Necro-Evangelism-When Dead Men Do Tell Tales

By Dennis Diehl

There is a phenomenon in evangelism that is quite strange to me. I call it Necro-Evangelism and it is where local or even national radio evangelical and fundamentalist churches continue to play the sermons of long dead founders to convert the masses. There are at least three major churches in my area and one I know of nationally that practices Necro-Evangelism and I'd like to explore the pitfalls of this if I might.

I find it funny in a macabre way to hear, usually the surviving son of the now dead evangelist, inviting the audience to stay tuned for a message from my now long dead father and pastor so and so. Some of these evangelistic types have been dead for just a few years, and so we might attribute his ongoing ministry as shock that the man died on the part of the family who has no clue on how to keep the business going. Others have been dead for decades and I suspect that as long as the tapes play and can be recopied, they will continue to preach right up until the Second Coming and maybe beyond! Usually there is a college or "work" that the family of the now deceased evangelist has inheirited to be maintained and, while the current family members might be up to the task, it's just good to hear the founder as if he was alive and well on the air. Others, to me, seem like the type that would never themselves be able to do what dad did with evangelism, but can't give up on the programming dad put in their heads nor the bucks it still can generate. That is an observation about method, not sincerity.

People hate change and this delays reality for many who have grown up on the words of the evangelist, now dead. One local college where I live continues to play the sermons of the long dead founder even though two or three generations have taken over the family business of evangelizing since his death. I don't believe I have heard a sermon on the air by any of the sons, all identically named after the founder save for the II,III or IV behind the name. Some Christian evangelists might be happy to return to glory, but you'd never know it as family desperately tries to keep things the same same as always the same as before he became a Necro-Evangelist. Why do we do this and what is the message it sends? You don't see Necro-Evangelists on TV, just radio. TV would be a bit much to take and obviously in poor taste.

First of all, it matters not if it is a right or wrong thing to do. I am sure the argument is "well if we had Jesus or Paul on tape, would we not play it?" Well yes it would, even though that isn't going to happen. We have them in books and we're not sure there if they really said and wrote what some say they did. All we need is a bunch of fake Jesus tapes floating around and here we go again! A whole industry would break out verifying or repudiating "the Jesus tapes." So while I understand the point, these men are not Jesus or Paul, and besides if you really know theology, you might suspect that the real Jesus would not have really appreciated the real Paul anyway, so now we have tape conflict. Then we'd have to deal with James tapes and what a mess! There would be a whole market in underground tapes and pseudotaperapha and we'd not be much further ahead than we are today with our understanding.

So while Necro-Evangelism might keep the family church, college or business going a few more generations, is it the thing to do really and what message does it send? One advantage is that, indeed, it does buy the unskilled or founder beaten children time to regroup and figure out what to do now that dad is gone. All their life they had preached that the Second Coming was going to for sure be in their lifetime but now what? Usually the first generation founds something, the second maintains it, and the third loses it all. Necro-Evangelism can postpone the Necro-evangelist sinking into a "who?" a generation later than this perhaps. But back to the message it sends that might be not good.

1. Necro-evangelism tells the audience that the sons do not have the conviction or skills that dad may have had but aren't willing to give it up as something dad did but we don't wish to do. So we play dad's sermons and don't have to come up with our own, "alive" ones. In my town, one such family member certainly does not have the voice quality or sound of conviction of his dad for sure, so I can see why he might wish to have dad keep it all going. He confines himself to introducing "my deceased dad, Dr...." and selling his tapes and even the library books his dad cherished, which obiously he doesn't. But he also has another line of work from what I understand, so does not depend on his Necro-Evangelist dad for his sole income.

2. Necro-Evangelism sends the message the survivors are spiritually lazy, but again, just can't give up on the potential to have a following or keep it all going. The second generation makes forays into the world of evangelism, usually getting caught up in politics more than dad did because down deep they know most of what dad either predicted or said did not really happen that way, and they just aren't convicted the same way dad was. Dad kept them out of "the world", and darn it, they are going to see it before they become Necro-Second-Generation-Evangelists too. Since dad impacted their lives with his own worldview, and often not in a very good way, they just don't have the same need to pass it along with dad the Necro-Evangelist's same fervor. In fact, they can't. So they busy themselves with producing dad's tapes and books and don't have to do much that shows their own creativity. They can run for public office or lecture as they wish, but keeping a ball rolling is much easier than getting it started. Anyone can be made the next president of a Necro-Evangelical College or Pastor of a Necro-Evangelistic Church. Starting the sucker is the hard part. Keeping it going can be a challenge but if we keep dearly departed dad in the picture, it is easier for sure. Somewho we filter out the fact that the Necro-Evangelist is long dead and maybe evangelism is a profession for the convicted living.

3. Necro-Evangelism sends the message that the Necro-Evangelist knew all there was to know about the Bible and all related topics. There is nothing new to learn or even unlearn, since dad made no theological mistakes, which is not true. Since we all like to hear the "old, old story, let dad explain it over and over. This is one thing that is wrong with religion in general. It supposes that all it's spokesmen had it right to begin with. If they could read the bible, tell a few good stories, keep you interested and convince you that the reading was the same yesterday, today and forever, bingo!...why change a winning game? Problem is that for every tape played, there are many that can't be for they are either dated by comments made during the sermon or even the family realizes that how or what dad said that day is not true or not appropriate today and let's just not play that one. So you're really not getting the whole man, you are getting the "Best All Time Hits of the Necro-Evangelist," as selected by the next generation. That's kinda no fair to me!

4. Most of those that had been inspired by the now Necro-Evangelist are now themselves Necro-Christians so they aren't even around to hear dad anymore either. They were all about the same age and have long since moved on to other heavenly realms. The kids of those who loved the now Necro-Evangelist aren't going to be inspired by a dead man. Sorry, they just aren't. They will feel the above three points even if they don't voice it. Kids aren't stupid and will see what generations II and III might be up to and how lame it is. These kids tend to find churches by saying "as for me and my house, we shall serve a living evangelist" and not just the memory of the good ol' days when the parents thought the now Necro-Evangelist could do or say no wrong. I used to pastor a church that on way too many occasions sent out taped sermons from the then living Apostle and occasional Evangelist. It was hard enough when they were alive, don't make me listen when they are dead!

Well I think we get the point. Is it right or wrong to conduct a Necro-Evangelically-Centric ministry? I don't know. It's just lame and nothing but a evangelical dead end.

DenniscDiehl@aol.com

GTA: "A Combination of Captain Kirk and Paul Harvey"

Battle of the engineers in the World Tomorrow, Part 1

Richard Krajewski

1/14/2011 8:25 AM EST

There was a television show in the 70's that became very popular, though you'd be hard pressed to find even one copy of it intact today.  It was The World Tomorrow, a religious program that, at that time, featured the charismatic and handsome Garner Ted Armstrong.  The program had a following of millions of people worldwide, perhaps largely because of the captivating and mesmerizing delivery of Mr. Armstrong.  His style was a dramatic combination of Captain Kirk and Paul Harvey, delivered with an entertaining bit of sarcasm and sense of irony, punctuated by an occasional weighty pronouncement worthy of a Shakespearean actor.  So engaging was he that he even appeared on an episode of Hee Haw, and, later in his life, on Oprah Winfrey (as most great thinkers eventually do). It didn't matter that the church he represented at that time, the Worldwide Church of God, had predicted World War III would begin in 1972, with the “United States of Europe” overthrowing the United States of America.  It didn't matter.  You'd watch anyway.  At least until Garner Ted and his church got into a fight and Garner Ted pretty much disappeared.

 Rest of article is here:
Battle of the Engineers in the World Tomorrow Part-1

The Systematic Theology Project: One of Armstrongism's Biggest Bogeymen

James Malm (The Shining Light Blog) is presently spitting daggers at  COGaWA and UCG claiming that they both may be ready to do their own version of The Systematic Theology Project.  This is Armstrongism's biggest perceived millstone that they continue to wear around their martyr necks.  It is also their biggest bogeyman that they can dump their collective anger on (after Joesph Tkach Sr, of course).  Bob Thiel has also spent a considerable amount of time denigrating the project.

I was there when this project was being developed and knew many of the men involved in it.  They were not 'liberals' hell bent on destroying the church.  It was not GTA's pet project on liberalizing doctrine or his tool in getting rid of his father.  It was a sincere project on their part to systematically lay out in print what the Church actually believed and understood.

Part of the reason they wanted to do this was because of ministers like Rod Meredith who would take simple doctrines and add numerous legalistic attachments to them to where things were becoming a burden on the members.  HWA would say one thing, Meredith and crew would interpret in their own way and include lots of nonsense that they felt members should also be doing.  The doctrines of the Church had become encumbered by this addition of legalistic rules and regulations

Another reason they wanted to do this was to have a unique document that laid out for the members and the  society at large on what we actually thought and believed. 

There was no cohesive document that ever stated what the Church actually believed. No document laid out in simple language the core beliefs of the Church.  We had hundreds of booklets, form letters, and 900 some different interpretations by 900 some different ministers on doctrines and beliefs.  Not only were we making statement on who and what God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit was or was not, we were also laying down laws on what color of cars people could drive, make up, hairstyles, clothing styles, dress lengths, etc. 

Armstrongism was infecting peoples lives with rules and regulations that they had no business using.  This was these men's attempt to stop that abuse.

I was there in the Auditorium when this notebook was passed out.  HWA was present that morning.  HWA also knew about this project from day one to the day it was passed out.  The myth that Malm and Thiel promote  that HWA knew nothing about this project is a lie.  Each one of the project's papers went right by HWA's desk.  Some of the Church's most educated men worked on this document.  They knew how to do research and how to do in-depth study.  Meredith did not like this because he has always been anti-education.


Meredith and various of his henchmen always loved to mock higher education and ridicule it as best they could.  That's part of the reason to this very day that Meredithism, Flurryism and the rest of the COGism's are still stuck in late 1800's/early 1900's method's of biblical understanding.  That was the thinking prevalent when HWA started his six months of study.  In those six months of study, in a public library, using books written for less educated minds, he formulated a set of beliefs that carry on to this day.

Public Library's have never been founts of knowledge for intensive in depth studies.  If you went to a public library today to study doctrine, theology, hermeneutics, etc., you will find an overwhelming selection of syrupy sweet Evangelical thought and interpretations.  Serious, in depth books are not in great supply.  Public librarians are not educated in the types of in depth biblical criticism books that they need to stock.  For that kind of study you need to go to a university or seminary library. A serious student of theology will use serious, in depth books on theology written by men and women who have spent their lifetime studying and examining Christian belief.  But of course, since these men and women are NOT educated in COG thought they are deemed as ignorant morons and their works irrelevant. And, God forbid if a COG man ever read a book written by a woman!

However, not all conservative COG members are as scared of the project as Malm and Theil are.  Surprisingly there is a conservative COG member named Nathan Albright who decided to look past all the hoopla and anger directed towards it.  You can read his comments here:

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Systematic Theology Project?

A Brief Look at the Systematic Theology Project

While there is no doubt my understanding on certain doctrines and what Nathan believes are miles apart, I find it greatly refreshing to read his viewpoints and understanding.  If more of the leadership of the COG's were like him then there might be a glimmer of hope for the COG yet.

Comments from "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Systematic Theology Project?"

As someone who is, in principle at least, sympathetic to the idea of a systematic theology project (something which I am not afraid to openly admit and defend), I find this sort of account baffling.  Why would it be “liberal” to desire a consistent view of scriptural positions on a doctrine, so as to avoid prooftexting and an incomplete understanding of the Bible?  As readers of my blog can attest to, my own interests in consistent biblical teaching about relevant biblical laws are not liberal at all [2].  They will also know that I have a passionate desire to help provide biblical consistency in understanding and practice in a broad array of issues ranging from business practices [3] to those who struggle with addictions or the aftermath of child abuse [4].  In short, I have zero interest in corrupting doctrine, but every interest in purifying it and removing from it inconsistencies that have resulted from ad hoc decisions made over the course of decades without a full understanding of the biblical context of existing judgments and doctrine about such issues as the Sabbath.

Nonetheless, there are potential pitfalls that abound in a systematic theology project that are worth considering.  It is not only liberals but also “conservatives” who like to add and subtract from the Bible.  People may spiritualize away obligations for generosity and support unbiblical systems of class warfare against the poor and helpless, completely twisting the purpose of biblical government [6].  Likewise, people may add their own personal interpretations to scripture and then seek to enshrine those as biblical, when the biblical core of truth has been deformed almost beyond recognition by the attached speculations.  This is especially true when someone claims that a scripture can only be interpreted one way when it may have many different applications and possible valid interpretations [7].  The pitfalls generally fall into two camps:  the people engaged in the systematic theology project may have agendas to pervert scripture by applying the wrong principles to the body of scripture in order to change doctrine by stealth by getting rid of proper biblical doctrinal material under fallacious grounds.  However, let us not forget that the other (and perhaps more common) pitfall is for a systematic theology to threaten the pet doctrines and speculations of believers and leaders, and thus to lead to the rejection of religious truth on behalf of deeply held error.  There are ditches on both sides of the narrow path of proper systematic theology.

One may say this or that is a twiggy point, but it is the purpose of a systematic theology project to tie up loose ends and resolve minor inconsistencies that threaten to discredit one’s commitment to the whole structure of biblical law.  Now, whether this was what was meant by the Systematic Theology Project engaged in by the Worldwide Church of God in the 1970′s, I cannot say.  It is, however, the way in which I would support and agree with such a systematic theology project myself, and an aspect in which I believe ordinary believers should be engaged in themselves in their own lives [8].  We grow in our capacities of spiritual discernment when we begin to see the rich and full perspective of scripture and transcend our own narrow understanding and limitations of perspective, and that process of spiritual maturation makes us more capable to judge and discern, and thus more expert practical and systematic theologians, not simply out of book knowledge but out of consistency of thought, belief, and practice.

From his article "A Brief Look at the Systematic Theology Project"

Among Church of God members, the Systematic Theology Project, which can be found in its entirety online, all 400+ pages of it [1] has a legendary and cursed existence.  It is often said that this effort was intended to liberalize doctrine and water it down.  Those who were involved in the project were subject to a late 1970′s backlash by a group of so-called “conservatives” who wished to get the Worldwide Church of God “back on track” that led to the early 1980′s “rule of the Ayatollahs” that some people (myself included) find a deeply traumatic past that is too painful to want to see come alive ever again, but was a nostalgic period for others.

What is my intent is to let the mostly dead men who worked on this project speak for themselves a little bit when it comes to their intentions and goals for the project and provide some of their doctrinal statements on such areas of interest for me such as our example to the community and our views on race and ethnicity as well as the Sabbath.  After all, the men who served on this project have been slandered for decades as liberals who sought to water down the true doctrines, and as I cannot bear to let people be slandered who can no longer defend themselves, I thought it useful to let their words speak for themselves, so that we may at least give them the credit they are do for being faithful and intellectually consistent men without heretical goals.  For too long their work (and those who wrote it, or those who like me long for similar such efforts to be made) have been unjustly insulted and maligned for desiring to bring doctrine and tradition into harmony with the Bible (or to discard it, if it is unbiblical tradition) and to judge everything by the absolutely and external standard of the scriptures [2].

You can read the entire Systematic Theology Project here:  STP Project

GTA Vidicated! It Was NOT His Fault!

Beddy Teddy has been vindicated! All that romping around with 200 coed's, the stewardesses on the three WCG Corporate jets and that hot masseuse,  was NOT his fault!  Hallelujah and pass the collection plate!  COG leaders take note!  You now have an excuse!

Thrill-Seeking Gene Can Lead to More Sex Partners

SUNY Scientists Find Longer DRD4 Gene Can Lead to Double Risk for Promiscuity, Infidelity

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES

Dec. 6, 2010

John Coleman, a 22-year-old from Syracuse, N.Y., has been engaged for the last two years and cannot fathom having sex with anyone other than his girlfriend.
"I find cheating appalling," said Coleman. "There's got to be something going on in your head to cheat."

It turns out Coleman is right.

In what is being called a first of its kind study, researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York (SUNY) have discovered that about half of all people have a gene that makes them more vulnerable to promiscuity and cheating.

Those with a certain variant of the dopamine receptor D4 polymorphism -- or DRD4 gene -- "were more likely to have a history of uncommitted sex, including one-night stands and acts of infidelity," according to lead investigator Justin Garcia.


Read the article here: Thrill -Seeking Gene

Garner Ted's Woodpecker

 Awe, come on!  Stop thinking like GTA!  Get your mind out of the gutter!

This is the woodpecker I was talking about!

What spurred this on?  There was a column on Andrew Sullivan where a reader talked about GTA's woodpecker....

The Atlantic Home

« The Act Of Bearing Witness | Main | The Shifting Tide Of Empathy »

Question Of The Week: An Article About A Woodpecker

02 Jan 2011 11:24 am

by Conor Friedersdorf
A reader writes:

I have a fairly unusual answer to your question of the week, I think. A magazine article that had probably the biggest impact on my life and the way I view the world was an article on evolution in an issue of The Plain Truth, an evangelical magazine put out by Garner Ted Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God in the '60s and '70s.  My mother subscribed to the magazine and I discovered it lying around one day when I was eight or nine years old.  I was a precocious and voracious reader, so I devoured it along with any other piece of reading material I could get my hands on.
The article in question was about the "so-called" evolution of the woodpecker.

It had the usual mocking tone of creationist arguments (which I kind of liked) and put forth the idea that the woodpecker was so perfectly suited to drilling holes in trees, it would be inconceivable to imagine any intermediate forms.  There was an accompanying illustration of the woodpecker as a machine, with great metallic legs gripping the tree, a piston neck and a drill-like beak. I loved that illustration and stared at it for hours.  More than anything, it convinced me that a partly-evolved woodpecker, flying around the forest, bashing his head against trees was ridiculous.  I become, before I even understood what evolution was, a creationist.

My conversion lasted about six months.  I went camping with my family in British Columbia and, one day, while wandering the woods near our campsite, I spotted a bird (not a woodpecker) pecking away at a tree. I saw it pluck something from the tree and fly away.  I moved to the tree to take a closer look.  I couldn't see anything of interest to a bird in the rough bark, so I dug a little at it with my pocket knife. There were bugs, not just in the cracks of the bark, but deeper inside the bark as well.  "There's stuff to eat all the way inside," I thought.  And, suddenly, I understood how a partly-evolved woodpecker could develop.  By eating the stuff available all the way inside and gradually developing stronger beaks, stronger necks and so on.  I had my first true inkling of how evolution worked.
For a moment, I was elated.  Then, suddenly, I was furious.  I had been lied to.  A magazine with the word "Truth" in its title had lied to me.  Grownups, trying to teach me about the world, had lied to me. It was a disturbing and frightening realization for someone my age, and it created in me a deep skepticism that remains to this day.  On the whole, this has been a good thing, and, I have to say, if I ever ran into the author of that article, I'd thank him, although he might not appreciate the sentiment.

And that picture of the mechanical woodpecker really was totally cool.

For other excellent article dealing with the same subject check out::

The Amazing Animals: The Whales and the Dolphins

Churchill's Gold: GTA's Other Book

Garner Ted Armstrong loved to write. But there is one book that most COG members never knew about that he penned under a pseudonym: William Talboy Wright.

William Talboy Wright was a mixture of names from his grandparents.  Willam Dillon (maternal grandfather), Isabelle Talboy (maternal grandmother), and Eva Wright (paternal grandmother).

Wright, William Talboy
     Churchill's Gold, 1988 (With nothing to lose, falsely accused fugitive
       Mark Masters agrees to take a wooden barkentine to the South Seas on a
       search for sunken treasure to bail out the British treasury during WW
       II.  "I found it to be an exciting adventure story of sailing despite
       the author having made some rather strange historical mistakes (e.g. he
       thought Taiwan was under Chinese control in 1941!) and totally out of
       his mind with regard to Spanish archives (the book inspired me to write
       my own book on how to find shipwrecks in Hispanic archives)." [LF])

He also penned The Real Jesus before he got kicked out of WCG.  He published another book a few years later called Peter's Story.

33 Years and Counting

Left to right, Harrison Ford (Han Solo), David Prowse (Darth Vader), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) 

and, in foreground, Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Kenny Baker (R2-D2) 

and Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker).

---------------------------------------------------------

It's hard to believe that 33 years ago the first Star Wars came out.  A large group of us from Ambassador College in Pasadena headed off to Hollywood to see it.  Every single seat in the theater was taken.  Yet, at this same time various ministers in Pasadena were trying to discourage students from seeing the movie.  It was fiction, it was dangerous, it had demons in it.  

Kind of like the ranting that Dave Albert did from the Auditorium stage when ET came out.  He went on and on about how the movie was really about demons manifesting themselves on earth as agents of light to gullible children.  If we went to see the movie we would be allowing demons to enter our mind. Thankfully 95% of the students ignored him as they had ignored the Star Wars silliness.

The other strange thing they told us that never came true was that they said we would never be able to see the  sequels in the Star Wars series when they came out. The reason being we would be in Petra.  The world would be coming to and end by that time the sequels would be coming out.

The other movie that stirred up a stink in Pasadena was Crocodile Dundee.  They planned to show the movie in the Auditorium.  It was common knowledge that God lived in the Auditorium so swear words and sexy scenes could not be shown on the screen.   Some moron from the student government stood next to the projector and held a piece of cardboard over the lens so the picture could not be projected on stage.  There were howls of protest.  People got up and walked out.  

Armstrongism has always been afraid of the silliest things.  

Herb hated country music.  He thought it was for the uncouth and uneducated.  We always thought he hated it because GTA liked it.  

Armstrongism did not like its members being actors.  The reason being was that they were taking on fake personalities and would have to live through those characters.  It was another avenue for opening the mind up to demons.  

You could not be a policeman because you carried a gun. (Even though GTA's bodyguard carried gun with him at all times.).  

They discouraged members from being EMT's.  You were performing medical procedures that took away the persons ability to use divine healing.