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Otherwise you could end up looking like this:
Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before! With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
from the 1996 Ambassador Report
A confidential source in the Chicago area, a former WCG member who is gay, recently explained to me what is believed to be the origin of Garner Ted's sexual escapades with women and girls. As reported to me, when Garner Ted was a young man, he apparently was living with another young man in a gay relationship. When his father, Herbert, found out about it he yanked GTA out of this gay relationship and commanded him never to participate in such a life-style ever again. So long as Garner Ted remained away from gay involvements, Herbert Armstrong looked the other way in regard to GTA's many heterosexual involvements. This long-established, family-based behavioral programming may account for the constant denial of sexual misconduct by GTA in spite of the extensive documentation of his lifelong problem.
Swilley, who created the Church In The Now some 25 years ago, is a divorced father of four. But he's known he's gay since he was a boy, says the Rockdale County man of the cloth, and even his wife Debye — whom he divorced earlier this year — knew when they got married (!). The couple kept it a secret for more than two decades, but Jim says Debye recently pushed him to share his story.
The pastor made the announcement to his congregation two weeks ago (yes, it takes time for some stories to trickle), with his family in the audience and decided to come out now after witnessing the rash of gay youths killing themselves. One Internet forum poster says that unlike Atlanta's Long (whom Swilley won't speak about), Swilley has not used the pulpit to denigrate gays: "For those of you familiar with Church In the Now, while never discussing his own sexuality, you know that Swilley has always preached a message of inclusion, love and abundance for all God's children. Bishop Swilley has been asked to step down as Bishop, but will remain as Pastor."
"Bishop Jim Swilley of Church In the Now of Conyers, announced to his congregation tonight that he is gay. He has been the pastor of Church In the Now since 1985, and has been married to his second wife for 21 years and is the father of four.
For those of you familiar with Church In the Now, while never discussing his own sexuality, you know that Swilley has always preached a message of inclusion, love and abundance for all God's children. Bishop Swilley has been asked to step down as Bishop, but will remain as Pastor.
Encouraged by the recent rash of G&L teen suicides, he decided to make his congregation aware of his sexual preference. I say sexual preference because he's made it clear that he does not intend to live a homosexual lifestyle (in that he has chosen to be celibate for the rest of his life). Knowing of his sexual preference, yet fully supporting him, his wife left him more than a year ago. However, she was in attendance at tonight's service, and spoke vigorously in support and love for her ex-husband, her childrens' father.
I absolutely support Bishop Swilley and his courage to speak his truth from the pulpit. As someone said recently said in the wake of the Eddie Long scandal, "it didn't take a scandal to bring me out of the closet." This is true of Bishop Swilley. While it is reasonable to consider whether or not the New Birth (which is a neighboring church) scandal influenced his decision, at the end of the day, Swilley made a decision to be completely honest with his congregation about who he is and invite them to continue to follow his message of God's love for every one.
A Pharisee is a sanctimonious, hypocritical, self-righteous heretic who practices and advocates strict observance of external forms and ceremonies of religion or conduct without regard to the spirit. He makes a hypocritical show of religious devotion, piety, and righteousness. He is confident of his own righteousness, and is smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinion and behavior of others. He pretends to have moral, religious beliefs and principles which he does not possess.
In simple terms…A Pharisee falsely thinks he is a god himself as he pretends to do God’s bidding, enforces God’s laws, knows God’s mind, and has the imagined authority of God in his hands His power is gained by lording over the humble, fearful, sinners who dare not even consider walking toward God because of their dirty transgressions and lowly state.
Los Angeles Times
Walking away from churchOrganized religion's increasing identification with conservative politics is a turnoff to more and more young adults. Evangelical Protestantism has been hit hard by this development.
By Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell
October 17, 2010
The most rapidly growing religious category today is composed of those Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. While middle-aged and older Americans continue to embrace organized religion, rapidly increasing numbers of young people are rejecting it.
As recently as 1990, all but 7% of Americans claimed a religious affiliation, a figure that had held constant for decades. Today, 17% of Americans say they have no religion, and these new "nones" are very heavily concentrated among Americans who have come of age since 1990.Between 25% and 30% of twentysomethings today say they have no religious affiliation — roughly four times higher than in any previous generation.
So, why this sudden jump in youthful disaffection from organized religion? The surprising answer, according to a mounting body of evidence, is politics. Very few of these new "nones" actually call themselves atheists, and many have rather conventional beliefs about God and theology. But they have been alienated from organized religion by its increasingly conservative politics.
This backlash was especially forceful among youth coming of age in the 1990s and just forming their views about religion. Some of that generation, to be sure, held deeply conservative moral and political views, and they felt very comfortable in the ranks of increasingly conservative churchgoers. But a majority of the Millennial generation was liberal on most social issues, and above all, on homosexuality.The fraction of twentysomethings who said that homosexual relations were "always" or "almost always" wrong plummeted from about 75% in 1990 to about 40% in 2008. (Ironically, in polling, Millennials are actually more uneasy about abortion than their parents.)
Just as this generation moved to the left on most social issues — above all, homosexuality — many prominent religious leaders moved to the right, using the issue of same-sex marriage to mobilize electoral support for conservative Republicans. In the short run, this tactic worked to increase GOP turnout, but the subsequent backlash undermined sympathy for religion among many young moderates and progressives.Increasingly, young people saw religion as intolerant, hypocritical, judgmental and homophobic. If being religious entailed political conservatism, they concluded, religion was not for them.
Nevertheless, predictions of the demise of religion in America would be premature. More likely is that as growing numbers of young Americans reject religious doctrine that is too political or intolerant for their taste, innovative religious leaders will concoct more palatable offerings. Jesus taught his disciples to be "fishers of men," and the pool of un-churched moderate and progressive young people must be an attractive target for religious anglers.
To be sure, some of these young people will remain secularists. Many of them, however, espouse beliefs that would seem to make them potential converts to a religion that offered some of the attractions of modern evangelicalism without the conservative political overlay.
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times