And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation withoutreference tosin, to those who eagerly await Him. – Hebrews 9:27-28
On Wednesday, May 1, 2019, divorce law reformers were again in front of the Texas House of Representatives, testifying in an effort to get the repeal of unilateral (non-consensual) “no-fault” grounds to advance from that committee, a bill identical to the one that had been voted out of the same committee two years before, whereupon that bill died a mysterious death before it could be brought to the floor of the full house for a vote, and before the legislature adjourned for two years. This time, related bills under discussion, HB922 and HB926 occupied about an hour of the late evening 3-hour session for testimony, while one bill seeking to protect wedding officiants from (homosexualist) liability by allowing them to recuse themselves, where conscience before God would be violated, (HB2109) preceded this debate and took more than 90 minutes of that time. During the discussion of the supposedly “homophobic” recusal bill, one recently-elected millennial lawmaker from a district north of Austin responded to the testimony of Cecilia Wood, a family law attorney of 32 years, there to testify in support of HB922 eliminating non-consensual “no-fault” grounds for divorce, but also a supporter of the right to recuse from officiating weddings based on religious conscience, as follows (@ 8:30):
Rep. Talarico: “Two comments and a question: of course, allusion to the civil war (sic) important, but there was also a right side to that war and a wrong side to that war. Second, you mentioned Christians staying home. There are many Christians on this dias, including me who don’t hold discriminatory beliefs….”
“Woke” social justice writers like Ms. Held are largely responsible for the extrabiblical notions of young Mr. Talarico and too many of his generation:
(1) Belief that one can be a follower of Christ without embracing and obeying His teachings on morality and sexual ethics, as plainly described in the bible – both on a homosexual and heterosexual basis.
(2) The belief that biblically-immoral sexual behavior choices can constitute an “immutable” identity which can then be parlayed into valid comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1860’s and 1960’s that were based on race, biological sex and religion, i.e. “a right side to that war and a wrong side to that war…” to pass prudent moral selectivity off as “discrimination”. (It should be noted, however, that homosexualism is quickly becoming a sect of the larger secular humanist de facto state-religion of the United States ruling political class.)
(3) The asserted moral superiority of “social justice” Christianity over a holiness-based discipleship that better comports with the full teachings of Christ, the apostles and the early church fathers, especially in the area of sexual ethics. The fact remains that this humanist pseudo-religion is the very antithesis of actual Christian discipleship in every respect.
(4) That false analogies (in general) are excusable for the greater “good”.
To this last point, a woman’s purported “right” to disobey Christ (such as by divorcing her husband in a pagan civil court) is obscenely compared with Martha’s sister, Mary choosing to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from Him, in the RHE illustration we’ve opened this post with.
While this testimony was occurring in Austin, TX, another kind of eternal tragedy was occurring in Tennessee in the Evans household, a covenant holy matrimony union of 16 years, with two children.
Dan and Rachel Evans wedding, 2003
The news site, AL.com wrote on April 19: “During treatment for an infection, Rachel began exhibiting unexpected symptoms. Doctors found that her brain was experiencing constant seizures. She is currently in the ICU. She is in a medically induced coma while the doctors work to determine the cause and solution…” By May 1, her condition was deteriorating due to brain-swelling after she failed to come out of the coma. As reported by CNN: “…Over the next 10 days and transfers between three facilities, Evans was comatose. Doctors began weaning Evans off coma medication Tuesday, but she did not return to an alert state during this process…Thursday [the coincidental date of the committee vote in Texas], Evans had ‘sudden and extreme’ changes in her vitals. A medical team found “extensive swelling of her brain” and took emergency action”.
That emergency action was unavailing, and she died on Saturday, May 4. Out of respect for the Evans family and their grieving process, we will be publishing this blog a day or two after her funeral.
This is the sort of dias-sitting “Christians” that Rep. Talarico was referring to in his hearing remarks were, no doubt, influenced in great measure by the evangelical darling of CNN, the Huffington Post, and a host of other liberal publications, secular and evangelical. SIFC has a grown, married daughter four years older than Mrs. Evans, who also started adopting RHE’s views around the time her writings gained prominence on CNN, and quoting similar homosexuality-sympathizing “Christian” writers such as Jen Hatmaker. This tragedy hits very close to home for that reason. It’s normal for young adults who have been raised in Christian homes to go through a season of questioning, but in these evil last days, it can be eternally fatal to purchase a home there (and turn it into a real estate office, as RHE did, with the backing of crooked investors). Hopefully, SIFC’s daughter is “just renting”, and moves to a home with a Rock foundation in time.
Mrs. Evans joined Soros-funded Baptist feminists (Karen Swallow-Prior, Beth Moore and an acclaimed homosexual journalist) in the leftist smearing of Rev. Paige Patterson, resulting in his removal from his leadership posts in the Southern Baptist Convention last year because of his fullybiblical anti-divorce views which rejected the morally rabid “abuse” doctrines of this evangelical feminist cult. She was quoted by Baptist News Globalat the time: “Patterson’s comments need a swift and thorough rebuke from the SBC and all Christians of good faith.” At least indirectly, Mrs. Evans was the epitome of the “rent-an-evangelical” cadre that Soros operatives openly bragged about recruiting.
The following was typical of her views on man’s divorce, finding purported legal “dissolution” a necessary “right choice” to prevent the exploitation of women, and imagining the true protection of women under the biblical leadership of her husband “legalistic”….rather than the metaphysical impossibility Jesus taught that divorce of an original holy matrimony union actually is. In effect, RHE was a popular writer because she excused hardness of heart, telling her fans what they wanted to hear – at a time when nearly 70% of unilateral “no-fault” divorce petitions are filed by women, and almost nobody takes provable abuse through the criminal justice system, as the bible would instead direct.
Jesus’ words about divorce were intended to protect women who were being exploited by the system. That they have been turned into legalistic laws that often harm women is a tragedy. A marriage is not more sacred than the people in it. Sometimes divorce is the right choice.
— Rachel Held Evans (1981-2019) (@rachelheldevans) April 29, 2018
“…but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
“Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!” – Jesus, Matt. 18:7-8
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. – Romans 1:32
“standerinfamilycourt” would vigorously challenge the late Mrs. Evans’ assertion about the “purpose of Jesus’ words on marriage”. Rather than protecting women from “exploitation by the system”, those words were to protect society as a whole from self-absorbed individualism, and keep fathers firmly in authority over the generations of their families, per God’s design.
Challenging the authority of scripture on such a matter, and then (apparently) dying unrepentant is very eternally costly, at least according to one early church bishop who was martyred early in the 2nd century….
Meeting this fate while still very young illustrates the extreme danger of achieving broad influence and acclaim which is built on a foundation of sand. It’s a mercy that God sometimes removes high-impact siren voices from our midst. When He must do so while they are so young, it’s a strong sign of how many they were leading astray, and of His foreknowledge of whether they would ever repent. Apparently, Mrs. Evans knew John Stonestreet of the Colson Center (Breakpoint.org) very well because they were from the same town in Tennessee, and (while he can’t quite bring himself to vocalize it), he is wondering if she ever repented before she passed into eternity last week. We can only hope so.
We are bracing for the howl we’re going to get from the antinomians out there, as we did when remarriage adulteress Joey Feek passed away young and unrepentant in her “marriage” to another woman’s legally-estranged husband. That blog post elicited comments from hundreds of people for days. We didn’t write that piece to be “mean” to the divorced-and-remarried, nor will we apologize for reminding people that all of the apostles warned repeatedly about the possibility of wandering away from the faith, as directly evidenced by the levels of repentance, and spirit of obedience to Christ’s commandments, in the life under discussion. If those who would take offense insist on doing so based on extrabiblical denominational dogma, their souls are in their own hands. If the past is any indication, some will read this and insist that SIFC has “judged” and personally consigned these erring souls to hell, as if feeling deputized by God to do so. This is irrational (to be as kind as possible in expressing it). What SIFC has done is tell the audience what God’s word and early church fathers clearly said about similar situations.
“standerinfamilycourt”, as Mrs. Evans did, feels called to the role of a teacher of God’s word on the family, approaching it with a holy fear of God, and ever-mindful of the stern warning from Christ’s brother, James, about the eternal impact on the audience….
“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. “
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
For by wise counsel you will wage your own war, And in a multitude of counselors there is safety.
– Proverbs 24:6
As soon as the speaker list was released, this blogger knew that this conference was simply not to be missed, come hell or high water (SIFC literally experienced a little of both before arriving there, but that’s a story for another day). “Standerinfamilycourt” has always had the greatest respect and admiration for its sponsor, The Ruth Institute. Many of the scheduled speakers have long been personal heroes (and heroines). The trip to Lake Charles is easily 15 hours each way by car, but that was no obstacle. This will by no means be a post about “buyer’s remorse”. There is no question that some very important connections were made at the Summit, and much cross-awareness “landed” for the participants, SIFC included.
And, there’s no question that what transpired in that venue absolutely fulfilled the objectives for the gathering that the Ruth Institute promised in the promotional information…
“Discover why the Church has been right all along about marriage, family, and sexual morality!
Stories from:
Children of Divorce
Abandoned Spouses
Children of Same-Sex Parents
Refugees from the Gay Lifestyle
Learn what it’s costing: in child trauma, clergy sex abuse scandals, runaway government power, and more.”
But…a day after returning, some of us were still feeling the effects of a few unmet hopes, including the action-oriented hope that it would be considerably more “shirt-sleeves” and interactive in its format, at least for the sessions involving “activist” panels. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse was careful to explain to participants that The Ruth Institute is not a lobbying organization (according to IRS rules for 501c3 and 501c4 educational organizations, TRI being the former). However, the distinction seems to be more philosophical than strictly legal in how “Ruth” defines her mission and organizes the organization’s engagement with issues and social change. For example, according to the website:
“In the summer of 2013, the Supreme Court’s decisions in the DOMA and Proposition 8 cases signaled a new level of governmental commitment to the Sexual Revolution. Dr. Morse and the team at the Ruth Institute concluded that the opponents of natural marriage hold a commanding position on the legal and political fronts. At that time, the Ruth Institute made a strategic decision to enter into the cultural and social fray in a new way.
“With Ruth’s renewed focus on the social and cultural arenas (as opposed to the political and legal arenas)…”
Tidy strategy, this is: hoping to drive culture change in order to ultimately reform the vicious “teacher” that this law has become —except that, all the signs of the times ( for example, 70 years elapsed since Israel’s re-establishment as a nation, the emergence in Europe of mandatory RFID chipping of corporate employees, Russia’s renewed aggression, Trump’s move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple) ….seem to point to the Lord returning and rapturing away His church long before such a strategy might ever come to fruition, after which, the bible tell us the influence of the Holy Spirit will be removed from society remaining on earth, and the Antichrist will have a brief reign that will make all of this moral concern seem wildly irrelevant anyway. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that the U.S. has already been “given over”, as described in Romans 1 because heterosexual moral reform has been rejected, especially in the church, long before the Windsor / Perry / Obergefell decisions of 2013-2015. Those of us who are impatient about the timeline of family law reform are impatient mostly because the souls of loved ones remain in serious jeopardy in the meantime. Some of us want the drag queen fired as “teacher” yesterday, and a morally worthy role model hired in “her” place for the sake of our kids and grandkids. No society in all of recorded history has survived more than 3 or 4 generations in the utterly bankrupt moral climate we have now, almost all of it driven by nefarious family laws and institutional acquiescence to them.
What’s largely forgotten in that 2013 strategic thought process at TRI is the need to change not one, but two grossly sinful cultures that sprang from the Sexual Revolution, the sodomy-as-“marriage” culture, and the sequential-polygamy-as-“marriage” culture (still seen by most in Christendom as what TRI refers to above as “natural marriage”). As our friend, Pastor Jack Shannon pointed out in his 2017 book, Contra Mundum Swagger, those heavily invested in the second culture (relying on either RCC “annulment” or evangelical hypergrace) tend to see the first culture as befalling them from out of nowhere, and by no fault (pun not intended) of their own, seeing it fatalistically as a “test” or “cross to bear” rather than as an immediate call to individual and collective repentance. It was not lawful for Herod to have Herodias, his (living) BROTHER’S wife, and a man of God gave up his own saved life to warn their souls. It is no more lawful today for a few of these repeal movement leaders to have their current mates, while SIFC has not shrunk back from warning them in various ways (and is probably not on the short list of suitable conference speakers for that reason alone).
The Lord may not continue to forbear for two or three more decades for culture to change, under a strategy of incremental influence, in order “ease into” legal reforms. It might be different if we were not citizens of a constitutional republic that His extreme favor gave us in the first place, and which we are now basically squandering when we fear reprisal, or fear suffering persecution and loss of comforts – steep costs that the early church joyfully bore in order to introduce the world to true Christian morality, though they had little or no formal voice to the Graeco-Roman government systems at all.
For anyone, with both a representative vote and a state of living estranged from their true, God-joined spouse, to compare a reticent approach toward contemporary government engagement with the example set by the early church is just not an apples-to-apples comparison.
Wrote Anglican church historian Kenneth E. Kirk in the 1940’s:
“What is more astounding than the mere fact that the early Church taught and practiced the complete indissolubility of marriage for so long, is the fact that the Church chose to take its stand against the strong contemporary lax social and legal attitudes toward divorce which prevailed so universally all about them. The Church, today, feels that it is on the horns of a dilemma, because so many divorcees are coming to her for help and encouragement. Shall she accommodate the Scriptures to the apparent need of the unfortunate divorcees, or shall she uphold the Biblical standard of the indissolubility of marriage for any cause while faithfully discharging her duty to such distressed individuals? Every church of today which considers the lowering of its divorce standards should remember that the early Church stood true to the Biblical doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage in a world that was pagan and strongly opposed to the moral and marriage standards of the New Testament. Not only did the Church maintain her stand on the indissolubility in the early centuries, she changed the attitude and standards of the whole world toward it. Even today the whole Church of Christ and the entire western world is still reaping the rich benefits of that heritage. Shall the Christian Church of today be less courageous and faithful than the Church of the early centuries of the Christian era? Does she not under God have the same spiritual resources?
“There were other grievous social evils in the early Christian centuries. Slavery enveloped the Roman Empire of that age, yet the Christians did not set themselves to change the thinking of the masses against it, but they did set themselves to change the thinking of the masses toward marriage and divorce. Why did they not attack slavery with the same vehemence? The reason was that the Apostles had not received a “thus saith the Lord” from Christ respecting it. They had, however, received such in the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. No sect or school of philosophy is known to have influenced the early Church in this teaching. From whence, then, did she get the teaching? Certainly she received it from the teaching of the Gospels and from the teaching of the Apostles, who had earlier conveyed the same orally (as well as in writing) to the leaders of the early Church who succeeded them.”
(Marriage and Divorce. 2nd ed. London, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.,1948)
For the action-oriented participants (who would like to stay God’s hand in the timing of His finalized judgment), important collaboration items had to be relegated to the conference breaks, such as asking Fr. / Dr. Sullins how one might get important outdated research refreshed, or undertake a child-outcome study for a sociological group that has never been addressed before (children of biblical standers being segregated out from those of generic and incomparable “single parents” because the former are likely skewing that measure by their growing numbers and superior child outcomes from walking out biblical principles in the home).
Perhaps there’s no avoiding the fact that panelists addressing the hydra-headed issue of what’s being done to reform unilateral no-fault divorce laws (and resulting injustices) would have a more difficult time being brief enough to allow feedback and interaction afterwards in a uniform allotted time slot, which was 30 minutes total. This seemed to be less of a problem with the personal testimony panels where there was ample time for some follow-up, in most cases. As it turned out, there was no time for such in the “activist” panel led by Matthew Johnston, Jeff Morgan and Christopher Brennan (~47 minutes into this link). The personal testimonies, while significant and powerful, mostly represent the symptoms of the disease, while the “activist panel” (in effect) represents a proposal for the surgical approach to excising the disease that is causing the cascade of symptoms. Yes, this does involve a process for influencing policy and legislation to some extent, but the IRS has given 501(c)3’s a little bit of leeway for potential indirect involvement in this:
501(c)(3) organizations ARE allowed to take part in small amounts of political lobbying. There are two ways to determine how much nonprofits can legally lobby: 1) Insubstantial Part Test and, 2) Expenditure Test. In the first option, an organization’s lobbying activities cannot constitute a substantial part of the organization’s total activities and expenditures in any tax year. This option is somewhat vague, as it does not define “lobbying activities,” “substantial amount,” or how that amount will be calculated. The second option is somewhat clearer. The Expenditure Test defines permissible lobbying activities and measures an 501(c)(3)’s lobbying activities only by the amount of money spent on lobbying activities.
Surely, providing an annual venue for meaningful strategy development, and possible nonprofit mentoring (or incubation) for an allied-but-separate non-profit that could take a more activist role which complements TRI’s core strategic mission would not get TRI into any difficulty with the IRS, nor divert significant resources from “Ruth’s” preferred core activities. The fact that TRI awarded an “Activist” recognition this year is a good demonstration of that point. Quite often, when a problem seems complex and intractable, effective solutions are “both / and” rather than “either / or”, meaning that involved organizations can certainly specialize where they feel their strengths are, while maintaining supportive ties with other organizations whose strengths may be complementary but not duplicative.
Perhaps some time allowance is necessary for “ice-breaking” when diverse allied interests and players (who started out not knowing each other very well) begin coming together for the first time, but the road home from this conference felt as though an untamed “adhocracy” will continue to be aimed in 2019-20 at the political realm, rather than a purposeful coordination of collaborating efforts based on experiences shared, and consensus-finding. This seemed like a sad waste of the rare and valuable face-to-face time we were afforded in Lake Charles. Hopefully, some of this occurred at the smaller dinners that were organized for the invited speakers outside the formal agenda. From SIFC’s seat, it appeared that some panelists were not in consensus with each other about specifics of the way forward. When the other side plays dirty (as we know they do), one option indeed is to wait until conditions are more favorable before ever engaging, another is to peck away randomly which isn’t likely to be very successful, and the third way is to go after them with a solid, coordinated and well-vetted battle plan that takes into account a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that is updated at least annually. One possible solution for the next conference might be some breakout time by interest area.
We all tend to come to these events with a few individualized sub-agendas, in addition to the main agenda items. SIFC is the first to admit that what will be gleaned from this year’s Summit participation and deemed most valuable is steps to meaningful reform that will come sooner rather than later, and divert that many more precious souls from hell (at least, on account of dying while in a sinful subsequent union). Another sub-agenda, for somebody else, might be gleaning whatever will most quickly lessen parental alienation or reduce onerous child support payments. Some standers in the room might prefer for divorce to remain cheap, easy and certain so that their prodigal spouse has an easier path to repentance some day. Some individuals will be looking to make or continue a livelihood from the reform effort. These things will, of course, cause some differences in preferred approach and timeline to reform. Possibly, a sub-agenda for the Summit sponsors is to be inclusive of non-Catholics while not doing anything that might unnecessarily alienate the material support of RCC hierarchy for the organization’s efforts and vision. Can a mutually-supportable action path be found through all these sub-agendas? Possibly, but not if insufficient interactive discussion time is allotted among key stakeholders in the program agenda! This is the first major conference in recent memory attended by SIFC where some sort of general participant evaluation feedback was not requested.
It did not take long for word to get out among the covenant marriage stander community of this #RuthSummit, and of the livestream video resources that Family Research Council staffers so generously provided. “Standerinfamilycourt” awoke to an email from a male leader in the movement Tuesday morning, sharing that another abandoned, standing husband had emailed most of the faithful pastors in the movement, and several other standers. This young husband who originated the email chain had been texting me on Friday, eager to get to the livestreaming links before the opening dinner got underway. All of this is truly a blessing to that large community, who has (admittedly) mixed views on the actual repeal of unilateral, no-fault divorce laws and the biblically-appropriate level government engagement by Christ-followers.
“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to wrap up this post by giving a hearty “thumbs-up” to a few points in the long list of positives from #RuthSummit 2019 over this past weekend:
1.) Auspicious, God-orchestrated timing: As we sat at dinner Friday night, while Texas activist Jeff Morgan was receiving TRI’s award as “Activist of the Year”, SIFC received a text on the cell phone: Both HB922 and HB926 had been scheduled for their committee hearings on only 2 business days’ notice. SIFC is “sure” there was no mal-intent with this timing, which is “done all the time”, we hear. Little did House committee chairman Harold Dutton know that his maneuver increased the joy of the evening, as the veritable who’s who of activists in were in the same room to receive the news while gathered over dinner. This would include Dr. Morse, Leila Miller, Matthew Johnston, Chris Brennan, blogger Kristi Davis, Dr. Stephen Baskerville, and new repeal enthusiast Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon. Just picture the phones ringing off the hook in Austin all day today and tomorrow, and the prayers going up for some of these folks who will be there in Austin testifying tomorrow at 10:30 local time.
The timing actually helped increase the chances that if both bills fail against the very long odds of getting to the House floor for a timely vote, there will at least be solid backing for simultaneously introducing them in both chambers (with needed improvements) in 2021, next legislative session. The Lord works in mysterious ways. – praise Him!
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. – Gen. 50:20
Dear Readers, here is the list of committee members and their contact information.
ACTION REQUEST: Would you consider being a part of history-making and giving each of these committee members a timely call, asking them to support both bills? You do not necessarily have to be from Texas to weigh in, but if you are from Texas, and either you or somebody you know from Texas has a restored marriage after a Texas “no-fault” divorce, this will be very important information to leave with the staffer when you call, in order to deliver a strong message that “insupportability” is nothing more than a subjective legal fiction on which no law depriving citizens of their parental or property rights should be based in a constitutional republic.
The current legislative session in Texas adjourns for two years at the end of May. If you are interested in watching tomorrow’s proceedings live tomorrow, Wednesday, May 1, try this link (no promises they will actually have it on camera, but there’s a chance). Alternatively, it’s likely Jeff Morgan will be videoing capturing the testimony for upload to you his youtube channel as he did two years ago.
UPDATE: Testimony on the bill to repeal one spouse’s subjective and unsubstantiated declaration of “insupportability” as a ground for divorce in Texas was heard on May 2, 2019. On May 3, the bill failed to achieve the necessary votes in the Democrat-dominated Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee to move on to the Calendar Committee, despite having done so two years earlier, and despite dozens of covenant marriage standers calling these committee members’ offices in support of HB 922. It will now have to be introduced again into the 87th legislative session in 2021.
2.) Wonderful connections with another strong group of Catholic standers was forged: We already have solid connections with Catholic standers through Bai MacFarlane’s wonderful ministry, Mary’s Advocates. SIFC learned at the Summit that Covenant Keepers has been working closely with a well-established group of Louisiana standers who have formed a weekly group locally called “Hosea’s Hope” (no apparent online presence). These standers shared another tidbit of good news: it appears that Covenant Keepers has worked recently to cleanse its local group leadership of adulterously remarried leaders, which would be an update on our earlier reporting, if confirmed.
3. ) The value that covenant marriage standers bring to the effort to save biblical marriage was publicly recognized at the Summit. Dr. Morse asked all the standers in the room to “stand” right after the panel on marital abandonment spoke. We were able then to identify each other, perhaps half a dozen people. Hard copies of this recent blog post , “7 Important Contributions Covenant Standers Are Making Toward the Repeal of Forced Divorce”were brought to the conference for handouts, and Dr. Morse very graciously gave us impromptu table space in the venue. She told the invited stander speakers, “when the history is written that this ship got turned around, y’all are going to be mentioned…” This was said in front of some of the most important Christian scholars we have today by one of the most important Christian scholars we have today, and it went out over the Family Research Council media machine. It was a mighty proud moment for standers everywhere. Dr. Baskerville gets a lot of feedback from the (justifiably) angry MGTOW crowd (“men going their own way”). It must have been refreshing to hear for once about grace-filled men and women going GOD’s way under the same profoundly unjust circumstances.
4.) Dr. Baskerville hit yet another one “out of the ballpark” (opening wide the eyes of some very influential people). These were the exact words of a stunned Dr. Gagnon on his Facebook wall after hearing Stephen Baskerville’s riveting 40-minute address:
“Dr. Stephen Baskerville, professor of government at Patrick Henry College, hitting his critique of “No Fault Divorce” out of the ballpark. It is one of the most anti-constitutional measures imaginable, incentivizing family break ups, rejecting basic standards of justice, and giving the state unlimited tyranny…”
Most serious standers who follow our pages were not surprised by this at all, since it is quite customary for the blunt Dr. B to hit things out of the ballpark every time the mic is on. That said, there is a famous moment in the movie, “Amazing Grace” where MP William Wilberforce has conspired with the head of the Tories to take one well-heeled set on a party-barge tour of the harbor, complete with powdered wigs, wine, hors-d’oeuvres, and a string quartet. SIFC could go on to describe the proceedings, but it would be more fun to just let the readers watch it instead, while emphasizing that in no way are any Summit leaders or participants being compared with the insensitive lot in the movie, but the “turning point” feel of that moment is still quite similar indeed. Picture Dr. Baskerville on the bridge of the sailing vessel that carried the slaves – not hard, is it?
5.) The language of the thought leaders in the room appeared to be slowly changing for the better (and root causation finally being acknowledged out loud). Dr. Gagnon also gave an excellent address Saturday afternoon. Although it was (by title) about homosexualist twisting of the scripture, he had a lot to say about holy matrimony. Across several of the speakers, we started hearing a bit less about the looser “standard” of “permanence”, and considerably more about the far more demanding state of indissolubility that Christ laid out. Desirably, we also started to hear a lot about the one-flesh state, notably at ~ 11:55 in Dr. Gagnon’s address, when he says this about the one-flesh state (echoing Paul in Ephesians 5): “…so whatever you do to your spouse, if it’s a negative thing,it’s a self-inflicted wound.” And again, at ~ 21:30, and at ~40:00 where Dr. G comes oh-so-close to appropriately recognizing the instantaneous, supernatural, metaphysical nature of the God-joining that is the very Creational basis for indissolubility, and for “remarriage” while an original spouse still lives, constituting papered-over adultery 100% of the time. It’s not the repeated physical uniting that creates the one-flesh state, according to Jesus in Matthew 19:6,8 and Paul in Ephesians 5:31, it’s God’s actual hand in the wedding itself that permanently does so. If this were properly acknowledged, the witness against homosexual “marriage” (and practice) would become so much more powerful than any attempts to “rank” soul-corroding sexual sin.
At ~ 18:00: “When Jesus talked about marriage in Matthew 19 as being indissoluble, permanent, lifelong…a vision largely lost by the church, which is the beginning of our problems. We would never be at this place on the issue of homosexuality and transgenderism if we hadn’t already lost the battle on the longevity and permanence of marriage…if we had not caved on those issues, we would not have come to this extreme point, and we are at an extreme point now.”
(SIFC must still respectfully disagree with any attempt articulated between 22:00 and 40:00 to claim that one sexual sin is “worse” than another, when Paul said this in 1 Cor. 6:18-20, about heterosexual defilement of the temple of the Holy Spirit, and warned at least twice, “do not be deceived” : both receive the same eternal outcome if unrepented, we’ve lived to see that both equally undermine the biblical family, hence entire societies, sending the unrepentant to hell in both cases. SIFC believes such a philosophy is a large part of the reason we “lost the battle on the longevity and permanence of marriage”, as Dr. Gagnon had earlier put it.)
We believe it’s the patient, continued voice of the scholar-standers who are respectfully challenging the comfortable presumptions of the more conventional and acclaimed scholars and bringing about this necessary evolution in the latter.
6.) There also seemed to be a “lessons-learned” readiness to jettison the unhelpful idea of 5 years ago, that the sexuality debates can leave God out and prevail. The best indication of this maturation, of course, is the theme for the Summit: “Why the Church’s Teaching Was Right All Along” (that is, “right all along” if you ignore the 12th century fabrication of “annulment” doctrine under Pope Innocent III, and you also ignore Luther’s humanistic 16th century innovations.) The absurdity of this notion should have been obvious on its face in 2013: “we battle not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities and dark forces in the heavenly realm.”
7.) Satan so feared the impact of the #RuthSummit livestreaming result that he felt compelled to harass the Family Research Council technicians on both days. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit was invited in both days in prayers to open and close the sessions. Organizing this kind of an event around a controversial topic that brings together people of different faiths, but the same biblical truth, is never as easy as it looks. This one came off very well, and was an endless encouragement to thousands of covenant marriage standers around the world who were not able to attend, but wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
We are looking forward to next year already!
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames. – Sir Thomas More
Given his 1535 martyrdom for refusing to recognize Henry VIII’s divorce and adulterous remarriage to Ann Boleyn, does it seem at least a little reasonable to believe that Sir Thomas More might have been deeply troubled about the Marxist social engineering a successor Lord Chancellor named Gauke is currently cramming down the throats of over 80% of the UK citizens, a sample of whom resoundingly told Parliamentrecently they don’t want 6-month forced family-shredding (no-defense divorce) to become the immoral law in their country?
When Ireland was about legalize abortion a couple of years ago, every one of these groups, whose logos appear above, tracked and wrote about it on an almost weekly basis. When gay marriage was in the process of being legalized in numerous countries abroad (not the least of which was the UK), it was the top daily headline for every one of them. The push to radically expand unilateral “no-fault” divorce has been all over the UK papers for more than a year now, ever since a British high court did the right thing by the nation’s families last year in denying a 67-year old woman who had no legitimate grounds to seek a divorce against her 80-year old husband of 40 years. It wasn’t that this woman would never be divorced from her God-joined one-flesh mate under the UK civil law, however (unless the Lord brought her to repentance). It was only that it had been just 4 years since she moved out of their main house, and this decision made her await the final year under existing law to fully go her own selfish way with a chunk of the sizable marital estate.
You guys decided to sit this one out for some reason. One can only imagine if instead of an elderly heterosexual couple, this had been Elton John and his lovely “husband” David Furness being denied a quickie divorce under existing law. Would any of you have been able to resist sparring back at the outraged tabloids? Yet, in over a year’s time, not one of you has even shown awareness that traditional marriage in the UK literally is on its last lonely stand.
Believers who care about this issue were scratching our heads, but still willing to forgive and support you when two U.S. states in the last four years took the tremendously courageous step of very seriously attempting the repeal of forced family-shredding-on-demand by requiring that “no-fault” grounds only be allowed upon a joint petition or other form of documented mutual consent, but for public purposes, you chose to sit that one out as well.
“standerinfamilycourt” means no disrespect, but 90% of the infringement of religious liberty in the name of the Sexual Revolution can be traced directly back to that grossly irresponsible bill Gov. Ronald Reagan signed on September 5, 1969. In fact, innocent “Respondents” on the receiving end of a unilateral “no-fault” petition, having been charged with the made-up crime of “irreconcilable differences”, have suffered the earliest, worst and most numerous of religious freedom violations, including loss of God-assigned parental rights to influence and discipline, loss of ability to choose and direct their childrens’ parochial education, severe financial reprisals in court for not acquiescing to the petition, restraining orders where there was no lawful cause, jail time, loss of licenses, and on and on. And don’t forget, scripture tells us that if a Christian (or anyone else, for that matter) is “divorced” by their spouse, it is immoral to “remarry” for as long as that spouse remains alive, an act which Christ repeatedly called ongoing adultery. That item alone makes unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws the most severe of all religious freedom violations, other than religious acts deemed to be capital violations.
If your mission statements are sincere, how can you possibly be silently sitting these events out? How can you be so embarrassed to be seen with your brothers and sisters in Christ who care as much about this issue as all of the Apostles and early church fathers did?
At least Mr. Reagan eventually admitted that his signature on the death warrant for the institution of binding holy matrimony was his worst act in all of his years of public service.
The people of the UK have a tiny window of time before this destructive law is imposed upon them against their majority will. We’re going to be nice in this post and not say anything about how inexcusably the industry special interest group that is backing this is violating the Article 73 separation-of-powers provisions in the British constitution, but we would like to introduce you to your embattled counterparts in the UK who actively fight for the sanctity of heterosexual marriage in its own right. “Standerinfamilycourt” is pleading with you to come to their aid in any way you possibly can while this time window remains briefly open due to Brexit preoccupation (the hand of the Lord, perhaps?) And we all know you can give these family warriors at least the moral support they need right now!
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mr. Thomas Pascoe and Mr. Colin Hart, of the Coalition for Marriage (C4M). Please consider giving these gentlemen a hand in not allowing the liberal press and ruling elites to control the debate with the sort of narrative that the past 50 years’ track record in this country has overwhelmingly disproven.
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. – Hebrews 13:4
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:32-33
Video credit: Jeff Morgan. Matthew Johnston interviewing Dr. Stephen Baskerville, February, 2019
Our blog spends most of its time and words mapping out the moral space between scripture and unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, all the while being well aware that this is “taboo” space which is alleged to be at odds with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Actually, this moral space consists of three moral sub-spaces:
(1) the moral space between scripture and the allowance of fault-based divorce which does not violate the Constitution, but severely violates scripture (Matt.19:6,8 ) – Space “A”
(2) the moral space between fault-based unilateral divorce (Romans 13:4) and mutual-consent “no-fault” divorce – Space “B”,
and, finally
(3) the moral space between mutual-consent “no-fault” divorce and forced, unilateral “no-fault” divorce (Isaiah 5:20) – Space “C”.
(please click to enlarge picture)
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
“standerinfamilycourt” began pondering this due to the repeated persistence, in a small strategy discussion group, of a Catholic man who refuses to budge from Space “A” on both moral and constitutional grounds. He therefore stands opposed to the apparent consensus of the majority in that group: that our divorce law reform objective, particularly insofar as it encompasses the legislatures, should be Space “A” + Space “B”. It’s not at all that this gentleman believes per the bible that death is the only thing which severs and dissolves holy matrimony. On the contrary, as a “good Catholic”, he also believes that an “annulment” decree from the bishop does this, but in that case he would argue that some extrabiblical “defect” somehow made it “not a marriage”.
At the same time, a brilliant young legal scholar in the group also believes in reform encompassing only Space “A” – on technical constitutional grounds related to Articles 3 and 10 of the Constitution, but for pragmatic reasons, can settle for Space “A” + Space “B”, so long as this result doesn’t get overturned in court on those same constitutional grounds. (“Get ‘er done”!) The difference between the two gentlemen is in their motives and reasoning in arriving at the same end point. Our Catholic friend believes there are some instances other than physical death which lead God to assent to “dissolution” if church leadership does, and absent leadership corruption (a huge presumption), this would normally track with fault-based jurisprudence which would be better for the children of the marriage than their parents having an option to decide together to end their marriage. (Church traditionelevated above God’s commandment, by perceived “delegation”). Meanwhile, our millennial believes that God has delegated so much authority to the state that the Establishment Clause must override God’s law in order to prevent a “theocracy”. (State over God, because the alternative in a pluralistic society might be worse.) SIFC cannot agree with either view, because of Who God says He is, and the outright blasphemy involved with corrupting in any measure one of the key symbols of His holiness and His relationship with His people.
That said, SIFC can also “live with” a pragmatic reform result of Space “A” + Space “B”….but upon deep reflection, believes that if Jesus Christ were in this discussion group, He’d say that even Space “A” is too much “daylight” between the instructions He left us with and what we as Christian citizens will settle for in our family laws. Space “A” actually reflects the Pharisaical school of Shammai which He rebuked in Matthew 19, while Spaces “A” + “B” + “C” reflect the Pharisaical school of Hillel which He also rebuked in Matthew 19.
Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will not enter heaven. Matthew 5:20
He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.” Matthew 19:8
Christ’s position would be: only God, and not civil government has authority over holy matrimony, and nothing short of holy matrimony is actually moral:
Space “A” + Space “B” + Space “C” – Space “A” minus Space “B” minus Space “C” = zero human authority to create holy matrimony or grant a divorce from it.
Christ would grant civil government the authority to track marriage and death records to support the union, but would say that all divorce is man-made and of no effect in the kingdom of God, unless the “marriage” it purports to “dissolve” was invalid and kingdom-unlawful to begin with. He would say that all authentic marriage is only God-made, and anything outside of that is adultery, which sends people to hell if they don’t repent of it, and for which He will eventually judge our unrepentant nation, especially if the shepherds of His church remain complicit. By contrast, one recent state is attempting to keep the usurped authority for the state to continue granting unilateral “no-fault”dissolutions, but prospectively only record God-joined unions (and all manner of other man-fabricated cohabitation arrangements) upon affidavit, and doing so in order that the state’s judges may escape perceived persecution and actual liability at the hand of the homosexualist community from conscience-based refusal to officiate sodomous weddings.
“Standerinfamilycourt” is sincerely wrestling with this….
So…just how acceptable in God’s sight is it to advocate for change in a law that is presently sending people to hell by the millions, in favor of a reformed law that maybe only sends people to hell by the thousands (on the prevention side), and increases the legal avenues for repentance which avoids hell (on the rectification side)?
How much more or less acceptable in God’s sight is it to advocate for a law that prohibits divorce altogether (that is, strikes the dissolution statute in its entirety — whether or not there exist what men might consider to be “fault-based grounds”), thereby sending few or no one to hell because they divorced their true spouse, but sending some to hell because they can no longer civilly-divorce a faux spouse, and which also closes off all avenues of biblical repentance via man’s law? After all, it can’t be emphasized often enough: the law is a teacher, (especially with regard to the unregenerated who have no way of being counseled from within by the Holy Spirit), for better or for worse.
“standerinfamilycourt” may never have the answer to this dilemma until actually standing before the throne of God, when all of a believer’s life works will be judged to see what survives the fire:
For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. 1 Cor. 3:10-17
“standerinfamilycourt” is right to be concerned that all of the very costly and difficult activism, in terms of changing man’s divorce law, is only “wood, hay and stubble”. But if legal reform could also change hearts, reduce the massive number of people dying in a state of adultery, and increase theharvest of godly offspring who ultimately become citizens of heaven, that becomes a precious metal which will withstand the fire.
In Mathew 6, Jesus told us to seek His righteousness (presumably for ourselves, but perhaps also for others) while we’re first seeking the kingdom of God. In Matthew 5:6, He declared, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Both verses clearly promise a fulfillment from Him if our heart motives are what they should be, and we’re doing our part to obey the seeking, hungering and thirsting part.
Many earnest believers will argue either (1) “No one serving as a soldier entangles himself in the affairs of this life, that he might please the one having enlisted him” (2 Timothy 2:4), and therefore eschews all political involvement by Christians, or (2) God’s law of marriage only applies to the redeemed. Although the first idea has some merit, the second is completely contrary to Christ’s instructions, so “standerinfamilycourt” respectfully rejects both notions, in times like these.
It seems, therefore, the moral focus needs to be on the net effect on souls arriving in the kingdom of God, in clean wedding garments. That is all that will survive the fiery test of our life works. Obviously, if the “dissolution” statutes were all repealed from the lawbooks of all 50 states and not replaced, the expected result would be a wave of both righteous and unrighteous marital abandonments, the former resulting in repentance from adultery , and the latter resulting in a massive, if not unprecedented, increase in adultery because of the cultural intolerance of being told by government what to do. As predominantly immoral as our society has grown in the past five decades (encouraged by the enactment of increasingly immoral civil laws), perhaps the effects would initially “wash”, then who knows what would follow after that?
Situational ethics and moral relativism are never healthy things, and are downright nauseating to SIFC. This is the mistake Moses appears to have made, in endeavoring to “manage” sin in a pretty identical situation (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) instead of strongly rebuking it, and Christ showed that He was less than impressed with this. After all, it was not Moses whom Christ commended as the “greatest among all men born of woman”. It was instead His cousin, John, who sacrificed his very head to try and warn two adulterers to repent to escape hell. The kingdom of God suffers violence, not appeasement and accommodation! In accepting moral Space “A” or moral Space “A” + “B” for pragmatic reasons, there is both situational ethics and moral relativism involved, because human compromise is being aimed at seeking to prevent a perceived greater evil anticipated from a stricter law, due to inherently evil human nature.
Talk like this can be very unsettling to those who have never had the constitutionally-false notion of a thick wall of separation between church and state meaningfully, intellectually challenged. Certainly, among millennials, there is a long-fed fear (much of it, historical-revisionism-driven and propaganda-driven) causing this generation to struggle in particular with the Establishment Clause, and almost elevating it over the Free Exercise, clause out of concern, (perhaps) that Christianity will lose its moral authority and representation if Allah, Buddha, Krishna and Marx are not given equal place with the Most High God of the bible in our society. A lot of it has to do with the time period in which boomers vs. millennials and generation X-ers lived and grew up. And that has a lot to do with (believe it or not) the downstream effects of enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce. Those of us whose hair is now graying grew up for at least a couple of decades during a time when Christian values indeed dominated, and families under all religions actually thrived, even if they were prevented from dominating or having equal representation. That’s because we still HAD our families, directly due to Judeo-Christian domination of power structures and government.
In another February interview, Dr. Baskerville told World Magazine , “The churches withdrew from private life? And the state moved in. What had been the role of pastors and priests became the role of lawyers, judges, and social workers. The church has never tried to reclaim its turf, and has been a major contributor of secularization, of people feeling the church is not part of their life when it’s not enforcing the marriage contract.
“What can be done now? The church has got to step in. Much of the history of the Christian church has been brave churchmen speaking out when the state overreaches its authority. This whole area of sexual morality is, frankly, our turf and God’s turf. The state has a role but is overstepping.”
Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no? But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar’s. And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s. And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace. – Luke 20: 22-26
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse posted another excellent question from that interview on the Ruth Institute facebook page: Q: Were churches sleeping when no-fault divorce emerged?
A: Some churches did raise their voices, but much of their attention was diverted at the time by Vietnam and civil rights. There was very little debate, very little discussion. No-fault divorce, the welfare state, and the cohabitation explosion were all usurpations of the church’s role by the state. Governmental power was inserted into a realm of private life that had been the realm of the churches.”
All of the above is true enough, of course, but does not represent the whole picture, at least with regard to the Protestant churches:
[standerinfamilycourt 3/6/2019 on this Ruth Institute Post ]Martin Luther & co are partly to blame for the church apathy. Forced divorce would be a much bigger issue had he not turned over the authority to the civil state to regulate holy matrimony in order to obtain access to man-made “dissolution” certificates, then established the Reformation church on the outright heresy that original holy matrimony bonds can be severed by anything but death. The real insult to the church is that the civil state is deigning to regulate marriage at all, much less on a “no-fault” basis, but heresy reigns supreme, and revised bibles back it up. For the church to do much to oppose state regulation of marriage, much less any kind of tyrannical divorce law, they would have to acknowledge that all resulting “remarriages” are morally and spiritually invalid adultery in all cases. When they can get away, and indeed grow rich, with not doing so, that’s too big a morsel for most to bite off.
One of Martin Luther’s more outrageous quotes (actually acknowledging that only death dissolves holy matrimony, and providing a very creative solution) goes thusly…
Dr. Morse’s Roman Catholic Church has their own canon law, and has continued to claim its authority over marriage, notwithstanding the state’s competing claim to that authority. Both claims are overstated and distorted from a kingdom of God perspective.
Perhaps it’s best to step back and look at the behavior of our nation’s founders and their choices with regard to allocating authority over marriage, between human government (Caesar) and God’s commandment that marriage was indissoluble except by physical death. It was these men who claimed “certain inalienable rights” directly from God, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is interesting to note that neither the U.S. Constitution nor any of the original state constitutions eventually ratified in the thirteen colonies even attempted to allocate the authority to regulate marriage to civil government at all, even though Federalism and Article 10 left the states this space. Based on this, SIFC believes it is fair to say that our nation’s founders started off on the conservative end of Space “A”, fairly aligned with biblical instruction, and this is one of the reasons God incubated and fostered our nation, making it extraordinary in its greatness. In other words, there wasn’t a lot of moral space between the Bible and the Constitution until case law and legislatures put the moral separation space there later.
A Word About Our Founders, the Framers of the Constitution Were all of our principal founders followers disciples of Jesus Christ? No. Many were deists and humanist subscribers to natural law, including Thomas Payne, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen and Benjamin Franklin. Others, like John Jay, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Samuel Adams and Alexander Hamilton, Noah Webster were unequivocal about following Christ. Virtually all of them knew and expressed an overt warning that the form of government they had designed and bequeathed to the future citizens of this nation would only continue to function in an environment of national biblical morality.
Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence said: “Without morals a nation cannot subsist for any length of time.”
John Adams said, “Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.”
Though widely assumed to be a deist, Benjamin Franklin said, “God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without his aid?”
( SIFC: That can be the rise of a nation for a kingdom purpose, or it can be tolerated rise of a malevolent stronghold into an empire to punish an unrepentant nation that once enjoyed His extreme favor, and in yesteryear faithfully carried out that purpose, but now is leading the world into deeper debauchery and idolatry.)
Also, observed by Ben Franklin: “Only virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
George Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports”, and, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the bible.”
John Adams declared, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
(Tell us 21st century citizens about that, Mr. 2nd U.S. President!)
Finally, Noah Webster said, “…the moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis for all our civil constitutions and laws…All the miseries and evils that men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from the despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the bible.”
It is frequently argued today that we can’t go back to what we first had as a nation (as if the Lord God were indifferent), because our nation’s residents are no longer homogenous enough for it to work, therefore, we have no practical choice but to govern according to the prevailing cultural morality. (Much of this, it can be quite accurately observed, is said with the motive of coddling and appeasing the homosexualists.) “standerinfamilycourt” hereby prophesies that if we continue on as a nation with this ridiculous fallacy, the Muslim caliphate ultimately will not share that opinion with us, and will not hesitate to impose Shariah law on a morally-unruly citizenry. There is plenty of historical precedent for this in the bible and recorded world history. God owes the United States of America nothing, but He allowed first the Assyrians and then the Persians to overtake the nation of Israel. After seven decades of subjection, He required an intense purge of unlawful “marriages” and restored societal morality before He would restore sovereignty to His favored nation whose religious leadership was complicit in the systemic evil.
The following is only a theory on SIFC’s part, but it has been well-tested by the first nearly 200 years of our nation, when Baptists, Anabaptists and Methodists (who were socially disdained back in England) got along just fine with the Anglicans and Presbyterians. Later on, the Jews and Catholics got along just fine with the Protestant leaders and citizens under the civil marriage laws that prevailed until 1970. God’s moral favor gave cover for civil governments to impose that morality on the Mormons and Muslims, a circumstance that today shows signs of beginning to break down. Civil law does not need to prohibit man’s consensual divorce in order to appease God and wisely govern the people, but it must never forcefamily dissolution and fragmentation on innocent family members while morally and financially rewarding the guilty family members. Society begins to break down at the point when obeying God’s biblical family law (whose very core is Gen. 2:21-24 and Matthew 19:4-6,8) becomes either very difficult or impossible under the corrupted civil laws of men.
Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people. – Proverbs 14:34
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him. – Proverbs 18:17
The “senior members of the Judiciary, the Family Mediation Task Force, Resolution (the national organization of family lawyers)” have the perfectly “simple” solution to the Solomonic dilemma posed above: make it henceforth unlawful for another to come and examine him.
(At least, until they’re all back in court afterward, fighting over the level of support and visitation of the children, upon which the next 10 years of fees may be billed, post-decree.)
Thomas Pascoe of the Coalition for Marriage called the House of Commons legislative “impact assessment” supporting enactment of “no-fault” divorce in the UK, on the premise that it will reduce conflict, “very flawed”. We call it, “not very original” – nor experientially true. We couldn’t agree more with Mr. Pascoe. In fact, after studying the study, we find his critique quite tactfully understated with regard to the entire study’s design, purpose and independence. Based on U.S. experience, we have much to say about the validity of the very premise that conflict over the involuntary dissolution of one’s marriage, and abridgment of parental and property rights, while innocent of any objective and provable charge, can or should be “managed” by the state as a primary goal of marriage regulation. The U.S. experience shows the acrimony can only be postponed until after the “dissolution” is imposed, and that this particular state-of-affairs has a long track record of being extremely lucrative for the legal community, while imposing absolute totalitarianism on the citizenry as a whole, outside of the protected special class.
In Part 2 of our coverage of these developments, we do a “deep dive” into the validity of the report, gleaning what we can about sponsorship, financing for the study, design, independence and objectivity. We do so from a U.S. experience-base of almost 50 years concerning the on-the-ground ability of the government to “manage conflict” in an adversarial divorce petition over inalienable property and parental rights, especially one where there’s no defense available to the “Respondent”, as is the appalling case in most U.S. states. We concede that the British constitution differs in various respects with the U.S. Constitution when we use terms like “inalienable”, and we forthrightly concede that these things have eroded over time in the U.S. due primarily to judicial corruption.
Undertaking this task has actually required the reading of several ancillary reports in addition to the House of Commons recommendation (briefing) report, including the public vetting results, and a 171-page commissioned “research” paper financed by a liberal public policy foundation (which states in a foreword that it also funded 1980’s research pushing unilateral divorce-on-demand), and spearheaded by a family law professor. This centerpiece research paper focuses primarily on administrative convenience for the courts, and “public perception” of the law, and not at all on evidence surrounding family integrity or outcomes (which should be paramount).
Pointedly not considered in the design of this “study” was any highly relevant U.S. data resulting from similar policies as here proposed, or whether the unilateral divorce laws enacted in the United States and Canada are sustainable in light of their extensive, progressive damage to the constitutional republics involved, nor even where similar policies (“postcard divorces”) had to be repealed even under communist regimes before those societies uttlerly collapsed. Most tellingly, Professor Tinder ignored Dr. Mark Regnerus’ landmark 2012New Family Structures Study which was longitudinal over 15,000 subjects and a 30 year time period, and showed (among other things), that children raised in step-parent homes resulting from divorce did as almost poorly in their adult outcomes as children raised in single-parent homes – a clear rebuke on public policy which promotes non-widowed remarriage. Indeed, the study was not concerned at all with family structure outcomes; did not ask that question, therefore did not consider any of the abundant data along those lines. Despite engaging a statistics firm, this study did not even do a competent root cause analysis on the study questions it did ask, to validate the problem statement before defining “alternatives” and jumping to predetermined recommendations.
A properly-validated study would have examined the proposals from persistent reform efforts in other “no-fault” countries such as the United States, at least to have reasonable assurance that all viable reform models were being considered in this study. We further note that if the problem statement and root cause analysis had been properly constructed, the rather trivial complaints which the study said “justified” reform would have been more properly attributed to the lack of availability of a joint petition based on “irretrievable breakdown”, rather than mis-attributed to fault-based grounds — as was the true case in the United States in 1969.
It is quite implausible that Resolution would not have been aware of the steady wave “no-fault” reform bills over the last 15 years or so before legislatures in Michigan, Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma, where the persistent reform consensus has been around providing a combination of consent-only “no fault” grounds by mutual petition, and fault-based grounds that would apply in the event consent cannot be obtained. The best of these reform efforts also seek to apply fault-based property and child custody standards which have the goal of reforming the perverse financial incentives involved in the family law industry’s practice of actively contributing to the promotion of family breakup, to judicial collusion and corruption, and to preemptive control of all related legislative committees. It is also implausible that the lobbying organization “Resolution” would not be aware of the commercial advocacy of their counterparts in the various state bar associations and family law associations in the U.S. Surely, they would be aware of the rapidly-growing Parents’ Rights movement backlash in North America that has resulted from the very policies which this “reform” campaign advocates. Instead, this “study” takes a mere “snapshot” of existing problematic legislation which these intensifying reform efforts are aimed at, and disingenuously complains that the UK is “out of step” with what is occurring abroad.
In “standerinfamilycourt’s” humble opinion, the only portion of these study documents that were not primarily lobbying propaganda was the very interesting public vetting results (which were basically ignored in the final recommendations), along with very valid criticisms in Section 5 of the report.
The official recommendation for the new legislation reads as follows:
“The Government proposes that there will still be only one ground for divorce: that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. However, this would be established in a new way. The Government proposes to move away completely from both the ability to allege “fault” and the ability to contest (defend) the divorce: We propose to move away from an approach that requires justification to the court of the reason for the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage to a process that requires notification to the court of irretrievable breakdown. We also propose to remove the ability of a spouse, as a general rule, to contest the divorce (this is formally called defending in the legal process…). The Government reasons that if one spouse has concluded that the marriage is over, then the legal process should respect that decision and should not place impediments in the way of a spouse who wants to bring the marriage to a legal end. Importantly, this change would also prevent the legal process from being used to exercise coercive control by one spouse over the other spouse who may be a victim of domestic abuse.
“The Government therefore proposes to repeal the requirement for petitioners to give evidence of one or more facts and to replace it with a process of giving notice of irretrievable breakdown. In this process, the person seeking the divorce (or potentially the couple jointly) would give notice to the court of the intention to divorce, stating their belief that the marriage had broken down irretrievably. Irretrievable breakdown would therefore continue to be the sole ground for divorce. In the two-stage decree process that we propose to retain, the court would not be able to grant the first and interim decree (the decree nisi) if it was not satisfied that the marriage had broken down irretrievably.”
( SIFC : Notice the clever pretense of a residual “judicial discretion function” in the last sentence, mimicking a pseudo separation-of-powersbut no longer with any actual substance, since explicitly all that will be legally required is the Petitioner’s subjective assertion which would then bind the judges to just one possible decision, once appealed. Under the U.S. Constitution this sort of window-dressing would be an imperative due to Articles 3 and 10.)
How did the vetting population feel about this? And who were they?
Overwhelmingly, these UK citizens are opposed to the main legislative recommendation to remove fundamental family protections, but their voice is clearly being ignored. This figure tracks right along with data gathered three decades ago in the U.S. that showed 80% of Respondents to a “no-fault” petition alleging “irretrievable breakdown” opposed the dissolution of the marriage based on religion and conscience, even if they could not afford to formally contest. Clearly, these UK citizens know when their civil rights and the sovereignty of the family are at risk, and when they don’t buy into the problem definition to begin with.
Based on who the vetting population consisted of, it is clear to see who made up the 15% minority in favor of forced, non-consensual divorce.
Independence in the research study?
SIFC found that in digging into the Nuffield study on which the legislative recommendations almost entirely rely, the backward-engineering (n.b. desired solution defines the “problem” which scopes the “research”), and cozy relationships between the legislators, judiciary and the family law industry didn’t take long at all to detect. Clicking over to the webpage of one of the partners in the study, statistician firm Bryson Purdon Social Research, we find their list of current and past projects shows that they are regularly hired by legislators. The acknowledgments page of the study gushes about the extensive contributions of the family law lobbying association in the UK called Resolution, several members of which served as advisors and “recruited interviewees”.
It would have been great to compare the list of officers and trustees of the Nuffield Foundation with those of Resolution, but unfortunately, the latter was unavailable to non-members. We have already mentioned the study director’s extensive ties to family law. As a touching finish, we read this dedication: “This report is dedicated to the memory of Sir Nicholas Wall, a former President of the Family Division (of the Judiciary) and an advocate of divorce law reform.
Rationale for disregarding overwhelmingly negative public input On page 16 of the study, we read the following (bold emphasis added by SIFC):
“In our national opinion survey, 71% thought that fault should remain part of the law. However, the general public are unlikely to be aware that the current law does not in fact seek to make a definitive allocation of blame or of the very limited scrutiny that the court can undertake in practice.
(SIFC: In other words, the ignorant peasantry simply “doesn’t understand” that the current statute is meant to preserve an appearance, and isn’t meant to foster the best family outcomes, renovate the system from the ground up so that the judiciary can manage its case load, preserve fundamental rights of innocent family members or promote any meaningful changes in the existing power structures for the good of society as a whole.)
“Drawing on qualitative interviews with the parties, we drew a contrast between two different and mutually exclusive moralities in relation to divorce: a traditional one based on ideas about individual justice for the petitioner, and a responsibility morality based on the ‘good divorce’ where the focus is on harm-minimisation, especially in relation to children. The first emphasises the importance of a strict adherence to and finding of fault; the second would eliminate fault if possible.
“We also traced how adherents of both moralities experienced the divorce process. In general, the experience of both groups was largely negative, but for different reasons. For some embracing a justice morality, the pragmatic orientation of the justice system could be deeply frustrating, whilst for others the experience of fault turned out to be problematic due to the conflict and upset it generated. Those embracing a responsibility morality also found the experience difficult. Some were using fault pragmatically but found the process slow and painful; whilst some who were avoiding fault on principle found the long separation required to avoid fault very difficult in practical terms and also left them feeling they had lost control of private family decisions. A small number of interviewees a dopting the justice morality wanted the role of fault to be strengthened, but for most the removal of fault was strongly preferred. ”
( SIFC : The removal of fault may have been “preferred” for Resolution’s hand-picked interviewees for the study, but this was certainly not born out in Commons’ vetting effort with the general public, which showed an even stronger result at 83% than the still-overwhelming 71% found in the study. We should also note that the last statement directly contradicts the beginning statement in this quote: so, which is it, Resolution?)
Why is increasing the role of fault important to this “small number of interviewees”? Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College, and author of two enormously important books, “Taken into Custody” (2007) and “The New Politics of Sex: The Sexual Revolution, Civil Liberties, and the Growth of Governmental Power” (2017) travels all over Europe explaining this very eloquently…
Dr. Baskerville (~ 2 minutes): “Nobody’s claiming we have to force somebody to live in a house with somebody they don’t want to live with. The question is…who bears the consequences? It’s a legal contract, or it should be, and if one walks away from it, what are the consequences? Who gets the house? Who gets the children or property and so forth ? Under what circumstances does the state have the role to come in and start allocating things? So fine, if someone wants to leave a marriage then I think we have no choice but to allow them to do that. But that’s not what we’re talking about here in the divorce machinery is positive state action against the other spouse. Why should that spouse who wants to leave the marriage without legal grounds…
( SIFC : excluding purely subjective legal grounds not based in any provable offense against the marriage or family members)
“… shouldn’t he or she leave with just the clothes on their backs, what they can get in a suitcase, and nothing else? Do they have the right to take the children, take the house, take the property with them when they leave? And this, of course, is where the state has to step in and say…has to allocate fault. They have to say where justice and injustice is.”
We provide this additional brief link to another key segment of the February, 2019 interview with Dr. Baskerville, for important further context. The study respondents in favor of increasing the role of fault know that the true best moral interest of the children and the only avenue to actual, objective justice, upon which a sustainable society depends, absolutely requires the application of fault, at least with respect to the effects of the divorce. The real barrier to this policy alternative, of course, is the hoped-for business model of the family law special interests, including the sponsors and designers of this “research study”.
“The aim of the policy is to reduce conflict between couples involved in divorce, dissolution and legal separation. The policy objectives are in line with wider strategic objectives to deliver a modern courts and justice system, including to provide a fair and effective justice system which supports better outcomes for children and families.
“The objectives are:
• To ensure that the decision to divorce or dissolve a civil partnership continues to be a considered one
• To minimise the adversarial nature of the legal process, to reduce conflict and to support better outcomes by maximising the opportunity for the parties to agree arrangements for the future
• To make the legal process fair, transparent, and easier to navigate
• To reduce the opportunities for an abuser to misuse the legal process to perpetrate further abuse”
These are purely ideological statements, with an undertone of making the law as LGBTQ-friendly as possible (code word: “Equality”). We point out that if a justice system which supports better outcomes for children and families were really the objective, then the research study would have been designed accordingly around family structure outcomes, and Dr. Regnerus’ rigorous 2012 NFSS study would have been invaluable support in reaching that outcome.
Because the April, 2019 position paper by Lord Chancellor David Gauke brings no other independent evidence to bear other than this heavily-biased and less-than-arm’s-length “research” (extensively requoted verbatim in the final recommendations, including the incomplete set of policy alternatives)– and the public citizen input has been patently ignored and discounted, “standerinfamilycourt” rests our case against the validity of “support” for this legislation here, rather than picking apart the legislative conclusions point-by-point (which was nevertheless tempting!)
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
https://cordellcordell.co.uk/news/divorce_in_the_uk_stats_and_facts/
by Standerinfamilycourt
And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.” – Mark 10:11-12
This blog post has been in-progress for the better part of a year now. In a way, there’s both good and bad in that happenstance. On the “good” side, the British “wheels of progress” have ground very slowly – God be praised! On the bad side, we’ve witnessed an adulterous royal “wedding” (to which the U.S. sent its second most godless Anglican clergyman to take part in the nuptials), and….the echo chamber of the UK media has had little pushback as they trot out the same unsupportable arguments that have long been discredited and overwhelmingly disproven by the five decades of ruinous track record for unilateral “no-fault” divorce in the U.S.
A hopelessly flawed official report (“study” result) was published in the House of Commons in October, 2018 with enactment recommendations. Part 2 of this post will break down that “study” for our readers, in detail.
Since last spring, “standerinfamilycourt” has been reading an avalanche of articles that look and sound like they have literally been plucked from a dusty 1969 box, and retyped to add the requisite “u’s” and replace the “z’s” with “s’s”. Those articles were “snake oil” back then, when U.S. church and government leaders were shamefully duped by the latent cultural Marxism taking dead aim at the U.S. Bill of Rights, and they’re still “snake oil” in their recycled state as they’re being dusted off (again) in London.
Where’s the mention of the direct impact this regime has had on the willingness of U.S. young people to ever marry at all, rather than cohabit (and thereby keep the reckless totalitarian government out of their homes altogether), and the concupiscent attorneys out of their pockets?
Where is the mention of all the constitutional challenges being renewed by citizens in numerous states to try to overturn the various U.S. state laws and vindicate their violated fundamental rights?
The chief argument that seems to be carrying the day in the UK (according to the media and the official Parliamentary report) is the utterly bizarre notion that forcibly shredding someone’s family and destroying their generations, robbing their family’s hard-earned wealth and materially compromising most family members’ futures will somehow “reduce conflict”. Hello?
Another key U.S. reality that goes unmentioned in the UK (one-sided) debate: the bulk of attorney fees in the United States’ $100 billion-a-year “family law” industrial complex come not from the divorce itself, but from years and years of subsequent legal conflict between family members for so long as the children remain minors. Fifty years of U.S. experience have exposed this spurious “reduced acrimony” argument as completely untrue, so it’s beyond ridiculous that in a day and age of worldwide instant media access, elite special interests are pulling this over on the British public! If only the BBC would dare to air the U.S. documentary DivorceCorp,and give the railroaded British citizens a truthful look at their future under this “reform”.
“Barbaric!” they all hissed. Several of us would argue that what’s really barbaric is what the U.S. has been saddled with for decades, which was the literal incubator that has since led to a veritable Pandora’s Box of ever-worsening religious freedom and parental rights violations, for both intact and government-shattered families.
Not one of these liberal “rags” showed the least bit of concern or compassion for Tini’s grieving family members – the ones with the clean hands! How outrageous of every one of them to demonize this faithful and gracious husband who has every right and responsibility before God to keep his family whole.
The real fault in the Tini Owens case, contrary to the media hype and thick emotional huckstering, is that existing UK law still allows for an entirely unilateral divorce to be had by the offending party after 5 years of self-imposed non-cohabitation, and probably allows an abandoner to also take half of the family assets, which in the case of the Owenses, was considerable:
“They built up a hugely successful £5million-a-year mushroom growing business and amassed four ‘nice houses’, including a stunning £630,000 Cotswolds farmhouse, where the family lived, and holiday homes in Wales and France.” – Daily Mail, July, 2018
Much hand-wringing ensued the refusal of the appeals courts to hear the case, rather than state the obvious: Ms. Owens had separated from Mr. Owens in 2015, and according to one media source, had been in an adulterous relationship from 2012, so Mr. Owens could have filed a fault-based petition against her in due time much shorter than 5 years, but apparently feared God and had compassion for his wife. The reality is that the UK government did not owe Mrs. Owens a financial reward for selfishly breaking up her 40-year marriage and leaving her blameless husband four years ago. It is against sound public policy, indeed, for them to do so.
Three things tend to be a commonality with elite social engineering, as we’ve painfully learned here in the “colonies”: emotional pitches run absolutely amok in the media, the laser-like focus always locks onto the most extreme outlier case that could possibly be dredged up, as if this rare case was going to bind and ruin the whole nation, and lastly, there is a conspicuous absence of grassroots demand for the “urgent” change outside of commercially-paid and sponsored “surveys”.
As was the case in the U.S., and continues to be, there are a few quality voices speaking out against this poorly-justified piece of legislation, including Thomas Pascoe, campaign director at Coalition for Marriage, who recently said in an interview, “We already have no-fault divorce, but it takes between two years when both parties agree and five when they do not. This standstill period recognises the gravity of divorce. It allows both parties time to try and save the marriage and allows both time to make reasonable adjustments to their lives where no agreement can be found.”
Similarly, Colin Hart of the Christian Institute points out the resoundingly obvious truth that “no-blame” actually constitutes no justice.
Finally, in the House of Commons briefing paper, Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative) was quoted as having pointed to evidence from other countries which, he said, showed the wider consequences such legislation might have. ” Sir Edward then set out other potential impacts of family breakdown, drawing on evidence from a study in the US which argued that 75% of low-income divorced women with children had not been poor when they were married, but Douglas Allen also points out in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy that “the real negative impact of the no-fault divorce regime was on children, and increasing the divorce rate meant increasing numbers of disadvantaged children.” In the UK, Sir Edward continued, a 2009 review by the then Department for Children, Schools, and Families had found that a child not growing up in a two-parent family household was more likely to experience a number of problems which he detailed. He also spoke of other research on the effects of family breakdown. Sir Edward considered that the potential adverse consequences of no-fault divorce should rule out its introduction.” (Sir Edward was on the right track, but still didn’t have the gist or full evidence of what this kind of legislation has done in the U.S. after the divorce, nor that it has been the least bit successful in curbing “conflict” – a function of disingenuous problem definition by the majority.)
Sadly, none of these voices are availing themselves of the abundance of available, documented evidence that these policies have horribly failed in country after country around the world. History is eerily repeating itself fifty years later, with no lessons learned. As was true in the 1960’s, female attorneys have been conspiring this con job, and gaining the blind support of the elites. According to the president of the UK Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, the majority of “solicitors” (practicing attorneys) in the UK are women. She has been advocating for unilateral, forced divorce since the early 1990’s, as had the feminist U.S. womens’ bar groups. Lady Hale asserts in 2016, more than half of all divorce petitions were submitted on the basis of adultery or “unreasonable behavior” (a.k.a. “emotional abuse”, in U.S. legalspeak). We actually need to be honest about the fact that the main driver of divorce is, and always has been adultery (and the desire to legitimize adulterous relationships). Civilized, sustainable societies don’t incentivize adultery. The objective of these feminists has always been to remove the father from the family (forcibly, if necessary) so that he won’t be in a position to obstruct further social engineering.
These special interests allege that the (existing) law forces separating couples to “make more aggressive allegations against one another” in order to secure a divorce, verbatim the overblown 1969 argument in the U.S. , as if sweeping excrement under an “irreconcilable differences” rug, will take away the stench. On our side of the pond, we know that all this philosophy has accomplished is train our society to lie in ever-broader ways and blame others for our own self-indulgences.
This cartoon points out the U.S. situation where the very same lobbying professionals who were falsely asserting that unilateral divorce-on-demand would “reduce acrimony” – rather than merely postpone it, were actually about to start ramping up their profits by egging the acrimony on during the proceedings and long afterward – to the point of having non-custodial parents jailed and worse.
In the UK, it’s objectively true that such “aggressive” allegations must be made to shorten the waiting period from 5 years to 2 years under current law, while in the U.S. prior to 1970, only one state allowed a couple to mutually agree to end their marriage, while the UK does not allow for mutual consent divorces either, according to the government discussion paper(a fact that conveniently escapes the “problem” definition in the House of Commons analysis – for which there is, in fact, a commercial reason that goes undiscussed). Both were unstable situations, however, mustthe UK repeat the U.S. constitutional travesty of killing a gnat with a sledge hammer and reaping the harsh societal consequences? What would be wrong with instead implementing a mutual consent joint petition, with perhaps a 180 day waiting period? Why not retain fault-based grounds where there’s no consent, but eliminate the waiting period altogether if the charges are proven? As Thomas Pascoe pointed out, no alternative models were adequately considered, which strongly implies that a prescribed “solution” was looking for a “problem”, rather than the other way around.
No-fault divorce was reportedly first introduced by the Family Law Act 1996, but its provisions were later deemed “unworkable” after a pilot attempt and it was repealed. It has been widely supported by prominent members of the judiciary, lawyers and relationship charities (in other words, the elite, and not broad citizenship demands. ) Quoting a 2001 article in the Daily Mail about the repeal,
“The admission came as Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine at last killed off Part Two of the Family Law Act, which would have allowed a husband or wife to ditch their spouse in 12 months without ever having to bear blame or answer for their behaviour.
“Opponents of the law brought in nearly five years ago by John Major’s Tory government, and enthusiastically backed by Labour, insisted no-fault divorce would increase break-ups rather than help families.
“Lord Irvine has now acknowledged that the opponents of the system were right and the law would be repealed.”
So, what has changed, UK?
Between that previous attempt to move toward forced-divorce-on-demand and the current campaign, the Anglican Church liberalized its doctrine in 2002 to promote “remarriages” that Jesus consistently called adulterous, effectively clearing away any temporal reasons for meaningful opposition from the country’s largest and its state church.
Writes a friend of “standerinfamilycourt” who lives in Cornwall,
“It’s been handed over to the Crown prosecution who believe it’s the only way forward now for the Government to pass , So sad
“I spoke to my MP Derek Thomas Conservative MP for St Ives Cornwall, knew him before he was an MP but when I talked to him about divorce and remarriage his face went blank, end of conversation. I will have to write or email him a letter, we are going down the pan quickly here in the UK Brexit abortion now this, yes sad to say the big wigs here follow the States, money to be made let’s go go go.”
Perhaps this Cornish friend will now be able to educate her MP about the five-decade U.S. adventure in state-enforced family shredding, and inform him that a growing number of people in the States don’t think setting back the family clock 50 years is actually that bad an idea. This is not yet a “done deal”. Bad policy was enacted and repealed before in the UK. This is even worse policy, and does not deserve to be enacted, despite the powerful endorsements. Even India had the common sense to repeal faultless unilateral divorce practices in their country, ruling them unconstitutional violations of equal protection and property rights.
Discretion will guard you, Understanding will watch over you… To deliver you from the strange woman, From the adulteress who flatters with her words; That leaves the companion of her youth And forgets the covenant of her God; For her house sinks down to death And her tracks lead to the dead; None who go to her return again, Nor do they reach the paths of life. – Proverbs 2: 11, 16-18
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. – Judges 21:25
What happens when a Marine returns to civilian life, becomes a Certified Public Accountant and uses his professional training in an all-out battle to restore the very principles he served overseas to defend? Hopefully, a lot! What follows is a Tennessee tale, that is equally true in virtually all other U.S. states.
( SIFC: John graciously reviewed this article and provided input, which will be inserted below.)
In this 2017 video, Gentry speaks of the mysterious and questionable deaths in 2010 of a former lady state senator from Georgia and her husband. Nancy Schafer had been a leader in the late Phyliss Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, and had been campaigning against the child-trafficking abuses facilitated by Title IV-D funds, which she says in a 2009 radio interview had caused her to lose her seat in the Georgia Senate. The deaths were officially ruled a murder-suicide, but many doubt the truth of that, due to the death threats Mrs. Schafer had been receiving because of her efforts and high profile exposure of corruption.
(For a shorter version of a similar speech, click here. )
Mr. Gentry, however, is not actually himself an aggrieved parent. The public record reflects that he married a business owner in 2009, and that she filed a unilateral “no-fault” divorce petition against him in 2014, which he tells us he supported. Both were middle-aged at the time of the marriage, and they were childless. The court records reflect that he spent considerable time in court fighting the settlement provisions of the divorce and then appealing them, but on only various technical complaints, rather than bringing a constitutional challenge of the statute itself.
So what caused him to become so passionately involved in doing battle with CPS-sponsored child trafficking for Federal funds, and with exposing the judicial corruption that enables it ? That’s not entirely clear from any of the available sources, but “standerinfamilycourt” can relate. Though personally blessed to be able to raise two children to adulthood in an intact marriage that thrived for most of their years growing up, SIFC sat many days in the courtroom and watched judges ride roughshod over many young fathers, denying them their God-assigned responsibility of ensuring the safety of their own children after wayward wives had unilaterally divorced them and moved in with someone else. John is gracious not to speak of his estranged wife at all in speeches and interviews, but it seems clear that in all of his pro-se legal filings (of varying effectiveness, over process in his own divorce case), he joins the rest of us in being appalled that a state law can unilaterally deprive one of the parties of their due process protections. But….when we see someone else’s children suffering or being legally abused and endangered because of it, soon enough our own battle wounds are subordinated and we take up the even worse offense suffered by those unfortunate families. CPA’s comply with a strong professional ethics code, and are subject to reliable censure for acts reflecting poorly on the profession, so to see the legal community flouting their standards of professional ethics and getting away with it, is certainly a strong motive for action (to which SIFC can also directly relate.) These two professions have very significant overlaps.
Yet, John does not appear to be an overt champion of repealing unilateral “no-fault” grounds for divorce, per se. He seems to strictly focus on reforming judicial accountability and oversight processes, the widespread lack of which greatly exacerbates the evil effects from 49 states maintaining a profoundly unconstitutional “family law” statute on the books. His main personal beef with the family court system seems to be mostly property-related, believing (according to the Tennessee lower court description) that he was entitled to a share in the business his wife founded before they married.
( SIFC: John’s additional input… “Although I transformed my ex wife failing business into a successful and internationally recognized brand (subsequently closed due to my ex-wife’s inability to operate a business), my “beef” was intellectual property I created, a patent pending product with international distribution, worth millions, was valued by corrupt court as zero and distributed 100% to my ex wife. That product too failed under her care. Very sad. Even with that, I don’t care about the property. My “beef” is about the criminal conduct of all the judges and attorneys (including my own attorneys). Severe deprivation of due process and equal protection.”
Fair enough, since something has to create “standing” to bring access to the courts of appeal. It is rather typical for family courts to automatically deem the “no-fault” Petitioner to be “more credible” than any Respondent who contests any part of the proceedings, and proceed to extract whatever financial penalty is circumstantially available, to teach others a lesson about challenging judicial authority or this state statute. Gentry says in a recent (2019) interview that he has two certiorari requests before the U.S. Supreme Court. The only such request brief (2018) that “standerinfamilycourt” was able to read does not seem to raise a specific, actionable constitutional challenge, nor ask the Court to consider any specific legal questions.
Mr. Gentry has, however (so far, unsuccessfully) attempted, under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, to sue the trial court judge who granted his wife’s civil dissolution petition, hoping in Federal court to pierce though the immunity shield which insulates state judges from liability for actions that are within their subject matter jurisdiction. The public record does not provide the details of whether he based any of his pleadings on an Article 3 separation-of-powers argument, but the state appeals ruling does not reflect that he made such an argument during the trial, nor acted to reserve his right to appeal on this constitutional basis. These constitutional matters generally need to be raised way back at the petition response phase of the initial grounds trial to be deemed to have any standing for appeal (at least, based on SIFC’s personal experience), based on court operating rules and precedents.
Having apparently lost or been denied a hearing in 2017 in the U.S. Sixth Circuit, he has successfully attempted to get his case docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, but it remains to be seen whether it will ever be heard. In this instance, the briefs Gentry submitted in early 2018 for his request for certiorari are publicly available. He requested all eight (at the time) sitting Justices to “recuse themselves” on his theory that they would each have generalized “probable bias”, which he listed in his brief as the “standard of review”. Presumably, he has argued this at each level of the appeals process. SIFC does not really see an effective, specific pleading with respect to Article 3in that document, nor for that matter any immediately actionable request for relief from the court for which he would be deemed to have standing. It could be argued quite reasonably that the best (and perhaps only) way for all of the sitting justices to “recuse themselves” is to simply deny certiorari, and move on to the remaining 8,999+ submissions. The other filed document is a brief request to have filing fees for his “cert” petition waived based on Gentry’s veteran status and service to our country. The record reflects that this was denied him.
( SIFC: John’s additional input… “In the Supreme Court of the United States, the clerk’s office concealed 14 of 17 appendixes that evidenced impeachable conduct of magistrates and judges in the district court and sixth circuit. The impeachable conduct of the federal judges occurred to protect the criminal conduct of the state court judge and attorneys.”
The main point of interest in reading through Gentry’s case and appeal briefs, for those of us hoping to re-route a series of effective constitutional appeals of various state unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws through the Federal courts based on 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, and based on a specific legal question concerning separation-of-powers, is whether what Gentry argued is closely related to what the divorce appeal cases will be arguing. It does not appear that the pleadings will be even remotely similar.
Family law reform activist Jeff Morgan sat down last month and videotaped an interview series with Mr. Gentry in Tennessee concerning his remonstrance efforts before the Tennessee legislature. This particular area of endeavor may hold the more fruitful potential for needed family law reforms vis-à-vis his SCOTUS filings, at least with regard to doing something about the judicial corruption aspect. Those interviews with Jeff are very articulate and credible, with a good grasp on history and original founding documents. The aim of the petition of Gentry’s remonstrance is to goad our legislators to stop shirking their constitutional responsibility to oversee the conduct and ethics (including violation of required separation-of-powers) of the judiciary. It should be pointedly noted, however, that in the case of “adjudicating” unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, there is no actual provable offense, no lawful cause-of-action, and no constitutionally legitimate judicial role — the bottom line is that the statutes themselves violate the separation of powers in Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution (and the counterpart clauses in all of the state constitutions). In this case, there are both legislative and judicial foxes guarding the chicken coop! Gentry, however, does not seem to be focused on this, because his primary concern is with property and parental rights symptoms of the root problem. There really are too many potent disincentives to better behavior by the judiciary until the root cancer is excised, either by SCOTUS or by legislative repeal of faultless unilateral grounds and repeal of faultless criteria for the property and parental effects of civil “dissolution” .
Gentry’s petition of remonstrance was predictably rebuffed when he brought it in January of this year before the Tennessee legislature. The clerk of the Senate claimed that only sitting legislators could legally bring such a petition, and accused Gentry of misusing the process, according to a January 27 story by Dave Tullis of 92.7 Nooga Radio: “In the missive below, Mr. Stevens calls the Gentry remonstrance illegal, ludicrous. ‘If it were heard, it would set an evil precedent. All manner of other people would stream before the general assembly and take up all of its time with their grievances, he says. No, it is not the purpose of the general assembly to hear grievances. It is the purpose of the general assembly to write laws.’ …That is essentially is his [Sen. Stephens’]argument. His fear of Mr. Gentry’s making personal argument before senate and house is that it will open the gates for an outpouring of public sentiment against the political machinery that he represents.”
Gee, that’s really rough, Sen. Stephens! We can’t have the chickens coming home to roost after decades of legislators and judges taking wholesale advantage of the citizens, for crying out loud!
“While I appreciate the effort you have obviously put forward in this endeavor, you have grossly misunderstood the historical and practical implications of remonstrance. Further, you have misread our rules and constitution. You have no constitutional right to present to the general assembly your remonstrance…
( SIFC: Au Contraire:” Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peoplepeaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”– 1st Amendment, U.S. Constitution
“Section 23. That the citizens have a right, in a peaceable manner, to assemble together for their common good, to instruct their representatives, and to apply to those invested with the powers of government for redress of grievances, or other proper purposes, by address of remonstrance. ”
– Article 1, Constitution of the State of Tennessee
Earnestly hoping Mr. Gentry has randomly appeared at the state capital without having bothered to read either founding document, Mr. Stephens continues….. )
” Our rules apply to the members of the general assembly.
James Madison’s famous memorial and remonstrance regarding religious liberty was presented to the Virginia assemblyas a MEMBER of the assembly. Although you appear to have read our rules, you have ignored Rule 9 – No one may address the speakerexcept a member of the senate, and Rule 11, which directs members to only direct their comments to the Speaker.
(SIFC: To carefully preserve the highly-lucrative power stranglehold that members of the bar have carefully nurtured over at least two (arguably, all three) branches of government over the course of the last several decades, their promulgation of “operating rules” haven’t hesitated to trounce on the fundamental rights of ordinary citizens, and do furtive end-runs around these constitutional provisions. This is equally true of court “operating rules” and of legislative chamber rules. Most ordinary citizens aren’t taught about these, even if they’re fortunate enough to have had a good civics class in school, don’t even know that they exist or that many have corrupt purposes, and with the accountability structures also incapacitated by pervasive collusion, this is a very effective means of ensuring that the peasantry may not avail themselves of their fundamental rights unless they are unusually persistent for peasants. Indeed, “standerinfamilycourt”, being very well-educated, otherwise, with a closely-related professional certification, a masters’ degree, considerable business and regulatory law experience, got a first taste of “court rules” as a result of witness stand mode of testimony being repeatedly interrupted and rebuked as “unacceptable” by the family court judge. With all due respect, Senator, legislative rules don’t apply to Mr. Gentry, so your point about “rules” is irrelevant. In fact, your “schooling” of Mr. Gentry conveniently ignores the citizen remonstrances that have occurred in other states, made to the legislature, and not through a representative.)
“To think otherwise is absurd. The citizens of Tennessee, nor any republic, would not stand for the expenditure of their resources by their elected representatives if our legislative attention was diverted from legislative deliberation to, instead, sitting through the presentation of such remonstrances by individual citizens.
“There could be hundreds if not thousands filed. It is absolutely ludicrous to even consider that the drafters of our constitution, let alone the citizens who approved its adoption, would spend the time to create a system of representative government only to completely eviscerate its operation through some supposed right of remonstrance which included the right of a citizen or citizens to commandeer its members of the general assembly for the reading of the entire remonstrance by the chief clerk or to even require said “petitioner” to gain the undivided attention of all 132 members at the same time or of each individual body at the same time.
“The citizens of Tennessee have the right guaranteed in Art. I, Section 23, to express their opposition or support of proposed legislative action, government conduct or policy.
“Like all rights, it is not without limitation. The limitation is the procedure for such an “address of remonstrance.” I am unaware of any procedure in law or in our rules that allow a citizen to file a remonstrance, beyond that in T.C.A. 69-5-922.
“Such procedures have been established through the adoption of the rules of the house and senate, respectively. The rules apply to the members. The rules provide for presentation of resolutions, petitions and memorials by members of the general assembly and do not address in any way remonstrances.
“I do not have a copy of Mason’s with me in my district office so I do not know if they address the filing of remonstrances. In any event, any member of the general assembly can file a resolution, petition or memorial which would then proceed through the normal legislative process. I suggest contacting your representative and senator and have your remonstrance presented in the form of a resolution or petition.” [End of Stevens letter]
So, where has Gentry’s effort gone since January? This, too, is very telling of the long journey involved, even when the petitioner is legally correct, and the objecting solons blowing nothing but smoke. David Tullis followed up with another article on March 9, “Senate clerk mum as blocks bid to impeach crooked judges”…
“Whispers about a remonstrance project swirl this week in Nashville as the senate clerk refuses to answer press questions about his rejection of senate rules and a TV station airs a salacious story about Tennessee judges whoring and toking in the tropics.
“Senate clerk Russell Humphrey ignores repeated efforts to interview him about his refusal to give senators copies of the petition for remonstrance on judicial misfeasance and his ignoring senate rules requiring remonstrances to be read to the entire body…NanetteMitchell, journal clerk for the senate, in two phone calls says she will take a message requesting an interview about the remonstrance to Mr. Humphrey. She says he is not available. Mr. Humphrey makes no return call to tell his side of the story…
“Nashville TV station WSMV TV4 obtained travel records from the government of Costa Rica showing that legal personalities in Davidson County visited that country at the same time as did a corrupt judge, Casey Moreland of sessions court.
“The vacationing was highlighted by prostitutes and narcotics, the report says. “According to those documents, in 2013, General Sessions Judge Aaron Holt entered and left Costa Rica on the same dates as Moreland.” Lawyers and a Davidson County district attorney, Glenn Funk, also were in the country at the same time as Judge Moreland, who is under a prison sentence….”
Here is a link to a January 29 interview carried on Nooga Radio, where Gentry responded to these events over the air.
Apparently, even if all the members of the state senate were not distributed copies of the remonstrance document, Gentry gained the ear of his own state representative, and nevertheless wound up testifying before a committee at least twice in March and April, bringing his requests for mandatory drug testing of judges, for abolishment of the judicial conduct council (consisting of judges, not of legislators or their agents), and strengthened recusal rules for both legislators and judges. Whether an independent development or in response to Gentry’s complaint, the legislature considered a measure to rename and reorganize the judicial body to oversee judicial conduct, while (naturally) still leaving it unconstitutionally in the hands of judges, rather than bringing it directly back under the legislature (and mandated separation-of-powers), as the Constitution requires. It also appears that the “window-dressing” exercise (HB0782/SB0722) might have been scrapped or slowed as a result of Gentry’s April 2 committee testimony. It remains to be seen whether an authentic reform measure will replace it at some point.
All this said, Gentry does a valuable service with his studies, of reminding all of us where legislators are specifically violating their own ethics and conflict-of-interest rules (@ ~23 minutes) in the very processof legislating “family laws”, whereas in many states, family law attorneys with a direct pecuniary interest sit on the “family law” committees, and sometimes even chair them, or they are given (by legislative “rules”) what amounts to unilateral veto power over whether or not a committee-approved reform bill ever makes it to the floor for a vote, via routine scheduling. To borrow a football analogy, Gentry’s efforts constitute offensive blocking, but when it comes to comprehensive family law reform (a truly separate issue in its own right) so that state statutes comport with the Constitution, he must not be mistaken for the ball-carrier.
Gentry’s website provides detailed guidance and materials for this process of remonstrance, and petitioning for arms-length judicial oversight in any and all states, as he is currently in the process of carrying out in Tennessee. Remonstrance might possibly make the legislative process (to reform state family laws so that they no longer violate the Constitution, on numerous points) more fair in the future, by neutralizing the powerful conflicting interests, but the remonstrance process will not directly result in the needed separate reform of these separately unconstitutional statutes, whether in Tennessee this occurs by successful Federal court action on the basis of (U.S.) Article 3 challenges of unilateral “no-fault” judicial actions, or it occurs by a successful legislative effort ahead of such a judgment.
Do not rob the poor because he is poor, Or crush the afflicted at the gate; For the Lord will plead their case And take the life of those who rob them. – Proverbs 22: 22-23
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
David Franklin, director for Bartow Baptist Association and Georgia coordinator for the National Day of Prayer, called upon those at the prayer gathering at the State Capitol to stretch their hands toward the two houses of legislators and pray for unity in the government. GERALD HARRIS/Index
by Standerinfamilycourt
“Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light.” – Luke 8:16
“….gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” – Galatians 5:23-24
There’s no question about it, disciples who make up their mind to pay the very high price to obey Christ, that is, to choose not to enter into a subsequent intimate relationship or civil marriage with another person while their legally-estranged true spouse is alive, is probably the most countercultural type of figure in modern society, probably on a scale with the first “Followers of the Way” in the first century church, even if their executed bodies are not being used as street torches, as recently depicted in the 2018 motion picture, “Paul, Apostle of Christ”.
“For we bestow our attention; not on the study of words, but on the exhibition and teaching of actions, — that a person should either remain as he was born, or be content with one marriage; for a second marriage is only a specious adultery. “For whoever puts away his wife,” says He, “and marries another, commits adultery;” not permitting a man to send her away whose virginity he has brought to an end, nor to marry again.” (Athenagoras – 175 A.D., A Plea For The Christians, 33)
“Standers”, for purposes of this post will also include those who, based on moral conscience and scriptural instruction, have exited a civilly-legal “marriage” of the sort Jesus called continuously adulterous, even if they’ve never actually had a covenant spouse (as Jesus defined in Matthew 19:4-6). The true measure is the extent that their life choices and the significant, visible sacrifices they make, speak biblical truth about marriage into a deafened, jaded culture, and this measure is what this post will bring into focus. Repenters from an unlawful union are standing for the sanctity of holy matrimony in their own circumstances, and quite often they suffer even greater censure and persecution at the hands of other believers than do those standing for the soul of their true one-flesh partner and for the rebuilding of their own covenant family. In a broader sense, the ranks of “standers” also includes pastors with congregations, many of whom are in intact biblical, covenant marriages, who gladly suffer very real career consequences (along with their family) as the high price for putting rightly-divided scripture and the souls of their flock above the corrupted circa-1970’s doctrine change of their denomination. Likewise, “standers” include Catholic priests who stand strong against abuse of annulment canons, and who speak out for the souls of those served communion while they are living in what that church euphemistically calls “irregular circumstances”.
Not all standers can go lobby at the state capital, or have the means (time, treasure, talent) to bring a constitutional appeal of their state statute, or create effective media that exposes the travesties of unilateral “no-fault” divorce to the uninformed, nay, the duped public. But, not being able to do these things certainly doesn’t meanthey aren’t making a very significant contribution in the big picture journey toward success. Of course, those whom the Lord has resourced to do both over time, will make an even greater contribution.
The truth is that many of these standers who have a covenant spouse off in the Far Country in an adulterous civil-only “marriage” to a counterfeit would actually prefer not to see unilateral “no-fault” laws reformed to be consent-based only. They fear the possibility that their prodigal may lose the ready ability to repent by divorcing out of these immoral arrangements, and may die in their sin as a result, if the counterfeit spouse won’t consent. There would certainly be a much greater risk of this if we went all the way back to the fault-only laws of the 1960’s. We talked to those reform risks in a much-earlier blog post. Meanwhile, the Lord is still using even the passive witness of covenant marriage standers in many powerful ways. Here we discuss just seven of them that relate to cultural influence.
At the end of our days, here is how the Lord will test the result of all of our choices and activities, in terms of how we’ve used our time, treasure and talent. Our part in getting an evil law repealed won’t count for much in itself, really, but the souls that we’ve helped to heaven as a result of the sacrifices in our role, most certainly will:
“For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” – 1 Corinthians 3:11-15
Here is how countless unsung “standers”, in their everyday lives, are making an enormous difference, in this life and the next:
1.) Standers’ eventual reconciliations with the spouse of their youth is slowly debunking the legal myth of “irreconcilable differences”
One of “standerinfamilycourt’s” absolute favorite activities is collecting, organizing and resharing all of the miraculous testimonies of covenant families being put back together by the Lord God Almighty after decades of estrangement, and after intervening adulterous remarriages that even involved the birth of non-covenant children.
The divorce industry estimates this is roughly 5% of couples the legal system has forcefully estranged at the request of just one of the spouses. To be sure, some of these reconciliations are sinful because the spouses involved still belong in God’s eyes to somebody else, namely the spouse of their youth.
But think of it: 1,000,000 marriages a year “dissolved” by the legal system for a span of 50 years since unilateral “no-fault” divorce was enacted in the 49 United States: that’s approaching 50 million marriages cumulatively, of which 5% is 2,500,000 “irretrievably broken” marriages nevertheless made whole again in that time span, over 40,000 for each state in the union. Just imagine if even 1,000 restored constituent couples showed up to register a 5-minute testimony before the state legislative committee hearing, where a bill is being considered to restrict the availability of “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for divorce only by mutual petition! Will such a bill continue to be killed “off the record” in the Calendar Committee, as has been the case in Texas at least once since 2017? Would mainstream news media dare to ignore a story like that?
2.) Standers’ celibacy (and typical financial sacrifice) acts like a vehicle-mounted bullhorn into the culture
Our culture has for centuries screamed that we are entitled to a sexual relationship throughout our lives, and therefore any law, moral or civil, that makes this less accessible is by definition harsh and unjust. This was the siren song of the Catholic humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, who quite literally managed to stamp the Protestant Reformation with the ticking time bomb of family-destroying licentiousness. Jesus begged to differ:
For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven….” – Matthew 19:12
Standers, if their motives are pure, always put eternal souls first in everything they undertake while their one-flesh spouse is off in the Far Country.
To be sure, it’s much easier not to be called a “divider of the brethren” by their pastor when they won’t go to that adulterous wedding, or won’t join that home group run by the adulterous couple who gives the most time and money to the church, or when they complain about the “marriage enrichment” class that’s scheduled featuring “the blended family pastor” being a bad influence on the flock. It’s much easier not to have their adult children upbraiding them for not being “emotionally stable” enough to “move on” and stop causing conflict in the extended family when their one-flesh has “remarried” the estranged spouse of another living person. It’s substantially less excruciating not to have to endure the pain and worry on the faces of our elderly parents who may well go to their graves wondering what’s going to happen to their child when we reach their age. (Truth be told, it’s hard enough dealing with those emotional thoughts in our own hearts from time to time.)
The pastor who no longer has a congregation, as a directconsequence of refusing to “marry” another, after his covenant wife has left him to “marry” a more prosperous pastor, but who goes on to establish an enduring marriage permanence ministry while he’s replaced in his former church role by a shepherd who is indeed “the husband of more than one wife”–perhaps creates the loudest bullhorn of all. But the congregation he was forced to leave may never fully understand the extent of their loss, this side of eternity. Here, unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws have successfully attacked a church with its own doctrine, removing a godly pastor in the process and replacing him with a godless one who only has the veneer of “managing his family well”.
3.) Standers’ lifestyle is actually admired by the future policy makers of our nation
The future policymakers of our nation are increasingly the children and grandchildren of divorce. They are some of the Sexual Revolution’s survivors. In four years of readership responses to 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce! , some of the best have come from those young people who are raising tiny children and still suffering from having too many “grandparents” in the picture. They can’t believe someone would make the kind of sacrifice it takes to actually obey the bible. They can’t believe the integrity of standers, compared to their own pastor. They can’t believe what they weren’t taught in church that might have made a huge difference in their estranged parents’ marriages. They can’t believe that they can yet draw a spiritual line in the sand in their own young family for the sake of their own children and grandchildren, and someone will stand with them. Some can’t believe that a few mature people will say, “Judgment begins with the house of the Lord”, so stop ragging on the gays when most of the heterosexuals are living in papered-over adultery.
“standerinfamilycourt” got the first taste of this in March, 2013 while attending the March For Marriage in Washington, D.C. organized by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). A parade of well-spoken, far-seeing millennials took the platform and talked about how the corruption of marriage had impacted their own families of origin. Many looked idealistically at the hope of repealing “no-fault” laws, recognizing that this was the vehicle that took the nation from “Point A” to where we now were, on that chilly early spring day when oral arguments were in progress at the Supreme Court for two same-sex marriage cases. It wouldn’t be long before some of the rulings to follow, in the spate of 2014-2015 homosexual rights cases, would embolden a revival of judicial challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws by the aggrieved, and would strengthen legislative efforts for “family law” reform, which were also reviving after a period of dormancy, made more urgent as the culture continued to deteriorate.
As authors Leila Miller and Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse capture in their respective books, these young adults grew up silenced and stifled to speak out against either their parents’ selfish personal choices or the government-promoted family fragmentation and sequential polygamy norm that prevailed in their church pews when they were growing up. Now they see adults not only not hesitating to “diss” the blatantly unscriptural “blended family pastor”, but also care so much about a return to 1st century biblical morality that they’re willing conspicuously to live it out in their own lives, in other words, to take up their cross and follow Christ.
Assuming the Lord stays His own hand of judgment long enough for the emerging voices in this generation to begin to have influence over their peers and the existing power structures, the pendulum will eventually swing back from the current cultural depravity. We see this even now, as a sizable percentage of this age group simply refuses to participate in the entrenched moral corruption.
4.) Standers’ unselfish prayer life goes straight to God’s ear on behalf of the nation for which they are interceding
Every covenant marriage stander lives with the very real possibility that their prodigal spouse will die unrepentant in their sin and wind up in hell. They live with the terrifying possibility that some or all of the children will emulate that parent, and meet the same eternal fate. They wish they could evacuate all their progeny from this immoral culture that prevails even at church, and go colonize Mars, if that could but change the trajectory for their covenant family. If they spend any time on their knees at all, they know that the situation was the result of demonic forces going all the way back to the snake in the Garden just before Eve bit the apple, and it’s going to take nothing less than God’s direct intervention to redeem any part of the situation.
Paul warned the Corinthian and Ephesian churches (and by extension, us):
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh,for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. – 2 Corinthians 10:3-6
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. – Ephesians 6:12
It’s not at all fun to wear this armor. With so much on the line for them personally, however, standers tend to have more motivation to faithfully, consistently and persistently do so. Nobody wants to see their one-flesh life partner meet with the same fate as the rich man Jesus discusses at the end of Luke 16.
Meanwhile, God, who has been allowing a progressive series of ever more devastating (unheeded) judgments on the land over each of the past 5 decades since the enactment of civilly-forced divorce, along with legalized baby-murder and hireling behavior by His shepherds, is seeking for a reason not to go ahead and finalize His judgment. Standers know this. God finds various ways to keep reminding the community of covenant marriage standers that giving our nation over to its worst internal and external enemies is not His preferred choice of action, but the hour is very late, historically speaking.
Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it?Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” – Genesis 18: 23-25
5.) Standers are driving bible study much deeper than would be the case if this controversy over holiness did not exist in the church
Most Christians today assume that the myth that our founders “required” a rigid separation between church and state, while perceived as patently invalid when it comes to abortion or same-sex “marriage” being unacceptable, but when it comes to heterosexual marriage laws, they don’t see a substantial biblical issue. That’s because our bibles have been altered over time by the social engineers of the last two centuries, who posed as seminarians.
We all thought for a long time that we could simply select a contemporary English bible version that made the text within clear and relatable, with lots of “trustworthy” commentary notes at the bottom, bring it home to the coffee table, crack it open once in a while, and trust it completely as guidance for our lives. In fact, since Christ died (we were told) for our past, present and future sins, we were “under grace”, even if our understanding, hence our obedience to it, was less than perfect on an ongoing basis.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, right?
Little did most of us know, that most contemporary renderings of Romans 8:1 omit a very crucial last phrase from that verse…
“…no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk by the Spirit and not according to the flesh.”
And though most of us knew that Luke 16:18 forbid remarriage after man’s divorce without any exceptions, we didn’t dare imagine that the next 13 verses containing the story of the rich man and Lazarus was an eternal warning against seeking “your best life now”, by doing such a thing, even though it was literally the next thought out of Christ’s mouth, wrapping up the conversation in Luke 16. Indeed, in most of our churches, one simply did not speak of hell, especially concerning anyone who had ever repeated the Sinner’s Prayer, no matter how they were currently living….much less connect the adultery repeatedly spoken of by Jesus with regard to remarriage, with the adultery spoken of by Paul in asserting that such will have no inheritance in the kingdom of God (“do not be deceived”).
Even though there were at least three recorded instances of Jesus Christ warning that for any man to “marry” any divorced woman was committing adultery, we were assured by celebrity seminary presidents that this was only a one-time act, “over with” on the wedding night, then covered by “grace” and duly forgotten by God who “hates divorce” (yet, He allegedly “authorized” it for “biblical grounds” and allegedly was Himself “divorced”.) We were further assured, given that “all authority is from God“, we must obey civil laws that conflict with God’s law, and that therefore, there are “greater” and “lesser” grades of adultery (adultery-lite, if you will, in the presence of civil paper) with differing eternal outcomes than would appear to be supported by our bibles. We swallowed hard or scratched our heads at the blatant conflict between Matthew 5:32; 19:9andMark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18, but alas, the footnotes that might have shed some light in an earlier era, pre-1970’s… Revised Standard Version, Second Edition of the New Testament, 1972 – Matthew 19:9
….were now being quietly removed by the Zondervans who stocked those bible bookshelves and cut the sales deals with Amazon. Most of us, having not attended bible school or seminary, having not been taught the history of the scripture manuscript texts, nor whose hands those texts passed through (including when and why), having not been taught how blatantly that which issues forth from today’s pulpits is at profound variance with the unanimous writings of the 1st through 4th century church fathers – many of them actually martyred, most of us never would have imagined the need to dig hard for ourselves into our study of the bible, in a way that goes all the way back to those texts in their original languages. Most us didn’t at the time know the basis on which we truly needed to call out our denomination’s leadership when they changed their marriage doctrine in the 1970’s by a vote of the pastors, to accommodate unilateral “no-fault” divorce enactment.
Most of us had no idea that we couldn’t rely on the “scholars’ ” rendering of the koine Greek verb moods and tenses, where taking certain liberties could turn Christ’s or Paul’s meaning literally on its head, if it served to prop up the Sexual Revolution that was occurring in the church and had been ongoing since the 16th century for Protestants. (Without elaborating too much here, there is also irrefutable evidence that the same process was ongoing with Catholic bibles for the same reasons and in the same time frame. Try going to biblegateway.com and bringing up Matthew 19:9 in the old Douay-Rheims version, alongside the newer NABRE version, for just one illustration of this.)
All of that was until…. the civil law of the Sexual Revolution collided head-on with the holy matrimony unions of several clean-living seminarians who had a talent for research and writing, and also collided with a few bible school grads whose churches were censuring them for repenting of their adulterous civil-only unions by divorcing civil-only spouses who really belonged to someone else, and remaining celibate, upon their studious discovery of the undiluted truth about “marrying” the estranged spouse of another living person. Thankfully for all of us, by the Lord’s hand, this was occurring with divinely-orchestrated timing, just when technology and online resources were drastically bringing down the cost of the requisite research tools, and removing various barriers to accessing those tools, as well as barriers to broadly communicating their findings to anyone who was interested. This at times has led to confirmation by pastors and linguists half a world away. By then, there were at least tens of thousands of covenant marriage standers on social media who were looking for assurance that what the Holy Spirit was leading them in (intensely countercultural) was indeed backed by scripture they could test and research and confirm for themselves.
The books these scholars then wrote have been literal Godsends. When it becomes abundantly evident that we can’t trust the most acclaimed seminarians and publishers of the day, we must all assume responsibility for our own deep scholarship of original sources. We didn’t plan on any of this, but it’s not all bad. Bible study will probably never be “boring” again!
6.) Standers’ “saltiness” in remaining in a less-than-perfect church is affecting their pastor’s conscience, even if they’re seen by him as a “troublemaker”
“If you have a prayer request, volunteers are waiting to pray with you in the prayer room”, they said. “Stop in before you leave.”
The stander thinks, “uh-huh, how am I going to ask Mr. & Mrs. Blended to join me in praying that my spouse will leave their adulterous remarriage, rebuild our covenant family, escape hell by not dying in that ongoing state of sin, and set an example to our generations not to repeat his / her sin?”
This is just one of the many examples of the various crosses a stander bears to try and be salt and light in their local harlot church. No stander should ever attempt to do this unless (1) they are exceptionally strong spiritually and uber-confident of who they are in the Lord, and (2) the church is otherwise a strong discipling church where none of the pastors are living in that kind of sin. If there is anyone in spiritual authority in that church who is “married” to somebody else’s spouse, the proper biblical response is to flee that kind of unbiblical leadership.
Generally, to do this for any length of time, standers need to have a very strong support network among the virtual (and occasionally-meeting) marriage permanence community. If you hear your prodigal was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer, take it both places, by all means. Prayer requests for the demise of your one-flesh’s adulterous “blended” household probably belong only in the stander community, at least until the prodigal is on his or her way home. Or maybe not. Be led by the Holy Spirit in deciding, and you will not fulfill the evil desires of the flesh.
Some standers find themselves in trouble in bible studies and home groups. It goes without saying that someone in an adulterous remarriage is not qualified to teach or lead in the church, yet nevertheless, it’s quite common that they do, so the Lord will excuse a stander for declining to be under the leadership of such a person.
“Godly couples” in ongoing adultery with someone else’s spouse?
And is the “husband” onboard with leading this group?
However, some of the conflicts that might come up may not even involve questions of marriage. For example, goaded for some weeks to join a “small group”, and having received no response to a letter written to the senior pastor to orient him to the difficulty of a covenant marriage stander participating in a small group where couples in adulterous remarriages were also members, “standerinfamilycourt” decided to attend a large group under the leadership of one of the junior pastors. This was a gathering of around 100 people in a church that is approaching mega church size. We were instructed to cluster according to the town we live in, resulting in a sub-group of around 15. One man seemed to dominate the group, knew it all, and was a dogmatic Calvinist. As he went on about the Holy Spirit being a “guarantee” that one cannot lose their salvation, “standerinfamilycourt” ventured to inform him of what the Greek text literally said (see comments above about deep bible study), that the original texts use the word “arrabōn(ἀρραβὼν)“, meaning down-payment. Perhaps it was just the idea of a new face walking in and contradicting the man, but more likely, a lot of Christians were sold a comfy-system that they don’t want disturbed – ever. Even so, perhaps a little seed was planted for the other 13 participants enticing them to delve a little deeper.
Standers have a couple of unique opportunities in such churches, nevertheless. For example, why not volunteer to teach a generic class on applying hermeneutic principles to the study of scripture, how to use deep bible study tools found online, and the history of our bible texts to reconcile those areas where (usually manipulated) scripture seems to conflict with other scripture?
Some female standers with home space available have taken into their homes the young, abandoned wife with a baby — so that the church would not push her into an adulterous subsequent relationship using twisted scripture, rather than take on the church-wide responsibility to contribute to her longterm financial needs.
There are times when it is just not possible to stay in a church that does not subscribe to the no-excuses indissolubility of holy matrimony, according to scripture. Other times, though it’s frequently uncomfortable, that’s still where the Lord would have us right now. There’s very little chance that state legislative efforts cropping up in a few states to repeal “no-fault” grounds for divorce unless there’s mutual consent, will ever come up for a vote, much less pass and get signed into law, unless someone is there recruiting the pastor’s active support. The pastors to affluent suburban communities are actually the ones needing the most encouragement to support these efforts.
7.) Standers are emboldening more pastors and priests to forsake false, comfortable teaching for Christ’s hard teachings, straight-up and undiluted
This part of the movement is blessedly growing, which may be the influence that eventually pulls our nation back from the brink. Some of these pastors have experienced the walk of a stander, and the restoration of a God-joined holy matrimony union for themselves. Either way, God is orchestrating quite a bit of cross-pollination which also crosses denominations. It would be great to see these pastors begin engaging other pastors on “family law” reform, especially in states where a repeal or reform bill is active before the legislature.
– A Pennsylvania bible college president writes a book in 1957, a very disciplined hermeneutical masterpiece that the succeeding leadership of his evangelical denomination tried its best to keep buried deep in the bowels of their headquarters basement, even though at the time, it carried an endorsing foreword by the General Superintendent of that denomination.
– A Connecticut pastor in an intact original marriage who juggles his congregation, leadership of a K-12 school, and a weekly radio broadcast ministry…who confronts other pastors with Jeremiah 23 as needed, and calls out the adulterous legalized unions, urging physical repentance, is hopefully sending a few prodigal spouses home to their true mates.
– A fiery black pastor in an intact original marriage regularly dishes unpopular truth out to his Philadelphia-headquartered megachurch and its global satellites. His tone is far from “diplomatic”.
– A Milwaukee pastor in an intact original marriage realizes that government regulation of holy matrimony was never delegated by God, and in fact, Matthew 19:6,8 backs this pastor up completely. He refuses to marry anyone under a civil marriage license, and teaches his flock alternative means to secure property and other rights in biblical marriage, while forgoing some of the government benefits that doing so entails. God sees the weddings in this congregation as covenantally-binding all the same.
– A Canadian pastor in an intact original marriage commends a teenage girl in his congregation for walking in Paul’s 1 Corinthians 5 instructions while the guest of a church in the U.S. when she finds out that her host and hostess are in a “marriage” Jesus repeatedly called adulterous, and cuts the trip short because of it.
– An Ohio Baptist pastor in an intact original marriage refuses to perform any wedding he wouldn’t do right in front of Jesus Christ, and also refuses to take people already in those unions into this church as a couple, no exceptions, no excuses.
– Another Ohio pastor in an intact original marriage gives up his Cincinnati church congregation on good terms when his conscience no longer permits him to perform weddings over people with living, estranged prior spouses, nor fellowship with people in such a union. He tearfully apologizes to those he has done the wrong to in performing their biblically-unlawful marriage, then departs to form a house church and weekly conference call supportive of the stander community and reconciliation of holy matrimony unions. He writes a landmark book on the topic that carries a spirit of gentleness and truth.
– Another Baptist pastor in Arizona openly rebukes several pastors and leaders of large media ministries who are divorcing their covenant wife to “marry” an adulteress, and all too often, one who is another man’s legally-estranged wife.
– A famous evangelist in the Charismatic movement reconciles with his covenant wife instead of getting entangled in the pursuing attentions of a serially polygamous female “pastor”. (She went on to other infamous exploits, enough said.)
– A Florida pastor in a long marriage with a widow who gave up his congregation to write two landmark books on the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony and the invalidity of subsequent civil marriages while an original estranged spouse is alive, including the required means of repentance.
– A soft-spoken seminary graduate on the east coast writes a very important scholarly and historical book, and accompanying historical paper before he himself marries, then later finds himself standing for his own marriage, and experiencing a God-orchestrated reconciliation in some very difficult circumstances.
– A Houston pastor in an intact marriage who uses his blog to patiently teach principled hermeneutics on a weekly basis.
– A courageous African Cardinal stands up to Pope Francis’ plans to allow civilly-divorced and remarried parishioners (who have estranged prior spouses from valid marriages still living) to take communion, and to further liberalize “annulment” practices.
– A Virginia pastor leaves the legal profession to establish a marriage permanence church and family integrity radio broadcast.
Are these diverse shepherds “harsh”, “unloving”, “Pharisaical”, “unmerciful”, “unpastoral”, “pushing a ‘works-based’ salvation” ?
No, unlike most of their peers who adhere to the majority opinion, they’re simply focusing on eternal souls, and eternal outcomes. They are the handful who are fulfilling Christ’s instructions to “feed my sheep”. The law of this territory is that souls are more important than feelings, once forced to make a choice between the two. Being “pastoral” utterly fails if most of the sheep don’t ever make it back into the right (eternal) fold. Pastors like this act as a voice of conscience to all other pastors, even in the midst of a denouncing and reviling response from them. Pastors like this remind everyone, from the county court judge to the Pope, that even if “possession is 9/10ths of the (civil) law”, Jesus echoed John the Baptizer in the firm rebuke that such possession never exceeds 0/10ths of GOD’s law. Taking it to the next level, “standerinfamilycourt” would like to challenge these exemplary pastors to consider that “the law is a teacher”, and take the case to their state capitol (preferably with a church bus full of like-minded saints), so that we can get back to the days when people didn’t typically go to hell for much more than not knowing Jesus. Just imagine the character of your congregations if murder or rape or theft were legal! You are the “salt” of the pastorates, so please do for biblical marriage what you’ve always been willing to do for the sanctity of life. We stand very little chance of success repealing this abomination in 50 states without the solid support of church leadership!
“standerinfamilycourt” would like to close with this: how many laws would ever get enacted, or how many immoral laws would remain on the books if everyone knew that availing ourselves of that particular law would send us to hell? How many legislators would vote for a law like that if they could see people in the hell-flames for observing it? How many would refuse to vote for repeal of such a law, or conspire to keep its repeal from coming to a general vote of our state representatives? We have immoral civil laws as a result of the traditions of men that were built around sincerely-believed and long-unquestioned heresies, such as Chapter 24 (V, VI) of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which forms the basis for the (extrabiblical) fault-based grounds for civil divorce. Having answered this question, apart from the example of standers conspicuously devoting their lives to the restored wholeness of their covenant families, snatching people from those flames, and willingly bucking the contemporary taboo against even speaking of hell, how else would the world ever find out that this is actually the case, according to God’s word?
And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember thatduring your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. – Luke 16:24-25
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;–to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;–to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;–to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;–to Controversies between two or more States;–between a State and Citizens of another State; –between Citizens of different States, –between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. United States Constitution, Article 3, Section 2, Clause 1
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. United States Constitution, Article 10
Two landmark cases of the Sexual Revolution in the U.S., namely Roe v. Wade – 1973 (depriving pre-born children of their fundamental right to life), and Obergefell v. Hodges – 2015, legalizing sodomy as “marriage”, were seen by conservatives and original constructionists (with a fair amount of justification, we daresay) as “legislating from the bench”. An extra-constitutional fundamental right (to “privacy”) was established without actually amending the Constitution via Congressional and state legislative action as called for in Article 5. Leading up to those cases, several other cases also turned on a judicially-presumed “right of privacy”, including Eisenstadt v. Baird – 1972 (establishing the right of unmarried individuals to purchase contraceptives) and Lawrence v. Texas – 2003 (declaring state laws against sodomy “unconstitutional”). It should be noted that the fundamental right that is explicit in the Bill of Rights is the right to freedom of association, which came to be closely associated with a presumed “privacy” right which, even worse, has come to override the priority of other conflicting fundamental rights of impacted parties, in order to arrive at some of these activist, individualist decisions that don’t comport with balancing fundamental rights in a way that is best for society as a whole.
As for prioritizing the protection of fundamental rights that inherently conflict with one another, most reasonable people would concur with the principle: “My fundamental rights end where yours take up.” For example, a baby’s right to life was ruled in Roe v. Wade to unduly infringe upon a woman’s right to “free association”, but is that reasonable? A homosexual pair’s right to “free association”, protected by local SOGI laws (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) was ruled to have priority over a wedding professional’s free exercise of religion in a matter before the U.S. Supreme Court last year with a landmark ruling in his favor delivered in June.
SCOTUS did (effectively) rule in 2015 that homosexual couples have a fundamental right to remain married, but our unilateral divorce laws continue to deny that same fundamental right to innocent heterosexual spouses who oppose the purported “dissolution” of their marriage as profoundly harmful to their immediate and extended families’ true best interests, and significantly infringing on the family members’ rights to free association and free religious exercise. In fact, the Petitioner’s presumed right to “free association” with an adulterous partner, and “privacy” are treated as trumping their innocent spouse’s right to free religious exercise and conscience, as well as their right to protection of property with due process of law, along with their right to protection of decades of extended family relationships. My right to bear arms must necessarily yield to your right to life if I misuse my fundamental right in order to advance my individual selfish interest at your expense. And so forth.
Most immoral laws and court rulings indeed result from immoral prioritization of conflicting fundamental rights – a balancing that always has been unavoidable when it comes to the Bill of Rights protections. It is popular (and ridiculously false) to claim that “you can’t legislate morality”, but is that not precisely what laws against murder, rape, battery, larceny and defamation actually do? Don’t discrimination laws of all types “legislate morality” ?
C.S. Lewis famously said,
“There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.”
Indeed, if someone isn’t legislating morality, it certainly doesn’t leave just a neutral vacuum. The evidence is all around us that somebody else is surely going to be legislating immorality –and in constantly increasing amounts, to the corrosive detriment of the whole of society. As the morality and sense of the good of the whole thereby disintegrates, the whole nation can go down to historic ruin because immoral laws can be exceedingly difficult to reverse no matter how much vile impact they’ve produced.
This concludes the long introduction to the topic at-hand.
Our U.S. Constitution and state constitutions were designed with an intentional separation-of-powers so that the three branches, legislative, executive and judicial, historically operated with prudent boundaries; checks-and-balances on each other. It wasn’t perfect, but it continued to pervasively function well over a long period of time — until the Sexual Revolution hit in full force in the 1970’s. In addition, the concept of Federalism served to set boundaries of balance between states’ power and the power of national leaders. Unfortunately, both of these mechanisms in recent decades have worked together to make the erosion of equal protection in marriage laws enacted with unconstitutional statutory provisions increasingly difficult to counter or overturn, at least with regard to the heterosexuals who (after all) produce the children who become the next generation of citizens.
As we’ve seen since former President Obama swept into office in 2008, it’s been a far different story with regard to homosexuals, who achieved superior protections to all other citizens, and relaxation of those legal boundaries, vis-à-vis heterosexuals . Homosexuals have typically not been required to undertake the expensive burden of taking marriage cases through all levels of the state courts before a lower Federal court would hear and rule on the case. Homosexuals have often been extended special privilege in overturning a state marriage law that state judiciary authorities declined to review. By contrast, heterosexuals in modern times have been forced to bear the expensive burden of exhausting all state channels of review, with SCOTUS being the first allowed Federal engagement point of review. The odds of getting a constitutional challenge heard there are approximately 90 to 1 as recently reported. Reportedly, less than 1% of the 9,000 some cases submitted for SCOTUS docketing ever make it oral arguments. Unless at least four Justices agree to hear the case, it will never be heard, and no reason need be given. To make matters worse, the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Court revealed that the Justices had been using a “vetting pool” of clerks, rather than having their own clerks read the cases, reducing the chances of a case which so fundamentally “takes on” the Sexual Revolution having its day in highest court in the land even more remote. To his credit, Justice Gorsuch announced that he would be joining Justice Alito in breaking with that convenience. Most recently, Justice Kavanaugh was mum on that issue, so presumably he’s using the “cert” pool, as the now-retired Justice Kennedy did. That means liberal clerks still probably outnumber conservative clerks in that pool, but “standerinfamilycourt” digresses except to say that even the conservative clerks are going to have an ideological bias against the perception of “legislating from the bench”.
Unfortunately, the whole concept of “legislating from the bench”, tends to be ideologically charged. It refers to using courts to violate the constitutional separation of powers in Articles 1 and 3, also the interference with Federalism and states’ rights prohibited by Article 10. Our constitutional republic is gravely harmed in the clear-cut cases of “legislating from the bench” where special rights have been created for a group of people in a case precedent that will in fact deny fundamental rights to everyone else in order to implement and enforce the same. Our constitutional republic is equally harmed when an ideological majority uses the concept as an excuse to deny fundamental rights to a group of people whose state constitutions and the Bill of Rights is supposed to guarantee them. The latter has historically been accomplished either through applying an inappropriate standard of judicial review, or wrongfully declining to hear such a case coming from a lower level.
For example, in 1986, Florida pro-se constitutional challenger Judith Brumbaugh related in her book, “Judge, Please Don’t Strike that Gavel on My Marriage”, that she managed to get her appeal of Florida’s unilateral “no-fault” divorce law docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court. They ultimately declined to hear the case “for want of a Federal question”. It was striking that Judith’s request for “cert” even got docketed. This blog has documented many earlier challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws based on religious freedom and equal protection grounds, where the state appeals courts applied the rational basis standard of review, instead of the strict scrutiny basis that is constitutionally required when fundamental rights are being denied by a state statute. The latter requires that the states prove a compelling interest in denying those fundamental rights, and that such laws be narrowly-tailored to meet that interest in the least intrusive way upon those rights. What tends to happen is that SCOTUS will apply Article 10 first, and say there is no “Federal question” (unless conflicting results are found in lower courts in different circuits on the same issue) even when it is clear that not only is the Bill of Rights being violated, but the state courts are tolerating wholesale violations of Articles 1 and 3, and thereby compromising the separation-of-powers between the branches of government. What’s really happening is the actual inverse of “legislating from the bench”, that is, taking away true judicial discretion and validating a phony cause-of-action from the floors of the state legislative bodies, while being allowed to do it through what amounts to judicial collusion and self-dealing.
Although SCOTUS intervened twice in equal protection cases involving marriage or divorce between homosexuals between 2013 and 2015, the last heterosexual divorce case “standerinfamilycourt” could find that was heard appears to be in 1996 out of Mississippi, and it involved the termination of parental rights for a mother who had suffered a divorce to which she probably acquiesced. (Mississippi’s “no-fault” law is the only one in the country that was comprehensively enacted in 1972 so as to not force divorce on a non-consenting spouse except on a fault basis.) The matter at issue was not even the divorce itself, but her inability to pay the transcript costs that blocked her from fighting the termination of her parental rights at the request of her now-“remarried” husband. There was already significant precedent for the costs of access to courts not to be permitted to deny access to her avenues of initial hearing or appeal. That case was simply remanded back to the state on that very narrow basis.
In the landmark case, Loving v Virginia (1967) there were no such concerns with violating Article 10. The Lovings had secured the help of the ACLU to fight the state’s anti-miscegenation laws all the way up through the state appellate system in a class action suit, until certiorari was requested and granted from SCOTUS. However, neither was there any artificial requirement imposed by SCOTUS to wait for differing outcomes in other regions of the country, lest the spurious claim be made of “want of a Federal question”. The Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) ….
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
….makes such assertions highly questionable when Bill of Rights protections are being denied by state legislatures to its citizens.
The sequence of events in the Loving case, as laid out in the majority SCOTUS opinion:
“On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. The motion not having been decided by October 28, 1964, the Lovings instituted a class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia requesting that a three-judge court be convened to declare the Virginia anti-miscegenation statutes unconstitutional and to enjoin state officials from enforcing their convictions. On January 22, 1965, the state trial judge denied the motion to vacate the sentences, and the Lovings perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge District Court continued the case to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the highest state court. The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes and, after modifying the sentence, affirmed the convictions. The Lovings appealed this decision, and we noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966…”
Fundamental rights to stay married, and to live where they wished were on the line in this case that was decided unanimously by the Justices, two and a half years before unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws began to be enacted in the various states. While it should never be the case, the ugly reality is that the changeable prevailing morality tends to drive landmark SCOTUS decisions and fundamental rights get some lip service, but tend to take a back seat. For more on the constitutional challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce that were decided at the state level under an erroneous standard of judicial review, but never heard by SCOTUS, please click here, and here. Several of the gay marriage cases decided in 2014 cited the right to stay married.
If subsequent state legislation conflicts with a state constitution, there is no violation of Federalism for SCOTUS to enforce the state constitution where a state supreme court denied certiorari.
First-level state appeals are required to be heard, but are sometimes dismissed on technicalities, and hearings for state Supreme Court appeals can be declined without comment, simply based on the number of cases submitted, with “standerinfamilycourt’s” constitutional attorney advising that the state Supreme Court might hear perhaps 5% of the few thousand appeals submitted each session. Given the influence-peddling on the state level for states that have an elected judiciary, which was ongoing both before and after the jaw-dropping Citizens United ruling by SCOTUS (money is “speech”), it is important, in theory at least, to have an unobstructed path to SCOTUS. Appellate decisions at the state level, and demonstrably also by SCOTUS, are becoming almost uniformly ideological rather than independent, with the effect that constitutional checks-and-balances between the branches of government are becoming ever-weaker, and stare decisis (ruling by precedent) is pretty much a joke these days. While in a rare instance there might be a favorable individual challenge where the ruling would be limited in its impact to the law as applied to just that case, no state appellate court wants to invalidate 50 years worth of unconstitutional marriage dissolutions by admitting the laws are unconstitutional on their face, knowing the social chaos that would result, so these courts will be duplicitous in avoiding ever being put in a situation where they would have to so rule. Some basis is going to have the be found for taking a constitutional challenge up through the Federal court system despite the long history of being barred from doing so by Article 10 arguments.
In one sense, given the long history of barriers and difficulty of getting any true appellate justice in 1st and 14th Amendment-based challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, either on the state or Federal levels, the question of whether it would be “legislating from the bench” to declare them unconstitutional on this basis might seem like a moot or futile question. However, if judges could be sued in Federal court because they ruled while having no true subject matter jurisdiction due to the Article 3 violations entailed in the statute, then this might suddenly become a very relevant question. As this post is being written, the theory that state divorce statutes unconstitutionally strip judges of the discretion required by Article 3 is being tested in Federal court in several states. As soon as some initial outcomes are available, the updates will be the subject of a future post.
Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the Lord of hosts. “For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. – Malachi 3: 5-6
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Give us that Marxist social gospel Give us that Marxist social gospel Give us that Marxist social gospel It’s good enough for most
It was good enough for the mainstream Methodists
Good enough for the Episcopalians
Good enough for the leftist Lutherans It’s even good enough for this Pope
Yeah!….( okay, “SIFC” will behave now.)
In the not-so-humble opinion of “standerinfamilycourt”, it’s way past time to recognize that the bride of Jesus Christ is not some sort of demographic-sensitive, finger-to-the-wind organizational hawker. Her Husbandnever did allow one single soulto come to Him on his or her own terms while He walked the earth, not even the man who wanted to go home first and bury his ailing father.
It has been hard to miss the leftward drift over the past 3 or so years of The Gospel Coalition publication (TGC) and the related Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), both of which are Southern Baptist-affiliated organizations. What do we mean by “leftward drift” ? It’s easily recognizable to some of us with adult children whom we raised in conservative evangelical homes, or in traditional Catholic homes, but those big kids are now thinking Jesus died for “social justice” – and they choose their current church accordingly, leaving some of us grateful that our grandchildren are in church at all, but….
Did Jesus die for “social justice” ?
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm. Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. – John 18:36-37
Jesus laid down His life to bring the poor and lost into a future kingdom. Yes, He taught us to do unto others as we would have done for us, but the temporal (as He demonstrates Himself) is only PART of the equation, and it is, in fact, by far the lesser part.
While it might seem comforting to reason that the SBC is doing what all major organizations do in the 21st century, especially after losing a million members over the last decade, and they are appealing to what they perceive as their future demographic to try and recover the loss, yet there may possibly be a little more that’s afoot along with the demographic appeal, and it just might be a bit sinister. This may seem a crass suggestion, but once the choice has been made to shift (or drift) mission from the eternal to the temporal, is not such discernment fair game?
In the fall of 2015, TGC contributor Joe Carter did an excellent three-part series of articles on the Communist roots of the U.S.
50-state unilateral divorce laws, and the deleterious impact they have had on the civility and stability of our society. He promised a fourth installment which the marriage permanence community eagerly awaited, but for some reason, he has not delivered it –almost three years later. Why? Some have sought to find out, but Joe’s not saying. (More about the reinvented Joe Carter below.)
As the Southern Baptist Convention gears up for its annual convention June 10-13 in Dallas, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it appears the agenda will be heavy with more of the same. The media has managed to keep the national attention riveted on “racism”, despite a rash of multi-racial school shootings, carried out by fatherless young men. Denominational leaders are tripping all over themselves to “apologize” for our “segregated” churches, despite the fact that people quite freely make their own choice where they feel most comfortable attending, and you never see a “blacks only” or “whites only” sign in front of any church in this country. Likely to be ignored (again) in the agenda is the fact that the 2018 host state and the neighboring state both have unilateral divorce repeal bills pending on the floors of their legislatures, and it’s a prime opportunity for the SBC to act on its year 2000 resolution — that is, presuming the denomination ever meant a single wordof it.
The family-friendly year 2000 SBC resolution entitled, “The Baptist Faith and Message”was presided over by the man who this week lost his job as head of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary over allegations that he is a “misogynist” and “patriarchal”, guilty in the first-degree of the unspeakable crime of counseling a physically and emotionally battered woman, some years earlier, in the identical fashion the Apostles Paul and Peter would have. As described in the preceding blog post, homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt brought a Y2K radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson to Spiritual Sounding Board, a blog site that “exposes” traditional biblical church conduct and morals (and especially, church leadership that cultivates this) as “abusive” and “controlling”. SSB then proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women. This inflamed the likes of leftist-leaning Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition garnering over 3,000 signatures demanding Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post. The undersigned claimed to “affirm” The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 principles (we’d beg to differ), which reads, in part:
Given that Jesus was abundantly and repeatedly clear that all “divorce” is man-made rebellion against the created order (Matt. 19:6,8), representing an un-Christlike and deliberate decision to take one’s own revenge, to never forgive, and to covet a different spouse, is it not at least possible that what really offended these women on Patterson’s part, is that many of them actually are adulterously-“remarried”, and therefore, Paul’s instruction for abuse found in 1 Cor. 7:11casts an implicit moral judgment on their own unbiblical life choices, when counseled and publicly endorsed by a seminary head? Around this blog, we call that the “shoe fits-syndrome”; nobody likes to be exposed, by the double-edged sword of God’s word, as a hypocrite – even indirectly. This tragically-successful petition treats the socially conservative SBC year 2000 Resolution as though it were a bag of trail mix, because these same women (and possibly their pastors as well) have grown accustomed to treating God’s word the same way. Don’t think for a moment that the well-financed globalist players pushing the Marxist breakdown of the family aren’t intimately familiar with the utter hypocrisy of the contemporary adulterated church (as well as the 50-year advanced pastor-intimidation-factor which unrepentant congregation members routinely wield), or that these globalist malefactors would evenhesitate to “play” these gullible women, along with their horde of well-meaning sympathizers!
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses,always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.– 2 Timothy 3:1-7
( SIFC: Regrettably, Karen Swallow Prior was reported to have been hit by a bus on Wednesday in Nashville, one day after Patterson’s removal, and suffered serious injuries requiring emergency surgery. Please be upholding this confused lady in prayer – Matthew 5:43-48 – for a healing from head to heart to toe, as God is gracious to deliver and instruct. She reportedly is recovering well, according to an update from the same source.)
In the four-minute “smoking gun” audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused. Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”, and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce. Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing Dr. Patterson could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries” — already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth. From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about on occasion. (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact). He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady–rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’shave vocally characterized it as. One has to seriously question the born-again experience of histrionical critics whose words and conduct show they do not trust the ability of God to supernaturally protect those who obey Him, and even worse, who cast aside as inconsequential the kingdom fruit of a former abuser being transformed, regenerated and born into the kingdom of God.
He counseled this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’…. Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard. He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred…. “…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken. He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her. Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’ Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.
Additional audio “skeletons” came out of the closet where Patterson either showed some bad judgment in sheltering sexual offenders, or related some anecdote in a way sure to inflame the “feminists-for-Christ”, who insisted he was “objectifying” women and girls, including this audio from 2014. Lastly, a late-breaking claim from a former seminary student who reportedly told blogging Enid, OK pastor Wade Burleson just this week that she had been raped on the campus of another Baptist seminary in 2003, and she alleged that Patterson had counseled her not to report it to the police. This last story literally broke via the Washington Post (given by Burleson to young religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey) just as the deliberations for Patterson’s job were getting underway on Tuesday this past week, and this 11th hour story pretty much sealed his fate. Since Patterson had earlier removed Burleson from a job on a missionary board, the latter was hardly a “disinterested party” when he took the tasty morsel to WaPo. Snarks the previously-vanquished former underling of Patterson’s: “A woman divorcing a man is far worse than a woman enduring physical abuse. A single woman inviting a man into her apartment is a far worse sin than a single woman being raped by the man she invited over.” Tell me this false shepherd Burleson isn’t a cultural Marxist–and one with a festering personal vendetta, at that!
( SIFC:While any failure to timely report a felony crime to law enforcement officials is seriously unacceptable on the part of any school official — or any Samaritan with firsthand knowledge, for that matter, what was conveniently left to the side by Burleson, Dreher, et. al. in their screeds was any mention whether this perpetrator (another student) forced his way into the victim’s [apparently] on-campus living accommodation or was invited there, in violation of campus rules. These schools typically require all students to sign their pre-consent to strong morals agreements as a condition of remaining a student in good standing. Critics like journalist Rod Dreher, a former evangelical converted to Roman Catholicism, are decrying that the female victim was put on probation… while the male student was expelled and permanently barred from attending another SBC seminary. While not completely conclusive, this strongly indicates that the victim violated the campus moral policies by inviting him in, and she received a proportionally lesser penalty that at least allowed her the opportunity to complete her studies if she was so-inclined. The real question is whether the disciplinary actions were appropriately documented by school officials and whether those files still exist 15 years later. Apparently, normal seminary disciplinary policies, formally pre-agreed by the students, aren’t supposed to be enforced, under #churchtoo ideology, against victims who suffer crime as a direct result of themselves violating school morals policies, because “it adds to their trauma”. This, as concerns a seminary student, is supposed to be the moral equivalent of blaming a rape victim who–proverbially–had dressed like a streetwalker, according to the social justice ideology.)
Ironically, the only story we’re aware of about Patterson’s leadership malfeasance that doesn’tseem at least questionable by objective biblical standards never even surfaced during this food fight in Fort Worth, but was well-known to SBC leadership for years. We come by it due to a brief mention by relatively sympathetic Pulpit & Pen, who thinks disciplinary action against Patterson should have occurred ten years ago, and that he was politically singled out while other known bad and worse actors have come away unscathed so far. The others, apparently, are lesser-known to the noisy outside social justice warriors–and they don’t run the institutions that influence church doctrine and shape future pastors.
We’re Being “Played” : Abuse As a “Silver Bullet”
Many believe the bottom line was that unless a way was found ahead of the conference to shove Patterson to the side, there was a reduced chance of carrying off a social justice theme at the June conference. “Abuse” is one (but not the only one) of those potent, emotional core themes of the Left, right along with “bullying” — one that even the most ardent social conservatives will cast aside years of professional expertise in evidence and due process to treat an allegation emotionally if a painful personal experience stirs up those emotions. As we saw with the successful last minute smear of former Chief Justice Roy Moore (who was for years an active advocate for intact, biblical families in carrying out his duties on the bench–in addition to his powerful opposition to the LGBT political agenda) prior to the December, 2017 special election in Alabama. It is a signature trait of Soros interference with democratic processes that unproven (or unprovable) allegations will indeed carry the day if visceral human emotions are skillfully played ,with inadequate time or means to investigate allegations. It has become an article of Leftist faith that to call man’s divorce immoral, and to require a man or woman to remain in a marriage they no longer want to be in is “social injustice”.
The Gilyard debacle could have been spun as precisely what it looks like: insensitive and negligent failure to protect female members of the congregations and staffs of a succession of churches from an obvious sexual predator. One who was convicted, went to jail, and was installed in yet another pulpit as soon was he was released, as a matter of fact. Why wasn’t it spun this time? Perhaps the issue is that this sexual predator, apparently sheltered by Dr. Patterson for a couple of decades, is black. Not good for the narrative. The operatives knew that predominantly-female emotions were high enough over uninvestigated and questionable charges, that it was unnecessary to hang the man over a real crime which didn’t fit the narrative. And who was sheltering Dr. Patterson in the nine years since Gilyard went to prison – any of the board members who voted this week to depose him, perchance?
( SIFC: Update, June 1 ,2018 – documentary evidence has now been made public by the wife of Dr. Patterson’s chief of staff, showing that it is likely that the 2003 “rape victim” at Southeastern Baptist Seminary was actually caught in consensual fornication, and more recently lied to the media about it. This includes correspondence the “rape victim” sent to Dr. Patterson in 2003.
This should not be at all surprising, given the highly political rush to judgment, the revenge factor of some of the players, and likely outside meddling. As the actual facts come to light, the Patterson proceedings bear even more resemblance to the politically-pivotal Roy Moore incident in December, 2017, where unsubstantiated allegations cost a Senate election. Regrettably, on May 30 a faction of the Board of Trustees voted to reverse their May 23 decision based on continued feminist pressure, and vindictively stripped Dr. Patterson, age 75, of his retirement benefits, while he was out of the country, claiming, there was “new” – but undisclosed – “urgent” evidence.)
Another pastor from Oklahoma, Grady Arnold, was interviewed this week on the Janet Mefferd podcast show. Pastor Arnold has written a resolution, discussed at the 20 minute mark, which he will be presenting at the conference to try to turn the SBC back from formally or informally embracing cultural Marxism. May the Lord put the wind at his back, but the resolution’s prospects don’t look very good at this point.
Rent-An-Evangelical
Mentioned earlier was the connection between removal petition instigator, Karen Swallow-Prior and the ERLC, between Jonathan Merritt and the George Soros-controlled secular publications that frequently carry his work. Independent journalists such as Pulpit & Pen have been alleging for the past three years that one or more of the complex funding networks of Mr. Soros has been donating to both the ERLC and to The Gospel Coalition, which has manifested in the leftist undertones both have been steadily taking on. In fact, Pulpit & Pen asserted on an April 10 facebook post that Soros / Riady-placed board members run the ERLC, but did not name any names. The ministry website names only a massively large “Leadership Council” but does not disclose the names of ERLC board members. This information is also unavailable on either Charity Navigator or Guidestar. Presumably, this board would include the likes of Tim Keller, and others involved with the Acton Institute.
Another Janet Mefferd podcast on May 18 featured an interview with Tom Littleton, another Southern Baptist pastor and writer, where Soros funding of SBC entities was discussed at the 20:30 mark. where Littleton says, “at some point I think that’s [the dirty money] going to surface….and it’s going to be a really damaging thing for some of these leaders when we see where some of this money is coming from.”
Unfortunately, conclusively proving the money trail is not so straightforward, because both of these SBC “suspect” organizations are able to classify themselves as disclosure-exempt religious organizations according to IRS rules for nonprofits. That means the IRS Form 990 information returns that disclose financials and major donors which we might otherwise be able to look up on sites like Guidestar and Charity Navigator are not available to the public. That said, the serendipity of a 2016 hacking and leaking incident resulted in access to strategy documents of the (Soros) Open Society Foundation that at least provide some pretty good circumstantial evidence. The first “rented” evangelicals were already liberals, such as journalist Jim Wallis of Sojouners, who was forced to admit in 2011 to taking Soros money after originally denying it.
This is a map of the various locations for Soros funding organizations in the U.S. — showing plenty of them in and around the SBC’s operating hubs. Most deal with open borders immigration initiatives (which is how the first financial involvement with the ERLC was orchestrated), but not all do. Source: Soros FY2015 Reception and Placement Program Affiliate Sites
( SIFC: Here’s a quick guide to those Soros-funded organization acronymns on the above map illustration:
CWS*~^ – Church World Service (open borders) EMM*~ – Episcopal Migration Ministries (refugees) ECDC* – Ethiopian Community Development Council (refugees) HIAS* – (refugees) IRC^ – International Rescue Campaign (refugees) LIRS^ – Lutheran Immigration and Rescue Service (refugees)** USCCB*~^ – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (ecumenism) USCRI* – U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (open borders) WR*^ – World Relief (“human flourishing” – a.k.a. humanist responses to human suffering)
* Eight of these “social justice” organizations have a presence in the Chicagoland area, home to The Gospel Coalition.
~ Three of these have a presence in the Louisville, KY vicinity of the SBC / ERLC national headquarters
^ Five of these have a presence in the Dallas / Fort Worth area where important SBC seminaries, including the one Dr. Patterson was just deposed from, are located.
** One of SIFC’s adult children is presently part of a liberal Lutheran church located in a university town in a Deep South state–which is also gay-affirming, divorce-and-remarriage-affirming, and deeply involved with this Soros-funded organization. The church’s local leadership consists largely of liberal professors from the nearby secular university. SIFC has attended services there numerous times and is quite familiar with the liberal culture of that church, where gay literature is displayed on the reception tables in the church lobby.)
Says Pulpit & Pen, December, 2017: “THINKING THIS THROUGH together for a moment… Joe Carter came to the ERLC soon after Russell Moore’s ascent and radical altering of the standard conservative Southern Baptist messaging on key topics, especially LGBTQ issues. Carter serves as ERLC “Communications Specialist” while he still holds his Senior Editor job with Rev. Robert Sirico – the once radical left wing, Marxist gay activist Pentecostal (later) gay church pastor and founder of Metropolitan Community Churches (the world’s first gay denomination), who conducted some of the nations first gay marriages and boasted he would perform exorcisms to rebuke the heterosexual spirits from his opposition – who is now a Catholic Libertarian priest. If that is not disturbing we are simply NOT paying attention! Carter has also worked in high level editing positions with at least two other Catholic publications according to his biography….
( SIFC: This blogger personally became aware of a sodomy-affirming MCC evangelical “church” during the 1980’s while residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the “buckle of the Bible Belt” and sequential polygamy capital of the nation–and considered both very disturbing!)
This December, 2017 article continues…. “Civil City Utopian Prophets and The Funding Machine The following collaborations outlined as bullet points show the depths of Faith-Based involvement of Tim Keller and other evangelicals and institutions. Several have been mentioned in previous articles without mention of the role Acton played in them.
Leading up to the 2009 infusion of untold billions of tax dollars by the Obama administration into the Faith Based Partnership overhaul – Tim Keller (page 80) and Friends, including the Acton Institute, worked with a Faith Based Partnership model in Orlando called “Seeking the Welfare of the City” (STWOTC) which resulted in the Polis Institute. Richard Florida’s pro homosexual ideology was promoted by the Human Rights Campaign and Albert Mohler played a key role (page 76) as has the Acton Institute. Acton still heavily promotes the “Welfare of the City” concept which centers around Faith Based Partnerships. If participants like churches and ministries want to find funding to “save their cities” through Community Development grants, they must be inclusive and welcoming of one of the more destructive influences within the communities they are asserting they wish to help. The erosion of the family and sexual liberation are two of the most compelling issues urban centers face. ………. “Are Money Changers Funding Acton and an Evangelical Deep State?
Another major player in what appears as an Evangelical Deep State is the National Christian Foundation of Alpharetta GA. According to its history with Conservative Transparency and a 2016 990 forms /report, the NCF has brought about $6 Billion into its Christian philanthropy circles since 2011 (page 15 of the 990 shows $1,396,381,203 in 2016 alone.) On requesting NCF to provide its donor and recipient list and history, the organization refused to supply any information whatsoever. Various philanthropic sites do track some of the money and its sources, but given that NCF is a “Donor ADVISED fund,” the agreement upon giving is the intention of the donor is to be recognized but not required in the distribution. What the Conservative Transparency tracking shows is that NCF giving in large part goes to political organizations like Acton Institute, Heritage Foundation, and a variety of organizations, many being Libertarian like Acton instead of conservative Christian organizations or ministries. NCF helps coordinate giving for the Frankfurt School / Marxist-inspired Civilitas Group in which Tim Keller and Rick Warren serve as Board Members…..Since 2012 a marked departure from classic Evangelical conservative stance has taken place and Russell Moore, Tim Keller and others have been peddling the new, more civil, culturally relevant tone on social issues. Given that their partners, like Acton and Sirico, all share the goals of harnessing Christian giving while promoting a Social Gospel and Faith Based Partnerships (FBP) it is fair to ask, “WHY?”Marvin Olasky, crowned the father of the Bush FBP agenda, later heavily funded and loaded with LGBTQ activism in the Obama years, provides conservative Christians with unquestioned news “from a Christian world view” in World Magazine. Perhaps he should answer for his Fellowship with Acton Institute and Father Sirico knowing the LGBTQ infiltration of these circles and the programs he (Olasky) promotes. Would Albert Mohler, the highly regarded head of Southern Seminary and SBC/ TGC/ evangelical leader clarify exactly what part of Richard Florida and HRC’s pro gay urban planning he believes is so vital for the church that he endorses it along with other strategies of the homosexual agenda. There is little else in the Florida rhetoric except a heavy dose of Cultural Marxism. So what is the Appeal and what part of the ideology are we as the church to follow if NOT its push for LGBTQ “inclusion”?”
Another Christian journalist, Brannon Howse (World View Weekend), echoes this history and web of sinister connections between TGC and ERLC principals in his two-part series, “Exposing the Religious Trojan Horse of the Globalist Deep State” (March 28, 2018). Presumably, these leaked documents enabled the reporting that was coming to light in 2017 and 2018 by these sources.
( SIFC: While Howse’s documented fact-gathering is indeed very useful, we put a heavy “disclaimer” on the toxic Calvinism that intrudes at the halfway-point of the Part 1 video. Obedience to the commandments of Christ is not “salvation by works”, as Howse wrongly contends while critiquing Dr. John Piper as a “neo-Calvinist”.)
There are documents dating from at least 2008 to 2016. In June, 2016 the Open Society Foundations also had several documents leaked by DCLeaks. Bloomberg reported that the foundation notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the hacking. DCLeaks.com link was provided in a PJ Media article, but no longer works. One leaked memo posted by DCLeaks.com from Soros’ “Open Society” Foundations, for example, outlines a plot to co-opt Catholic officials and push Soros’ views within the Catholic Church and within the Christian world more broadly. To do that, Soros provided funding to two so-called faith-based organizations, PICO (People Improving Communities through Organizing), and Faith in Public Life (FPL) that would advance his extremism against a “faction of the church” that does not support it.
Among other schemes, Soros provided “essential resources” to secure the “buy-in of individual Catholic bishops to more publicly voice support of economic and racial justice messages.” The agenda was to create a “critical mass of bishops” to promote Soros’ interpretation of Pope Francis’ perceived anti-free-market activism and “racial justice agenda.” Numerous prominent Catholics have said Soros is radically distorting the pope’s message to further his own fundamentally anti-Catholic agenda. Debatable, since the pontiff and the financier actually appear to be significantly aligned on matters of relativistic morality and “social justice”.
Soros money was used to help create an advanced propaganda campaign to promote one of Soros’ “Christian” puppets as a “leading commentator in high-profile outlets, such as USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, NBC, NPR, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.” Of course, if a “commentator” agrees with Soros, by definition he or she disagrees with the bible Possibly five of these bad actors, who were key in the removal of Dr. Patterson last week, seem to fit this pattern very well: Jonathan Merritt, Ed Stetzer, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Karen Swallow-Prior, and Beth Moore. This 2014 Gospel Coalition video involves three of these individuals, and it accurately foreshadows (at about the 38 minute mark) what unfolded in 2018: learning how to “play church nicely”, removing any obstacles to doing so, so that we can grow at the expense of souls and, if necessary, while setting aside the word of God for “pragmatism”.
The Hard Facts about Declining Baptist Church Membership
This whole conversation has been far more about heat, rather than light. What gives any group of people the right to demand that church leadership move away from biblical practice and principles? Or the right to murmur about everything else, short of whether Dr. P’s wife uses bagged salad greens in her submission to the “troglodyte” she married? One of these days, either SIFC or somebody else is finally going to prove the unsavory, undisclosed financial connection between this whole initiative and the demonic pocketbook that has successfully “rented” evangelicals over the past few years in the SBC, RCC, and even in other countries, for immoral political ends that go well beyond the church. Such would never be enabled if individuals claiming to be Christ-followers possessed the personal integrity to match their level of popular cultural influence. Identity politics and victimhood doesn’t look any better on well-published “Christians” than it does on anyone else.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
To be fair to the Southern Baptists, there needs to be some acknowledgments: the Assemblies of God reportedly picked up 1 million members after they liberalized doctrine and practice in the area of marriage permanence. The Roman Catholic Church also appears to be gaining members after a long drought which let up after the death of conservative John Paul II, and liberalization of sexual morality commenced in earnest under the last two popes. The “social justice” gospel is attracting millennials and their young families back to mainline churches some four decades after their conservative evangelical parents once derided them as “dead churches” whose remaining members were primarily the elderly. Even so, God does not care at all to have pews packed full of spiritually dead and morally lost people who are “compassionate” in the temporal sense only. The Baptists and Catholics are about to find out what’s already evident in the resurgence of the mainline churches: the “social justice” pact-with-the-devil contains a price tag out of which the homosexual agenda cannot be “line-item vetoed”. That makes ERLC head, Dr. Russell Moore’s famous last words in 2015, “Evangelicals Won’t Cave”, (likely written while that SBC pact was being made with OSF) laughable only three years later, as we predicted at the time in our rebuttal.
While it’s strategically tempting to hope to fill empty pews by opening the U.S. borders and becoming gay-friendly, if the SBC doesn’t get back to true biblical bearings, and tell all opposed critics to take a hike, what we’re going to have is a strengthening in an already-strong, growing movement inside and outside the churches, to dump the corrupted denominations and opt for small house churches / lay pastors, which nobody can argue isn’t a 1st century biblical model. In other words, a continued loss of membership despite “inclusion” (heretical liberalization) efforts. I’d personally hate to see that transpire at this nasty and pivotal point in our national history, because we really need the GODLY political power of the collective church to restore a little of the kingdom of God in our nation for everyone else suffering from 50 years of Leftist misery, most especially the poor, during which the salt lost its savor. Instead, we’re squabbling about whether the Apostles and church fathers were “misogynists” in the clear instructions, presumably God-breathed, they left today’s leadership to follow. SIFC’s current young pastors would call this contemporary vexation a “first world problem”.
Yes, the SBC has lost a million members over the past decade, while the liberalizing RCC seems (temptingly) to be picking up members the past few of years, with their Leftist, gay-affirming, “annulment”-expediting, communion-adulterating Pope. AOG likewise picked up members like nobody’s business from 1971 to 1984, adding 1 million members (far fewer souls, I daresay) as a direct result of voting to desecrate heterosexual marriage in the wake of unilateral divorce enactment in the early 1970’s. The price they paid was the swift exit of the power of the Holy Spirit, as numbers grew by yet another million to-date, and it gradually became acceptable to haul exposed cleavage, drooping pants and the “spouse”-du-jour into church. I know because I was there for most of it. “Come as you are, stay as you are” does indeed work wonders for membership — until it doesn’t. In this case, the Southern Baptists can be presumed to be on the same side of “until it doesn’t” as the Pentecostals. Tulsa didn’t get to be the divorce capital of the United States due to Catholic dominance. It’s small wonder some SBC leaders are so keen to import potential new members through open or porous borders, rather than set a godly example that gains power over the “nones” as our godly forebears did.
Teaching unbiblical, culturally-popular pseudo-values (including, never piss off the women) to future pastors also works – until it doesn’t. The fixed moral wall that has been hit a couple of times previously in church history is Islamism (and its ancient predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar), a reprise of which would be perfectly fine with Mr. Soros.
Many of the lost members from these denominations and from the RCC are legally-discarded spouses (and their children) whose pastors failed in very significant ways to honor and uphold the lifelong sanctity of their biblical, God-joined covenant marriage, their numbers being added to by perhaps 400,000 to 500,000 a year in the U.S., based on current unilateral divorce rates. Nobody at a major evangelical publication ever writes a single word about these disciples (except to insinuate that there’s something “wrong” with them), though the conservative Catholic publications increasingly connect with “standers’ ” obedience to biblical instruction. Perhaps 25% of the disaffected women find their way into Anabaptist-heritage churches, or a few of the dwindling number of virtuous Catholic parishes. The rest, including most of the men, join the virtual church, house churches or settle for spiritual isolation, if they want to obey the Lord and not take a replacement “spouse” adulterously.
Women like Beth Moore and like Karen Swallow-Prior, who claim that Jesus prescribed marriage dissolution for all manner of perceived and actual abuse, as opposed to chaste separation with rehabilitation in mind and appropriate reliance on the criminal justice system (where warranted)–are hussies and Jezebels, no matter how many books they sell. They will be found “correct” the day that Jesus accepts hard-heartedness, unforgiveness and self-promotion as acceptable attributes in His disciples. And those who become so presumptuous as to build “abuse ministries” around the same ideology, are apostates misleading others toward moral destruction. Quite amusingly, the hard-Left feminists have recently expressed their extreme displeasure with the nouveaux “conservative” feminists who promote the judicial murder of God-joined covenant marriages; who promote sequential polyandry in the name of domestic “justice” — but still won’t give their unqualified endorsement to abortion on demand for all.
Dr. Stephen Baskerville (May 3, 2017 – How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution, Crisis Magazine) : “The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice. “
But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. – Revelation 2:4-6
Will the Southern Baptist Convention not even measure up to the Christ-rebuked Ephesian church, by the time this story of shameless social pandering and denominational prostitution ends? Will there be anyone left in power to “hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans” by the time of the 2019 annual conference ?
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7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
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