Voddie T. Baucham Jr.'s Blog

A few days ago, Tim Challies posted a link to Sam Waldron's article on the "Family Based Church Movement" (note: Challies used the term Family Integrated Church in his post) released on the Reformed Baptist Fellowship blog. Since Challies, one of the most respected bloggers in the Reformed Christian camp, refers to the article as "a useful critique of some of the tenets of the Family Integrated Church movement," his post has set off another wave of inaccurate, prejudicial, well-worn, asked-and-answered straw man attacks against all things FIC (I'm not sure that "Family of Families" straw man can take another lynching).

Unfortunately, Tim doesn't mention Waldron's Open Letter that he issued following the release of the aforementioned article (in which he retracts his principle objection against the main representatives of the group he assessed in his article!). I am not sure if he is even aware of the Open Letter (since the Open Letter is not linked to the Waldron article on the RBF blog in the interest of full disclosure and the protection of the names and reputations of their RB brethren... but I digress), so I thought I'd repost it, for those of you out there who have 1) written and/or called to make me aware of the Challies post, or 2) taken advantage of another opportunity to use a post (or in this case a link to a post) from a Reformed brother as a wedge to try to marginalize the FIC, and 3) those who run the RBF blog and link to myriad articles and posts castigating the FIC (or straw man caricatures of the same) without as much as a mention of (let alone a link to) their reformed Baptist FIC brothers who have written on the topic (and have actually been inside an FIC... not just on a few websites), as though there is only one side of the so-called debate (but again, I digress).

So here it is:


An Open Letter with regard to My Blog on the
Family-Integrated Church Movement

Dear Brothers in Christ,

Several months ago I allowed to have posted on the blog of Reformed Baptist Fellowship a lecture I had prepared several years ago for my Doctrine of the Church course at MCTS on the relation of the family and the church. This lecture was prepared on the basis of interaction over the years with pastors who had dealt with this movement and also on the basis of an inspection of several websites supporting the family-integrated church movement. In my original lecture I noted that some of the groups and websites I mentioned were less extreme than others. I mistakenly thought that I specifically mentioned that the group headed by Scott Brown and originally associated with Vision
Forum and named the National Center for Family-Integrated Churches was in my view more moderate and less extreme than other groups I cited. That was my view as I recall when I wrote the original lecture, but apparently I did not specifically mention that their positions seemed more moderate to me. It is only fair for me to make this clear here and now.

Since allowing this lecture to be posted, I have had numerous email and personal opportunities to talk to Scott. I have also had indirect contact with Voddie Baucham and perused his blogs on the subject. Both men affirm that they hold the 1689 and its view of ecclesiology. They have protested rather vigorously that we are misrepresenting their views when we attribute to them the idea that they believe the family is the basic unit of the New Testament church. In his blog which I cite below Voddie, however, has been honest and candid enough to admit that their description of the church as a "family of families" has been unnecessarily confusing. I recommend for clarity that you read Voddie's blogs on this subject. Here are the addresses.

http://www.voddiebaucham.org/vbm/Blog/Entries/2009/3/26_Is_the_church_A_Family_of_Families.html

http://www.voddiebaucham.org/vbm/Blog/Entries/2009/3/27_Is_the_church_A_Family_of_Families_2.html

I have no doubt that on a host of issues I am in much agreement and real sympathy with Scott and Voddie on how the church should relate to the family. (My wife and I, for instance, schooled our five children at home through middle school.) I am also confident that on many practical issues I am in significant, practical disagreement with their views. This letter is not intended as a commendation of the family-integrated church movement. It is, however, an opportunity for me to clarify that I recognize that the Family-Integrated Church movement is not a monolithic movement and an attempt to set the record straight as to the views of Voddie and Scott on ecclesiology. It is also a recognition that these men hold the 1689 Baptist Confession and that there are too few of us who hold this great statement of faith for us to be unnecessarily or mistakenly divided.

Perhaps it will assist good communication if I try to identify why many Reformed Baptists oppose the family-integrated church movement. It may be that I am speaking only for myself, but I do believe that one reason why many Reformed Baptists have reacted against this movement is that we associate it with the many eccentric and divisive viewpoints which have plagued Reformed Baptist churches. We have seen people with various such ideas come to and then leave our churches because they made their ideas on secondary issues practically matters of church fellowship. Many of us are also conscious that too often good counsel has insensibly become divine command and people have been held accountable to follow good counsel as if it were divine command. Elders have sometimes mistaken the good counsel they give people for Scripture itself. Applications of divine commands have been mistaken for the divine commands themselves. The advocates of the family-integrated church movement need to realize that sometimes it has looked as if this was the kind of thing they were doing. It was not traditional Reformed Baptists being (what perhaps occasionally we have been) ugly and narrow that led them to challenge the family-integrated church movement. It was, in fact, just the opposite. It is Reformed Baptists (rightly or wrongly) trying to avoid such narrowness.

On the other hand, if there are churches and elderships that with an open, good, and friendly spirit decide to have no nurseries and decide against traditional Sunday Schools, these are not confessional issues or even key, doctrinal issues. They are rather issues of practical application. I may (I do) firmly disagree with such practical applications, but I could hold fellowship with 1689 Baptist churches who hold such views if they also diligently endeavor to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Much more could be said, but it is not my purpose to re-enter this debate. It is rather my purpose to have a good conscience by not misrepresenting brethren and to assist the cause of unity among confessional Reformed Baptists by open communication. My heart is to wish all such Reformed Baptists the benediction of Hebrews 13:20-21: Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

The Lord Reigns,
Pastor Sam Waldron, PhD

WELCOME TO THE
CONTINUING COLLAPSE! 
 
 By Bruce N. Shortt, J.D., Ph.D

Exposing Government Schools: The Youth Ministry of the State Church of Secular Humanism 

November/December, 
Anno Domini 2010
  
 
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
(Groucho Marx) 
 
 
"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."
H.L. Mencken
 
Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered
And slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
(Hilaire Belloc)
 


This Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday edition of TCC is a bit long. Unfortunately, the current information you need to have

 
"OUR SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT"
(The check is in the mail, too.)
 
 
The Continuing Collapse has long pointed out that Christian parents who do the government school "dump and run" are not only destroying their children spiritually and morally, they are also virtually assuring that their children will be the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" in the 21st Century global economy.
 
Unfortunately, suburban and rural parents all too often try to rationalize their government school habit by claiming that the academic problems in government school don't affect their "really different" suburban or rural school districts. The problems, you see, are all in those "urban districts."
 
In its never-ending quest to provide reality therapy to Christian parents and pastors, last month TCC linked you, Dear Reader, to John Stossel's Stupid In America and to some clips from Bob Compton's Two Million Minutes, which TCC hopes you shared with your pastor and Christian friends. 
 
Anyone who watches the Belgian students laughing about the academic performance of our suburban students from affluent families in New Jersey or the contrast in attitude and achievement between the Indian and Chinese students and their Carmel, Indiana, counterparts in Two Million Minutes would have a very difficult time trying to maintain the delusion that our "really good school districts are as good as any in the world". The truth is, they aren't. In fact, they aren't even close, and no amount of wishful thinking or "school reform" will make them so.
 
Now the Chinese have joined the international snarkfest. What follows is a video produced in China (with subtitles) that uses "Waiting For Superman" as an opportunity to heap some much deserved ridicule on the U.S, government school system.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrgpxoS8nzE&feature=fvwk
 

BUT THEY HAVE OUTSTANDING "SELF-ESTEEM"
 
For a very long time we have been assured that ever more lavish funding of government schools will bring about a veritable renaissance in U.S. education. The recently released results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, however, indicates that taxpayers ought to be demanding a refund.
 
Despite something approaching a trillion dollars a year being spent on government schools, the NAEP tells us that no dramatic improvement among twelfth-graders has occurred. 
 
For example, only 38% of twelfth-graders can read at or above a "proficient" level, which is another way of saying that fully 62% of our expensively institutionalized high school seniors can't read proficiently. This is slightly better than 2005, BUT not significantly different from prior years. In fact, reading scores were slightly higher in 1992 than 2009.    
http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2009/summary_g12.asp
 
 
In math, only 26% of our 12th-graders could perform at or above a proficient level. 74%, therefore, will need pictures on cash register keys if they are lucky enough to get a job at McDonald's.
http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/summary_g12.asp
 
Bear in mind, too, that these "magnificent" results exclude the 30% or more of students that the Manhattan Institute estimates have dropped out of school before graduation.
 
What else is the NAEP telling us? All that "school reform" money poured into the government schools and the latest multi-culti curricula haven't done anything to improve the education of blacks, and especially the education of black boys. 
 
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.
 
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
 
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
 
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
 
The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress...In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008.
 
The analysis of results on the national tests found that math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=2&ref=us
 
 
 
AS THE TOP 40 DJ'S USED TO SAY:  
"AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING"
 
Well, perhaps in this case, the "hits" are more like the hits Sam Huff or Lawrence Taylor used to lay on NFL quarterbacks.
 
More bad news for our highly trained education professionals? Yes, the results of the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) were recently released.
 
In math, 15 year-old students from 34 economically advanced countries took the test, and American students ranked 25th. In science American students ranked 17th.  http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/

 
AND NOW FOR THE REALLY BAD NEWS FROM PISA FOR THE "OUR SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT" CROWD:  
 
America's best students did worse than the best students from other countries, and the U.S. has more students than other developed countries performing at the lowest level according to ACHIEVE, a non-profit education reform organization.
http://www.achieve.org/pisa-results-demonstrate-importance-college-and-career-ready-agenda-all-us-students
 
As you look at the science and math scores, bear in mind that these are 15 year-olds, which means that most of them haven't really started a serious science curriculum, e.g. physics and chemistry. Why does this matter for understanding what is really happening?
 
Math is at the core of high school level science courses. The TIMSS has demonstrated that the longer a student is in government schools, the worse he does in math and science in relation to his international peers.
 
Consequently, PISA doesn't really reflect the end-game for achievement in science or math. Because American students perform very poorly in math, by 12th grade their science achievement in relation to other developed countries will drop significantly. The TIMSS has shown this in the past.
 
What does this mean in practical terms? When they reach 12th grade, the students who participated in PISA will probably be adept at discussing various methods of recycling, but lost when it comes to figuring out the rate of acceleration of a falling object.
 
One final comment on PISA: Shanghai posted by far the highest scores on the test. Don't believe it. The Mainland government is cooking the results to gain face in relation to Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Macau. An honest appraisal of the students in Shanghai would probably show strong performance, but the results would very likely be below Hong Kong.
 
 
THE COLLAPSE HAS COME TO DETROIT
(the collapse of the government school system, that is) 
 
 
 
Here is an article for the "school reformers" that discusses in some detail many of the factors that render government schools unreformable. Not surprisingly, the unions play a starring role.
 
In any event, the quite competent turn-around specialist, Mr. Bob Bobb, has thrown in the towel on his efforts to save the Detroit Public School System. Here is why:
 
A "multidimensional" crisis that's been unfolding for decades may finally be coming to a head in the Detroit Public Schools: The district is virtually bankrupt, the schools are unsafe and they generate the worst student achievement results in the nation. And now, Robert Bobb, the governor-appointed emergency financial manager, is waving the white flag, asking the state to borrow against future revenues to bail out the district. Doing so would be unfortunate for both students and state taxpayers.
 
The district is rife with dysfunctions — administrative mismanagement, rampant corruption and an inept school board, to name a few. But perhaps the worst is a suffocating collective bargaining contract and recalcitrant union leadership that prevent the district from taking advantage of what few resources it still has.
 
This is exemplified by a current issue related to substitute teachers. Apparently, the district had been using some of them to do something not explicitly permitted by the union contract: instruct students. To pressure the district to increase the pay of unionized substitutes, Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, issued a command for them to stop developing lesson plans, grading assignments, recording grades or attending parent-teacher conferences.
 
In his marching orders Johnson actually acknowledged that his tactic contradicts the district's primary purpose: "I truly regret the necessity to take this action because it is not in the best interest of our students."
 
The union boss has provided an excellent example of something Robert Bobb has often noted, that too often the district is run for the benefit of the adults, not the children it's supposed to educate.
 
This example of union obstructionism is hardly unique. The DFT vehemently opposed the creation of new public charter schools in the city and the use of high-quality teachers available through the "Teach for America" program.
 
Given all these dysfunctions, Bobb's capitulation on the fiscal front is understandable. Practically every reform he's tried has run into an iron wall erected by the union, armed with a 150-page contract that covers every action by every employee from "Art Therapists" to "Transition Specialists."
 
True, this contract was negotiated and signed by Bobb and the district management, so they are partially responsible. However, they did so hobbled by a state labor law that grossly tilts the negotiating table in ways that benefit unions, and an Emergency Financial Management statute that fails to give managers the authority they really need.
 
Under current state law, Robert Bobb does not have the authority to void these contracts and negotiate reasonable ones. Until that changes, no one should expect any real improvement in Detroit schools. That's unfortunate, because it leaves just one entity that does have such power, and — absent irresponsible state borrowing to keep the wreck rolling for a couple more years — may soon have an opportunity to exercise it: A federal bankruptcy court.
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/14026
 
 
EDUCATION IS NEVER NEUTRAL
 
The effort made by Christian parents to ignore the fact that government schools are parochial schools for secular humanism never ceases to amaze The Continuing Collapse. Moreover, if our highly trained education professionals give some program with an obvious political and social agenda an impressive sounding name and tell parents that it is "world class" and will make their children wizards of smart, most parents will go for it like a big mouth bass hitting a spinner.
 
Here we have a story in which at least a few parents have figured out that the latest curricular innovation, the International Baccalaureate program, has an agenda.
 
NEW YORK, November 18 (C-FAM) A sign nailed to a tree trunk in a family's front yard reads, "NO IB, Stop Wasting Money, Keep the UN Out of Our Schools."  Across the Arizona town, a school board member criticizes a curriculum she says surrenders local control to a foreign organization that promotes world government.
 
The debate means one American community has awakened to the International Baccalaureate, a study program quietly embraced by nearly 1,000 U.S. campuses and 139 countries worldwide.  While found mostly in public high schools, the curriculum has touched middle and elementary schools, and even a number of Catholic schools.
 
"IB is the biggest educational scam perpetrated on American schools today," says Lisa McLoughlin, a Long Island mother and leading critic.  She says schools shouldn't spend tax dollars on the program...
 
"IB students learn diversity, multiculturalism, and international-mindedness, but can they do math?  Do they learn grammar?  Can they write a paper?" says McLoughlin.  
 
The IB comes from a non-profit educational foundation of the same name founded in Switzerland in 1968....
   
The baccalaureate foundation maintains close ties to the UN through its cultural and education agency, UNESCO.  It regularly participates in UNESCO meetings and comments on its proposals in education.  UNESCO still funds some IB projects, as does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
 
Despite its direct relationship with the UN, IB denies any UN influence on its curriculum.
 
But critics say IB is anti-American, undermines national sovereignty, and promotes radical environmentalism.  Until recently, IB endorsed the Earth Charter, which supports population control and socialism...  
 
Some also criticize IB's non-traditional curriculum and lack of transparency.  To discover the actual curriculum, outsiders must buy course guides from the foundation itself.  But even then the course guides are vague, McLoughlin says.  (See her website, www.truthaboutib.com) 
 
She says IB promotes moral relativism and undermines familial values.  An IB director, for example, said in a speech that questions about ethical obligations, human rights, beliefs, and moral responsibility have "no right or wrong answers." 
 
A document on IB's website contains a curriculum model that emphasizes "Sharing the planet."  It promotes world citizenship, and says students need a greater understanding of internationalism because of the "prevalence of discrimination, racism in all its forms . . . and environmental destruction." 
 
Whatever its official relationship to the UN, the IB's personal ties run deep. The foundation's chair is Carol Bellamy, who formerly led the United Nation's Children's Fund.  During her tenure, UNICEF promoted abortion rights, sex ed for children that encouraged promiscuity, and a radical feminist agenda... 
http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1737/pub_detail.asp
 
And then, we have our purely home grown leftist curriculum being smuggled into classrooms by our highly trained education professionals.  
 
Public school children are innocent victims of a radical "guerrilla warfare" being waged by the late professor Howard Zinn's Zinn Education Project (ZEP), Rethinking Schools Magazine, and Teaching for Change. ..
 
These anti-establishment educators' mission includes curriculum-subversion in order to radically transform schools into centers of social justice wherein  students are trained to become global citizen change agents. 
Perpetuating Zinn's revolutionary mission, his surviving business partners proclaimed: 

Howard Zinn, in honor of the marvelous victory of your life, we will act in defiance of all that is bad around us and attempt to spin the world towards justice. 
With the national spotlight on History Channel's "The People Speak" and its ZEP curriculum — parents, teachers, school boards and administrators should beware of the celebrity-opiate being dealt to their schoolchildren by way of Zinn-doctrination…
 
On Jan. 19, 2010, Harper Perennial Publications (HPP) and ZEP presented "Ask Howard: A Conversation with Howard Zinn on Teaching 'A People's History of the United States'" on Blog Talk Radio...
 
During the broadcast: 
• Professor Zinn explicitly advised teachers: "Don't obey the rules… you have to play a kind of guerrilla warfare with the establishment in which you try not to be fired… You have to depart from the curriculum… outside the lines that are set for us by the school administration, or the politicians." 
 
• Dr. Bigelow confirmed that ZEP's materials have been smuggled into classrooms throughout the country by teachers who astro-turf Zinn's "guerrilla warfare with the establishment." 
 
• Dr. Bigelow boasted: "Whether or not ZEP materials have been adopted by school districts formally or anything like that, we're not even going that route. We're going for a more grassroots approach."
 
• Prof. Zinn mocked as "antiquated thinking" the professionalism of teachers who comply with state Education Codes. He advocated his teachers "win over" peers to either look the other way, or join ZEP 'guerrilla warfare' against established, lawful curriculums.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abaldwin/2010/02/03/howard-zinns-legacy-instructing-teachers-to-disobey-education-codes/
 
As you can see, many of our highly trained professionals are quite willing to ignore the law to advance their worldview. Most Christian parents and our ostensible Christian leaders and pastors, on the other hand, are unwilling to do WHAT IS LAWFUL to protect our children, families, churches, and culture from the agenda of the government education establishment. That is the power of the addiction to the middle-class welfare entitlement called "free public education."
 
HOW BAD IS IT?
TCC IS GLAD YOU ASKED.
 
Of course, those reluctant to admit that government schools are intellectually crippling our children sometimes try to argue that test scores and curricula don't necessarily (a weasel word, if ever there was one) translate into inferior "real world" performance.
 
Let us leave aside the rather elementary question of how students who can't read or do math proficiently are supposed to magically transcend these difficiencies and perform at reasonable levels merely by virtue of leaving school. Instead, let us attend to the "real world" findings of an employer that does not have unrealistically high standards: the U.S. military. From Bruce Deitrick Price:
 
 
Recently, a retired general wrote an article in the local paper that started this way: "Is our troubled educational system posing a threat to our national security? The Defense Department estimates that a shocking 75 percent of young Americans are not able to join the military --and one of the leading reasons is poor education."
 
His solution was that everyone should support the new Core Standards proposed by the Education Establishment.
 
But isn't it obvious that these are the same people responsible, in the first place, for rendering the majority of young Americans educationally unfit for military service? Why would we trust them?
 
Four years ago, another general published an article in the same paper, where he lamented the poor quality of the young people coming into the military. To be blunt, these recruits were largely ignorant and nearly illiterate; the military could hardly use them. The general optimistically explained his solution: the Army would establish a remedial Academy to compensate for the poor job done by the public schools.
 
I wasn't optimistic. I was sure that, to set up his Academy, the general would consult with so-called experts from Harvard and Teachers College (that is, high members of the Education Establishment, the very same people who created the mess in the first place). Even if they had the ability to help the general, would they? After all, any improvement among these recruits would put the public schools in even worse light.
 
Now consider this news story: "Army Basic-Skills Program Said Failing.
Washington--A five-year-old remedial-education program for Army recruits has largely failed to help soldiers improve their basic skills in reading and mathematics, and it has inadequately linked basic-skills objectives to job performance in the Army, according to a report by the General Accounting Office."
 
This report appeared in Education Week more than -- are you ready? -- 25 years ago! (This was roughly the same time when the Nation at Risk report famously concluded that our public schools seem to have been designed by a "hostile foreign power.")
 
Doesn't everyone see the pattern? No improvement ever occurs.
The Education Establishment has created mediocre public schools; and we are supposed to accept that. My analysis is that these elite educators got sidetracked by ideological (read: collectivist) considerations. What these people care about is social engineering. They don't know how to run good schools because it's not something they value. If you ask them for help in setting up remedial programs, they won't do a good job. If you ask them for help in writing new Standards, they won't do a good job. When did they ever do a good job? All of their innovations, all of their much-touted theories and methods, turn out to be counterproductive. (For education, that is. For social engineering, they work just fine.)...
http://www.rantrave.com/Rant/Memo-to-PENTAGON--Subject-EDUCATION--Status-HIGHEST.aspx
 
 
Does the military's discontent with the results of expensively institutionalizing children in government schools convince you that educational malpractice by our highly trained education professionals is producing ugly "real world" consequences?
If not, below we have a mother asking a fundamental question, shockingly, in a fashionably liberal magazine. Unfortunately, she fails to realize that if her high school son isn't reading in his A.P English class and doesn't know the days of the week it is less a "media" problem than a problem of the ideology of those she allowed to control her son's education. Pay close attention to her colloquy with education professors.
Is It Just Us, Or Are Kids Getting Really Stupid?
They don't read. They can't spell. They spend all their time playing computer games and texting and hanging out with one another on Facebook. But the problem is much worse than you think, because the way your kids live now is rewiring their brains...
 
Two autumns ago, in my son Jake's junior year of high school, he took an AP English course. Junior year was bad for him and me — we never seemed to have anything nice to say to one another. But Jake did like to read, and it occurred to me at some point that perhaps I could use his AP English course to connect with him. Surely I'd read the same books he was reading, since the high-school reading list was carved in stone sometime in the early 1950s. So I asked him: What are you reading in AP English?
 
"The Great Gatsby," he said.
 
"Do you … like it?" I asked delicately, thrilled to be having what was almost a conversation with my teenage son.
 
"I don't really like the actor who plays Gatsby," he said. "He's got these weird bumps on his face that keep distracting me."
 
"The actor?"
 
"We're not actually reading the book," Jake informed me. "We haven't read a book all semester. We watch the movies instead."...
 
Reading and writing scores both fell on the 2008 SATs. Not long ago, a high-school teacher in California handed out an assignment that required students to use a ruler — and discovered not a single one of them knew how....
 
Kids today are assailed by such a constant stream of input that they can't even remember what they see. Viewers of TV screens crowded with crawls and graphics are significantly less able to recall the facts of news stories than viewers of simpler screens. "The larger the cognitive load, the harder it is to process information to any depth," says Chatterjee. Our brains need time to mull over what's presented to us, to decide what's worth shifting from short-term memory into long-term storage. We may have an infinite amount of information at our fingertips, Chatterjee says, but "we don't actually ingest that information in such a way that it gets deeply encoded." And that explains why my son doesn't know the days of the week. (N.B. You would have to be delusional to believe that "media" is the reason. Perhaps it makes her feel better.)

Call me old-fashioned, but the fact that he doesn't concerns me. There are certain things my kid — any kid — should know by the time he's a high-school grad — that Wednesday follows Tuesday, and his nine-times tables, say. 
 
Now, two of the highly trained education professionals who train teachers and teachers of teachers explain to our liberal suburban mother why she shouldn't be concerned that her AP course taking, high school graduate son doesn't know the days of the week. In the process these paragons of pedagogy reveal that they view the mission of the government schools as political - as in, inculcating in students the worldview of the education establishment.
 
 ELLIOT WEINBAUM, a professor at Penn's Graduate School of Education, thinks I'm worrying unnecessarily. "Is your son's school on a six-day calendar?" he asks, as we sit at a table in a conference room with a handful of his colleagues, munching sandwiches and chips. 

I look at him in surprise. As a matter of fact, it is. Weinbaum shrugs. "He doesn't know the days of the week because he doesn't need to know them," he says matter-of-factly. "What he needs to know is, is it day two or day three?"...
 
"Adults have always been afraid of their culture being lost," Penn's Sharon Ravitch declares. "Okay, so classical music may be lost, but what about the broader array of music I'm exposed to? We fear we're losing the moral base. But the postmodern view is that the moral base didn't resonate with a lot of kids. We have this mythological notion of what people used to know, but that's male, white, Western-based knowledge. What is teaching? What is learning? What is the political basis of schools?"...
 http://www.phillymag.com/articles/feature_is_it_just_us_or_are_kids_getting_really_stupid/page1

By the way, for the "our schools are different crowd", try to bear in mind that the son in question is not attending one of the horror-show  inner-city public schools in Philadelphia. 
 
 
 
 So, You Have Your Child in a Government School
and You Think You are a Responsible Parent....

 
Suppose The Continuing Collapse came to you and told you to send your child to TCC's really swell day camp. Of course, you would be told that TCC may or may not vet its counselors carefully or maintain safe facilities. Moreover, TCC would also tell you that because TCC has friends in high places there is almost no way you could hold TCC's camp liable if something dreadful happens to your child.
 
Even if TCC's camp were free, you would probably not-so-politely decline TCC's offer. Yet, any parent rendering his child to a "public school" really has no basis for declining TCC's invitation. 
 
Do you doubt TCC? Here is a story in which the parents discovered too late that government schools, like TCC's camp, are "above" being responsible.
 
 
A 14-year-old boy who allegedly was sexually molested by a female guidance counselor can't sue his school even if it was negligent in hiring and supervising her, a state appeals court has ruled.
 
Friday's decision by the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles might surprise parents who have been assured that schools are legally responsible for their kids' safety.
 
But it's only a step beyond the state Supreme Court's 1989 ruling that threw out a suit against the Oakland Unified School District by a junior high student who said his teacher molested him during a school-sponsored work session at the teacher's apartment.
 
The school isn't responsible for the teacher's conduct, the court said back then, because what he did was so far outside the scope of his job. In last week's ruling, the appeals court said there's no state law under which the youngster could sue the school district either for the counselor's misconduct or for the district's alleged failure to prevent it.
 
The youth, identified as C.A., claimed the counselor at Golden Valley High School in Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County) sexually harassed and molested him many times between January and September 2007. She met with him in her office with the door closed, drove him in her car and had him perform various sexual acts on her at her home, his suit said.
 
The suit also claimed that the William S. Hart High School District knew the counselor had done similar things with other minors, should have seen what was happening to C.A., and should be held responsible for failing to take reasonable steps to protect the student.
The suit was filed four months after the same counselor, Roselyn Hubbell, was arrested at a motel with another youth. She pleaded no contest in February 2009 to a misdemeanor molestation charge and was placed on probation, according to the district attorney's office.
 
The school district put Hubbell on leave when the allegations surfaced. The district's lawyer in C.A.'s case, Stephen Harber, denied any negligence, saying Hubbell was "appropriately hired and appropriately supervised."
 
The appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling, said that was beside the point because no state law authorizes a damage claim against a school district for negligently hiring, supervising or training an employee...
 
"Kids have a mandatory duty to go to school," Finaldi said. "What this ruling says is that if they happen to be sexually abused by a teacher or counselor ... and they knew or should have known what was going on, you can't sue the school."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/crime/detail?entry_id=76674#ixzz151PZ7Buf
 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/crime/detail?entry_id=76674&tsp=1

If you think that this is a problem only in California, check your state law and then get back to TCC.
 
 
 
 
That's a wrap for this edition of The Continuing Collapse. So, TCC bids you a fond adieu and asks you to:

REMEMBER:

 
1. Feel free to circulate The Continuing Collapse. 
 
2. If you aren't hearing about at least some these government school problems from your pastor, why is he your pastor?
 
3. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS. 
 
"I had a motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political." (Aldous Huxley [evolutionist, leftist, and grandson of T.H. Huxley, known as "Darwin's bulldog"]: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff. )

RESPONSE (Continued):
CRUSADES
4. Another general topic broached by the drive-by smear is the Crusades. While the post makes many accusations, the portions relating to the Crusades to the Middle-East are, again, illustrative of the general tenor of the treatment of this subject.
As incredible as it should seem to anyone with a modicum of historical learning, it evidently still needs to be pointed out that for over half a millennium the Middle East and North Africa were Christian. The Mediterranean was, in essence, a Christian lake.
Mohammedanism didn't develop until the 7th Century and was subsequently spread by fire and sword until North Africa, the entire Middle East, and Spain had been overrun. To be sure, this wasn't a phenomenon experienced exclusively by Christians. The Mohammedan conquest of Persia and of large parts of present day India and Pakistan were perhaps even more brutal.
The Crusades to the Holy Land didn't arise because one morning Pope Urban II awoke and thought that it would be entertaining to ask thousands of Christian warriors to go off to fight Mohammedans in the Middle East. No, he raised the call because the indigenous Christians in the Middle East had been pleading for help in warding off the Mohammedans.
In the 40 years preceding Urban II's call, the Seljuk Turks had, for example, slaughtered the Byzantines at Manzikert, taking the Byzantine Emperor prisoner, conquered Syria, and slaughtered thousands of Christians in Jerusalem. Add to this the usual Mohammedan practice of murder, rape, and enslavement of Middle Eastern Christians and pilgrims, and the call for help, the Pope's response becomes understandable, even to the modern mind.
The Crusades were quite clearly the beginning of a nearly 600 year defensive effort to stop Mohammedan expansion and predation. That effort only ceased when Mohammedans were turned away for the second time from the gates of Vienna in 1683.
Like all men, the Crusaders were fallen. Not everything that they did was right, but neither was most of what they did wrong. The Crusaders did occasionally and reprehensibly violate Christian principles. Nevertheless, even Mohammedans who lived in the newly established Crusader kingdoms were treated better by their Christian rulers than by Mohammedan rulers. Here is how a Spanish Mohammedan, Ibn Jubayr, who travelled through the Crusader kingdoms described the situation: "Upon leaving Tibnin (near Tyre), we passed through an unbroken skein of farms and villages whose lands were efficiently cultivated. The inhabitants were all Muslims, but they live in comfort with the Franj [Franks or Crusaders] – may God preserve them from temptation! Their dwellings belong to them and all their property is unmolested. All the regions controlled by the Franj in Syria are subject to this same system: the landed domains, villages, and farms have remained in the hands of the Muslims. Now, doubt invests the heart of a great number of these men when they compare their lot to that of their brothers living in Muslim territory. Indeed, the latter suffer from injustice of their coreligionists, whereas the Franj act with equity." It's interesting that the apparent worry of this Muslim traveler was that his coreligionists might be tempted to convert because they had experienced the difference between living under Christians and living under Mohammedans.
Of course, no discussion of the evils of the Crusades is complete without some horror-stricken reference to the siege of Jerusalem. Yes, the Crusaders captured Jerusalem after a siege, and their behavior was consistent with the rules of war that were followed in connection with sieges well into the 17th Century.
Siege warfare was relatively common prior to the modern period. It was also a very risky proposition for the besieging army, which not only faced the danger of decimation through pestilence, but also of tremendous casualties attempting to take the walls of the besieged city. The general convention that had developed was that at any time up to the breaching of its walls, a city could surrender, and the lives of the people would be spared. If the besieging army was forced to take the walls, no quarter would be given. This created a strong incentive for cities whose leaders had doubts about their ability to withstand the siege to save many lives on both sides by surrender.
One famous example of this was immortalized in Shakespeare's Henry V, in which Henry tells the Mayor of Harfleur that unless the city surrenders he will not be able to restrain the fury of his soldiers and Harfleur would be sacked. Happily, the city surrendered, the people were spared, and Henry was off to meet his destiny at Agincourt.
In the case of Jerusalem, the Mohammedans did not surrender, the Crusaders finally breached the walls and forced open the gates, and Jerusalem was sacked. Some accounts report that during the siege the Crusaders allowed Muslims and Jews to leave the city if they wanted. It is known that Count Raymond, a leader of the Crusaders, gave a personal guarantee of safety to the governor of Jerusalem to allow him to leave the city. This is significant because, according to the understanding of the times, failure to take advantage of an offer of free passage out of a besieged city was taken to establish that those who remained behind were committed to battle and had accepted the consequences.
Robert Spencer points out that even the early accounts of the sacking of Jerusalem probably exaggerated the number killed (which is not to deny that many were killed), presumably to make it appear a greater feat of arms than it was. Much later, as Spencer also points out, Mohammedan writers began inflating the number killed enormously when they discovered its propaganda value.
As a general proposition, readers of documents written before our modern, quantitatively oriented age need to bear in mind that the use of numbers in such texts were seldom meant to be taken literally. More often than not, numbers served as literary devices for emphasizing the importance of events rather than as accurate indicators of quantities. In fact, in many situations, it is clear that it's very unlikely that numerical claims in such texts could have been known with any degree of accuracy.
In this vein, anti-Christian bigots also often take advantage, or fall victim to, the general inability of the public to bring an intelligent hermeneutic to bear on old texts. The post mentions the claim that the Crusader knights were wading ankle deep through Jerusalem in the blood of the defeated Saracens, which was taken from an anonymous source. In fact, it is surprising that the poster didn't use the reliably attributed and facially more lurid statement by Archbishop Daimbert, Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, and Raymond, Count of Toulouse, to Pope Paschal II that "…in Solomon's Porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of the Saracens up to the knees of their horses."
A non-comatose reader would undoubtedly recognize that what is claimed by the anonymous source and by the Archbishop, Duke, and Count is obviously literally physically impossible. A more informed reader would also immediately recognize that the point of this bit of hyperbole was not to communicate the extent of the destruction of the Saracen defenders, though destroyed they were. Rather, the point was allude to the language in Revelation 14:20, thereby identifying themselves and their military mission with the agents of God's wrath described in the destruction of evil-doers toward the end of chapter 14 of Revelation. This is, indeed, was how the Crusaders saw themselves.
But to return to the point: Were the Christian Crusaders wrong in going to the Holy Land? The Bible doesn't require "pacifism" in the face of the murder, rape, man-stealing, and pillaging. There is also no question that the Mohammedan Saracens were in fact the aggressors in the Middle East and were elsewhere carrying out Jihad.
While the Crusader undertaking was not unblemished by sin – and no human undertaking ever is - they were generally men who left relatively comfortable lives to venture into an unknown, hostile environment for the purpose of responding to calls for help by the largely defenseless Middle Eastern Christians who were the object of Jihad. Some might call this selfless. Moreover, the quality of these men can be seen in the quality of the kingdoms they established.
Perhaps they may be thought foolish for going on this errand. Certainly, others have delighted in pointing out the imperfections of the men. But it is incontrovertible that for most part, their motives were right and the territories they came to control were well and justly governed. Yes, eventually they were forced out of the Middle East, but they and their successors at Rhodes and Malta held the Mohammedans at bay long enough to allow what remained of Christendom to prepare for the centuries of Jihad directed at Europe.
Theodore Roosevelt places the importance of the Christian warriors from Charles Martel (grandfather to Charlemagne), through the Crusaders, Graf von Salm and his Landsknecht, the Knights of Malta, and Don Juan of Austria to Jan Sobieski and his Poles in their overall context: "Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought.  If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to, and including, the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over, the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated.
Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared.  From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could, and would, fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor."
The civilization of Europe, America, and Australia, exists today at all, only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization—because of victories through the centuries from Charles Martel, in the eighth century, and those of John Sobieski, in the seventeenth century.  ...There are such "social values" today in Europe, America and Australia only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do—that is, to beat back the Moslem invader."—
As an aside, there has been a remarkable effort by many to whitewash Mohammedanism by many academics and members of the press – abetted, oddly enough, by both the Bush and Obama administrations. In earlier generations in the West we had many public men who spoke straight-forwardly about Mohammedanism.
John Wesley, for example, described Mohammedanism as "…Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it…have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth…"
Churchill said of Mohammedanism that "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world."
For an honest academic's assessment of modern-day Mohammedanism, see Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. The intellectually curious would also benefit from reading Dario Fernandez-Morera's relatively short article titled "The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise", which is now available online. In summary, Fernandez-Morera, a professor at Northwestern University, punctures the PC lie that Moorish Spain was a vibrant, multicultural paradise.

HITLER, etc.
5. In the tradition of saving the most infamous for last, we now turn to the post's mendacious insinuation that Christians were responsible for the murder of millions of Jews by Germany's National Socialist regime. In addition to being oblivious to obvious and inconvenient facts such as it was the National Socialists who put Jews in the "kilns", and Christian men from the United States and Great Britain who rescued the survivors from many prisons and several camps, including Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsin, the post evidences little knowledge about Germany and National Socialism.
Plainly, the post's drive-by smear on this account is an echo of the effort by the secular humanists to create a new, useful (to them) historical "narrative" in which National Socialism is portrayed as a Christian movement.
In point of fact, by 1914 Christianity was a hollow shell in Germany. Outward observances were maintained, but the beliefs and commitments required of Christians were largely gone. This was a reflection of the assault on the historicity of the Bible begun by Friedrich Schleiermacher and continued by Julius Wellhausen, David Friedrich Strauss, Ludwig Feuerbach, and what came to be known as the "Tubingen School".
The remaining Christian veneer of German society was completely shattered by the trauma of World War I. It is difficult today for comfortable, secure Westerners to imagine the concrete social impact of the death and destruction caused by WWI. Moreover, as severe as the impact was in Britain and France, it was vastly worse in defeated Germany: A huge percentage of German brothers, fathers, husbands, and marriageable young men had simply disappeared - interred in the trenches of the Western and Eastern Fronts. The remaining German people were suffering from starvation as a result of a blockade by Britain preventing food from reaching Germany. The German economy was destroyed. The Treaty of Versailles imposed a Carthaginian peace, and, in time, the savings of Germans were utterly destroyed through inflation.
The immediate result was an attempted Communist seizure of power, and, somewhat later, the founding of the Frankfurt School, and the creation of the Weimar Republic: the first postmodern culture.
Into the moral void created by the utter destruction of the older German Christian culture and the rise to dominance of postmodernism rushed the two most consequential parties of the left – the socialists of the Internationale (Communists) and the National Socialists (Nazis). The result was street fighting among various formations of these groups, with members of each side often switching sides when it offered an advantage. In the end, however, the National Socialists proved stronger than their other socialist competitors and began to consolidate their power.
Early on, the Nazis took advantage of the historical Lutheran church/state relationship to take control of remaining, rotting Protestant ecclesiastical structure. As a result, the Nazis began changing theology and replacing unsympathetic pastors. This hardly mattered because, although many Germans claimed to be Protestant, they were at best nominal (cultural) Christians who observed Christmas and Easter. For their part, the Nazi's leadership privately detested Christianity, considering it a "slave religion."
As the Nazis forcibly took control of the Protestant churches, the relatively small number of actual Christians who remained in Germany formed what was known as the Confessing Church. Because the Confessing Church was truly Christian and not supportive of the Nazis, the leadership was persecuted and many were imprisoned or sent to the concentration camps.
One of the peculiar facets of the Nazi movement that is known to scholars, but not the general public, was that the Nazi party leadership was deeply involved in homoeroticism and other forms of sexual deviance. The founders and top leadership of the Brown Shirts (Sturmabteilung), for example, were homosexuals, as were almost all of rank-and-file Brown Shirts.
The leadership of the Hitler Youth, most of Hitler's ministers, his body guards, and others in Hitler's government were also homosexuals. Of the top leadership, only Himmler and Goering were not thought to be homosexual. Goering, however, engaged in transvestitism.
Hitler himself appears to have contained more sexual identities than a leather bar. As Professor Lothar Machtan (Bremen University) writes in The Hidden Hitler (Basic Books), the evidence indicates that Hitler was, depending upon the season of his life, a homosexual (incuding probably being a homosexual prostitute in Vienna and having a homosexual relationship with Rudolph Hess), a celibate, and an autoerotic. Other evidence suggests that he was at one point bisexual and a coprophiliac. Further, Machtan and others clearly show that Hitler's closest associates were homosexuals, and they were responsible for bringing him into politics.
Those who attempt to cover-up the deeply homoerotic nature of the Nazi regime claim that homosexuals were persecuted during the Nazi era, arguing that, therefore, the Nazi party couldn't possibly have been dominated by homosexuals. This is a deceitful smokescreen. Indeed, some homosexuals were sent to camps – effeminate homosexuals. The Nazi homosexuals, however, were hypermasculine, detested "fems", and sought to eliminate them.
And, of course, where you find homosexuals you find pedophilia. The Nazi homosexuals who were concentration camp guards were notorious for indulging their sexual appetites for boys. This was observed first hand by Elie Weisel while he was interned in a Nazi concentration camp.
Hitler's sexual "identities" were just part of the overall package, however. His Nazi party was big on "public/private partnerships", social control of industry, income redistribution, and "protecting" nature and the environment. Moreover, besides being anti-semetic, the Nazis were sympathetic to, and allied with, Mohammedans. The Nazi regime further sought at every turn to undermine Christian moral values - particularly those relating to sex - through the Hitler Youth and government education. If we throw in Hitler's anti-smoking fanaticism, his vegetarianism, and his love of animals, it is apparent that with suitable "rebranding", Hitler and his friends would not in any way be identified with Evangelicalism, but would fit very well into the mainstream left today, especially the university left.
ODDS AND ENDS
Here are a few parting observations – some of which touch on the post and some that don't.
Looking over the balance of the post, there are a few howlers – the Pope didn't order the slaughter of the Huguenots; it was Catherine de Medici and Charles IX. Moreover the massacre had multiple motivations. On the side of the royal family and nobility, the matter had largely to do with a dynastic dispute between the Houses of Bourbon and Guise. On the part of the Paris mob, the willingness to riot and kill was partly motivated by religious differences, but also involved deep discontent resulting from rising taxes and poor harvests and resentment of the relatively prosperous Huguenots.
More generally, if you look carefully at what are often portrayed as "Christian religious wars" in Europe, you find that the reasons for the conflicts are not only complex, but largely arise out of political disputes. Consequently, you will find in the 30 Years War, for example, Catholic France fighting at one point with the Catholic nations and, at another, fighting with the Protestants. If that fails to convince you, perhaps it would help to know that the Mohammedan Turks and Protestants were at one point fighting against the Hapsburgs. These kinds of things wouldn't happen in a war that was truly about religion.
It did happen, however, and it was because the war was mainly over the balance of power in Europe. For its part, France was determined to make sure that the Spanish Hapsburgs could no longer dominate the continent, while the German princes wanted to be independent of the Hapsburgs and their Holy Roman Empire.
Moreover, the 16th and 17th Century European conflicts that for polemical purposes are alleged to have been "religious wars" were in the main dynastic and territorial disputes. The Hapsburg's 80 years war against the Netherlands, for example, would have occurred even if Netherlands had been exclusively Catholic. The Hapsburgs simply were not going to give up part of their territory without a fight. The same was true in the overlapping 30 Years War – the German princes were not going to be allowed to become completely independent of the Hapsburgs without a fight.
It is true, however, that Huss, Bruno, Savonarola, and others were killed for heresy. Here we have good examples of the fallen nature of man that extends to all human undertakings, including the church. But, to return again to the "dreaded" Spanish Inquisition, if you were to compare the total number of executions by the Spanish Inquisition over its entire 400 year history with, say, the number of executions by the "Enlightened" humanists of the French Revolution in the course of three years or so, you would again be very, very surprised.
But even burning someone at the stake for alleged heresy was sometimes at bottom largely a pretext for concealing a political objective. William Tyndale is a good example. While it was true that the church arrested him and had him strangled and burnt at the stake, the power behind this crime was Henry VIII. Henry VIII, who was known as the perfect "Renaissance Man", was infuriated by Tyndale's publishing of a work condemning his divorce (which Henry viewed as a dynastic necessity). Subsequently, Henry VIII set in motion the events that led to Tyndale's execution.
Let me close this note by acknowledging that Christians must always struggle against the flesh, but the greatest failing of the modern church is cowardice in pulpit, a lack of genuine commitment to a Christian worldview, weak theology, intellectual laziness, and a failure to make the effort to carry the gospel and God's law into the culture.
The kinds of wild accusations by secular humanists that abound on the internet are mainly a distraction. Our focus should be on both the Gospel and on confronting and repairing our rotting culture.
BNS

Bruce N. Shortt, J.D., Ph.D., is a practicing attorney in the Houston area. He is a committed home educator and member of Exodus Mandate. He is also chairman of the board and unofficial historian of VBM, Inc.

RESPONSE:
By Bruce N. Shortt, J.D., Ph.D.
The internet is used to spread information and disinformation alike, and certainly, one of the groups that has embraced the internet as a means of using disinformation as a means of creating a "useful narrative" is the secular humanists. This post is a museum quality example of a drive-by smear that mixes some facts with falsehoods, distortions, and a lack of context to promote a blood libel against Christianity.
The difficulty in responding to this sort of thing – which is common among the internet secular humanist crowd – is the same as the task of cleaning a carpet after a vandal has thrown ink on it; the vandalism takes but a moment, but cleaning up after it is a very lengthy undertaking.
In this case, we are dealing with a crude, disjointed effort at defamation that on its face probably strikes most readers as suspect. Nevertheless, responding to all of the factual errors, correcting all of the distortions, and providing all of the missing context would be a massive and pointless undertaking. The author plainly has no interest in getting to the truth. Catholics would call this form of spiritual disorder "invincible ignorance".
Consequently, rather than try to respond to every snippet included in this odd exercise in cutting and pasting, I will limit myself to a discussion of a couple of the post's particular claims to illustrate its grotesque intellectual irresponsibility by considering the posts claims about Charlemagne and Hypatia. Much of the rest involves either muddle or insinuation. So, rather than try to impose order on the muddles or an interpretation on the insinuations, I'll just briefly discuss the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Nazi regime to illustrate further why this post can scarcely be taken seriously.
We start with Charlemagne and the beheaded Saxons.
CHARLEMAGNE
1. One of the advantages to claiming that Charlemagne had 4,500 Saxons beheaded because they wouldn't convert is that very few people today have even heard of Charlemagne, let alone know anything at all about this very important historical figure. This particular smear, however, combines outright falsehood with a thorough lack of context.
The Saxons of the 8th Century were not the phlegmatic, German engineers and craftsmen of today. Rather, they were a people who delighted in incessant warfare, human sacrifice, and ritual cannibalism. One of their principal forms of entertainment in the late 8th and early 9th Centuries was raiding Charlemagne's eastern territories.
Naturally, Charlemagne's subjects objected to having their towns and farms burned, their men, women, and children killed (and, in some instances, carried off to be sacrificed and eaten), and their property stolen. As their liege lord, Charlemagne had a legal and moral obligation to defend his subjects. Therefore, he conducted 18 military campaigns against various Saxon bands over the course of 32 years.
Now, the falsehood that Charlemagne had 4,500 Saxons beheaded because they wouldn't convert arises out of events that began around 777 A.D. At that time, a Saxon named Wittekind (alternately, "Widukind") roused a very large number of the then-pacified Saxons to resume their campaigns of murder, rapine, theft, and abduction against Charlemagne's people. This resulted in Charlemagne again returning to Saxony and militarily crushing Wittekind's forces. Wittekind, however, escaped and fled to Denmark.
In 782 A.D., or shortly thereafter, Wittekind returned to Saxony, mocked and humiliated the Saxon nobles who had submitted to Charlemagne and who were now living peacefully with their Frank neighbors, and fomented a general Saxon rising. Back across the Rhine went Wittekind with his thugs, which is said to have included armed Saxon women, to resume the grand sport of killing, raping, and eating Franks. In this instance, however, Wittekind made of a point of burning village churches and torturing and killing nuns and priests.
And, in response, back came Charlemagne, who, as he passed through the areas visited by Wittekind's Saxons, saw yet again the destruction wrought by the Saxons, including, in village after village, burned churches and the savagely mutilated corpses of nuns and priests. Across the Rhine went Charlemagne in pursuit of the Saxon killers, but, as was so often the case with Saxon raiders, Wittekind and his followers disappeared into the forest.
Charlemagne, not being a sensitive New-Age kind of guy, explained to the Saxon nobles that if they wanted peace, THEY would identify and arrest Wittekind and his gang of merry murderers. The Saxon nobles complied, although Wittekind again escaped. Subsequently, the members of Wittekind's band who had been caught were beheaded.
Although the number hardly matters, you should be aware that chroniclers from this period didn't share our present-day concern with numerical precision. "4,500" undoubtedly was used to indicate a large number. It might have been 5,500 or 2,500 or some other number. In any event, it was quite a few. If you now feel moved to shed tears for the Saxon murderers who were beheaded at the direction of that mean old Christian king, Charlemagne, feel free. As for myself, I think it is a pity that the Saxon nobles didn't catch them all.
I should mention that in one of history's ironies, within two years following the foregoing events, Wittekind surrendered himself to Charlemagne and converted. Charlemagne, for his part, pardoned Wittekind.
The larger point, however, is that Charlemagne, through imposing Christian cultural standards, did substantially advance civilizing the Saxons, and he deserves much of the credit for the fact that Saxons today build Mercedes and Audis and eat sausage instead of eating Frenchmen.
For those who are interested in Charlemagne, warts and all, Derek Wilson's Charlemagne is a good place to start.
HYPATIA
2. Very little is actually known about Hypatia, but feminists and secular humanists have created a cottage industry of inventing "narratives" to advance their ideology by portraying her as a great mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, who was martyred by a Christian mob because she was a pagan.
Unfortuantely, if you look at feminist "biographies" of Hypatia you will find the liberal use of words like "probably" to describe her achievements because none are recorded. Not a single theorem, novel philosophical doctrine, or scientific discovery can reliably be attributed to Hypatia (feminists try to explain this profound lack of any record of her alleged achievements by saying that all of her works were destroyed when the library at Alexandria was burned.).
The only written works that she is believed to be associated with, however, were those of her father, a well-known mathematician. Whether she collaborated with her father in some of his works is completely unknown. Nevertheless, because her father was a well-known teacher of mathematics and other subjects, the claims that she was intelligent, well educated, and a gifted teacher are quite plausible.
Now, what of Hypatia's alleged martyrdom because she was a pagan? Hypatia, the feminists notwithstanding, was not a major figure, so there is relatively little material about her life and death.
The most reliable sources indicate, however, that she fell victim to a political dispute. At the time of Hypatia's death, Hypatia, rightly or wrongly (no one knows), was seen to be involved in a political disagreement between the Imperial Prefect and the Patriarch Cyril. The population of Alexandria was eager to have the dispute ended, but Hypatia was believed, through her relationship with the Prefect, to be actively impeding a reconciliation. This ultimately led to her murder by a mob believed to have been led by the Parabolani, an order of male nurses.
There is no evidence that the Patriarch was in any way involved in the murder of Hypatia or that her paganism figured in her death. To reiterate, to the extent that anything can be known about the matter, it appears that the reasons for her death had to do with a political dispute and her relationship with the Imperial Prefect.
INQUISITION
3. Which brings us to that secular humanist oldie-but-goodie: "The Inquisition". What today's secular humanists have seized upon here is – sorry to say – a great deal of Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda that was later appropriated and embellished by Enlightenment secularist humanists. Rather than provide a coherent argument regarding the Inquisition, the poster simply casts upon the water several disjointed, alleged facts about the Inquisition, evidently in the hope that they will evoke the usual, widely held exaggerated beliefs about its evils.
For anyone who is interested in the actual history of the Inquisition, the two best scholarly works are Henry Kamen's The Inquisition (Yale Unversity Press) and Edward Peters' Inquisition (University of California Press).
Although Kamen, for example, provides a wealth of detail about the Inquisition, one of his principal points is that the popular understanding of the Inquisition is at bottom a by-product of the political disputes of the times: "From its very inception, the Inquisition in Spain provoked a war of words. To its opponents through the ages contributed to building up a powerful legend about its intentions and malign achievements. Their propaganda was so successful that even today it is difficult to separate fact from fiction….The printing-press, one of the most powerful weapons taken up by the Reformation, was used against the tribunal….Wherever Catholicism triumphed, they claimed, not only religious but civil liberty was extinguished. The Reformation, according to this interpretation, brought about the liberation of the human spirit from the fetters of darkness and superstition. Propaganda along these lines proved to be strikingly effective in the context of the political conflicts of the period…"
Peters makes a similar point in his scholarly study: "There was never, except in polemic and fiction, 'The Inquisition', a single all-powerful, horrific tribunal, whose agents worked everywhere to thwart religious truth, intellectual freedom, and political liberty. That is 'The Inquisition' of folklore, martyrology artwork, and post-Enlightenment fiction."
Of course, the point these and other scholars make is not that the Inquisition committed no wrongs, but rather that there is little actual understanding of the motives and actions of the Inquisition and that its wrongs have been greatly exaggerated. To put things in perspective, it would be interesting to compare the number of persons put to death over the 400 years or so of the Spanish Inquisition with the number of babies murdered annually by abortion mills, say, in Chicago. You might be surprised.
BNS

Bruce N. Shortt, J.D., Ph.D., is a practicing attorney in the Houston area. He is a committed home educator and member of Exodus Mandate. He is also chairman of the board and unofficial historian of VBM, Inc.

Recently, a frequent reader/commenter on my Facebook Fan Page left a comment in response to a video and comment I posted concerning the election, and our need to remember that the gospel, not our elected officials, is our ultimate source of hope. I was encouraging Christians to 1) vote like Christians, while 2) living like Christians who know that our vote is not the be-all-to-end-all.

The reader, a practicing physician and self-professed "former Christian", took offense at my comments and responded with a tirade about Christian atrocities in history. I responded briefly, but promised a more thorough treatment. In this three-part series, I want you to see 1) the common attack against Christianity, 2) the flimsy, inflammatory, misleading, and often downright false nature of the claims, and 3) an example of how to answer such claims effectively.

To achieve the desired ends, I have decided to post the Doctor's comments (cut and pasted from one or more hit sites), then follow up with a response from VBM's resident historian, Dr. Bruce Shortt. Those of you who follow The Continuing Collapse will be familiar with that name. Dr. Shortt has a law degree from Harvard Law School and holds a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science from Stanford. As such, although these attacks are neither sophisticated, nor difficult to defend, I am happy to post Dr. Shortt's brief, yet educational response. We need to know that the opponents of Christianity have neither history, nor reason on their side.

Here is the original post:

VICTIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
Events that ...solely occurred on command of church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List incomplete)

Ancient Pagans

*As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples
were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.

*Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.

*Examples of destroyed Temples the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea,
the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the
Heliopolis.

*Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis
were famous as "temple destroyer." [DA468] *Pagan services became
punishable by death in 356. [DA468]

*Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed,
because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]

According to Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all
Christian teachings..."

*In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.

*In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on
demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]

*The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to
pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a
Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.

Mission

*Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to
convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]

*Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church
taxes between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain
5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]

*Battle of Belgrad 1456 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]

*15th century Poland 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by
Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]

*16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and
civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable
beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common
of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of
the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother
of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the heddes of all those (of what
sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte
off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the ground by eche
side of the waie", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused
"greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde
fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde".

Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99,
225]

Crusades (1095-1291)

*First Crusade 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]

*Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96
thousands. [WW23] *9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then turkish),
thousands respectively. [WW25-27]

*Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered
(number of slain unknown) [WW30]

*After 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and
60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children) killed.
[WW32-35]

Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the
enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lances through their
bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres.
[EC60]

*Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the
subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemies were
eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]

*Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish,
muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]

(In the words of one witness "there [in front of Solomon's temple]
was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood
of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our people
marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of
gratitude")

*Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the following
summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the stench of
decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]

*Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered "in the
name of Our Lord Jesus Christ". [WW45]

*Fourth crusade 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims
unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]

*Rest of Crusades in less detail until the fall of Akkon 1291
probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas
alone). [WW224]

Note All figures according to contemporary (Christian) chroniclers.

Heretics

*Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus
and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]

*Manichaean heresy a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice
birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics)
was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between
372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]

*Albigensians the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians.
[DO29]

The Albigensians (cathars = Christians allegedly that have all rarely
sucked) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept
roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. [NC]

Begin of violence on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single
pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Beziérs (today France) 7/22/1209
destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including
Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours and friends)
20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]

*Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed.
[WW181]

*subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half
the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were
exterminated. [WW183]

*After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search
and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the
stake 1324. [WW183] *Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy
alone), [WW183]

*Other heresies Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and
many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some
Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of
persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including
the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).

*Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220
burnings. [DO28]

*John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was
burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]

*University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna.
[DO59]

*Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for
seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori
(Rome) on 2/17/1600.
*15th century Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]

*1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all
English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into
action). [DO31]

*1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million
rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain.
[DO31]

*1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope
Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]

(I feel sick ...) this goes on and on, century after century, right
into the kilns of Auschwitz.
I could go on but there is an 8000 character limit
http://notachristian.com/christianatrocities.html

Last August we got a phone call from Covenant Care Services in Macon, GA. informing us about a little boy who needed a home. Shortly thereafter, we flew home from Georgia with Micah Alexander Baucham (baby number six)! Now, just fourteen months later, we are headed to Georgia to pick up another baby. However, this time... IT'S A GIRL!

Safya Caimile (pictured above hours after birth) is currently awaiting us in Georgia. Safya (pronounced Saf-ya... only two syllables, please) will be the first girl in the Baucham household in over twenty years. Her name, which is of North African/Arabic origin, means "Pure". Her middle name, Caimile, means "A family is born".

As I pointed out last year, Covenant Care has been everything an adoptive parent could ask for. They are professional, attentive, thorough, responsive, and above all they conducted themselves like true followers of Christ. They understand adoption in ways that only a Christ-honoring, gospel-centered agency can. All adoption agencies are not created equal. After having to walk away from a local agency due to their willingness to place children with same-sex couples (did I mention that adoption is spiritual warfare?), we are pleased to be working with Covenant Care once again.

Pray for Us

Pray for our family as we separate in order to unite. Bridget and I will be leaving in the next day or so to meet Safya, and her birthmother. We don't know how long it will take for the State of Georgia and the Republic of Texas to agree that we are free to bring our baby girl home. In the meantime, we'll hold up in a hotel near the airport and wait for the 'all-clear'. Pray that God will grant us favor once again, that the meeting will be fruitful, that our words will be seasoned with grace, that we will connect with this young woman and minister to her, and that things will be well with our home when we return. I've also got to skip over to North Carolina (by way of Houston... since those tickets were already purchased) for an event this weekend in the midst of it all, and I'm not looking forward to leaving my wife and new baby daughter in Georgia.

Pray that God will continue to teach us to trust him for our financial needs. While we have always had to trust God to provide for the finances necessary to adopt children, this time is unique. We are now having to trust him for a vehicle that will accommodate all of us! Our Suburban is officially too small (what a strange thing to say). We have a line on a vehicle (there aren't many options when you have more than eight people and gear for two toddlers and a newborn), but we are praying that God will quickly bring some things to pass so we can pay for it without adding debt. In the meantime, we will be driving two vehicles whenever we all have to go somewhere.

Pray for Bridget's health. If you've followed my blog (back when I used to actually blog), you know that my wife has some pretty serious medical conditions that could make it very difficult to do all that she does. Nevertheless, by God's grace, she is relatively symptom free, and has been able to function just fine over the past several years. Pray that God will continue to extend grace to us, and that we will continue to learn to depend on him for our strength. Pray that I will heed Peter's admonition to, "live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered." (1 Pet 3:7)

Pray that God will give me wisdom in managing my time. In the midst of raising seven children, shepherding a flock, and preaching around the world, I am currently working on three books (due 12/1/10; 6/1/11; and 12/1/11 respectively). Pray that I will fulfill my calling as a husband and a father in order that I might have credibility as a minister of the gospel. Pray that I will manage my time, choose my projects well, and seek the Lord more diligently than ever before knowing that it is only in his power and by his grace that I will finish the course.

Pray that God will use our family to help others discover the ministry of adoption. There are children throughout the U.S. and the world who are waiting to be adopted. There is a need for Christian families to stand in the gap and open their homes to these precious ones. Just when it appears that our adversary has condemned these children to a life of fatherlessness, poverty, and Christlessness, we have an opportunity to come along and flip the script. Whether it is domestic, international, newborn, sibling groups, special needs, or Foster Care, there is a great and growing need for families who are willing to open their homes. This is especially true for ethnic minorities.

Finally, pray that Safya Caimile will come to know the Lord. We know that God is sovereign, and that it is his hand that saves. We do not believe that coming to our home guarantees a child's eternal destination. Nevertheless, we also know that God ordains the ends as well as the means of salvation, and that sending this girl to our house is a sure way to put the gospel before her on a continual basis. Moreover, we are "not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." (Rom 1:16) Join us in asking God to make the gospel effectual in Safya's life as we seek to "bring [her] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." (Eph 6:4)

For more information about Covenant Care, contact them at:

Covenant Care Services
3950 Ridge Avenue 
Macon, Georgia 31210-5002

Toll Free Crisis Line: 1-800-226-5683 (LOVE)
Phone: (478) 475-4990
Fax: (478) 475-0367

VB

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