Homeschool News & Views

Issue 57, February 10, 2008

From Homeschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Church Ministries

By Dan L. White

Listen to this article.

Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are starting a new Baptist Church movement. They are calling for unity among the Baptists.

Carter left the Southern Baptists several years ago when they said that a wife should be subject to her husband. He left them but says they are divisive.

From onenewsnow.com, February 2, 2008:

“A meeting of liberal Baptists has wrapped in Atlanta with a call to action from former President, Bill Clinton.

…The three day meeting...called a "Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant"... was organized by former President Jimmy Carter and was largely boycotted by conservative Southern Baptists. One SBC spokesman had called it a Democratic party prayer meeting because of the high profile given Democrat speakers. The day before the Clinton address, former Vice-President Al Gore was given the platform to sell his global warming campaign.

Clinton took a break from campaigning for his wife, Hillary Clinton, to attend the Carter gathering.

The meeting also heard from well-known author, John Grisham.

Baptist Press reports he criticized the Southern Baptist church where he grew up for teaching that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant Word of God. …Grisham called churches holding such beliefs intolerant and harmful to the cause of Christ. " The church was proudly intolerant of other people, other denominations, other religions," Grisham said. "Sadly, in many ways and in many places, that church still exists today.””

And from christianitytoday.com, January, under the headline Baptists Push Unity and a Fresh Face:

“Top leaders of the nation's largest Protestant denomination were not involved in the planning [for the meeting], but Carter has told Southern Baptist president Frank Page that "everybody's invited."

Last year, Page blasted what he called the group's "smoke screen left-wing liberal agenda," even as he appreciated efforts to help "a hurting world."

Organizers insist the event, which has more than 30 participating organizations, will be nonpartisan, even as Carter, former President Bill Clinton, and former Vice President Al Gore are among the headliners.

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who pastored Southern Baptist churches in Arkansas before he entered politics, initially agreed to speak at the event but later withdrew.”

So Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are calling for unity among Baptists. Unity means getting the conservative Baptists to accept what the liberals believe.

Of all the Christian denominations in America, Southern Baptists are best known for standing for some historical Biblical positions. They are against homosexuality. They are against abortion. They are against feminism. And to some degree, they are against the public schools. Frank Page is calling for the Southern Baptists to set up a nationwide free Baptist school system.

Since liberals like Carter and Clinton are for homosexuality, for abortion, for feminism and for the public schools which teach all those things, they are not unified with the Southern Baptists. They are calling for those intolerant Christians who believe that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant word of God to stop being so divisive. Let’s have unity!

The presidential terms of Carter and Clinton were among the two most disgraceful presidential terms in all American history. Carter’s financial policies greatly damaged many Americans and he left office in weakness and shame, under the burden of the Iranian hostage crisis. The next president Ronald Reagan was such a refreshing contrast to the liberal Carter. Bill Clinton’s term can be summed up like this: When Al-Qaeda was making a general attack on America, Clinton was most concerned with his genitalia.

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton know that the liberals have been defeated by the conservative Christian vote. Now they are seeking to get those conservative Christian voters to support liberals, not by changing the liberal doctrines, but by calling for Christian unity.

Let’s think about that for a moment.

Let’s say you want to kill me. I don’t want you to kill me. I disagree with you about that. So you say I am being divisive and hurtful.

Let’s say you don’t want to kill me, but you want to kill little babies. I don’t want you to kill babies. I disagree with you about that. Then you say I am being divisive and hurtful. I am preventing unity because I don’t want you to kill babies.

We can have unity in either of two ways. You can agree to stop killing babies, or I can stop disagreeing with your killing babies. Why is it that I am the one who is opposing unity, and not you?

So it is with the liberals. Liberals in politics and religion are pushing unity. Unity means that conservatives must accept what liberals believe. Unity never means that liberals must accept what conservatives believe.

Liberals believe horrid, monstrous things. We constantly hear the term abortion, and we get inured to its real meaning. In actuality it means that liberals are willing to pull a baby out, except for its head -- a real, living, soft, cute, adorable, heart warming, moving baby-- stab it in the back of the head and suck its brains out. You know there have to be times when that baby actually comes all the way out, but that’s just a technicality of the law, isn’t it? They could swat that baby and it would cry, or they can stab the baby and it will die. They choose to stab. It would be more accurate if, instead of calling it abortion we called it a’butcherin.

That’s the liberal Jimmy Carter – Bill Clinton religion.

Barack Obama is now the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. His whole campaign is based on bringing America together, changing the division that plagues us. He is a fresh face who will bring unity to America. That unity will include feminism, homosexuality and a’butcherin. It will not include the infallible, inerrant Word of God.

The call for unity is often used against those who call for repentance.

Local church congregations are extremely prone to this. How many times have I heard church sermons which are bland, boring, and banal – but supposedly not offensive to anyone. The speakers are seeking to preserve unity in their churches by not speaking out against sin. They understand that sinners don’t like being told they are sinning, so to keep from being offensive, they don’t speak against sin. They don’t speak against anything. They only speak for things.

That’s what the political liberals are doing now. They are saying we should emphasize only positive things, like helping the poor and fighting global warming. If we’re for everything and not against anything, we can have unity.

Almost all churches constantly do the same thing. They are for good works, but they are not against sin. They are for prophecy, but they do not rail against the sin that is submerging America. So we have sermons that are bland, boring and banal – but not offensive to anyone.

I’ve got a surprise for such speakers. Some people are offended by bland, boring, banal sermons.

The whole Christian homeschool movement was begun by people who were not seeking unity.

They were willing to be told by family members, “You’re going to raise a bunch of wierdos.” Still they homeschooled. They were willing to be told by pastors, “You shouldn’t do that because you’re withdrawing from society.” Still they homeschooled. They were willing to be told, “If you’re going to homeschool you need to hide it and not let church headquarters know about it.” Still they homeschooled.

In some cases they were willing to battle the legal authorities. In a few cases they went to prison, yet they still homeschooled.

Think of that. The whole nationwide and now worldwide Christian homeschool movement came about because a small number of families was willing to be divisive.

Why did they do that?

In homeschooling they were not seeking unity with people. They were seeking unity with Christ.

The Germans seek to bring about unity through force. They want all Christian children to be indoctrinated in pluralism and will not allow homeschooling. If Germany is to ever have a homeschool movement, a few bold families are going to have to forsake unity with the socialists.

A follower of Christ should never primarily seek unity with a society or a church. He should always first seek unity with Christ -- to let this mind be in you which is in the Messiah. If a Christ follower is seeking with all his might to be unified with Christ, then he will have unity with others who are doing the same. He will always be disunited from all others who are not doing that.