Universalist Orthodox Church in Toledo certainly isn't biblically orthodox

The red flags that identify the church mentioned in the following article as being unbiblical are so glaring and numerous that I'll leave it to the reader to notice and count them. As reported by Nicki Gorny of the Toledo Blade, July 1, 2019:

With its chanted antiphons and sweet-smelling incense, a divine liturgy at Toledo’s Joy of All Who Sorrow Parish is in some ways like any other in Eastern Orthodoxy.

In other ways, it’s decidedly not.

A commitment to full social, structural and sacramental inclusion of all people – regardless of their gender and sexuality – positions the parish outside the mainstream church hierarchy. While they remain true to what their founding bishop sees as an authentic expression of Eastern Orthodoxy, they’re carving out their own space in the ancient faith tradition.

“What do you do when such an integral part of your identity is in direct conflict with your values?” the Rev. Mother Maeve Leroux asked in a recent interview. “I definitely think the only option for me was to make the space.”

Mother Maeve, who established Joy of All Who Sorrow Universalist Orthodox Church in 2016, celebrates the first anniversary of her consecration as a bishop on Sunday. She described a winding path to that moment, one that gives her great familiarity with the struggle of loving and identifying with a faith tradition that – in one way or another – is also a source of conflict.

She said she was never eager to pursue ordination in the way that she has, which runs against a restriction in her tradition that only men enter the priesthood. Mother Maeve is transgender; her ordination is not recognized by the mainstream church. She said she felt called to the role as a way to create the inclusive Orthodox space she and others did not find anywhere else.

“It became pressingly apparent to me that, unfortunately, if we wanted any kind of inclusive Orthodox space, I would kind of have to do it,” she said. “Which was not a comforting thought. I don’t particularly like talking publicly. I don’t particularly like being in the front of any room.”

“But that was kind of the only way forward,” she said.

Mother Maeve came to Eastern Orthodoxy as a child, recalling a wind-knocked-out-of-her moment during a liturgy at a local church when she first she first felt the presence of God. By the time she was 18, she was essentially set on becoming a priest or a monk, options that were open to her in the mainstream structure of the tradition because she had not yet come out as female.

Once she made it to the monastery, though, she described an increasing disillusionment, much of it related to the hypocrisy she saw in her church in regard to issues of inclusion. Some of it was related to sexuality, she said; Eastern Orthodoxy is theologically opposed to homosexual acts. She said she also struggled with the restriction on women serving in the altar.

Even with a thorough reading of church canon, it just didn’t make sense to her, she said. In her understanding of the tradition then and in the understanding that she brings to her ministry now, she looks to the inclusiveness that she sees in the early church, if not necessarily in some of its canons. Orthodoxy is not as unchanging as it’s perceived to be, she said, describing historical pushes for women in ministry, even an early rite believed to be for a same-sex marriage.

“Inclusion is not innovative within ancient Christianity,” she said. “Inclusion is usually more authentic.”

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about what would become these internal conflicts before she entered the monastery. But “it’s kind of like any relationship where you fall in love,” she explained. “You fall in love and you think, ‘There are some issues … but this is what I want. Maybe it’s not that big a deal. These people seem good. Maybe it’ll work out.’ And you kind of put it away from your mind for a while, because you’re enamored.”

When she finally reached the point where she couldn’t justify wearing the monastic robe anymore, she left the monastery. Adrift without the faith tradition that had been such a firm anchor for so long in her life, she said she spent some time looking for a spiritual fit in others, first in Christianity, then in other traditions altogether. None of them felt like hers.

Then came a turning point. At a local interfaith service, she came across the Rev. Beverly Bingle, a Roman Catholic Womanpriest who pastors Holy Spirit Catholic Community in Toledo.

Roman Catholicism, like Eastern Orthodoxy, does not allow for the ordination of women. The Rev. Bingle describes her ordination as “valid, but not legal,” meaning that she is ordained in a valid line of apostolic succession, but her ordination is not recognized by the Catholic Church.

For Mother Maeve, the encounter sparked an idea.

“It really kind of inspired me to think: Orthodoxy doesn’t have to be confined into the boxes that history has put it in over and over,” she said. “I had always assumed that I had to accept Orthodoxy on its own terms, and that’s it,” she continued. “So I started thinking about it. I started looking: If there’s a Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement in Catholicism, does Orthodoxy have something like this? Have people gotten fed up?”

“The answer is no,” she said with a laugh. “Not really.”

It would fall to her, then, she decided. She sought a bishop to ordain her in the Independent Sacramental Movement, a network of self-sustaining faith communities that operate outside the structures of mainstream churches, but that retain the same apostolic succession of these same mainstream churches. As with the Rev. Bingle, the mainstream church hierarchies generally do not recognize the ordinations of clergy in the Independent Sacramental Movement, even though the lineages of these clergy – who ordained whom ordained whom ordained whom – can be traced back to the same foundational ministers.

Mother Maeve admits she herself had initial qualms about tying herself to the Independent Sacramental Movement. But when individuals began reaching out after her ordination as a priest, sharing their own stories of excommunication or their denial of the priesthood – stories, like hers, of those who felt marginalized by their own faith tradition – she found herself leaning further into it.

She began to pursue ordination as a bishop, believing she would hold a greater capacity to address these types of situations in this role.

“You have people coming to you. You have people who want to learn the liturgy from you, learn the tradition from you, they just want to take communion again after a decade of not being able to take communion anywhere,” she said. “So you kind of say, Who cares what I think? Or who cares what other people think? If it’s needful, you should do it.”

A year into her consecration as a bishop and three into the establishment of her parish, she today ministers to a modest community at Joy of All Who Sorrow. She and her partner, Jess Bernal, who as an ordained priest is known as Presbyter Theophan, said they typically hold services for only a handful of parishioners on Sunday.

Some are local, some drive hours for a divine liturgy. Sometimes it’s just the two of them.

Presbyter Theophan typically leads the service, her voice blending with Mother Maeve’s in the litanies and antiphons. When it comes time to consecrate the Eucharist, it’s her at the altar, behind the icons that are a standard in any Orthodox worship space – even one that’s a temporary setup each Sunday. They meet in the chapel of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

Their reach and ministry stretches beyond Toledo, though, in several satellite parishes in other cities and in those with whom they connect through their website or social media. Their stories of feeling drawn to the faith tradition or desiring to remain in it despite the roadblocks they see in gender, sexuality and other issues keep coming.

“There are definitely out there,” Mother Maeve said. “And a lot of them experienced what I experienced, where you look and you look and you look [for an inclusive community] and there is nothing. Then suddenly, you look, and there is one thing that pops up. … So it’s been rewarding for people to kind of be for people what I had wanted in the first place.”

50 years ago: The deaths of Karl Barth and Thomas Merton

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. James 1:8

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. I John 2:18-19

These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;
Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. Jude 12-13

On December 10, 1968, Swiss theologian Karl Barth died at the age of 82. Professor Barth was a Reformed Protestant pastor who served as a pastor in Switzerland and then in Germany. He opposed the Nazis, and was largely responsible for the Barmen Declaration (1934), which proclaimed that the church's allegiance to Jesus Christ took precedence over loyalty to any human ruler. Prof. Barth was forced to resign his position at the University of Bonn in 1935 and return to Switzerland after refusing to take an oath of loyalty to German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler.

Professor Barth was a man of contradictions, and serves as an example of how a mixture of truth and error still results in error. Although he opposed Nazism, he promoted socialism. He rejected much of the religious liberalism that he was exposed to in his early years, and claimed that God reveals himself to us through Jesus Christ, but denied biblical inerrancy. Prof. Barth rejected the assertion that he was the father of "neo-orthodoxy"--one of whose doctrines is that the Bible isn't the word of God objectively, but becomes the word of God as it interacts with the reader--but he has been hugely influential upon numerous prominent religious liberals. Prof. Barth's best-known books were The Epistle to the Romans (1919/1922) and his multi-volume Church Dogmatics (1932-1967).

Thomas Merton, one of the world's best-known Roman Catholic monks and authors, also died on December 10, 1968, at the age of 53. He was born in France of an American mother and New Zealander father, and lived in France, the United States, and England in his early years. Mr. Merton was generally indifferent to religion, but after reading such books as The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy by Étienne Gilson (which contained an explanation of God that appealed to him) and Ends and Means by Aldous Huxley (which introduced him to mysticism), and meeting visiting Indian Hindu monk Mahanambrata Brahmachari (who recommended traditional Roman Catholic books such as Augustine's Confessions and Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ to him rather than Hindu writings) in New York, he joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1938. He eventually became a Trappist monk, taking temporary vows in 1944 and solemn vows in 1947.

Mr. Merton was a mystic who became increasingly interested in Eastern religions and promoting interfaith understanding. His books included The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) and Seeds of Contemplation (1949). Mr. Merton was also known for advocating a non-violent approach during the Vietnam War and the social and racial upheavals during the 1960s. Indeed, Mr. Merton even took a non-violent approach to World War II. He'd been attracted to the idea of entering the Roman Catholic priesthood, but didn't move on it until he entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky at the age of 26 on December 10, 1941, three days after the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, conveniently enabling him to avoid military service. As Sherlock Holmes would say, "Most singular! Most remarkable!" Mr. Merton's brother John Paul, who had also converted to Catholicism, didn't take a non-violent approach during World War II, and was killed while flying overseas in 1943 when his plane was shot down.

Ostensibly a Roman Catholic, Mr. Merton was moving toward New Age belief and universalism at the time of his death, which is where mysticism inevitably leads. He was attending an interfaith conference in suburban Bangkok when he died suddenly, reportedly by accidental electrocution from a fan while stepping out of the bathtub. Fifty years later, Thomas Merton remains popular in some circles, especially with practitioners of contemplative spirituality and the pseudo-Christian movement known as the "Emerging Church." An example of this can be found here.

In addition to dying on the same day, Messrs. Barth and Merton had other things in common. Both men, while claiming to be Christians, promoted truth as being subjective rather than objective. Both men have been hugely influential long after their deaths, and that has been in the direction of influencing subsequent false teachers in the perpetuation of false teaching.

For good information on contemplative spirituality, I especially recommend Lighthouse Trails Research Project and Herescope.

Percentage of female clergy in liberal denominations has increased greatly in the last 20 years

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12

This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife,... I Timothy 3:1-2a

For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee:
If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. Titus 1:5-6

It comes as no surprise to this blogger to see that the most liberal religious denominations, such as those mentioned in the following article, are the ones where the percentage of women in positions of leadership has been increasing in recent years. The Unitarian-Universalists, of course, aren't Christian in any way (although, with the direction in which evangelicalism is heading, I wouldn't be surprised to see a movement for "Christians and Unitarian-Universalists Together"). The United Church of Christ is as apostate a denomination as you'll find that still claims to be Christian. As reported by Adelle M. Banks of Religious News Service, October 18, 2018:

The share of women in the ranks of American clergy has doubled — and sometimes tripled — in some denominations during the past two decades, a new report shows.

“I was really surprised, in a way, at how much progress there’s been in 20 years,” said the report’s author, Eileen Campbell-Reed, an associate professor at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tenn. “There’s kind of a circulating idea that, oh well, women in ministry has kind of plateaued and there really hasn’t been lot of growth. And that’s just not true.”

The two traditions with the highest percentages of women clergy were the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ, according to the “State of Clergywomen in the U.S.,” released earlier this month. Fifty-seven percent of UUA clergy were women in 2017, while half of clergy in the UCC were female in 2015. In 1994, women constituted 30 percent of UUA clergy and 25 percent of UCC clergy.

UUA President Susan Frederick-Gray credits the increase to a decision by her denomination’s General Assembly in 1970 to call for more women to serve in ministry and policymaking roles. She noted that as of this year, 60 percent of UUA clergy are women.

“All that work in the ’70s and ’80s made it possible for me, in the early 2000s, to come into ministry and be successful and lead thriving churches,” said Frederick-Gray, “and now be elected as the first female, first woman minister elected to the UUA presidency.”

Campbell-Reed and a research assistant gathered clergywomen statistics that had not been collected across 15 denominations for two decades.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Zikmund, who co-wrote the 1998 book “Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling,” welcomed the new report as a way to start closing the gap in the research.

“While the experiences of women and the evolution of church life and leadership have changed dramatically over the past two decades,” she said, “there have been no comprehensive studies on women and church leadership.”

Reached between recent convocation events at Andover Newton Seminary, the Rev. Davida Foy Crabtree, a retired UCC minister, said the report’s findings were reflected around her.

“I was sort of looking around and seeing so many women and remembering that in my years in seminary in the ’60s how few of us there were,” said Crabtree, a trustee and alumna of the theological school. “So it’s definitely a sea change in terms of women’s ordination.”

Campbell-Reed’s research found a tripling of percentages of clergywomen in the Assemblies of God, the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America between 1994 and 2017.

But Campbell-Reed also found that clergywomen — with the exception of Unitarian Universalists — continue to lag behind clergymen in leading their churches. In the UCC, for example, female and male clergy are equal in number, but 38 percent of UCC pastors are women.

Instead, many clergywomen — as well as clergymen — serve in ministerial roles other than that of pastor, including chaplains, nonprofit staffers and professors.

Paula Nesbitt, president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, said other researchers have long observed “the persistent clergy gender gap in attainment and compensation.”

For women of color, especially, significant gaps remain, and for women in some conservative churches, ordination is not an option.

Campbell-Reed noted that clergywomen of color “remain a distinct minority” in most mainline denominations. Those who have risen to leadership in the top echelons of their religious groups, she said, have done so after long years of service.

“Some of them are also being recognized for their contributions and their work, like any other person who’s got longevity and wisdom, by being elected as bishops in their various communions,” she said of denominations such as the United Methodist Church and the ELCA.

Campbell-Reed also pointed out the role of women who serve churches despite being barred from pastoral positions in congregations of the country’s two largest denominations, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church.

Former Southern Baptist women like herself have joined the pastoral staffs of breakaway groups such as the Alliance of Baptists, which have women pastoring 40 percent of their congregations. And Catholic women constitute 80 percent of lay ecclesial ministers, who “are running the church on a day-to-day basis,” she said.

Patricia Mei Yin Chang, another co-author of “Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling,” said the new statistics prompt questions about the meaning behind them, such as changing attitudes of congregations or decreases in male clergy.

“Those are two really different causes,” she said, “and they may differ across denominations.”

Campbell-Reed, whose 20-page report concludes with two pages of questions for seminaries, churches, researchers and theologians, said the answers about the often-difficult job hunt for clergywomen relate to sexism.

“Just because more women enter into jobs in the church or are ordained does not mean that the problems of sexism have gone away,” she said. “At times, the bias is more implicit but no less real.”

Some women are reaching “tall-steeple” pulpits — leadership in prominent churches — instead of being relegated to struggling congregations, often in denominations on the decline.

Frederick-Gray said her denomination, which is working on race equality as well as gender equality, is seeing greater opportunities for women to preach in its largest churches. Of the 41 largest congregations in the Unitarian Universalist Association, 20 are served by women senior ministers.

Women’s leadership, Frederick-Gray said, is necessary at a time of decline for many religions.

“The decline is not the responsibility of women,” she said. “But maybe we will be the hope for the future.”

As usual, the clergyhag with the stereotypical hyphenated name has it wrong with those last comments. Putting women in positions of leadership is, and always has been, both a symptom and a significant contributing factor in declining membership and increasing apostasy. For a church to put women in positions of leadership is an indication of the liberalism that already exists within that body; and it invariably proves to be an indication of further apostasy and declining membership to come in whatever denomination adopts the unbiblical practice.

United Church of Canada-affiliated St. Stephen's College offers courses in Wicca, mindfulness, and Jungian psychology

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; I Timothy 4:1

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. II Timothy 3:5

As the late Dave Breese said, when you depart from the faith, you don't just take a step down, but you drop into the dark abyss. Submitted for your disapproval, more evidence that the United Church of Canada isn't in any biblical sense a Christian church (links inserted by blogger).

St. Stephen's College, founded and governed by the United Church of Canada, is affiliated with the University of Alberta:

St Stephen’s College is a graduate school founded by The United Church of Canada and an Affiliated College of The University of Alberta in Edmonton. An Act to Incorporate St Stephen’s College (April 27, 1927; amended 1968) authorizes St Stephen’s College to confer degrees in theology, including masters level divinity programs in pastoral psychology and counseling. These degrees include: Doctor of Ministry, Master of Theology, Master of Psychotherapy and Spirituality, Master of Theological Studies, and Bachelor of Theological Studies. We are an Associate Member of The Association of Theological Schools in The United States and Canada;

According to their statement of Missions and Values:

Mission & Values

Our Mission
To be an interfaith community that offers sacred spaces for learning and transformation.

Our Values
We are deeply committed to the values rooted in our experience and those that shape our response to changing rural, urban and global perspectives. These values help define our life together and are characterized by:

High standards and commitment to scholarship and academic excellence, with academic freedom to explore theology and spirituality;

Academic programs and policies that are grounded in adult learning principles and are learner-centered;

Accessibility to theological education through a multi-faceted program that creates communities of learners;

Integration of theory and practice;

We seek to achieve these values through:

Inclusivity and justice in language and practice for all persons, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation and sexual identities or physical abilities;

Commitment to social justice and ecological responsibility;

Honoring and understanding the need to be in care of one another;

Resiliency and creativity in the presence of a constantly changing social climate;

Consultative ethos, including academic planning and decision-making processes characterized by open communication, widespread consultation, and transparency;

Mutual respect for and honouring of diverse cultures, locally and abroad;

Openness to risk-taking, innovation and flexibility in offering of programs, in our relationship to the communities around us, and in supporting faith communities as they undertake theological reflection;

Shaping of our theology by the contexts in which we live and work and have our being, and solidarity with those who suffer;

Financial stability and accountability.

Updated: April 22, 2013

Courses offered for credit at St. Stephen's College include the following:

JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY [CHRTP523]

Psychotherapeutic process and spirituality is explored in the context of Jungian analytic thought. This course integrates key concepts such as projection, transference, and typology in exploring the individuation process. Further exploration will be made of dreams, the numinous and the psyche-soma relationship as they relate to psychological development and the Jungian therapeutic process.

MINDFULNESS FOR TEACHERS [CHRTP330]

“Mindfulness is the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment. It is the continuous practice of touching life deeply in every moment of daily life. To be mindful is to be truly alive, present and at one with those around you and with what you are doing.” [cite:plumvillage.org]This course will help you develop and nurture the energy of mindfulness in your own life and in turn in the lives of your students. In this course you will:

Increase body/mind awareness by practicing various forms of meditation

Develop your ability to be ‘present’ with your students

Explore the possibilities of contemplative play

Develop mindfulness exercises for students of varied age levels

Consider how the arts can be used for contemplation and transformation

SPECIAL TOPICS: INTRO TO WICCAN THEOLOGY [CHRTP400]

Introducing foundational ideas and practices of the New Religious Movement of Wicca. Wicca is polytheistic, syncretic, and experiential. It draws from Western occultism, European folk magic and tradition, feminism, ecological theology, and queer theory. The course mixes lecture, discussion of readings, writing and practice.

Carl Jung is popular with New Agers--especially those who claim to be Christians--but was a man whose "wisdom" came from a "spirit guide," i.e., demon, named Philemon. For more on Carl Jung, see PsychoHeresy: C. G. Jung's Legacy to the Church.

Mindfulness is a word that's been receiving a lot of publicity in recent years. A good description is provided by Mark A. Burch of the Simplicity Institute, an organization that appears to include those who are ostensibly Christian, but who follow Eastern religious practices (which is a subject for another post). From Mr. Burch's report Mindfulness: The Doorway to Simple Living (2012):

Mindfulness, or Right Mindfulness, is one precept drawn from a set of interdependent precepts called The Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism. (p. 3)

Formal mindfulness practice consists of sitting meditation with attention focused on one’s breathing, either by counting breaths or by silently witnessing the act of breathing, to the exclusion of all other internal or external distractions...

...Practices that specifically develop stable states of mindful awareness often entail formal meditation or contemplation. In Buddhist Vipassana (mindfulness of breathing) practice, for example, attention is focused on the breath with the intention of slowly developing concentration, cultivating inner stillness and eventually an ever deepening insight into the activities and dynamics of one’s own conscious awareness ...

...Christian “Centering Prayer,” while differing from Buddhist Vipassana in its intention, is nearly indistinguishable in its method. The Buddhist is intent on liberation from suffering and growing in compassion whereas the Christian practitioner of centering prayer is intent on cultivating a state of inner stillness and spiritual receptivity to the action of the Holy Spirit. The Buddhist “anchors” attention on the breath while the Christian anchors it on a “prayer word,” not unlike a mantra, expressing the contemplative’s intention to open themselves to intimacy with God (Keating, 1998). But otherwise, all the physical postures, preparation, attitudes and activities that one brings to the practice are nearly identical. (pp. 4-5).

The reader will notice that Mr. Burch admits that mindfulness comes from Buddhism, and that Christian "Centering Prayer" is indistinguishable, in practice, from the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. The inevitable conclusion for those who indulge in such practices is that since the experiences are similar regardless of one's religious tradition, they must derive from the same source, leading the practitioner toward universalism.

The course in Wicca--advertised as an Arts option--is taught by Sam Magar. According to the course syllabus:

Sam Wagar MA, Wiccan 3rd Degree Initiate, is the author of four books and numerous published papers and articles. He has founded an international Pagan pacifist network, a religious retreat, five Temples, and several covens. He is a Doctor of Ministry student at St. Stephen's College and the Wiccan chaplain to the University of Alberta.

It comes as no great surprise, but is nonetheless disturbing to this blogger, to see that not only does the University of Alberta now have a Wiccan chaplain, but this publicly-funded university is offering credit for practicing a pagan religion ("practice" is said to be part of the course). I don't think the university is offering credit for practicing Christianity now, and if such credit was offered when I was a student there in the 1980s, I wasn't aware of it.

30 years ago: Unitarian minister's prayer shocks Edmonton City Council

Until fairly recently, council meetings in Edmonton and other Canadian cities opened with prayer. However, the out-of-control atheistic mentally and morally retarded body known as the Supreme Court of Canada has seen fit to outlaw the practice in recent years, which will be the subject of another post, if I ever get around to it. The Unitarian Church, as the name indicates, isn't Christian, and this minister's requests make that obvious. As reported by the Edmonton Journal, December 10, 1986:

City council heard proposals Tuesday for a local abortion clinic, a nuclear-free Edmonton, and a worker-owned co-operative at the strikebound Gainers plant.

And that was just in the morning prayer.

Several aldermen raised bowed heads and stared in open shock as the minister, invited to deliver council's traditional opening prayer, ran down his Christmas wish list.

Rev. John Marsh of the Unitarian Church of Edmonton asked first that Edmonton be declared a nuclear-weapons-free zone. He asked next for a therapeutic abortion clinic.

"...Third, if (Peter) Pocklington does not want to own a meat-packing plant in our city, let the city make the financial arrangements for it to become a worker-owned co-operative."

Marsh acknowledged afterwards council members seemed "mildly disturbed" by his prayer.

Clergymen are picked at random to deliver a prayer to open council's regular meetings.

The Outhouse (aka The Shack) author William P. Young's heresy, blasphemy, and perversity is becoming more obvious with the passage of time

For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.
Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Acts 20:29-30

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. II Corinthians 11:14-15

Little children, it is the last time; and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. I John 2:18-19

I've already commented on The Shack (which I prefer to call The Outhouse) by William P. Young (Paul, to his friends), and I don't want to go to the bother of repeating myself, so the reader is invited to see my previous posts:

"The Outhouse" (aka The Shack): One-Hour Blasphemizing (December 30, 2008)

Finding God in The Shack? (April 1, 2009)

The Outhouse (aka The Shack) in God's house (May 5, 2009)

Catherine Elsworth interviewed Mr. Young for the online book club Goodreads for its September 2015 newsletter (bold in original) (as an aside, the same newsletter contained an interview with notorious atheist idiot Richard Dawkins):

Interview with Wm. Paul Young
September, 2015

Bestselling Christian novelist William Paul Young likes to shake his readers, both in terms of subject matter and the questions he asks. He achieved this in spades with his 2007 debut, The Shack, which not only featured a father reeling from the brutal murder of his young daughter but challenged perceptions by portraying God as a large, black woman who listens to funk. Heresy, some cried. But many more found the book inspirational, and the novel, which was initially self-published, has now sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, been compared to The Pilgrim's Progress in terms of impact, and is being made into a movie starring Octavia Spencer as God.

Young's new novel, Eve, is likely to prove similarly provocative with its interpretation of the creation narrative that suggests Adam, not Eve, triggered the Fall, which means that Eve—and therefore womankind—has for centuries been unfairly maligned. The gripping sci-fi-flavored story has as its central character a savagely wounded 15-year-old girl, a former child prostitute who witnesses creation from an in-between world of teleporting, angels, and evil mirrors. Eve is a "tall, fine-boned, ebony-black woman," God breast-feeds, and Adam is seen with a pregnant belly.

Those who were upset by The Shack will no doubt be outraged again. But Young, who says his fiction is grounded in decades of Bible study, welcomes such visceral responses. The 60-year-old, who was raised by missionaries in New Guinea, suffered abuse as a child and went on to attend seminary in Oregon, tells Goodreads why he is driven to challenge what he sees as polarizing and sexist in traditional interpretations of Scripture and how he hopes Eve will fuel a new discussion about gender roles and what it means to be human.

Goodreads: You've said Eve was the hardest book you've written because you were consolidating 40 years of work on this issue. How did you get to the point where you were ready to write it?

Wm. Paul Young: I don't think I would have had the confidence to tackle this without having written The Shack and Cross Roads [Young's second novel, released in 2012, about a selfish businessman who reconnects with God after falling into a coma], because it is such a monumental task to address something so embedded, and especially to do it inside a story, in fiction. That was why it was so arduous and such a hard piece of work, because I wanted a teenager to be able to read it and not get lost inside it, yet I wanted it to be true and coherent with the scholarship and with the text itself.

GR: Why was it so important for you to challenge the creation narrative of Genesis? What did you most want to do with this book?

WPY: For many of us, and I grew up evangelical fundamental Christian, the narrative has been pretty engrained. And the more I worked on the passages themselves, primarily pushed in that direction because of some major losses of my own, sexual abuse [an issue in the book] and those kinds of losses which were perpetrated by men, the more I came to the opinion that the narrative we have adopted is wrong. I grew up in a hierarchical fundamentalist religious perspective that really subordinated women and even in the last couple of decades has found new language to subordinate women. So I wanted to challenge the existing narrative because the polarizing language we use with regards to gender or relationships, to masculine and feminine, has created a huge amount of division and confusion. I saw a narrative for the entire passage that would allow a conversation to emerge that might get away from this polarity language and begin to relate to the question in terms of being human, not in terms of gender or ethnicity or social position. And I thought if I can find a way to make that narrative accessible, maybe it could change the conversation. And I really believe it can. So I'm kind of thrilled about it.

GR: How would you describe the existing narrative?

WPY: Oh, you know, Adam is created and then Eve is created, and she is beguiled by the serpent, who is the bad guy, and she tempts and draws Adam into an existence of separation from God. But the narrative predominantly places the blame at the feet of women, and that hasn't answered the question why have men done so much damage in the world.

GR: Why do you think this interpretation has endured for so long?

WPY: Because it's dominated by men, and translation has been dominated by men, and men have been the ones in power who have told the story. It's true not just of gender issues; it's true with ethnicity issues, and those in power create the narrative for history, whether they do it on purpose or not. I know job security impacts interpretation of Scripture more than any single thing. Genesis says that when the turning takes place, at least the woman turns to a relationship, which is more like the character and nature of God, but the man turns to the ground and the works of his hands, and so it becomes about territory and property. So, surprise, surprise, the narrative emerges that allows some sense of justification for men to continue to dominate and suppress the voice of women, and this is so wrong. Look at all the destruction and damage that men have brought to the world and continue to do so. So we need a different conversation.

GR: By depicting Eve as a black woman or having the images of God breast-feeding or Adam pregnant, are you trying to get people to think and perceive differently?

WPY: Yes, and the text allows for all of that. The word "mercy" is from the same root in Hebrew as the word "womb," and so every time you read "mercy" you are dealing with the maternal nature of God. And you've got language in Isaiah of God nursing or El Shaddai, which means the breasted one. We need to have a conversation that deepens our understanding of, and appreciation for, what being human is all about and that everybody, in my view, every single human being is a unique expression of the spectrum of both the masculine and feminine, because God is neither male nor female.

GR: How did you come up with the story itself—Lilly Fields, a teenage victim of child trafficking, horribly injured and abused, becomes a witness to creation and the fall and thinks she can somehow change history.

WPY: With the kind of history that I have, with growing up in a culture where sexual abuse was a part of my world before I was five years old, and it took me decades to work through the damage with any sense of coherency or integration, I have for many years been inside the conversation with regard to the healing of the human soul. So when I was looking at the story line, I was thinking, Eve is the character who frames the story, but who is the central character? The first time I began working with the idea, I was literally thinking, I want a 15-year-old girl to be able to read this story and not get lost. And I was thinking about the fact that sadly we live in a world where girls are constantly being trafficked, and they are objectified. And I was looking at my daughters and my granddaughters and thinking, How do I speak to this in a way that might change things for them? And not just for my girls but for the daughters of us all. Lilly allowed me huge freedoms because she allowed me to explore the process of healing itself.

GR: Some of the subject matter in your books, the suffering of Lilly or the murder of Missy in The Shack, is pretty traumatic. Is that part of what you want to do—to shake people?

WPY: I do, and there's no question about that. But even in Eve it's not graphic, and you don't need to be. You've got to pull people across the threshold enough so they understand what it is you're talking about. But I want my kids to be able to read this, and I want teenagers to be able to read this. People who read horror had an easier time with that than they did with The Shack because it is so human and so tangible and so wrenching, but not because it is graphic. And the same is true for Eve. I want a pretty strong boundary yet at the same time I don't want to be some Pollyanna person who thinks everything in the world is wonderful, because it's not. We have huge devastating problems that it is way past time to address.

GR: The voice of your teenage heroine is modern: She's unimpressed and skeptical about religion.

WPY: Yes, and it's because this younger generation is exactly there. They've got really good crap detectors, they're not excited about agenda, things are moving and changing so fast, they want something that matters that actually makes a difference. And her voice was not difficult to access. I'm surrounded by young women who give me lots of feedback, who love me, but aren't impressed.

GR: You wrote Eve in about seven months. How do you work when you start a new project?

WPY: I'm not a wake-up-in-the-morning, do-your-2,000-words kind of guy. I'm just like, all right, it's time, jump in the river, see what happens. Sometimes it could be 14 hours in a day. It's one of those zones where you lose track of time, you don't remember going to the bathroom or the last time you ate, you just get swept away in it, and it's a constant companion until it's done. To me it's as close as a man will ever get to delivering a baby, very much like a pregnancy—you have your morning sickness, and you waddle around, and you want to pull the baby out now, but it's not quite time, and the labor process is excruciating—and long for me.

GR: I wanted to ask about the book's graphic and colorful depictions of conception and labor. At one point God "plunges His hands into the holy mess... The labor was nearly finished. Then, with a piercing wrenching scream, Adonai raised above His head a newborn baby."

WPY: I have a high view of humanity, which is contrary to the evangelical heritage I grew up with, which had a very low view of humanity, so I am constantly trying to find ways to celebrate our humanity. And the whole conception and the birthing process is to me one of the most amazing miracles that exist in creation, and to find ways to celebrate it, I loved some of the depictions that emerged in the story line around the birthing process and the exultation of that, and that by itself grants a dignity and honor to women that is incredibly well deserved, and I'm thrilled about that, too.

GR: There was a very strong reaction to The Shack, with people accusing you of heresy and theological inaccuracy. What's it like to have such a visceral response?

WPY: I love a visceral response way more than I appreciate ambivalence. Someone who doesn't care, there's no real conversation there. At least with an angry person you can have a conversation, because when people are upset, something in them is being challenged enough to raise their ire, and that's an engaged process and opens up the possibility of really great conversation. I love the questions, I love the conversation, and I think it's our way forward.

GR: And with your background, you feel you can support your fiction with your knowledge?

WPY: I went to seminary, I went to bible school, and I've read voraciously. I love the deep philosophers and theologians and the people who people quote who they don't actually read, I actually read them. But I find that part of what I am to the community of faith as well as to the community of humanity is that I'm an interpreter. I grasp some of the big-picture stuff, and I find a way to say it in a way that my kids can understand it. And that's a very narrow thing, but it's important, and I'm thrilled to be in that space. My books are recognized as human books. They're not sectarian with an agenda to divide, but they're addressing fundamental human questions, and as a result I think they speak a language that crosses all these barriers, and that gives me hope.

GR: Goodreads member Ellen asks, "What sort of criticism or backlash do you expect from conservative Christians with the release of Eve?"

WPY: The same people who didn't read The Shack and didn't like it are not going to read Eve and not like it. And the beauty is they are my people. They really are. They are the people I grew up with, I know really well, and I know where they are coming from. I know what they are afraid of. So yeah, I anticipate I will get the same sort of serious 12-page dissertations against all the evils of the book that I've had before. But even with The Shack, I'd say that might be 1 or 2 percent, maybe 3 percent, of all the responses that I get. And even when people have come to where I've been speaking and intended to take a stand against me, they are overwhelmed by the stories of how this conversation has penetrated people and changed their world.

GR: The back of the book says it's an "unprecedented exploration of the creation narrative." You've never seen anything in all your reading like this?

WPY: The closest that I've gotten to someone who really did a great job on the Genesis narrative was Perelandra by C.S. Lewis, which remains one of my favorite stories. It's the second in the Space Trilogy that he did, and he posits Venus as the new Eden in which the Eve character makes the right choice. And Lewis is brilliant in that book. But he doesn't tackle the existing narrative; he just posits an alternative universe. But no, like I said, 40 years of work on all the issues and the problem passages, and it constantly drove me back to Genesis, really pushed me to explore the Hebrew and the historical theological positions about it and get a great grasp of the story line, and then draw together what people have written over the centuries and say, All right, let's see if we can't find a narrative that is coherent with the text and with the scholarship and that allows for a different conversation.

GR: Could you talk us through how The Shack became a book. You originally wrote it for your kids while you were working three jobs?

WPY: Yes, and our youngest was 13 at the time, so they weren't little kids. It started with Kim, my wife of nearly 36 years, who said to me, "Some day, as a gift for our kids, would you just put in one place how you think because you think outside the box." It wasn't until I was 50 that I felt my head and heart were integrated enough to write something that puts in one place how I think. So I wrote this story on the train going between my three jobs and ended up making 15 copies at Office Depot. I gave six to the kids and Kim and the rest to my friends and family. And those 15 copies did everything I ever wanted that book to do. I was thrilled with that. It never crossed my mind to publish it. I didn't know anything about publishing, and so to be involved in something that became such a global phenomenon was absolutely wonderful, humbling. You have the sense that, you know what, this is God's sense of humor. It's one of those stories where you just shake your head and laugh a lot.

GR: What does it feel like now that the movie is being made?

WPY: I was invited up to the set, and it is a surreal thing to walk around where they have built an entire shack, and they're filming and there's 50 crew and cast and you think, I made 15 copies of a little thing that I wrote for Christmas for my kids, and all of these people are employed because of this and bringing to this their abilities and their skill sets and their stories, and it's all being woven together into something that gets to be presented in a different way to the world again. It is so surreal, and I am so grateful.

GR: Who are your favorite authors and the writers who inspire you?

WPY: I grew up in the highlands of New Guinea, where we didn't have any technology, so I grew up with books and I read all the classics plus Edgar Rice Burroughs, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, I love the science fiction genre. And then of course the Inklings with C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers and G.K. Chesterton. And Malcolm Muggeridge, even in Punch magazine I loved his ability to turn a phrase and bite someone in the butt. And Mark Twain.

Then I started getting into some philosophy, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Jacques Ellul, who's not easy to read, but he's conceptually brilliant as a sociologist and a theologian. And then the mystic strain on the other side, people like Richard Rohr and Jean Vanier. Then back to Athanasius's On the Incarnation of the Word of God and people who were writing in the first few centuries. And also I'm a bit of a physics person. I love quantum theory and astronomy. I love it, just enough to be dangerous. That's why you have quantum fire in Cross Roads and fractals in The Shack and movement between worlds or parallel universes. And it's why you have this mixture of fantasy and science fiction and deep human psychology and theology all kind of merged together inside a story line.

GR: Goodreads member Katie asks, "Do you find it hard to write as a faith-filled man in a society that is becoming so secular and looking to follow popular opinion rather than stand for truth and right?"

WPY: So my first response to that is that I am convinced that secularism is halfway to Jesus from religion. I find huge amounts of resonance within secularism that religion has created inhibitions to address. So I don't find antagonism in the secular dimension of the world nearly as much as I find it within religious fundamentalism of any sort whether it's atheistic fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, or Islamic fundamentalism. With someone who is about being right, and not about loving, or about codified propositions and laws, then you've got a lot more pushback, and I find some comfort in the fact that Jesus found it the same way in the first century. It was the religious people who had the most problems with who he was and what he was saying. So I really don't. In fact, the more human that I am in terms of the conversation, the easier it is to have that conversation within the secular world.

GR: Goodreads member Kristin asks, "How do you feel when you hear your books have changed people's relationships with God?"

WPY: Oh my gosh, I hear that a lot. That's one of the greatest blessings that's ever happened, because I've been allowed to participate in whatever this is. And it really is the holy ground. People's stories are the holy ground, that's where you get to watch the activity of God inside a person's world in a way that burns away everything that's not real. So the greatest gift that's come out of this is the invitation to be inside other people's stories, and those stories are miraculous, they are just mind-boggling, and I've got thousands of them.

A few things that struck me from this interview:

When it comes to Paul Young's claim of having been sexually abused as a child, we have only his word to go on, but I'm increasingly inclined to believe he's telling the truth, because it would explain a lot. For instance, no normal man writes with a 15-year-old female reader in mind. To put it bluntly, there's something seriously wrong with Paul Young; his writing style is feminine; his subject matter appeals mainly to women (click on the link for the interview and look at the comments); he writes with 15-year-old female readers in mind; and worst of all, he promotes a feminine god. Mr. Young doesn't come across as a real man.

Mr. Young's list of favourite authors and literary genres is most revealing, and is more in keeping with a New Ager than a Christian. The Castalia House publishing firm is currently running a series of posts on its blog concerning the disproportionate amount of pedophilia within the science fiction community--including such big names as Arthur C. Clarke.

My reaction to the author of The Shack is similar to my reaction to the first two movies from writer and director Neil LaBute. In the Company of Men (1997) had two unpleasant men as the main characters, but the main female character was someone I could root for. However, Mr. LaBute's next movie, Your Friends & Neighbors (1998) had nothing but unpleasant characters; I can't speak for all myneighbours, but the characters in that movie don't resemble any of my friends. After seeing those movies--and especially, after the second one--I concluded that there was something seriously wrong with Mr. LaBute, who converted to Mormonism at Brigham Young University and has since left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Others have also noticed that there's something wrong with Mr. LaBute, as a glance at his Wikipedia entry will show. Two Neil LaBute movies were enough for me, and I haven't been interested in seeing anything else he's had to offer.

Paul Young openly denies the account of creation, apparently blaming belief in the literal truth of the account in Genesis chapters 1-2 for his sexual abuse as a child. As is always the case with religious liberals--especially those who have wormed their way from within the professing Christian church--those who believe in the literal truth of the Bible are always the bad guys. It should be kept in mind that to deny the biblical account of creation is to deny the very words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as well as the words of the Apostles, who were men directly commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ and were writing under divine inspiration.

By my count, Paul Young used the word "conversation" 11 times in the interview. That's the way it is in the Emerging Church in which Mr. Young would seem to naturally fit; it's always a "conversation" with Emergents, it's never "Thus saith the LORD."

Mr. Young boasts about his "high view of humanity," but whenever that occurs, it's always a see-saw--when the view of humanity goes up, the view of God goes down. The "God" of Paul Young's invention isn't worth worshipping.

Paul Young is an example of what Vox Day, author of the recent book SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police (2015) refers to as the three laws of Social Justice Warriors (SJWs)--the first law is the law that should be most kept in mind:

1. They always lie.
2. They always double down.
3. They always project.

Mr. Young, like a typical SJW, uses a false analogy when he places Christian fundamentalism on an equal level with atheistic and Islamic fundamentalism. He's also dishonest when he compares his own battles with fundamentalists with the religious leaders whom Jesus faced. In fact, the Pharisees of whom the Lord Jesus Christ was so critical weren't fundamentalists, but religious liberals; they didn't know (Matthew 22:29) or believe (John 5:45-47) the scriptures, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." (Mark 7:7)

Paul Young makes a snide remark about the "people who didn't read The Shack and didn't like it." What a liar. I, for one, did read The Shack and didn't like it. Go to my first post mentioned above, and click the links to see reviews by Christian authors who also read the book and didn't like it--including Mr. Young's neighbour James De Young, who turned his review into the book Burning Down the Shack (2010). After the extremely unpleasant experience of reading The Shack, this blogger has no intention of reading Eve; I'll wait for reviews by discerning Christians who have stronger stomachs than mine (and of course, who have actually read the book).

I can't emphasize strongly enough that Paul Young isn't someone coming from outside the professing evangelical Christian church, but from within. He's an alumnus of Canadian Bible College from its days in Regina; it's now Ambrose University, based in Calgary (search this blog under "Ambrose" for information on this increasingly unbiblical institution). Mr. Young presumbably knows what the truth is, but he's chosen to reject it; like those mentioned by Paul in the Acts 20 passage cited above, Paul Young is speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after himself.

"The Outhouse" (aka The Shack): One-Hour Blasphemizing

I recently finished reading William P. (he goes by his middle name of Paul) Young’s novel The Shack, which has been, and continues to be, sold in Christian bookstores, such as those associated with GoDeeper.ca (which now seems to have gone so deep that it's gone under), and promoted by organizations such as Youth With A Mission (YWAM). A number of good critiques of The Shack from a Biblical perspective are available online in print and/or audio form, including those by James De Young (a close friend of Paul Young); Berit Kjos; Albert Mohler; Eric Barger; The Berean Call; Larry DeBruyn (also at Herescope); Warren Smith; and Jeffrey Whittaker. The reader is invited to look these up for himself.

I just want to add a few points of my own on The Shack, which other reviewers may have missed or not emphasized. I won’t go into a detailed recapitulation of the plot; those who haven’t read the book can find this out from the reviews mentioned above.

In my opinion, The Outhouse would be a better name for the book (and a better place for it, if you get my drift). It's not only a bad book, but a dangerous one, because of the mixture of truth and error. Not everything that Paul Young says is wrong; for instance, where he writes about the love within the Godhead (e.g., pp. 101-102), and about Jesus being the centre of everything, I agree with him. However, readers of The Shack are being deceived if they think they're getting closer to the God of the Bible while they're actually pursuing a relationship with the false god of The Shack. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth--John 4:24. If The Shack had been published in the 1980s, Christians would have recognized its god as a New Age counterfeit; now the counterfeit is being promoted within the professing evangelical church.

The front cover of the book carries a quote by Eugene Peterson, author of the perverted paraphrase The Message, saying that The Shack will be to this generation what The Pilgrim's Progress was to an earlier generation. I thought that the endorsement was quite appropriate, given that Dr. Peterson is famous for writing blasphemous fiction. In my view, The Shack is to The Pilgrim's Progress what The Message is to the Bible. Dr. Peterson's comparison of The Shack with The Pilgrim's Progress is rather strange, however, given that John Bunyan's book is filled with quotes from the Bible, while Mr. Young's book barely mentions Scripture (maybe Mr. Young hasn't read the Bible).

Paul Young, the son of Canadian missionary parents, claims to have been verbally abused by his father, and physically abused by the New Guinea natives among whom his parents were ministering. This was an alarm bell for me right off the bat, because it suggests that the novel was written as therapy. As Rod Serling discovered when he invited amateurs to send in scripts for The Twilight Zone, when writing is done as therapy, the result is usually garbage, and The Shack is no exception. I found it badly written and a tedious read; its narrative form reminded me of Edward Bellamy’s 19th Century utopian socialist novel Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888), a similarly tedious read.

I don’t have children, so I didn’t get sucked in by the emotion of the story (and there’s so much emotion on display in The Shack that I thought it must have been written by a woman--the main characters are constantly laughing, crying, kissing, or hugging, which I found nauseating). The serial killer has become a tired device in books, movies and television shows by now. That aspect of the plot isn’t really important, anyway--it’s what Alfred Hitchcock called a "McGuffin," a device to keep the plot moving. The important part of the book begins when Mack, the main character (otherwise known as Paul Young) returns to the shack (p. 80 ff.), and the purpose of the book is for Paul Young to propound his heretical theology of universal reconciliation.

Mr. Young states that the gods of manmade religion are just better versions of the men who imagine them, but Mr. Young is guilty of this himself. From the beginning, I couldn’t stand the main character. The person that Mack reminds me of is Canadian Tire Guy (go here for a detailed examination of this pathetic individual). Mack doesn’t show reverence to the god of The Shack (in the Bible, people who encounter God always fall on their faces), probably because the god of The Shack is as much a wuss as his/her creator, and isn’t worthy of reverence. The god of The Shack has no wrath, in contrast to the God of the Bible (e.g. ...he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him (John 3:36)).

At no time did I ever sense or see any indication that Mack was actually born again, either before or during the events described.

I felt unclean in my spirit while reading The Shack, especially in those parts where Mr. Young puts words in Papa’s (i.e. God the Father’s) mouth. I thought that some of the language used by Papa to be vulgar and offensive. Mr. Young has a lot of nerve in doing this, and he should be trembling at the judgement that will await him if he doesn’t repent. (Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. (Proverbs 30:6))

Mr. Young's "Jesus" says that "God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things" (p. 112). The first part of that statement is true (e.g. Acts 17:28, Colossians 1:15-17), but to say that God dwells in all things is to express an animistic, rather than a Christian, world view.

Mr. Young declares that when God sent Jesus to the cross, that mercy triumphed over justice (p. 164). On the contrary, Jesus fulfilled his Father’s requirements for justice at the cross. (And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission (Hebrews 9:22))

Mr. Young states that there is mutual submission within the Trinity (pp. 121-124, 145), but I don’t find this in Scripture. Rather, the Lord Jesus submits his will to that of His Father (Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:42), and always does the things that please the Father (John 5:30; 8:29). And where in the Bible do you find mutual submission between God and man (e.g., pp. 124, 145-146), as promoted by Mr. Young?

If you want to know how far the level of discernment in the professing evangelical church of Jesus Christ has sunk, look no further than the statement by Papa near the end of the book that by sending Jesus to the cross, "I am now fully reconciled to the world" (p. 192). I’ve come across such a statement only once before, and that was in the made-for-television movie Jesus of Nazareth. That movie was originally broadcast in 1977, and an expanded version was broadcast on NBC in 1979. In the expanded version, "Jesus" says "My father in heaven is reconciled to the world." In the late 1970s, the heresy was coming from outside the church; now it’s being promoted from within. Jesus of Nazareth was written by Anthony Burgess, who stated in interviews that he didn’t believe the Gospels (he regarded the Gospel of John as a "highly romantic fable"). Bible-believing Christians denounced the film, which is now forgotten (Carl McIntire provided an analysis of Jesus of Nazareth in the Christian Beacon of April 12, 1979, and subsequently published a booklet on the film and its blasphemous content).

According to Mr. Young, reconciliation is a two-way street (p. 192), but the words of Mr. Young and Mr. Burgess are exactly the opposite of what the Bible says: All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. II Corinthians 5:18-20 (NIV); And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things on earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight. Colossians 1:20-22

Near the end of The Shack, Mack visits his now-dead father, supposedly in heaven, and, reminiscent of the practice known as "inner healing," becomes reconciled with him (pp. 215-216). Mack’s father is described as a child of God, although there’s no evidence that he repented before his death. This passage not only promotes necromancy, which is described in Scripture as an abomination (Deuteronomy 18:10-12), but is a denial of Hebrews 9:27--And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

This part of the book also includes a slight whiff of homosexuality, even within the Godhead. When Mack leaves his father at the end of this passage, he kisses him on the lips (p. 216). As if this isn’t revolting enough, a few pages later (p. 220), "Jesus" kisses his father (Papa) on the lips, which I found grossly offensive, to put it mildly. I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine what kind of person would write this. In a recent post at Slice of Laodicea, Ingrid Schlueter commented that when religious leaders start touting the feminine side of God, support for homosexuality isn’t far behind. I predict that the promotion of homosexuality will be more "out of the closet" in the sequel to The Shack (with all the enthusiasm and sales that his first novel generated, can there be any doubt that Paul Young will publish at least one sequel?), along with whatever other heresies and blasphemies Mr. Young will see fit to serve up. Claiming to be a victim of abuse doesn’t give Paul Young the right to blaspheme; may God grant Mr. Young repentance unto life.