its life against a large class of scientific men"; anti-Darwinism becomes his school's official position until 1929; meanwhile totally separate Princeton U., under pres. #11 (1868-88) James McCosh (1811-94) accepts Darwinism as evidence of God's great intelligence, finding no irreconcilable hostility to the Bible, becoming the first endorsement by a religious leader.
Stay tuned for scenes from one life to live? The year 1874 marks the year in which Christ's Second Presence (Second Advent) is due, according to Allegheny, Penn.-born Pastor Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916), author of the 7-vol. Studies in the Scriptures, 1879 founder of The Watchtower mag., and 1871 founder of the Internat. Bible Students, who in 1931 change their name to Jehovah's Witnesses, and go on to recruit millions of followers, incl. some celebs; when a Bible-based Armageddon prediction goes wrong, there is always a shakeup in the org., after which they regroup and make new predictions, because after all, the Bible is still telling them that there will be one; luckily by the 1980s they officially give up Big A predictions, claiming that only God knows the exact time. On Oct. 31, 1916 Charles Taze Russell (b. 1852) dies in Pampa, Tex., and his org. the Watch Tower Society is taken over by self-proclaimed Mo. "Judge" Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869-1942), who goes on to mount his "millions living now will never die" campaign, claiming that Armageddon will come in 1925, causing his followers to sell their homes and live in their cars travelling around to spread the urgent message while trying to avoid either marrying or having children; meanwhile the few who only wanted to study the Bible and think for themselves and not be dictated what to believe splinter off into the Bible Students org., which by the end of the cent. only has 10K members vs. 6M for the Jehovah's Witnesses.
In 1875 Brownsville, Penn.-born Quaker Freethinker Kersey Graves (1813-83) pub. the bestseller The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ, Containing New, Startling, and Extraordinary Revelations in Religious History, which Disclose the Oriental Origin of All the Doctrines, Principles, Precepts, and Miracles of the Christian New Testament, and Furnishing a Key for Unlocking Many of Its Sacred Mysteries, Besides Comprising the History of 16 Heathen Crucified Gods, which becomes a hit on the U.S. Freethinker lecture circuit even though the scholarship doesn't stand up to later scrutiny; he might be right but just lacks the documentation?; fans incl. Madalyn Murray O'Hair; "I desire to impress upon the minds of my clerical brethren the important fact, that the gospel histories of Christ were written by men who had formerly been Jews (see Acts xxi. 20), and probably possessing the strong proclivity to imitate and borrow which their bible shows was characteristic of that nation; and being written many years after Christ's death, according to that standard Christian author, Dr. Lardner, it was impossible, under such circumstances, for them to separate (if they had desired to) the real facts and events of his life from the innumerable fictions and fables then afloat everywhere relative to the heathen Gods who had pre-enacted a similar history. Two reasons are thus furnished for their constructing a history of Christ almost identical with that of other Gods."
1876 is a new low in U.S. pres. politics as two candidates favoring civil service reform get caught up in the most corrupt election ever? On June 14-16, 1876 the 1876 Repub. Nat. Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio sees Repub. House Speaker (1869-75) James Gillespie Blaine (1830-93) of Maine nominated after Dresden, N.Y.-born Peoria, Ill.-based orator ("the Great Agnostic") Robert Green "Col. Bob" Ingersoll (1833-99) delivers his Plumed Knight Speech, with the soundbyte: "This is a grand year, a year filled with recollections of the Revolution... a year in which the people call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the tongue of slander, the man who has snatched the mask of Democracy from the hideous face of rebellion... Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine from the state of Maine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of every traitor to his country and every maligner of his fair reputation"; too bad, the Mulligan Letters, written in 1864-76 by Blaine to Warren Fischer Jr., made public by Fischer's employee James Mulligan, implicating Blaine in a corrupt business deal with the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad, and although Blaine tries to clear himself by reading selectively from the letters on the House fool, er, floor, and his friends claim his vindication, it costs him the nomination, and he is passed over by a small majority for true-blue Civil War gen., civil service reformer, hard money advocate and 3-term Ohio gov. Rutherford B. Hayes ("a third rate nonentity, whose only recommendation is that he is obnoxious to no one" - Henry Adams), with N.Y. Rep. William W. Wheeler for vice-pres.; Whiskey Ring reformer Benjamin Helm Bristow receives 113 votes for pres. on the 1st ballot, and former Ind. gov. Oliver P. Morton is also passed over; on June 27-29 the 1876 Dem. Nat. Convention in St. Louis, Mo. nominates N.Y. reform gov. Samuel J. Tilden, a millionare corp. atty. and destroyer of the Tweed Ring (plus another ring in Albany), with Ind. gov. Thomas A. Hendricks of Ind. as his running mate; the campaign is marked by Repubs. waving the bloody shirt and grinding the outrage mills while the Dems. air the Republicans' dirty linen; too bad, after becoming the most popular orator in the U.S., destined for the White House, Ingersoll spoils his golden future in politics by giving golden-tongued speeches for secular humanism, rationalism, and freethought (supply caps if you're a true believer), virtually founding the 19th cent. British-Am. Freethought movement and popularizing Thomas Paine. On May 5 , 1881 Ingersoll is quoted in the Chicago Tribute as saying "I like Christ, because he held the Jewish religion in contempt." In 1881 Ingersoll pub. The Great Infidels. In 1896 Ingersoll pub. Why I Am An Agnostic. On July 21, 1899 Am. atty.-statesman-orator ("The Great Agnostic") Robert G. Ingersoll (b. 1833) dies in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. of heart failure, leaving The Collected Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, which create a generation of admiring religious skeptics: "The history of the world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it"; "Courage without conscience is a wild beast"; "Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrines of the weak."
In 1876 the annual Niagara Bible Conferences (Believers' Meeting for Bible Study) are founded (until 1897 except 1884) to discuss John Nelson Darby's Dispensationalism; starting in 1883 they are held in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. at the Queen's Royal Hotel; attendees incl. future Scofield Bible author Cyrus Ingerson Scofield; in 1878 it announces its 14-point Niagara Creed, incl. the premillennial return of Jesus Christ and restoration of Israel to to the Jews before the judgment of the saved and damned.
In 1878 Hamelin, Hanover-born German Bible scholar Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) pub. Prolegomena to the History of Israel, Vol. 1 (Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, Bd. 1) (2nd ed. 1883) (3rd ed. 1886) (5th ed. 1899) (English trans. 1883, 1891) (2nd vol. in 1894), advancing the Graf-Wellhausen (Documentary) Hypothesis for the Torah, namely, that it is a compilation of independent works by the Jahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D), and Priestly (P) sources, dating J to the Solomonic period (950 B.C.E.), E to the 9th cent. B.C.E., D just before the reign of King Josiah in the 7th-8th cent. B.C.E., and P to Ezra's day in the 5th cent. B.C.E., which becomes the std. for Bible scholars until the mid-1970s, which date J to the Baylonian captivity (597-539 B.C.E.) at the latest, and reject the E source, finding the D and P sources doubtful.
In 1880 Princeton, N.J.-born Presbyterian Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823-86), principal of Princeton Seminary in 1878-86 (son and successor of Charles Hodge) and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) (next principal in 1887-1921) pub. the article Inspiration in the Presbyterian Review, defending the literal truth of the Bible, claiming that its every verse is "absolutely errorless and binding for faith and obedience", and is the absolute "truth to the facts", becoming a hit and establishing the mushy field of Biblical theology as a historical science; "Christianity makes it appeal by right reason. It is solely by reasoning that it has come thus far on its way to its kingship. And it is solely by reasoning that it will put all its enemies under its feet." (Warfield); "The world should realize with increased clearness that Evangelicalism stands or falls with Calvinism." (Warfield)
In 1880 Barmen, Germany-born Protestant theologian-historian Albert Kalthoff (1850-1906) pub. The Life of Jesus: Lectures given to the Protestant Reform Club of Berlin, followed by The Problem of Christ: Principles of a Social Theology (1902), and The Rise of Christianity: New Questions about the Christ Problem (1904) (English trans. pub. 1907), resurrecting the works of Bruno Baer along with his Christ myth theory; "It sometimes happens in the scientific discussion of a problem that we make a considerable advance towards its solution by abandoning some point of view from which we have fruitlessly striven to master it, and confronting it from a fresh position. The experience suggests itself forcibly in the controversy with regard to the historical character of Jesus. Starting from the theory that the evangelical writings of the New Testament must be regarded as sources of evidence for the life-story of an historical individual, liberal theology has lost itself in a labyrinth from which it cannot escape. Even in circles where the dogma of a personal founder of Christianity is till rigorously maintained, people are beginning to see that very little biographical material can be obtained from the Gospels"; "A Son of God, Lord of the World, born of a virgin, and rising again after death, and the son of a small builder with revolutionary notions, are two totally different beings. If one was the historical Jesus, the other certainly was not. The real question of the historicity of Jesus is not merely whether there ever was a Jesus among the numerous claimants of a Messiahship in Judea, but whether we are to recognise the historical character of this Jesus in the Gospels, and whether he is to be regarded as the founder of Christianity." In 1906 Kalthoff pub. Modern Christendom. On Jan. 1, 1906 Ernst Haeckel forms the German Monists League (Deutscher Monistenbund) in Jena, which reaches 6K members by 1912, with the theological wing led by Kalthoff, along with Emil Jakob Felden (1874-1959), Oscar Mauritz (1867-1959), Moritz Schwalb (1833-1916), and Friedrich Steudel (1866-1939), none of whom believe in the historicity of Jesus Christ; on Dec. 16, 1933 after dwindling to 3.2K members the league is dissolved by the Nazis.
In 1881 Birmingham, England-born bishop of Durham (1890-1901) Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901) and Dublin, Ireland-born Fenton John Anthony "F.J.A." Hort (1828-92) pub. The New Testament in the Original Greek (2 vols.); the result of 28 years of joint labor, favoring the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus mss., and using the combination of Codex Bezae with the Old Latin and the Old Syriac as closer to the original, especially when it is shorter than other forms of the text, such as the majority of the Byzantine text; espouses Hort's doctrine of Western non-interpretations, preferring the Alexandrian text over the larger Western text and the Byzantine text, which is a combo; pioneers the principle of Lectio brevior potior (Lat. "the shorter reading is the stronger"); "Knowledge of Documents should precede Final Judgments upon Readings"; "[It is] our belief that even among the numerous unquestionably spurious readings of the New Testament there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes"; "Our object is to supply clergymen generally, schools, etc., with a portable Greek Testament, which shall not be disfigured with Byzantine corruptions" (Hort, Apr. 9, 1853) - it takes all this time to get Jesus' words right?
In 1886 on a Sun. afternoon in Chicago, Ill., Story Count, Iowa-born beer-swigging prof. baseball player (1883-90) William Ashley "Billy" Sunday (1862-1935) is "saved" by the Pacific Garden Mission, giving up liquor, and in 1891 he gives up his $400/mo. baseball contract to work with the Chicago YMCA for $83 a mo., becoming an evangelist in 1896, followed by ordination as a Presbyterian minister in 1903.
In 1887 after losing support from the Southern Baptists for opposition to slavery and founding Spurgeon's College in 1856 and Spurgeon's charity org. in 1867, Kelvedon, Essex, England-born Baptist preacher ("the Prince of Preachers") Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) of Metropolitan Tabernacle at Elephant and Castle in Southwark (founded Mar. 18, 1861, largest church bldg. of the time), known for his great spellbinding oratory skills and killer sermons pub. his first Down-grade article in The Sword & the Trowel, calling out and leaving the the Baptist Union for downgrading the Bible under influence of liberals, with the soundbytes: "Believers in Christ's atonement are now in declared union with those who make light of it; believers in Holy Scripture are in confederacy with those who deny plenary inspiration; those who hold evangelical doctrine are in open alliance with those who call the fall a fable, who deny the personality of the Holy Ghost, who call justification by faith immoral, and hold that there is another probation after death... It is our solemn conviction that there should be no pretence of fellowship. Fellowship with known and vital error is participation in sin"; "Assuredly the New Theology can do no good towards God or man; it, has no adaptation for it. If it were preached for a thousand years by all the most earnest men of the school, it would never renew a soul, nor overcome pride in a single human heart"; he goes on to oppose dispensationalism and supporting Jewish restoration to the Promised Land.
In 1888 Hobart, Tasmania-born Mrs. Mary Augusta Humphry Ward (1851-1920) (daughter of Tom Arnold and his older brother Matthew Arnold) pub. the bestseller (1M copies) Robert Elsmere, a novel of religious doubt attacking evangelical Christianity; an Oxford clergyman reads Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling and David Strauss and begins to doubt his Anglican faith, turning to "constructive liberalism" that stresses social work among the disadvantaged; set in Longsleddale, Lake District, which she calls Long Whindale; its internat. sales are the first to exceed Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; makes a fan of Henry James; "Simply Arnold's 'Literature and Dogma' with the literature left out." (Oscar Wilde)
In 1891 liberal Presbyterian theologian Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913), gives the sermon The Authority of the Holy Scripture, which claims that errors may have existed in the original text of the Bible and that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch, and that reason and the Church are equal sources of authority with the Bible, getting him put on trial for heresy in 1892 by the Presbyterian Church, acquitted, then fired and excommunicated in 1893 by the gen. assembly, which only makes him more popular?; in 1899 he is ordained as a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
On Apr. 6, 1906 African-Am. minister William Joseph Seymour (1870-1922) leads the Azusa St. Revival in Los Angeles, Calif., launching the modern Pentecostal movement, known for speaking in tongues, ecstatic trances, etc. which spreads like wildfire among African-Ams. and poor whites, reaching hundreds of groups in 50 countries by 1910, with Seymour announcing that racial integration not the gift of tongues is the decisive sign of the Last Days, with the soudnbyte: "If you get angry or speak evil, or backbite, I care not how many tongues you have, you have not the baptism with the Holy Spirit"; ""God sent this latter rain to gather up all the poor and outcast, and make us liove everybody. God is taking the despised things, the base things, and being glorified in them." (D.W. Myland); no surprise, reason-loving Bible-thumping Christian fundamentalists despise them.
In 1906 Alsace-born big brain "Reverence for Life" physician-philosopher-theologian Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) pub. the book The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung); English trans. pub. in 1910; 2nd ed. in 1913; how the "real" Jesus was all about "late Jewish eschatology", believing that his ministry would bring about the end of history in a short time; the 2nd. ed. tries to rebut those who claim that he never lived; becomes a std. work, stopping work on the historical Jesus for decades as a sub-discipline of New Testament studies; "He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side."
On Feb. 25, 1908 Penn.-born Union Oil founder Lyman Stewart (1840-1923) and his brother Milton Stewart found Biola U. (originally the Bible Inst. of Los Angels) in La Mirada, Calif., which in 1910-70 pub. the monthly journal The King's Business, which becomes the #1 fundamentalist movement journal; in 1910-15 the Stewart brothers anon. pub. The Fundamentals: A Testimony of the Truth (12 vols.), ed. by Shelby, N.C.-born Baptist pastor Amzi Clarence "A.C." Dixon (1854-1925) (elder brother of "The Clansman" novelist Thomas Dixon Jr.) and Hoboken, N.J.-born Congregational minister Reuben Archer "R.A." Torrey (1856-1928), distributing 250K free paperback copies to every Christian minister, student, and prof. in the U.S., launching the label of Fundamentalism for Bible thumpers who cling to a literal interpretation of Genesis despite nasty Darwinism and the German Higher Criticism, with the litmus test of the "five fundamentals", incl. divine inspiration of the inerrant Holy Bible, virgin birth of Christ, atonement for sin by Christ's death, Christ's bodily resurrection, and historical reality of Christ's miracles; Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is founded in Fort Worth, Tex. to teach Bible fundamentalism, becoming one of the largest seminaries on Earth.
In 1909 Holstein-born German historian-philosopher Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews (1865-1935) pub. The Christ Myth in London (English tr. pub. in 1910), joining Bruno Baer and Albert Kalthoff as Germany's pioneers in denial of a historical Jesus, stressing the similarities of the early Christ cult with the popular mystery cults of the time esp. Mithraism, and noting that Christianity could have arisen without a historical Jesus, but not without a historical Paul or Isaiah, with the soundbytes: "The question of the historicity of Jesus is a purely historical question to be settled with the resources of historical research"; "Critics are convinced of the historicity of the gospels a priori, before investigating the subject... [They only have] to seek the "historical nucleus" in tradition... How is it that Weinel knows the [innermost nature] of Jesus so well before beginning his inquiry that he thinks he can determine by this test what is spurious in tradition and what is not?... The gospels, it seems, are to be understood from 'the soul of Jesus', not from the soul of their authors!... Johannes Weiss... acknowledges that in all his inquiries he starts with the assumption that the gospel story in general has an historical root, that it has grown out of the soil of the life of Jesus, goes back to eye-witnesses of his life, and comes so near to him that we may count upon historical reminiscences... There is a further principle, that all that seems possible... may at once be set down as actual... [This is how] all theological constructions of the life of Jesus are based... the historicity of which is supposed to have been proved by showing that they are possible... Johannes Weiss is a master in...[this] way of interpreting the miracles of Jesus... If any one ventures to differ from him, Weiss bitterly retorts: 'Any man who says that these religious ideas and emotions are inconceivable had better keep his hand off matters of religious history; he has no equipment to deal with them' [A classical response of theologians to skeptics.]... [In] Weiss's 'Das älteste Evangelium'...he tries to prove that... Mark is merely incorporating an already existing tradition. 'Not without certain assumptions do we set about the inquiry.'"; "There is nothing, absolutely nothing, either in the actions or words of Jesus, that has not a mythical character or cannot be traced to parallel passages in the Old Testament or the Talmud. Historical criticism resolves all details of the Gospel story in mythical mist and makes it impossible to say that there ever was such a person"; "The Christ-faith arose quite independently of any historical personality known to us;... Jesus was in this sense a product of the religious social soul and was made by Paul, with the required amount of reinterpretation and reconstruction, the chief interest of those communities founded by him. The historical Jesus is not earlier but later than Paul; and as such he has always existed merely as an idea, as a pious fiction in the minds of members of the community... the Gospels are the derivatives... for the propaganda of the Church, and being without any claim to historical significance... [Religion] is a group-religion...the connection of the religious community... [Our personal religion], a religion of the individual, a principle of personal salvation, would have been an offense and an absurdity to the whole of ancient Christendom."
In 1909 Boston, Mass.-born Harvard U. pres. (since 1869) Charles William Eliot (1834-1926) gives the lecture (later pub. in book form) The Religion of the Future, advocating the social gospel sans the Bible, Christianity, and churches, with only one commandment, viz., the love of God as expressed in practical service of others, with the soundbyte: "No thinking person now accepts Eden, or God forming man out of the dust", freaking out Christian fundamentalists and conservatives and causing them to declare war on liberalism incl. Darwinism and Biblical Higher Criticism.
In 1909 Clinton Township, Mich.-born Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921) pub. the Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford U. Press), the first Bible ed. since the 1560 Geneva Bible with commentary alongside the text, popularizing John Nelson Darby's Dispensationalism and Futurism, with chain references; the 1917 ed. adds Archbishop James Ussher's 4004 B.C.E. Bible chronology, becoming many readers' first encounter with it; the fortunate coming of WWI boosts sales, reaching 2M by the end; makes fans of Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, and Edgar C. Whisenant.
On June 14-23, 1910 the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference in Ediburgh, Scotland is attended by 1,215 reps, launching the Protestant Christian ecumenical movement; it follows conferences in London in 1988 and New York City in 1900; on June 2-6, 2010 a centennial is held in Ediburgh, along with the Global Mission Consultation on May 11-14 in Tokyo, Japan, and the Third Internat. Congress of the Lausanne Movement on Oct. 16-25 in Cape Town, South Africa.
In 1912 Canadian mathematician and historian of early Christianity Shirley Jackson Case (1872-1947) pub. the book The Historicity of Jesus: A Criticism of the Contention that Jesus Never Lived, a Statement of the Evidence for His Existence, an Estimate of His Relation to Christianity, attempting to prove the historicity of a man who left no physical remains, writings, or official coverage.
In Apr. 1914 the Pentecostal (Holy Roller) Assemblies of God, founded by E.N. Bell, Howard Goss, D.C.O. Opperman et al. hold their first meeting in the opera house in Hot Springs, Ark. after sponsoring revival meetings in the same place last fall by New Lisbon, Ohio-born evangelist Maria Buelah Woodworth-Etter (1844-1924), who goes on to preach to large crowds throughout the U.S., causing the church to grow to 140 autonomous groups with 384K ministers and 67.5M members in 200+ countries by 2016, becoming the world's largest Pentecostal denomination; in 1988 a world fellowship is formed. In 1916 she pub. A Diary of Signs and Wonders.
In 1914 after attending Dwight L. Moody's campaign in Los Angeles, Calif. in Hazard's (Temple) Pavilion in 1888 and becoming a boy preacher in 1892, rising to the rank of lt. in the Salvation Army and preaching 500+ sermons/year in Southern Calif., Toronto, Ont., Canada-born Am. fundamentalist dispensationalist preacher (8th-grade graduate) (photographic memory) Henry Allen "Harry" Ironside (1876-1951) (raised in the Plymouth Brethren) founds Western Book and Tract Co. in Oakland, Calif. going on to preach 7K sermons to 1.25M listeners in 1916-29, becoming known as "the Archbishop of Fundamentalism"; in 1929-48 he becomes pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, Ill.
In 1916 Am. psychologist James Henry Leuba (1868-1946) pub. the book The Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological Anthropological and Statistical Study (2nd ed. 1921), which finds that only one-third of the "greater" scientists believe in God, and that a college education enganders religious belief, causing Christian fundamentalists to point to it as proof that liberals and modernists are rife in college faculties.
In 1917 the liberal U. of Chicago Divinity School begins an attack on the fundamentalist Moody Bible School across town, with early Christianity historian Shirley Jackson Case (1872-1947) accusing them of treason for taking money from Germans, and Alva S. Taylor comparing them to remake-the-world now Bolsheviks; Christian Register ed. (1918-33) Albert Charles Dieffenbach (1876-1963) calls premillennialism "the most asounding mental aberration in the field of religious thinking", causing Moody Bible Inst. pres. (1904-34) James Martin Gray (1851-1935) to reply that it was the liberals whose pacifism caused the U.S. to fall behind Germany in the arms race, jeopardizing the war effort, and The King's Business ed. Thomas C. Horton to accuse the liberals of being in league with Germans because they teach their Higher Criticism in their school along with the atheist philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, causing the collapse of religious values in Germany leading to WWI; Howard W. Kellogg of Biola U. (Bible Inst. of Los Angeles) blames the philosophy of evolution for spawning "a monster plotting world domination, the wreck of civilization, and the destruction of Christianity itself"; also "Loud are the cries against German Kultur... Let this now be identified with Evolution, and the truth begins to be told"; Baptist minister John Roach Stration (1875-1929) (rhymes with Dayton) delivers the sermon Will New York City Be Destroyed If It Does Not Repent?. On Jan. 1, 1927 Dieffenbach pub. the book Religious Liberty, the Great American Illusion, calling fundamentalism a threat to true religious liberty, which "is a sacred fire which must be forever tended, if it is to continue to glow in the history of the people"; "Religion is still religion though God in any conception of the word may be disregarded"; he preers "not to abandon the word God, for the reality in which I have my being, while it does not correspond to the traditional theistic conception, is nevertheless the support of my life without which I could not live in body, mind, or spirit."
On May 25, 1919 6K fundamentalist ministers and theologists meet in Philadelphia, Penn. for a week-long conference, resulting in the founding of the World Christian Fundamentals Assoc (WCFA), with Greene County, Ind.-born Bible-thumping Baptist minister William Bell Riley (1861-1947) of the First Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn. as pres. #1 (until 1929), which becomes the #1 interdominational fundamentalist org., trying to launch a "new Protestantism" based on premillennial interpretations of the Bible, soon turning to fight Darwinism, founding the Anti-Evolution League of Minn. in 1923 followed in 1924 by the Anti-Evolution League of Am., advocating Young Earth Day-Age Creationism (the six days of Creation in Genesis are thousands to billions of years long), becoming known as "the Grand Old Man of Fundamentalism", esp. after wiring William Jennings Bryan to act as their atty. in the Scopes Trial, uttering the soundbyte about evolution: "The first and most important for its elimination is in the unquestioned fact that evolution is not a science; it is a hypothesis, only, a speculation"; too bad, after his crusade against evolution falters, he begins blaming the internat. atheistic Jewish Communist conspiracy a la "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", pointing to WWI as having had all sides financed by Jewish bankers, and the Soviet Union-admiring admin. of U.S. pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt as proof that the U.S. is next; meanwhile he is all for a Jewish state of Israel after they lift God's punishment by accepting Christ; after the WCFA poops out, in 1930 the Independent Fundamental Churches of Am. (IFCA) is founded in Cicero, Ill., taking over the #1 spot until the 1941 founding of the Am. Council of Christian Churches (ACCC).
In the 1920s the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy arises in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., caused by the advent of Liberal Christianity (Christian Modernism), starting at Princeton Theological Seminary and spreading to every U.S. denomination, with the modernists winning by the end of the 1930s, causing the fundamentalists to drop out and found their own institutions incl. Zondervan Pub. House, Biola U., Dallas Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary; too bad, in the 1970s conservative Protestantism makes a comeback with Presbyterians, Southern Baptists et al.
On May 21, 1922 Buffalo, N.Y.-born liberal Presbyterian preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1960) delivers the sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win?, defending the unpopular modernist position, regarding the Bible as a record of the unfolding of God's will not the literal Word of God, taking an evolutionary view of Christian history itself, calling for an open-minded, intellectual, and tolerant “Christian fellowship”; the sermon gets him fired from his post at New York’s First Presbyterian Church, after which Riverside Church is built for him by John D. Rockefeller.
In Dec. 1923-May 1924 Evansville, Ind.-born fundamentalist Baptist pastor (1918-29)John Roach Straton (1875-1929) (rhymes with Dayton) of Calvary Baptist Church in New York City engage in a series of debates with libera Unitarian minister (1920-7) Charles Francis Potter (1885-1962) of West Side Unitarian Church over the Bible, Creation, Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, and his Second Coming, gaining nat. publicity; Straton later pub. a book containing only his own speeches; in 1925 Potter is an advisor to Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Trial, and in 1919 founds the First Humanist Society of New York, whose board incl. Julian Dewey, Albert Einstein, Julian Huxley, and Thomas Mann, and in 1933 co-signs the Humanist Manifesto, uttering the soundbytes: "Humanism is not the abolition of religion but the beginning of real religion. It will release tremendous reserves of hitherto thwarted power. Man has waited too long for God to do what man ought to do himself and is fully capable of doing" and "Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can be theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?"
In 1923 Baltimore, Md.-born Presbyterian Greek New Testament scholar John Gresham Machen (1881-1937), leader of the fundamentalist Princeton Theological Seminary (founded 1812) pub. the book Christianity and Liberalism, which disses Protestant liberals as pagans who deny Christianity by denying its core doctrines such as the Virgin Birth, and when they win over most of the Princeton Theological Seminary he leads a walkout, founding Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Penn. in 1929, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936; Machen's inaugural address on Sept. 25, 1929 incl. the soundbyte: "We believe, first, that the Christian religion, as set forth in the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church, is true; we believe, second, that the Christian religion welcomes and is capable of scholarly defense; and we believe, third, that the Christian religion should be proclaimed without fear or favor, and in clear opposition to whatever opposes it, whether from within or without the church, as the only way of salvation for lost mankind. On that platform, brethren, we stand. Pray that we may be enabled by God’s grace to stand firm. Pray that the students who go forth from Westminster Theological Seminary may know Christ as their own Savior and may proclaim to others the gospel of his love."
In 1924 Baltimore, Md.-born atheist-freethinker and science writer Maynard Shipley (1872-1934) founds the Science League of Am. to combat religious fundamentalism and defend the separation of church and state; in 1927 he pub. The War on Modern Science: A Short History of the Fundamentalist Attacks on Evolution and Modernism, claiming that a fundamentalist seizure of power in religious denominations followed by enactment of laws enforcing their views would be a return to the Dark Ages, freaking-out Bible fundamentalists who have recently taken hits from the Scopes Trial and Aimee Semple McPherson scandal and are trying to lay low only to see an avowed atheist belittle them.
On Mar. 21, 1925 Tenn. Dem. gov. (1923-27) Austin Peay (1876-1927) signs the Butler Act, passed on Mar. 13, prohibiting the teaching of Darwin's Theory of Evolution (Darwinism) in public schools, along with sex education (repealed in 1967); on May 5 after a group of Dayton, Tenn. businessmen approach him about being a test case, substitute teacher John Thomas Scopes (1900-70) of Rhea County High School (who attended high school in William Jennings Bryan's hometown of Salem, Ill., where Bryan gave his commencement address) becomes its first victim (or victory) as he is arrested for teaching the evolution chapter in the textbook "Civic Biology" by Hunter (1914); on July 10-25 the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tenn. forever sensationalizes and trivializes the issues for the public as Scopes' atty. Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) puts self-proclaimed Bible expert William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) and the Bible itself on a cross of gold, er, trial; fair, impartial Judge John T. Raulston has a sign that says "Read Your Bible" on the wall behind his bench; Darrow asks Bryan "Did you ever discover where Cain got his wife?", to which Bryan replies, "No, sir; I leave the agnostics to hunt for her"; these and other smug answers are allegedly a disaster for the fundamentalist cause, and are touted as proving the soundness of evolution?; on July 21 Scopes is convicted, fined $500, then later acquitted on the technicality that the judge set the fine instead of the jury; the Butler Act is not repealed until 1967; Scopes never actually taught the chapter but his students were coached to lie on the witness stand to make him their test case?; watch video.
In 1925 the big prediction of the Jehovah's Witnesses (Watch Tower Society) that Armageddon will come this year proves false, causing about 80% to drop out, and the Watch Tower officially drops founder Russell's writings, while splinter groups cling to them; that only causes its failed prophet Judge Rutherford to mount more determined proselytizing campaigns, concentrating on the slogan "Religion is a snare and a racket" (every religion other than their true one, which isn't a religion or a cult, but the Truth).
On May 18, 1926 super-popular Canadian-born Protestant evangelist and faith healerAimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944) suddenly disappears while visiting a beach in Venice, Calif., then reappears 5 weeks later in Mexico and claims she was kidnapped, which the public doesn't buy, guessing that she was really with a lover, ruining her carer - doesn't it make sense to get paid for what I love, aimless simple person?
In Mar. 1927 Saulk Centre, Minn.-born redhead Sinclair "Red" Lewis (1885-1951) pub. the bestselling novel Elmer Gantry; filmed in 1960 starring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons; a boozing womanizing college athlete who was kicked out of a seminary for seducing the deacon's daughter in the chapel and became a traveling salesman, then gets religion at a small town tent meeting after lusting after Sister Sharon Flaconer, becoming a Bible-thumping fundamentalist evangelist to get her poontang and filthy lucre, and always gets away with it because of his holy cover and great talking ability; based on pastor Burris Jenkins of Linwood Blvd. Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Mo. and Unitarian Rev. L.M. Birkhead; dedicated to H.L. Mencken; Billy Sunday calls Lewis "Satan's cohort", and it is banned in Boston, making it more popular, becoming the #1 fiction bestseller of 1927; "Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk" (opening line); "He had learned how to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty was blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons"; “Elmer Gantry never knew who sent him thirty dimes, wrapped in a tract about holiness, nor why. But he found the sentiments in the tract useful in his sermon, and the thirty dimes he spent for lovely photographs of burlesque ladies"; "We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!"
In 1927 after his friend William Jennings Brytan tells him in 1924: "If schools and colleges do not quit teaching evolution as a fact, we are going to become a nation of atheists", non-college-graduate Dale County, Ala.-born Christian evangelist Blow Job, er, Robert Reynolds "Bob" Jones Sr. (1883-1968) founds Bob Jones U. (BJU) in Panama City, Fla., moving to Cleveland, Tenn. in 1933, and Greenville, S.C. in 1947, benefitting from the U.S. GI Bill at the end of WWII; students are required to live a strict lifestyle sans liquor, sex, etc., and interracial dating is prohibited, eventually bringing on the PC police, causing black students to be admitted in 1971, limited to married blacks until 1975, and the interracial dating prohibition to be dropped in 2000; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1930 English-born Seventh-day Adventist Benjamin George Wilkinson (1872-1968) pub. Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, criticizing the Westcott and Hort Bible trans. as corrupted by Origen's version of the Septuagint, as well as deletions and changes from the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus that are based on corrupted Alexandrian text, praising the King James version that is based on the Byzantine Greek Textus Receptus, causing Am. fundamentalist Baptist pastor David Otis Fuller (1903-88) to take up his cause in his 1970 book Which Bible? (5th ed. Aug. 1, 1997), launching the King James Only Movement.; Fuller also pub. True or False? The Westcott-Hort Textual Theory Examined (1973), Counterfeit or Genuine? (1978), and The Evils of Elvis Preslyism.
The Catholic Church of the 3rd Millennium C.E. is born in the U.S.? On July 26, 1931 at an assembly in Columbus, Ohio (birthplace of founder Pastor Charles Russell), the Internat. Bible Students (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society) change their name to Jehovah's Witnesses (Isaiah 43:10), proclaiming the near approach of Armageddon (Rev. 16:16), and claiming they are Jehovah's only org. on Earth, and that followers of all other religions, Christian or otherwise will become bird food (Rev. 19:17-21) after Jehovah destroys them with an army of angels led by Jesus Christ (Rev. 19:11-16), while they won't have to lift a finger and will be protected like in the days of the Passover in Egypt; their 12-member board of dirs. now teaches that the current "generation" is the special 144K-member "anointed" class (Rev. 7:4), entitled to a disembodied life in heaven with Jesus and the angels after Armageddon, compared to future members that they will make, who are the "other sheep class" (John 10:16, Rev. 7:9), and who will remain fleshly creatures on Earth in a worldwide Garden of Eden with eternal life; for the next several decades, the 1931 crop of young door-knocking "anointed" couples, believing that the Big A will come at any moment, refuse to have children, and end up as old childless geezers with sore knuckles by the end of the cent., while all members are told to refrain from saluting the flag of any nation, saying a pledge of allegiance, joining the military or holding public office; meanwhile the tons of JW lit. has a thang about the portrayal of Jesus Christ, starting out as a beardless man hanging on a cross, then on a stake with no crossbar, then finally showing him with a beard, and finally as an impossible white Caucasian Marlboro Man lookalike in his earthly life, and during Armageddon as an old stern white man with white hair and beard (Rev. 1:13-14).
On Jan. 7, 1934 Des Moines, Iowa-born Apocalyptic Bible-thumping MF-pushing minister Herbert W. Armstrong (1892-1986) of the Radio (later Worldwide) Church of God (incorporated Oct. 21, 1933) begins broadcasting The World Tomorrow on AM station KORE in Eugene, Ore., later moving to Pasadena, Calif. and promoting Millennium Fever bigtime, preaching Armstrongism, his weird stew of Bible interpretation that preaches British Israelism (Anglo-Israelism), which claims that the British are the true Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and must observe parts of the Mosaic Law incl. Kosher food, holy days, and the seventh-day sabbath, claiming to be the End Times Elijah; on Oct. 8, 1947 he founds Ambassador College; too bad, his son Garner Ted Armstrong (1930-2003) stinks him up with his profligacy and begins disputing his doctrinal positions, causing him to suspend him from the church in 1972 and excommunicate and fire him on June 28, 1978, which doesn't stop him from founding the Church of God International in Tyler, Tex. and return to the airwaves; after Hebert's1986 death his church dissassociates itself from his doctrines, renaming itself Grace Communion Internat. in Apr. 2009; in ? Herbert W. Armstrong pub. the book The Proof of the Bible, which claims that the proof is fulfilled prophecies in Daniel; also Does God Exist?; also Mystery of the Ages; also Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast?; also The Wonderful World Tomorrow: What It Will Be Like. watch video; watch video; watch video.
On Jan. 1, 1935 after pub. "The Truth About the Protocols", which claims that "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" is true, and calling the Great Depression the work of Satan, and Pres. FDR a "devil" linked to the Jewish-Communist Conspiracy, and praising Adolf Hitler as Europe's savior from Communism Topeka, Kan.-born Christian fundamentalist Gerald Burton Winrod (1900-57)(ed. of the monthly mag. "The Defender", circ. 100K) pub. The Jewish Assault on Christianity, containing the soundbytes: "The same forces which crucified Christ nineteen hundred years ago are today trying to crucify His Church. Many Christian leaders have not yet realized it, but Christianity is in the grip of a life and death struggle at the present time. I nternational Jewish Communism, which has already undermined all nations, firmly expects to exterminate all Christians. What the Cause of Christ has endured in Russia the past eighteen years, surpasses its suffering at the hands of bloody Nero. One of the purposes of the present treatise is to show that this conspiracy is not of recent origin", and "Will the Church be able to demonstrate sufficient power to triumph over its foes in the present crisis, or has it become so weakened by apostasy and pernicious teachings that it will have to be drenched in its own blood before it can be brought to its senses? Jesus knew better than anyone else the unspeakable crimes of which [the Jews] are capable. The Jesus of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, is not the quiet, reticent Jesus of modern literature and the fashionable pulpit. The Jesus, whose righteous indignation is here asserted, is a man of words and action, a man in the act of pronouncing eight woes upon the Jewish leaders and finally condemning them to the damnation of hell", becoming a hit with fundamentalists and German-speaking Mennonites incl. Bethel College and Tabor College; in July 1942 the U.S. govt. indicts Winrod and 29 others (growing to 33) for sedition in an attempt to silence them, attracking civil libertarians to his cause in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944, which ends with a mistrial on Nov. 29, 1944 after the death of judge Edward C. Eicher.
In 1935 Maud, Okla.-born atty. Charles Lee Smith (1887-1964), 1925 founder of the Am. Assoc for the Advancement of Atheism (4As) pub. the pamphlet The Bible in the Balance, dissecting the Bible and exposing its many errors, contradictions, and absurdities, becoming a bestselling pamphlet distributed by atheist rabble-rousers the same way the Gideons distribute King James Bibles; in 1928 after putting a sign on his store front window in Little Rock, Ark. reading "Evolution Is True. The Bible's a Lie. God's a Ghost" and/or "There Is No God", he becomes the last person to be convicted of blasphemy in the U.S. (until ?).
In 1936 after being invited to preach on the 50th anniv. of the opening of the Moody Bible Inst. then launching his ministry in the U.S., London-born fundamentalist Higher Life minister (in Scotland) Herbert Lockyer (1886-1984) pub. "When God Died", "Roses in December and Other Sermons", and "The Swan Song of Paul, Or, Fascinating Studies in Second Timothy", followed by "Sorrows and Stars" (1938) and "Evangelize or Fossilize!" (1938), followed by dozens of other books (50+ total), incl. the 21-vol. "All" series (1958-), making a fan of Billy Graham, who writes the soundbyte: "Dr. Lockyer was unquestionably one of the spiritual giants of our century, and his prolific writings will continue to make an impact on countless Christians for generations to come if our Lord tarries" - you really suck at making me feel better? Watch video; watch video;
In 1938 Belfast, Ireland-born Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis (1898-1963) (who became an atheist at age 15, then was converted at age 31 by his Roman Catholic Oxford friend J.R.R. Tolkien and joined the Inklings group of Christian teachers and writers at Ox Ox Oxford) pub. Out of the Silent Planet; #1 of the sci-fi Cosmic (Space) (Ransom) Trilogy, written in response to his nemesis J.B.S. Haldane (ends 1945); hero is philologist Elwin Ransom; interplanetary theological attack on scientism, "the belief that the supreme moral end is the perpetuation of our own species, and that this is to be pursued even if, in the process... our species has to be stripped of all those things for which we value it - of pity, of happiness, and of freedom." In 1943 he pub. the sequel Perelandra (Voyage to enus). In 1942 he pub. The Screwtape Letters; a devil explains how he ensares souls. In 1945 he pub. That Hideous Strength; #3 in Space Trilogy. In 1950 he pub. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; set in 1940; first of seven books about Narnia, where it's "always winter and never Christmas": "Prince Caspian" (1951), "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" (1952), "The Silver Chair" (1953), "The Horse and His Boy" (1954), "The Magician's Nephew" (1955), "The Last Battle" (1956); Christlike lion-messiah Aslan, the White Witch, the four Pevensie siblings Susan, Lucy, Peter, Edmund (the betrayer), and a crypto-Christian battle between good and evil; sells 95M copies in the next 55 years; "The whole Narnian story is about Christ", writes Lewis in a 1961 letter to a child; Lewis recommends that they be read in the following order: 1955, 1950, 1954, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1956. Lewis dies on Nov. 22, 1963 the same day as U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy and writer Aldous Huxley.
In the early 1940s the Fundamentalist-Evangelical Split begins over the issue of separatism vs. engagement with modern culture incl. Catholics and Jews and contemporary issues, and acceptance of some of the ideas of modernists, with the term fundamentalist becoming "an embarrassment instead of a badge of honor" (Kenneth S. Kantzer), becoming known as Neo-Evangelicals; in Sept. 1941 after breaking with the Presbyterian Church in 1937 to form the non-smoking non-drinking premillennialist Bible Presbyterian Church and the Faith Theological Seminary (which supports the Scofield Reference Bible), Ypsilanti, Mich.-born minister Carl Curtis McIntire Jr. (1906-2002) of the Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, N.J., ed. (since Feb. 1936) of the weekly "Christian Beacon" (circ. 120K) and later (Mar. 1955) the Twentieth Cent. Christian Hour founds the fundamentalist Am. Council of Christian Churches (ACCC), which favors separatism; in the 1950s McIntyre joins Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade; on Apr. 7-9, 1942 after declining an invitation to join the ACCC , the Nat. Assoc. of Evangelicals (NAE) (originally Nat. Assoc. of Evangelicals for United Action) is founded by 147 evangelicals in St. Louis, Mo. led by Congregational minister Harold John Ockenga (1905-85) of Park St. Church in Boston, Mass. for conservative Christians to help win the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy by fighting the Nat. Council of Churches; in 1947 Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. is founded for evangelicals; in 1949 newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst tells his editors to "puff" Billy Graham, making his "crusade evangelism" into front-page news; in 1950 Graham and Ockenga speak at the Rose Bowl in front of the largest audience so far for a religious audience in the Pacific SW; Pres. Eisenhower becomes a fan, inviting NAE leaders to the White House; on Feb. 8, 1985 Ockenga dies, with Graham uttering the soundbyte: "He was a giant among giants. Nobody outside of my family influenced me more than he did. I never made a major decision without first calling and asking his advise and counsel." Watch video;watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1944 Eldorado, Okla.-born conservative Baptist Wallie Amos "W.A." Criswell (1909-2002) replaces George Washington Truett as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Tex. (founded 1868), preaching 4K+ sermons and increasing its membership from 7.8K to 26K, expanding to five blocks in downtown Dallas and becoming the largest Southern Baptist church on Earth, pioneering the modern megachurch phenomenon, gaining Billy Graham as a member in 1953 (until 2008) and becoming pres. of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1968-70, founding Criswell College in 1970 then sparking the Southern Baptist Conservative Resurgence starting in 1979 that ousts moderate and liberal leaders in favor of conservative ones in the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. ; too bad, Criswell calls govt.-manded desegregation a "denial of all that we believe in"; his succcessor (since Aug. 12, 2007) Robert James Jeffress Jr. (1955-) goes on to speak out against homosexuality ("Gay is not OK"), Judaism, Roman Catholicism ("Satanic Babylonian mystery religion", Mormonism ("a cult") and Muslims ("evil, evil religion"), and by 2018 the membership of the First Baptist Church of Dallas shrinks to 14K, although his radio show "Pathway to Victory" reaches 2.1K stations in 223 countries; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1944 Dawson, Tex.-born fundamentalist Southern Baptist pastor Lester Roloff (1914-82) launches his radio show "The Family Altar", turning full-time evangelist in 1950, preaching against Communism, homosexuality, drugs and alcohol, gluttony, and psychology, breaking with the Southern Baptists in 1956 to join the Independent Baptist movement, going on to rail against the dirty mainstream media and its liberal agenda; in 1954 he founds his first mission house in Corpus Christi, Tex., adding children's homes throughout Tex., Okla., and Ga. before establishing the Rebekah Home for Girls in 1968 for girls in trouble, requiring them to read only the King James Bible and listen to his radio show and attend his church, prohibiting outside contact; too bad, in 1973 when it is reported that he whips the girls, the state tries to close it, but he reopens it in 1974 after a successful appeal to the Tex. Supreme Court along with the soundbyte: "Better a pink bottom than a black soul", which doesn't stop Tex. atty. gen. John Hill from hounding him until his homes are closed in 1985, then reopened in 1997, then closed again in 2001; on Nov. 2, 1982 Roloff rolls off and dies in an airplane crash in a storm near Normangee, Tex., leaving the famous sermon Hills That Help, serving as an inspiration to the fundamentalist homeschooling movement; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
On Sept. 13-21, 1947 Charlotte, N.C.-born neo-evangelical Christian William Franklin "Billy" Graham Jr. (1918-2018) conducts his first crusade in the Civic Auditorium in Grand Rapids, Mich., followed by #2 in Charlotte, N.C. on Nov. 9-23; he goes on to conduct 417 crusades in 185 countries and territories on six continents by 2005, reaching 210M total people; in 1948 Graham is asked "What do you expect the World Council of Churches to do this August when they visit Copenhagen?", replying "I believe they are going to nominate the Antichrist"; too bad, in the 1950s Graham begins distancing himself from fundamentalism, and in 1957 he forms an executive committee for his New York Crusade that rejects the Virgin Birth and the Deity of Christ, pissing-off Bob Jones Sr., founder of his alma mater, who quotes 2 John 9-11 to withdraw fellowship because he doesn't "abide in the teaching of Christ", hardening the split between fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals;in 1961 Graham visits the WCC gen. assembly in New Delhi, followed by the 4th assembly in Uppsala, Sweden in 1968, going on to attend all but two WCC gen. assemblies, going on to hook up with London-born British Anglican social gospel preacher John Robert Walmsley Stott (1921-2011) to host the First Internat. Congress on World Evangelization in Palais de Beaulieu in Lusanne, Switzrland on July 16-25, 1974, composed of 2.7K evangelical Christian leaders from 15 countries, "possibly the widest-ranging meeting of Christians ever held", going on to reach out and partner with a global Christian ecumenical movement that incl. the Vatican, making evangelism take a back seat to social justice, changing the center of gravity from lily white North Am. and Europe to Africa, Latin Am., and Asia; the 2nd congress is held in 1989 in Manila, Philippines; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1947 Pontotoc County, Okla.-born Choctaw-Cherokee descent Baptist preacher Oral Robber, er, Granville Oral Roberts (1918-2009) has a magic moment with the Third Epistle of John ("I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as they soul prospereth"), causing him to buy a Buick, see God, and turn Pentecostalist, going on radio, followed by TV in 1954, conducting 300+ faith healing crusades in the U.S. and six continents, laying hands on 2M people, claiming to heal them of all ailments and even to be able to raise the dead, raising lakes of cash via direct-mail campaigns under the banner of seed-faith, maxing out at $120M/year and employing 2.3K, going on to become "the Godfather of the Charismatic Movement", founding the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Assoc. in Tulsa, Okla., followed by Oral Roberts U. in 1963 in Tulsa, whose students must sign an honor code to not engage in premarital sex, drink, or smoke; on Mar. 17, 1968 he and his wife convert to the United Methodist Church; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1949 Little Rock, Ark.-born Pentecostal faith-healing traveling tent evangelist ("a tent as big as the Ringling Brothers") Rex Humbug, er, Alpha Rex Emmanuel Humbard (1919-2007) broadcasts his first TV show, becoming the first Christian evangelist with his own weekly nationwide U.S. TV program in 1952-83, reaching 600+ stations, going on to build his $4M Cathedral of Tomorrow in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in 1958, with a 220-ft. dome, granite walls, teardrop chandeliers, colored lights, seating for 5.4K people and special design to accomodate TV broadcasting, along with the largest indoor cross on Earth and a stage with bistro-style lighting and crushed-velvet curtain, becoming the first modern Christian megachurch; did I mention a nursing home with 200 beds?; in the 1960s goes internat., reaching 160M viewers on 2K stations while traveling the U.S. in a converted Navy bomber seating 15, drawing 646K people to televised rallies in 1970-4, moving into a swanky Akron, Ohio neighborhood reserved for rubber tycoons; too bad, he overexpands, getting into financial trouble by the early 1970s, esp. after accepting a $1.2M loan in 1963 from Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union, growing to $5.5M, ending up selling getting into trouble with the SEC for selling unregistered securities, but parrying with the first mass tailored begging letter scheme, promising miracles in return for checks, copying a late 1960s scheme by Oral Roberts to answer letters with ditto and receiving $1.2M/mo. in 1977, growing to $40M/year after increasing letters to 2x/week, causing a reaction that leads to his resignation in 1983; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
On Jan. 1, 1950 Hull-born English freethinker Herbert Cutner (1881-1969) pub. the book Jesus: God, Man, or Myth?: An Examination of the Evidence, claiming that Jesus wasn't a man turned into a god, but a god turned into a man, and that his earliest mentioner St. Paul never thought of Jesus as a man, but as a spiritual being found in a spiritual sense within oneself, explaining why the early Church had a hard time accepting him, becoming a Freethinker/atheist Bible; "I make no apology for the fact that this work is controversial. It was unavoidably so, as many of the defenders of the 'man' Jesus, as well as those who insist that he was a 'God,' have bitterly assailed, not only on critical but on personal grounds, those of us who have insisted that the story of Jesus is just a myth. I hope, however, that readers will see something beyond the controversial part - will find a real criticism of the so-called evidences brought forward to prove that Jesus Christ lived on earth"; "It is surely very strange that though Paul talks incessantly of Christ Jesus, he never mentions 'Jesus of Nazareth.' He never mentions the wonderful teaching of Jesus, nor his still more wonderful miracles. Now, if the Gospel stories are true, and if Paul was converted so soon after the death of Jesus, and if he were also continually wrangling with the Apostles, how is it that in the Epistles we do not get more of Jesus of Nazareth, and a little less of Christ Jesus?"; The whole fabric of Vicarious Suffering with its Savior and its Cross is nothing but a huge imposture, that in fact it has literally no meaning. A suffering God is just a pagan and Gnostic IDEA." - TLW's favorite work on the Jesus question?
In 1950 super-conservative premillennialist Disciples of Christ minister (adopted orphan) Billy James Hargis (1925-2004) founds the Christian Crusade in Tulsa, Okla., hooking up with anti-Communist crusader Carl McIntire and U.S. Army Gen. Edwin Walker to mix religion and politics, attacking the U.S. govt. and popular entertainers until the Disciples of Christ withdraws his ordination in 1957, while his radio program booms, using direct mail marketing to bring in $1M/year from 250K donors by 1964, preaching the cosmic struggle of Christ vs. Satan (the U.S. vs. Communism), going on to advocate prayer and Bible reading in public schools and fight Roman Catholicism, segregation, the U.N., and Billy Graham, backing Repub. Ariz. Sen. Barry Goldwater in the 1964 U.S. pres. race and watching him go down in er, flames, causing the Old Christian Right he represented to begin a downward slide, being replaced after the loss of the Vietnam War by the New Christian Right which embraces Roman Catholicism; he goes on to pub. 100+ books, incl. The Real Extremists, the Far Left (Jan. 1, 1964), Distortion by Design: The Story of America's Liberal Press (Jan. 1, 1965), Why I Fight for a Christian America (Jan. 1, 1974), Slaughter of the Innocents, and the popular pamphlet (250K-1M copies) Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?; too bad, the IRS revokes his tax exempt status in 1964, and in 1974 two college students (1 male, 1 female) accuse him of having sexual relations with them, but the Tulsa district atty. never files charges and the local newspapers cover it up after he resigns as pres. of his Am. Christian College (founded 1971); watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1951 Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru) is founded at UCLA by Coweta, Okla.-born evangelist William R. "Bill" Bright (1921-2003) and his wife Vonette Zachary Bright, reaching 25K missionaries in 191 countries by 2011; in the 1960s it tries to counter the counterculture movement, holding concerts and sermons by Billy Graham et al., organizing counter-demonstrations against the New Left and Students for a Dem. Society (SDS), launching the Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF); in 1972 it holds Explo '72 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Tex., attended by 80K (95% white) and becoming known as the Christian Woodstock; it is followed by Explo '74 in Seoul, South Korea, which attracts 300K; in 1991 it moves its HQ to Orlando, Fla.
In 1952 John F. Walvoord (1910-2002) becomes pres. of Dallas Theological Seminary (until 1986), going on to pub. 30+ books promoting Bible-thumping dispensational theology and eschatology, incl. Israel and Prophecy (1962), using the Bible 's prophecies to predict the final persecution of the Jews, who fall for the Antichrist as their Messiah, who helps them rebuild their Temple of Jerusalem then orders his own image erected there as an object of worship, causing 144K Jews to reject him and accept Christ before dying as martyrs, after which Antichrist unleases a gen. persecution of Jews, killing all but a few before Christ's Second Coming; watch video.
In 1952 Freeport, Mich.-born Jack Leo Van Impe (1931-2020) graduates from the Detroit Bible Inst., launching his career as an ever-smiling Bible-thumping fundamentalist evangelist, teaming up with his wife Rexella to launch the weekly "Jack Van Impe Presents" telecast in Rochester Hills, Mich., using his nearly complete memorization of the King James Bible to interpret the coming Armageddon promised in Rev. 13, featuring the Rapture followed by the False Prophet, who organizes the world into 10 districts that are jointly ruled by the EU and the Muslim World, later claiming that Pope Francis is the last pope Peter the Roman; "Black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell." Watch video.
On July 26, 1953 (a.m.) Ariz. police raid the village of Short Creek (pop. 368) in NW Ariz. (Arizona Strip) on the Utah border on a pretext of "grasshopper control" to arrest Mormon polygamists belonging to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, becoming their 3rd raid (1935, 1944) to stop the pesky practice which causes girls as young as 13 to get married, settle down and have kids, arresting 122 men after Ariz. Gov. J. Howard Pyle (1906-87) predicts that unless they end the Bad P Thang, "in another 10 years the population would be in the thousands and an army would not be sufficient to end the defiance of all that is right"; Utah Gov. J. Bracken Lee cooperates; 38 women and 154 children are bused 400 mi. in the care of the Dept. of Public Welfare and given foster homes and forbidden to return, although most of the kids do after growing up; the largest mass arrest of polygamists in U.S. history (until ?), and the largest mass arrest of men and women in U.S. history (until ?); 36 men plead guilty to conspiracy to commit the Bad P, and are given 1-year suspended sentences; the town's name is changed to Colorado City on the Ariz. side and Hildale on the Utah side.
On Oct. 8, 1956 Greenville, S.C.-born fundamentalist Baptist minister Oliver Boyce Greene (1915-76) founds the Gospel Hour, which starts broadcasting from one AM radio station in Ga. and expands to 150 stations nationwide; he dies after receiving 200K confessions of faith and pub. 100+ books and booklets; watch video; watch video.
In the early 1960s the Fourth Great Awakening begins in the U.S. (ends 1980), seeing mainline Protestant denominations weakening sharply, while the most conservative denominations incl. the Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans and evangelical and fundamentalists expand; meanwhile all battle a rise in secularism incl. abortion and gay rights, fighting back with Creationism et al., led by the Southern Baptist Conservative Resurgence.
In 1960 after hearing that Chinese Commies proselytize via small comic books, Los Angeles, Calif.-born fundamentalist premillennial dispensationalist Independent Baptist cartoonist Jack Thomas Chick (1924-2016) begins issuing Chick tracts to evangelize for Jesus, incorporating as Chick Pubs. in 1970 in Rancho Coo-Coo, er, Cucamonga, Calif. in 1970 and hiring artist Fred Carter in 1972 then releasing 23 full-color issues in 1974-85, going on to be heavily criticized for folding in anti-Catholic, anti-Darwinist, and anti-gay messages, and for claiming Satanic influence behind various Jewish, er, non-fundamentalist Christian conspiracies incl. Islam, Freemasonry, and Halloween, which doesn't stop him from selling 750M+ in 100 languages.
In 1960 Detroit, Mich.-born evangelical theologian Kenneth S. Kantzer (1917-2002) becomes academic dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (until 1978), going on to defend the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy while steering clear of rigid fundamentalism and swinging liberalism.
In 1960 Lexington, Va.-born fundamentalist Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson (1930-), son of Va. Dem. Sen. (1946-66) Absalom Willis Robertson (1887-1971) begins his TV evangelist career in Portsmouth, Va., founding Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), then getting ordained as a Southern Baptist minister next year, going on to associate with the Charismatic movement and become a staunch Repub.; on Apr. 1, 1966 he launches The 700 Club on CBN; in May 1980 he utters the soundbyte: "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world." watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1961 Dallas, Tex.-born engineer ("the Father of Modern Creation Science") Henry Madison Morris (1918-2006) and Washington, D.C.-born theologian John Clement Whitcomb Jr. (1924-2020) pub. the book The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications, defending young Earth creationism as more in line with a literal Bible reading than old Earth creationism, becoming a bestseller among Christian fundamentalists, going through 29 printings and selling 200K copies in 25 years, which evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould calls "the founding document of the creationist movement", spawning a movement that attracts young scholars in the sciences, leading to the founding of the Creation Research Society in 1963 and the Inst. for Creation Research in 1972, and making a fan of Australian Christian fundamentalist Kenneth "Ken" Ham (1951-), who founds Answers in Genesis (AiG) in Petersburg, Ky. in 1994, the Creation Museum in 2007 in Petersburg, Ky., and Ark Encounter in Grant County, Ky. in 2016.
On Jan. 23, 1963 after becoming an Assemblies of God minister in 1937, then becoming an itinerant evangelist in 1949 after a vision of Jesus, joining the Voice of Healing Revival in the U.S. along with Oral Roberts, Gordon Lindsay, and T.L. Osborn until 1958, McKinney, Tex.-born Kenneth Erwin Hagin (1917-2003) forms the Kenneth E. Hagin Evangelistic Assoc. (later the Kenneth Hagin Ministries) in Garland, Tex., moving in Sept. 1966 to Tulsa, Okla., recording tapes that debut on KSKY-AM in Dallas, Tex. in Nov. 1966, and growing to a multimedia empire that makes fans of Kenneth Copeland et al.; watch video; watch video.
On June 17, 1963 the U.S. Supreme (Warren) Court rules 8-1 in Abington School District v. Schempp to strike down rules requiring the recitation of the Lord's Prayer or reading of Biblical verses in public schools (along with similar laws in four other states, and optional Bible reading laws in 25 states; 11 states had their laws declared unconstitutional by state courts) after primary student Ellery (Ellory) Schempp (1940-) and his Unitarian Universalist father Edward Schempp (1908-2003) (Unitarian-Universalists) protested then sued the Abingdon Township School District in Penn. in 1956 to stop the obligatory reading of 10 verses of the Bible plus the Lord's Prayer on each school day; after founding American Atheists (originally Society of Separationists), Pittsburgh, Penn.-born Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1919-95) ("The most hated woman in America" - Life mag.) enters the spotlight in a parallel case, Murray v. Curlett, seeking to have obligatory Bible reading stopped in Baltimore, where her son William J. "Bill" Murray III (1946-) (who later becomes a Baptist minister) is enrolled; the two cases are combined, and Schempp's case is chosen as primary because Unitarians are a larger group than Atheists; Bible teaching is still okay as long as it is "taught objectively as part of a secular program", but fears of the ACLU plus growing illiteracy result in only 8% of U.S. public schools offering Bible courses by the end of the cent.; Charles Lee Smith, pres. of the Am. Assoc. for the Advancement of Atheism and ed. of The Truth Seeker mag. donates $5K to O'Hair, which backfires later when he dies and she tries to take it over until a judge stops her.
In 1963 17-y.-o. Madrias, India-born Anglican-raised skeptic Ravi Zacharias (1946-2020) unsuccessfully tries to commit suicide before being preached to in hospital by a Christian, who quotes John 14:19 "Because I live, you also will live", causing him to devote his life to Christ, becoming an evangelist in South Vietnam in summer 1971, then speaking at Billy Graham's First Internat. Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam, Holland in 1983, going on to evangelize in India before founding Ravi Zacharias Internat. Ministries in Toronto, Canada in Aug. 1984, preaching in Moscow in 1989, followed by the first Vertias Forum at Harvard U. in 1992, and the Salt Lake Tabernacle in Utah in 2004; he goes on to becoming the thinking person's evangelist, publishing 30+ books incl. Christian bestsellers Can Man Live Without God? (1994), Light in the Shadow of Jihad: The Struggle for Truth (Feb. 28, 2002), and The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives (2007); watch video.
On Apr. 8, 1966 Time mag. seizes the chance to cash in on Millennium Fever by pub. an issue with the Easter ed. cover story Is God Dead? Toward a Hidden God; the cover features "Is God Dead" in big devil-red letters on a Hell-black background; the issue is really about the views of Am. radical Christian theologian Thomas Jonathan Jackson "J.J." Altizer (1927-2018) in his new book The Gospel of Christian Atheism, which combines Friedrich Nietzsche with G.W.F. Hegel and throws in William Blake; in 1966 Altizer and Am. theologian William Hughes Hamilton III (1924-2014) pub. Radical Theology and the Death of God; meanwhile on Apr. 30 (Walpurgisnacht) Chicago-born ex-circus roustabout, psychic, and organist (good actor) Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-97) comes out of the closet, shaves his head, and founds the Church of Satan in hip-to-it San Francisco, Calif., proclaiming 1966 as Year One Anno Satanas, going on to perform Satanic baptisms and be dubbed "the Black Pope" by the media, who makes him their 19666, er, 1966 darling? - it's red, it's rave?
Speaking of gods dying in Year 666, on Mar. 4, 1966 comments by Beatle John Lennon in an interview with his friend-lover journalist Maureen Cleave (1941-) (inspiration for the Beatles song "Norwegian Wood") are pub. in the London Evening Standard, in which he utters the soundbyte: "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus is all right but his disciples are thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." After it is ignored in Britain, U.S. teen mag Datebook reprints the quote out of context on July 29 on its front cover, pissing-off Christian extremists in the U.S, who soon get into mass record burning and burning in effigy, causing the Beatles to have to fend off endless reporters' questions with lame semi-apologies; on Aug. 11, 1966 the beleaguered Beatles hold a press conference in Chicago, Ill., and John Lennon backtracked on his "more popular than Jesus" remarks, saying "I didn't mean it as a lousy anti-religious thing"; Beatlesmania develop a dark anti-Christian side, and by the end of the decade the Beatles have dumped Christanity forever? On Aug. 16, 1966 the Beatles perform at Shea Stadium in N.Y., the first show on their U.S. summer tour, taking in $304K from 55.6K fans, the largest show business gross to date, earning $160K for 30 min. On Aug. 29, 1966 (Mon.) the Beatles conclude their Fourth U.S. Tour (which opened on Aug. 12 in Chicago, Ill.) with their last public concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, Calif., too bad, the stands are half empty, causing concerns that their popularity is fading, causing EMI to pressure George Martin into releasing "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" as a single, which works, bringing back their popularity, although the songs couldn't be included in the album, marring it; "San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality" (Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane). On Nov. 9, 1966 John Lennon first meets Yoko Ono at a preview of her exhibition at Indica Gallery in Mason's Yard, Mayfair, London, featuring a panel on the ceiling with the word "yes" on it, climbing a ladder and viewing it through an attached microscope, after which she passed him a card reading "Breathe", then wouldn't let him hammer a nail into a white board that has a sign inviting visitors to do it because he didn't pay for admission, after which the gallery owner told her who he is (she allegedly didn't know), causing her to relent and offer to let him do it for five shillings, to which he replied "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings if you let me hammer an imaginary nail" - it was a long night, even layered and in a sleeping bag? On Nov. 24, 1966 the Beatles decide to reinvent themselves, and lock themselves up in a studio to begin recording their paradigm-shifting album #8 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ("the world's first 41-min. single"), w hich goes on to become the #1 rock album of all time, launching the era of the studio album, selling 32M copies.
In 1966 after becoming a born-again Christian in 1962, Lubbock, Tex.-born charismatic prosperity gospel televangelist Kenneth Max Copeland (1936-), who calls Oral Roberts his "spiritual father" after becoming his pilot-chaffeur founds Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Tarrant County, Tex., with the motto "Jesus is Lord' (Romans 10:9), later claiming to have "brought over 122 million people to the Lord Jesus Christ"; in 2009 the IRS denies his $3.6M jet tax-exempt status and opens an investigation into the church's expenses, which Copeland refuses to cooperate with; his personal worth is estimated at $300M to $760M; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1966 Goose Creek, Tex.-born Christian dispensationalist John Charles Hagee (1940-) founds a church in San Antonio, Tex., followed by the Cornerstone Church in 1987, going on to back the Jewish state of Israel all the way ("Jerusalem will last forever") and piss-off the PC police by telling the truth about Islam; in 2013 he and Am. pastor Mark "Blood Moon" Blitz (1956-) create the Blood Moon Prophecy, claiming that the tetrad of four consecutive eclipses starting with the Apr. 2014 lunar eclipse and ending with the Sept. 2015 lunar eclipse signals the End Times; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1966 the Am. Bible Society pub. the bestseller Good News for Modern Man: The New Testament in Today's English, which sells 30M copies by 1971, spawning the Jesus Freaks mass movement in the U.S. (ends mid-1970s); the Old Testament is pub. in 1976.
In 1967 Concordia, Mo.-born Christian faith healer Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman (1907-76) is exposed by Minn. surgeon William A. Nolen (1928-86), who studied 23 people who claimed to have been healed at her services, none of whom had actually been healed, incl. "one woman who was said to have been healed of spinal cancer, threw away her brace and ran across the stage at Kuhlman's command; her spine collapsed the next day, and she died 4 mo. later."
In 1969 after beginning his ministry at age 12 and becoming a fan of Napoleon Hill's book "Think and Grow Rich", Dry Fork, Va.-born fundamentalist Charles Frazier Stanley (1932-) joins the staff of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, Ga., becoming senior pastor in 1971 and launching the half-hour religious TV program "The Chapel Hour" in 1972, which is picked up by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in 1978; in 1982 he founds In Touch Ministries, which expands to 50+ languages worldwide on 500 radio stations and 300 TV stations plus several satellite networks, developing his 30 Life Principles; too bad, his wife (since 1955) Anna J. Stanley (d. 2014) separates from him in spring 1992 and files for divorce on June 22, 1993, causing trouble with the Moody Radio Network, but after their final divorce on May 22, 2000 they can't quit him; watch video.
In 1970 Houston, Tex.-born Christian dispensationalist evangelist Harold Lee "Hal" Lindsey (1929-) pub. the bestseller (50M copies) The Late Great Planet Earth, which connects it with the fate of Israel and the European Economic Community, with the U.S. no longer a great power, but misses the role of Islam badly, claiming that Gog is the Soviet Union, although I'm sure he's readjusted it by now; oh yes, he has.; Gog is now Russia, and Magog is a coalition of Islamic nations led by Iran, er, Magog is the Islamic breakaway republics from the Soviet Union, er, ask him. On Jan. 1, 1980 he pub. the bestseller The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, containing the soundbyte: "Tthe decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it", claiming that the Antichrist is already here and that Russia will attack Iran to gain control of its oil, causing China to jump in, leading to Armageddon that destroys every major city on Earth along with half the world pop., after which a new Roman Empire consisting of a 10-nation confederacy led by Antichrist, who works for his father Satan to destroy everything; watch video; watch video.
In 1970 the Inst. for Creation Research is founded in San Diego, Calif., later moving to Dallas, Tex. to promote belief in Young Earth Biblical creationism as a scientific possibility.
In 1971 white Baptist Rev. Jerry Lamon Falwell Sr. (1933-2007), who since 1950 has built up the conservative Bible-thumping Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. to nat. prominence, along with his "Old Time Gospel Hour", aired on 300 U.S. and 64 foreign TV stations, known for the 1958 soundbyte "When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line - the true Negro does not want integration" founds Lynchburg Baptist College in Va. with 154 students and four full-time faculty, later renaming it Liberty U. and growing it to a 3,250-acre campus with 7.7K students, dreaming of making it the Notre Dame U. and Brigham Young U. for mainly white fundamentalist Christians who want to become active in leftist, er, conservative politics. In 1979 Bible-thumping Baptist Rev. Jerry Lamon Falwell Sr. (1933-2007), who since 1950 built up the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. to nat. prominence, along with his "Old Time Gospel Hour", aired on 300 U.S. and 64 foreign TV stations founds the Moral Majority along with Heritage Inst. dir. Paul M. Weyrich (who coins the term) to give conservative Christian evangelicals a voice in politics, encouraging voter registration and becoming instrumental in the election of pres. Ronald Reagan and the blocking of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and gay and abortion rights legislation, becoming one of the top 25 most influential Americans by 1983, lashing out against his foes, incl. liberals, abortionists, ACLU, feminists, gay rights activists, and the faithless; he disbands it in the late 1980s to concentrate on his Christian school, Liberty U.; conservative Southern Baptist U.S. Sen. (R-N.C.) (1973-2003) Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (1921-2008) (a Dem. in 1942-70) is a founding member of the Moral Majority, fighting atheism and homosexuality while fending off accusations of white supremacy; in Dec. the transpartisan mainly New Ager New World Alliance is formed in the U.S. by Mark Ivor Satin (1946-) et al. as a counter to Jerry Falwell and other evangelical Christian political groups, lasting until 1983 - you either wish him well or wish he'd fall down a well? In 1980 Rev. Jerry Falwell (1933-2007), Listen, America!; widely-distributed pamphlet with the soundbyte: "We must stand against the Equal Rights Amendment, the feminist revolution, and the homosexual revolution" - I'm Kilroy, Kilroy, Kilroy? On Feb. 24, 1988 in a ruling that expands legal protections for parody and satire, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns a $200K jury award that Moral Majority founder Rev. Jerry Falwell won against Hustler mag. and publisher Larry Claxton Flynt Jr. (1942-) for "emotional distress" for pub. a parody of Falwell having an incestuous affair with his mother in an outhouse in the guise of an ad for Campar Vodka ("You'll never forget your first time"); the ruling protects the article as political satire. In 1997 the perhaps crypto-gay-friendly Teletubbies show for preschool kids debuts on BBC-TV; they speak in the voices of toddlers and show video clips on their TV tummies: purse-toting Tinky Winky (purple), Dipsy (green), Po (red), Laa Laa (yellow); Dipsy and Laa Laa are black, Tinky Winky and Po are white; Rev. Jerry Falwell stinks himself up by claiming that Tinky Winky is a gay role model and morally damaging to children, which finds supporters; May 26, 2007 Ewa Sowinska (1944-), Poland's watchdog for children's rights asks for psychologists to investigate whether the char. is gay because it carries a purse, drawing the PC Police in, after which she er, drops it; watch video; watch video.
In 1971 Ferriday, La.-born Christian Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Braggart, er, Jimmy Lee Swaggart (1935-), cousin of rock & roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis (1935-) and country singer Mickey Leroy Gilley (1936-) launches his TV ministry with the weekly "Jimmy Swaggart Telecast" and "A Study in the Word" programs, which reach 3K stations by the 1980s; too bad, On Feb. 21, 1988 (Sun.) he admits in a Sunday morning sermon from his pulpit in Baton Rouge that "I have sinned" with a $20 New York City prostitute the year before after pictures taken by rival Marvin Gorman emerge, leaving the pulpit temporarily - for VD tests? Watch video;watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1971 English U. of London prof. George Albert "G.A." Wells (1926-2017) pub. the book The Jesus of the Early Christians: A Study in Christian Origins, questioning the historicity of Jesus Christ, causing a firestorm of controversy. In 1975 he pub. Did Jesus Exist?, which concludes that it's not very likely; he goes on to pub. several more books on the same topic until 2009 while making few converts. In 1982 he pub. The Historical Evidence for Jesus, followed by Religious Postures: Essays on Modern Christian Apologists and Religious Problems (1988), Who Was Jesus? A Critique of the New Testament Record (1989), Belief and Make-Believe: Critical Reflections on the Sources of Credulity (1991), What's in a Name? Reflections on Language, Magic and Religion (1993), The Jesus Legend (1996), and The Jesus Myth (1999). Too bad, in the late 1990s he accepts the existence of a mysterious itinerant Galilean miracle worker behind the Q document. He follows with The Acts of the Apostles: A Historical Record? (2000), Can We Trust the New Testament? Thoughts on the Reliability of Early Christian Testimony (2004), and Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where it Leaves Christianity (2009).
On Jan. 1, 1972 White City, Kan.-born biochemist (fundamentalist Baptist) Duane Tolbert Gish (1921-2013) pub. the book Evidence Against Evolution, followed by Evolution: The Fossils Say No! (June 1, 1979), going on to becoming a star with the Inst. for Creation Research, becoming known as "Creationism's T.H. Huxley"; watch video.
On Jan. 1, 1972 after starting out as an agnostic in college then seeing the light after trying to disprove Christianity and joining the Campus Crusade for Christ in 1964, Union City, Mich.-born Christian evangelist and apologist Joslin "Josh" McDowell (1939-) pub. the book Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Historical Evidence for the Christian Faith (rev. ed. 2009), which becomes a bestseller, spawning a series, followed by More Than A Carpenter (1977), with the soundbyte: "Evidence for Christianity in the Scriptures is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient", Answers to Tough Questions: Questions Skeptics Ask About the Christian Faith (w/Don Stewart) (1980), Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity (w/Don Stewart) (1981), More Evidence That Demands a Verdict (1981), The Resurrection Factor (1981), with the ad blurb: " If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, Christianity is worthless", Prophecy: Fact or Fiction (1981), Jesus: A Biblical Defense of His Deity (w/Bart Larson) (Jan. 1, 1983), He Walked Among Us: Evidence for the Historical Jesus (w/Bill Wilson) (1988), Skeptics Who Demanded a Verdict (1989) (C.S. Lewis, Charles Colson, Josh McDowell), and Evidence for the Historical Jesus: A Compelling Case for His Life and His Claims (2011); he goes on to pub. 150+ books; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1973 New York City-born Calvinist Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001) pub. his magnum opus The Institutes of Biblical Law (3 vols.); title is a takeoff on Calvin's 1536 "Institutes of the Christian Religion"; founds Christian Reconstructionism, arguing for a new society (theonomy) built on retro Christian principles of Calvin and the Bible that restore grim Mosaic Law incl. the death penalty for incest, adultery, homosexuality, blasphemy, witchcraft, idolatry, apostasy, even striking one's parents; "The heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state... Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies"; "Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristocracy"; [Democracy is "the great love of the failures and cowards of life"; in 1965 he founded the Chalcedon Foundation think tank that spawns and supports the political aspirations of the New Christian Right incl. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson et al.
In 1975 Buhl, Idaho-born bushy white-haired Pentecostal minister William Eugene "Gene" Scott (1929-2005) launches his TV ministry on the Faith Broadcasting Network, later founding the Univ. Network and broadcasting 24 hours/day via satellite to the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean by 1983, reaching 180 countries by 1990, becoming known for flaunting his Stanford Ph.D. in philosophies of education (he started out as an agnostic then got saved by Jesus in college) and filling chalkboards with scriptural passages in the original languages while wearing a variety of hats incl. a sombrero, beret, and English pith helmet, and smoking a cigar, often bursting into angry tirades when he's not publicly counting his donations, giving the raspberry to the label televangelist a la Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart, preferring the label of teacher or pastor; in 1990 Scott moves to the restored United Artists flagship theater in downtown Los Angeles, Calif., calling it the Los Angeles University Cathedral, featuring neon "Jesus Saves" signs; his wife (since 2000) Melissa Scott eventually takes over his empire; in 1981 Werner Herzog releases the documentary God's Angry Man featuring an angry Scott; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1975 the Jehovah's Witnesses stir up believers with frightening Bible-quoting predictions that Armageddon will come this year; after they are proved wrong they suffer massive defections, but survive and never again fix on a specific date, finally accepting the part of the Bible that says that no one knows the exact time, not even the angels or the Son of Man, but the Father alone (Matt. 24:36); actually, there's no need anymore since all those who wanted a fixed date quit?
In 1976 Denver, Colo. pastor Charles E. Blair (1921-2009) of Calvary Temple, a pioneer in televangelism in Colo. is convicted of bilking investors, mainly church members of $17M in connection with his Blair Foundation and Life Center elderly care facility, which went bankrupt in 1974; no surprise, his adoring congregation continues to support him; young TLW attended his services, smelling a rat and becoming a lifelong village atheist?
In summer 1977 El Campo, Tex.-born evangelical Christian pastor Two Buck Chuck Swindle, er, Charles Rozell "Chuck" Swindoll (1934-) founds the Insight for Living radio program, which grows to 2K+ stations worldwide in 15 languages; in July 1994 he becomes pres. of Dallas Theological Seminary, going on to found Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Tex. in 1998 and pub 70+ books, gettting him listed in the top 25 most influential preachers in the past 50 years in 2006 by Christianity Today; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1977 Shreveport, La.-born conservative Protestant evangelist with a doctorate in psychology James Clayton "Jim" Dobson Jr. (1936-), known for his 1970 book Dare to Discipline that advocates spanking of children up to eight years old launches the daily radio program Focus on the Family, which grows to 7K stations heard by 220M+ in 164 countries incl. 60 U.S. TV stations; in 1981 he founds the Family Research Council; on Jan. 24, 1989 he interviews serial killer Ted Bundy one day before his execution, with Bundy blaming violent porno, and Dobson later calling for him to be forgiven, making a tidy $1M from the Bundy tapes, of which $600K is donated to anti-porno and anti-abortion groups; after staying out of politics for years, in 2004 he leads a campaign to block the appointment of Arlen Specter to head the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee because of his support for abortion, causing Slate mag. in Nov. 2004 to call him "America's most influential evangelical leader", with the soundbytes: "Forget Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who in their dotage have marginalized themselves with gaffes... Dobson is now America's most influential evangelical leader, with a following reportedly greater than that of either Falwell or Robertson at his peak... Dobson may have delivered Bush his victories in Ohio and Florida"; "He's already leveraging his new power. When a thank-you call came from the White House, Dobson issued the staffer a blunt warning that Bush 'needs to be more aggressive' about pressing the religious right's pro-life, anti-gay rights agenda, or it would 'pay a price in four years'"; in 2008 Dobson opposes the U.S. pres. candidacy of Dem. U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, calling him "the abortion president', later mourning his election with the soundbyte that he was "going to appoint the most liberal justices to the Supreme Court, perhaps, that we've ever had"; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1977 Los Angeles, Calif.-born Calvinist dispensationalist premillennialist evangelist John Fullerton MacArthur Jr. (1939-) first airs his daily radio program "Grace to You", which spreads worldwide; he goes on to call the papacy "the biggest hoax ever foisted on the world". In 1997 he pub. the bestselling book (1M copies) MacArthur Study Bible (1997), followed by The Battle for the Beginning: The Bible on Creation and the Fall of Adam (2001), advocating young Earth Creationism, containing the soundbyte that Christians "ought to expose such lies for what they are and oppose them vigorously", arguing that "the battle for the beginning is ultimately a battle between two mutually exclusive faiths – faith in Scripture versus faith in anti-theistic hypotheses. It is not really a battle between science and the Bible", and Twelve Ordinary Men: How the Master Shaped HIs Disciples for Greatness, and What He Wants to Do with You (May 8, 2006) (500K copies); watch video; watch video.
In Oct. 1978 200+ evangelical leaders issue the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy; in Nov. 1982 they follow with the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics"; in Dec. 1986 they follow with the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Application".
On Oct. 19, 1979 Peter Sykes' and John Krish's Biblical drama Jesus (AKA The Jesus Film) (Inspirational Films) (Warner Bros. Pictures) debuts, produced by John Heyman and the Campus Crusade for Christ and shot in Israel, slavishly following the Gospel of Luke in the Good News Bible, starring Brian Deacon as Jesus, Rivka Neumann as Mary, Yosef Shiloach as Joseph, Talia Shapira as Mary Magdalene, and Alexander Scourby as Luke, becoming the most-watched and most-translated motion picture of all time?; does $4M box office on a $6M budget; watch film.
In 1979 Peoria, Ill.-born Christian theologian-philosopher William Lane Craig (1949-) of Biola U., owner of the Web site ReasonableFaith.org pub. the book The Kalam Cosmological Argument for the existence of God, that it is metaphysically impossible for there to be actual infinities or a temporally past-infinite universe, refining Thomas Aquinas' argument of the impossibility of a causally-ordered infinite regress, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's argument based on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, going on to defend the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, becoming one of the top-50 most influential living philosophers on Earth.
In 1980 San Jose, Calif.-born evangelical Southern Baptist pastor Richard Duane "Rick" Warren (1954-) begins a Bible study group in Orange County, Calif., leading to Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. which grows to 20K members by 2020; in 1995 he pub. the bestseller (1.5M copies) The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission, with the the five purposes: worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and mission: You Were Planned for God's Pleasure; You Were Formed for God's Family; You Were Created to Become Like Christ; You Were Shaped for Serving God; You Were Made for a Mission; in 2002 he pub. the bestseller (30M copies) The Purpose Driven Life, a Bible study book leading readers on a 40-day personal spiritual journey illustrating God's five purposes for human life on Earth; the five Global Goliaths: spiritual emptiness, egocentric leadership, extreme poverty, pandemic disease, illiteracy/poor education.
On Jan. 8, 1982 Bob Jones U. of S.C. and other racial-discrimination-promoting univs. are given tax-exempt status on the orders of Pres. Reagan after 11 years (1971), but on Jan. 12 after a firestorm of controversy he flip-flops; on May 24, 1983 despite an amicus brief filed by the Nat. Assoc. of Evangelicals (NAE), the U.S. Supreme (Burger) Court by 8-1 decides that the IRS can revoke the tax-exempt status of orgs. that are contrary to established public policy incl. those who practice racial discrimination, limiting their decision to "religious schools - not churches or other purely religious institutions"; the lone dissenter is Rehnquist.
In 1985 British-Australian biochemist Michael John Denton (1943-) pub. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, which turns off many scientists to the Darwinian paradigm and helps launch the Creationist and later Intelligent Design movements, making fans of Michael Behe and Philip Johnson; he later switches to a God-driven evolutionist position.
In 1985 the first annual Jesus Seminar, founded by Am. Bible scholar Robert W. Funk (1926-2005) (who claims that "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John 'marketed the Messiah' to make him conform to Christian doctrine that evolved after the death of Jesus", and that God is not appeased by blood sacrifice anyway) is held by scholars who cast ballots on each saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospels; red means that it was actually made by him, pink means he might have made it, gray means he didn't make it, but it might be close to one he made, and black means thumbs down; they end up casting black ballots for 82% of the words of Jesus in the Gospels, and only 16% red; noted members incl. Irish New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan (1934-), Am. New Testament scholar (skeptic of Jesus' historical existence) Robert McNair Price (1954-), and English historian of religion Karen Armstrong (1944-), who in 2000 pub. the book The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam; "Jesus did not ask us to believe that his death was a blood sacrifice, that he was going to die for our sins." (Robert W. Funk)
In Sept. 1986 CBN evangelist Pat Robertson announces his candidacy for 1988 U.S. pres., getting 3M signatures by Sept. 1987 and coming in #2 in the Iowa caucus ahed of rival George W. Bush, then faltering in all of the other primaries except Wash. state, where he wins a majority; he then speaks at the 1988 Repub. Nat. Convention and tells his supporters to vote for Bush before returning to CBN.
On Mar. 19, 1987 Am. Christian Assemblies of God televangelist James Orsen "Jim" Bakker (1940-) resigns as chmn. of his PTL ministry org. (founded 1974) over a sex and money scandal involving a double set of books and a $279K payoff to coverup his cheating on his eyebrow-free 4'11" wife Tammy Faye Bakker (1942-2007) with his chesty church secy. Jessica Hahn (1959-) from Okla., who initially claims rape, then flip-flops, calling it a fling rather than an affair, then capitalizes on her new fame by doing a Playboy spread, and later claims she wants to be reconciled with the church; the press jumps on their luxurious lifestyle, incl. an air-conditioned doghouse, gold-plated bathroom features, etc., although they are later proved to be exaggerated (heated doghouse, brass fixtures)?; Jim Bakker asks Jerry Falwell to act as temporary caretaker, turning on Jimmy Swaggart and accusing him of planning to take it over, then flopping on Falwell, accusing him of ditto, causing Falwell to hold a press conference, accusing Jim Bakker of having gay relationships with men, producing sworn affadavits, along wqith a note by Tammy Faye detailing her demands of $300K/mo. for Jim and $100K/mo. for herself plus their $400K mansion and other perks for going away quietly, after which Fawell resigns from the Liberty Federation and Moral Majority on Nov. 4, 1987 and disavows his political career, going back to the Old Time Gospel Hour; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
On Apr. 29-30, 1987 the Washington for Jesus demonstrations by 200K Christian right believers in Washington, D.C. are led by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, William Bright, and Benson Idahosa, featuring a videotape address by Pres. Ronald Reagan, who announces plans to make the following Thur. a Nat. Day of Prayer, turning conservative Christians on to political activism and unifying their stances against homosexuality, abortion, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, divorce, and women's liberation, increasing support for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; another rally is held in pouring rain in 1996, attended by 75K.
On June 19, 1987 the U.S. Supreme (Rehnquist) Court rules 7-2 in Edwards v. Aguillard that equal time in public schools for Creation Science along with Darwinian Evolutionary Theory violates the First Amendment Establishment Clause, but that "teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of scientific instruction", giving an opening to the Intelligent Design proponents; in support of the decision, amicus briefs are filed by 72 Nobel Prize winning scientists, 17 state academies of science, and seven other scientific orgs; dissenters incl. Justices William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia.
In 1987 Detroit, Mich.-born Christian Ph.D apologist Gary Robert Habermas (1950-) pub. his first book Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate (w/Antony Flew), going on to pub. 40+ books, half of them attempting to prove Jesus' resurrection; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1991 Frederick, Md.-born Randy Alan White (1958-) and his Elvishtown Tupelo, Miss.-born wife (since 1990) Paula Michelle White (nee Furr) (1966-) found Without Walls Internat. Church (originally South Tampa Christian Center) in Tampa, Fla., preaching Bible-thumping prosperity theology, growing to 5K attendees/week by 1999, and 20K in 2004, becoming the 7th largest church in the U.S.; on July 12, 2009 Randy resigns as pastor in favor of his wife Paula; too bad, in 2011 after a 3-year U.S. Senate investigation clears them, it shuts down and declares bankrupcy, and their prophecy of without walls is fulfilled?; in 2017 Paula becomes chmn. of Pres. Trump's evangelical advisory board, becoming the first female clergy member to deliver a U.S. pres. inauguration invocation on Jan. 20, 2017; in 2019 Trump appoints her as special advisor to the Faith and Opportunity Initiative at the Office of Public Liaison (until ?); she is a money-making fake Christian that's living proof of the New Testament prophecies about mass apostasy in the End Times?; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 1992 the first Veritas Forum to explore the relevance of Jesus Christ to modern life is held at Harvard U., reaching 300K students on 100 campuses by 2008 and becoming a who's who of Christian apologists.
In 1993 Bulaway, Southern Rhodesia-born Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary prof. David Falconer Wells (1939-) pub. the book No Place for Truth, or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?, grieving over the great falling away of belief in historical Christianity; on Apr. 17-20, 1996 after Wells' book shakes them into action, the 100-member Reformed, Lutheran, and Calvinish evangelical group Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals meets in Cambridge, Mass., and pub. the Cambridge Declaration, calling for repentance and return to the historical Christian faith that proudly thumps the Bible and rejects Catholicism, Charismatic Christianity, and Pentecostal Christianity.
A New Hope for Jedi Bible-thumpers? In 1996 Altoona, Penn.-born Lehigh U. prof. of biochemistry Michael J. Behe (1952-) pub. the book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (2nd ed. Mar. 13, 2006), which claims that some cellular structures are too complex to be explained by evolution, i.e., have irreducible complexity (IC); "[His book] overthrows Darwin at the end of the twentieth century in the same way that quantum theory overthrew Newton at the beginning" (George Gilder), getting it selected by Nat. Review mag. for its list of the 100 most important nonfiction works of the 20th cent.; watch video; watch video.
Return of the Jedi Bible-thumpers? In 1996 Am. scientist Stephen C. Meyer (1958-) founds the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) (originally the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture) at the conservative Discovery Inst., becoming the hub of the Intelligent Design movement. On June 23, 2009 Meyer pub. Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, followed in 2013 by Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal LIfe and the Case for Intelligent Design, helping launch the Intelligent Design Movement; watch video; watch video.
On Sept. 1, 1998 after his wife converts to Christ and he does ditto after allegedly studying in vain for two years to disprove her, Arlington Heights, Ill.-born atheist Lee Patrick Strobel (1952-) of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., host of the TV show "Faith Under Fire" pub. The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, which becomes a bestseller (5M copies), followed by sequels incl. The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity (Oct. 1, 2000), The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God (2004), The Case for Easter: Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection (2004), The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger (2005), The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ (Sept. 10, 2007), The Case for Christianity Answer Book (July 1, 2014), The Case for Hope: Looking Ahead with Confidence and Courage (2015), The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives (2015), In Defense of Jesus: Investigating Attacks on the Identity of Christ (2016), and The Case for Miracles: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Supernatural (2018); watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
On Jan. 17, 1999 Houston, Tex.-born Laodicean (lukewarm, stand-for-nothing) preacher Joel Scott Osteen (1963-) preaches his first sermon at his father John's Southern Baptist Lakewood Church, taking over when his father dies on Oct. 3 and boosting attendance from 5K to 43K, with his weekly TV show seen by 10M in the U.S. and several million more in 100+ countries; in 2003 it acquires Compaq Center, former home of the NBA Houston Rockets, renovating it for its 2005 grand opening attended by 56K incl. Tex. Repub. Gov. Rick Perry and Dem. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, becoming a favorite of Repub. Ariz. Sen. John McCain; in 2019 he marches with Lady Gaga at a gay pride march; watch video; watch video.
In 1999 Bible fundamentalist minister Dennis James Kennedy (1930-2007) of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., sponsor since 1974 of The Coral Ridge Hour (peak audience of 3M in 200 countries), known for wearing elaborate church robes hosts the Reclaiming America for Christ Conference, with Philip E. Johnson giving the speech "How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won", boosting the Intelligent Design movement, with the soundbyte: "To talk of a purposeful or guided evolution is not to talk about evolution at all. That is "slow creation." When you understand it that way, you realize that the Darwinian theory of evolution contradicts not just the book of Genesis, but every word in the Bible from beginning to end. It contradicts the idea that we are here because a Creator brought about our existence for a purpose. That is the first thing I realized, and it carries tremendous meaning... Now, the way that I see the logic of our movement going is like this. The first thing you understand is that the Darwinian theory isn't true. It's falsified by all of the evidence, a nd the logic is terrible. When you realize that, the next question that occurs to you is, 'Well, where might you get truth?' When I preach from the Bible, as I often do at churches and on Sundays, I don't start with Genesis. I start with John 1:1, '"In the beginning was the Word.' In the beginning was intelligence, purpose, and wisdom. The Bible had that right and the materialist scientists are deluding themselves"; watch video; watch video.
In 2000 after vacationing in Tahiti in 1994 and reading Sidney Sheldon's "Doomsday Conspiracy", beginning "to suspect that maybe I could write a 'thriller' of this type one day", Exter, N.H.-born Daniel "Dan" Brown (1964-) son of Phillips Exeter Academy math prof. Richard G. Brown and musician Constance Brown), educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Amherst College pub. Angels and Demons, about how the Illuminati are real and out ta getchya, introducing Harvard U. prof. Robert Langdon; filmed in 2009. Pass the cilice, Mother T? On Mar. 18, 2003 (two days after the U.S. invades Iraq) he pub. The Da Vinci Code; 10K advance copies and 230K initial press run; 23,578 sold the first week, making #1 on the NYT bestseller list ("the novel that ate the world"); "Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery" (first line); "O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!"; "So dark the con of man"; "In London lies a knight a pope interred/ His labor's fruit a Holy wrath incurred/ You seek the orb that ought be on his tomb/ It speaks of Rosy flesh and seeded womb"; "The Holy Grail 'neath ancient Roslin waits/ The blade and chalice guarding o'er Her gates/ She rests at last beneath the starry skies"; Harris Tweed-loving Harvard U. religious symbology prof. Robert Langdon (language don?), Capt. Bezu Fache (busy fish?) and Lt. Jerome Collet (roam around and collate his boss' microfiche?) of the DCPJ, Jacques Sauniere (saner?) of the Louvre, "Princess" Sophie (Sofia) Neveu (renovate?) alias St. Clair (not Plantard), monk Silas (Sauniere's Judas?) and Bishop Manuel Aringarosa (ring around the rosey?) of Opus Dei (which has only lay members?), Andre Vernet (wears vernier Rolex timepieces?) of the Depository Bank of Zurich, Sir Leigh Teabing (Sir Lipton tea bag?) alias the Teacher at Chateau Villette (1668) and his manservant Remy Legaludec (legal duke?) from Lyons and his Medusa revolver, the Da Vinci cryptex with password SOFIA, er, APPLE, fleur de lis, PHI, Amon L'Isa, 325 Council of Nicea, security warden Claude Grouard (guard?), Pamela Gettum (I'll get um for ya?) of King's College library, Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris with the first Rose Line and Sister Sandrine Bieil (bee eye?), Vatican Biblioteca Astronomica, Gare Saint-Lazre train station, 24 Rue Haxo and the Bois de Boulogne ("garden of earthly delights"), Friday the 13th of Oct. 1307, Leonardo da Vinci (always called Leonardo, never da Vinci?) and his Vitruvian Man, Mona Lisa, Madonna of the Rocks and skitoma-filled Last Supper, Sofia, 1099 Priory of Sion and Godefroi de Bouillon, Pentacle of Venus and Hieros Gamos, Dead Sea Scrolls, Sang Real not San Greal, Mary Magdalene of the tribe of Benjamin and Jesus of the House of David equals unbelievable; Atbash cipher and Sheshach alias Babel, Sir Isaac Newton and Alexander Pope, 1185 London Temple Church and 1065 Westminster Abbey with College Garden and octagonal Chapter House, 1446 Rosslyn Chapel (Cathedral of Codes) with the Boaz and Jachin pillars, Fibonacci sequence 13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5; "Yo soy un espectro" (Silas) (p. 56); starting with Ch. 58 the book gets rather preachy?; "Leonardo was one of the keepers of the secret of the Holy Grail. And he hid clues in his art" (Teabing) (p. 230); "Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false... More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, among them... The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great... a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest" (Teabing) (pp. 230-1); "At this gathering many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon - the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and of course, the divinity of Jesus... Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.... Jesus' establishment as 'the son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea... A relatively close vote at that"; "It was all about power... Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power" (Teabing) (p. 233); "The twist is this... Because Constantine upgraded Jesus' status almost four centuries after Jesus' death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke. From this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history... Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned" (Teabing) (p. 234); "Fortunately for historians... some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive... the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert. And, of course, the Coptic Scrolls in 1945 at Nag Hammadi. In addition to telling the true Grail story, these documents speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms. Of course, the Vatican, in keeping with their tradition of misinformation, tried very hard to suppress the release of these scrolls. And why wouldn't they? The scrolls highlight glaring historical discrepancies and fabrications, clearly confirming that the modern Bible was compiled and edited by men who possessed a political agenda - to promote the divinity of the man Jesus Christ and use His influence to solidify their own power base" (Teabing) (p. 234); "The Grail... is symbolic of the lost goddess. When Christianity came along, the old pagan religions did not die easily. Legends of chivalric quests for the lost Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be 'searching for the chalice' were seaking in code as a way to protect themselves from a Church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned nonbelievers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine" (Langdon) (pp. 238-9); "It was not Peter to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene... Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene" (Teabing) (p. 248); "Behold the greatest cover-up in human history. Not only was Jesus Christ married, but He was a father. My dear, Mary Magdalene was the Holy Vessel. She was the chalice that bore the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. She was the womb that bore the lineage, and the vine from which the sacred fruit sprang forth" (Teabing) (p. 249); becomes bestselling adult novel of all time (60M by 2006), spawning the new genre of fractured history written at the 8th grade level for the history-starved masses ("You don't hate history, you just hate your own history"?) spoon-fed during a ridiculous murder adventure; milks the fallacy of the evil albino, the fallacy of the talking killer, and the fallacy of the Bride of Christ not being his Church but his hot freckled red-haired bunkbunny Mary Magdalene, whose DNA (check out that melanocritia-1 receptor?) is more valuable than weapons-grade plutonium?; the best hook is the novel's opening: "FACT... All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate", spawning the Anti-Da Vinci Code Industry; "Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?" (1 Cor. 9:5); watch trailer; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
In 2002 The Way of the Master (WOTM) Christian evangelical org. is founded in Bellflower, Calif. by Kiwi evangelist Ray Comfort (1949-) and Panorma City, Calif.-born "Growing Pains" actor Kirk Thomas Cameron (1970-), going on to produce the Banana Argument episode, which claims that only an intelligent designer like God could produce it, not realizing that it was intelligently produced, by man, using artificial selection.
On Dec. 20, 2005 federal judge John Edward Jones III (1955-) rules in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District that the Oct. 2004 decision of the Dover, Penn. school board to permit teaching Intelligent Design in public schools is un-PC, er, unconstitutional, because it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and on Jan. 3, 2006 they rescind their policy; a video of the school board hearings where noted pro-ID experts testify while pro-evolution experts boycott it is released, becoming a great time capsule - because it prohibits the free exercise of religion or might cause it to receive equal time and threaten the ACLU program of freedom from religion?
In 2005 Lawrence, Kan.-born New Testament scholar Bart Denton Ehrman (1955-) pub. the NYT beselling book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Whose Word Is It?), exposing the New Testament's dirty laundry of inconsistent and unsure text, making it impossible to know what it really says, even in matters of basic doctrine, pissing-off Bible-thumpers, who mainly studiously ignore him?; watch video.
On June 28, 2006 U.S. Dem. Ill. Sen. (2005-8) Barack Hussein Obama II (1961-) gives a keynote speech to the liberal Christian org. Call to Renewal in Washington, D.C., dissing Alan Keyes for saying that Jesus Christ wouldn't vote for him, then making light of the Bible a la Tom Paine: "And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount, a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our Bibles. Folks haven't been reading their Bibles." He means he hasn't because he's too busy churning out his own? On July 30, 2007 U.S. Dem. Ill. Sen. Barack Obama tells conservative Christian CBN News that "America is no longer just a Christian nation", and offers to be the Messiah who can find ways that religious conservatives and liberals can "begin to find common ground", with the soundbyte: "I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism. Whatever we once were, we're no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers. We should acknowledge this and realize that when we're formulating policies from the state house to the Senate floor to the White House, we've got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community." Is that what they call a New York state of mind, or a Chicago one, make that Washington D.C? Okay, it's not a boner, since after his election he stuck to it, telling a press conference in Turkey on Apr. 6, 2009: "One of the great strengths of the United States is... we have a very large Christian population. We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation, we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."
The tip of the iceberg, indicating a massive loosening of morals among U.S. Christians in the face of the hurricane of Internet porn? On Nov. 2, 2006 Yorktown, Ind.-born Rev. Ted Arthur Haggard (1956-), a top Christian evangelist in Colo. Springs (founder of 14K-member New Life Church, son of an Indiana pig farmer, grad. of Oral, er, Roberts U. in 1978, married to plain Gayle Alcorn, daughter of a USAF col., with five kids, some of whom have his funny eyebrows?), and an opponent of gays and gay marriage leaves his posts as pastor and pres. of the 30M-member Nat. Assoc. of Evangelicals after admitting on his radio show on Nov. 1 to having responded to an ad at rentboy.com and having sex monthly with bodybuilder male escort Mike Forest Jones (1957-) from Denver for 3 years for $200/hour; says Jones "We always met at my place... It was pretty much vanilla sex"; Jones also produces a tape of Haggard asking him to buy meth; on Nov. 3 Jones fails a lie detector test, but maintains his story, while Haggard admits buying meth and that Jones gave him a massage, but denies having sucked, er, had sex with him, only going so far as to say "I was tempted" by the meth, but didn't take any; on Nov. 4 (Sun.) his congregation is packed when the board reads a letter from him admitting to "sexually immoral conduct", saying "There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark, I've been fighting it all my life", and fires him; after a 3-week "spiritual restoration" program overseen by four ministers, he is proclaimed "completely heterosexual" next Feb. (just in time for Valentine's Day?) - that delicious forbidden fruit that melts in my mouth is like a plain vanilla ice cream cone, no, a used cigarette butt? Watch video; watch video.
In 2007 Detroit, Mich.-born James E. "Jim" Wallis Jr. (1948-) (1971 founder of Sojourners mag.) and Philly-born Anthony "Tony" Campolo (1935-) found the leftist religious activist Red-Letter Christians to rise above religious partisanship to focus only on Jesus' words and chuck the rest of the New Testament esp. the Pauline Epistles, AKA Jesusism (Jesuism) (Jesuanism), with the soundbyte by Campolo: "The purpose of this gathering was not to create a religious left movement to challenge the religious right, but to jump-start a religious movement that will transcend partisan politics"; in 1974 Wallis wrote the soundbyte: "The new evangelical consciousness is most characterized by a return to biblical Christianity and the desire to apply biblical insights to the need for new forms of sociopolitical engagement"; no surprise, Pres. Clinton hires Campolo and Pres. Obama hires Wallis as religious advisers, esp. when they back gay marriage; watch video; watch video.
On Nov. 13, 2009 the Darwin Was Wrong Conference in Costa Mesa, Calif. presents evidence and arguments blasting Charles Darwin and Darwinian Evolutionary theory, calling him a great writer but not a great scientist, and claiming that the famous Lucy skeleton is really a human.
On Jan. 8, 2010 the Proceedings of the Nat. Academy of Sciences pub. a study by Mauro Santos of the U. of Barcelona rejecting the "metabolism first" theory that life originated from a system of self-catalytic molecules capable of Darwinian evolution sans the need for RNA or DNA.
In 2012 Am. paleontologist Mary Higby Schweitzer (1955-) of N.C. State U. discovers soft tissue in a T-rex bone, shocking the scientific world and pleasing Creationists with the theory that dinos lived no more than a few tens of thousands of years ago; she goes on to prove that the dino was a pregnant female, and find molecular similarities between the T-Rex and chicken.
On Jan. 1, 2013 after converting to Christianity in 1996 and obtaining a master's degree in theological studies at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Torrance, Calif.-born homicide detective James Warner Wallace (1961-) pub. his first book Cold Case Christianity; A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels, followed by Alive: A Cold-Case Approach to the Resurrection (Mar. 1, 2014), God's Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe (Aug. 1, 2015), and Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith (May 1, 2017); watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video; watch video.
On Aug. 12, 2013 Michael Argyle of the U. of Rochester pub. an article in Personality and Social Psychology Review reporting a study of 1.5K gifted children going back to 1921 which finds that the more intelligent ones turned away from religion even in old age.
On June 17, 2016 Am. theoretical physicist Michio Kaku (1947-) (co-founder of String Theory) pub. an article in Geophilosophical Assoc. of Anthropological and Cultural Studies, announcing that primitive semi-radius tachyons (discovered in 2005) are physical evidence that the Big U is a Matrix was created by a higher intelligence, with the soundbyte: "I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore.... To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance."
On Aug. 28, 2016 George Carneal, son of a conservative Southern Baptist minister who turned gay for 20 years then went straight and found Christ pub. the book Queer Christ: Journey into Light, warning of the dangers of the gay lifestyle and culture; watch video.
On Feb. 21, 2018 Am. evangelist Billy Graham (b. 1918) dies in Montreat, N.C., and his son William Franklin Graham III (1952-), pres. since 1978 of Samaritan's Purse evangelical Christian charity takes over his org., taking over the endless fight against Satan incl. gay and Muslim candidates and legislation and the PC police.
On Dec. 21, 2019 Christianity Today ed. Mark Galli pub. an editorial calling for Pres. Trump's removal for being "morally unfit", pissing-off mag. founder Billy Graham's son Franklin Graham and Trump, who note that Trump won 81% of the evangelical vote in the 2016 U.S. pres. election.