Though he's a bit late to the discussion I'm glad to see some
other Christian leaders come to the realisation that persecution and state
oppression are going to look different in the 21st century. The
technological leaps are such that old methods of underground life are going to
be quite different in this new age. I think the biggest struggle for White and
all those who run in his circles will be the end of middle class life and
affluence.
The faithful, those who long ago applied New Testament ethics
to their lives have long been feeling this pain, and the stresses and
ostracisation that come with it. It's interesting how in some respects the
pressure or even just lite-persecution results in Biblical obedience or
apostasy. Those who have conformed, those who are part of the system – they
haven't felt it yet. They're getting 'scared' and nervous at the cultural and
political trajectory. Again this only demonstrates just how unfaithful and
blind they have been. The dilemmas they think that are coming were already
present more than a century ago. They've been asleep (really more akin to
drugged) and have sleepwalked into this mess – one they helped to create.
It's in the framework of Biblical obedience, when you're no
longer invested in the society and in a position of second-class dissent –
that's when the real costs start to become apparent. You're not just losing
your dishy house in the suburbs and your iPhone, but you're in danger of not
being able to pay your bills, eat, or you face ruin and destitution. This is
the lot of the remnant Church throughout history and it's the lot of the Church
in much of the world today – but Western and particularly American Evangelicals
wouldn't know anything about it. They've grown rich through their compromise.
Idolatry can be quite lucrative. And the leaders of the Church – they have
cashed in. They've done very well for themselves and have formed powerful
alliances – turning the Church into a den of thieves in the process. Of course
since they are unwise and judge themselves by themselves, there are many like
White who can convince themselves that they're not avaricious, that they live
humbly even as they pull in large salaries with lots of ministry perks. They
can always point to the extremes and feel better about themselves. They can
reason – I might be making ten, twelve,
or twenty-thousand dollars a month – all taken from the people of God but I'm just 'living from the gospel'. After all
I don't have a private jet, right?
There were those of us who were more than a little concerned
when the likes of White and others were quick to sign on with the Bush II agenda
regarding the surveillance state. Hoodwinked and deceived by the War on Terror
pseudo-narrative and the charade about Iraq, these Christo-American
Evangelicals had (and have) an impoverished view of the larger world,
geopolitics, economics and the like. To this day they have not understood the
events that led up to 9/11 or the real meaning of its fallout. They facilitated
the Bush administration's seizure of power, its marginalisation of the US
Constitution and the rule of law in general – even while they still pretend to
pay it lip service. They championed this Constitutionally subversive faction and
allied themselves with it – even while they perpetuated their myths about the American
Constitution and their false narrative of its genesis and American history in
general.
White, displaying his usual cultural and political myopia
wants to blame the Left-Evangelicals. Fine, blame them for reacting to the brutal
and frankly obscene ugliness of the Anti-Obama campaign and the rise of
Trumpism. They were right to be concerned (in a way White was not) but at the
same time their reactions were wrong-headed and faulty. As far as Marxism goes
– and White is among those completely fixated on this topic – it's not even in
the spectrum. He doesn't know what he's talking about. There is no Marxism in
American politics, not even a hint of it. Biden and even Harris are nationalists,
pro-law enforcement, and pro-military. They cast their imperialism in terms of
'humanitarian intervention' and 'American Leadership' in multilateral
frameworks but that's just the smokescreen, the style and packaging employed in
order to purse the policies under the guise of Classical Liberalism.
They are Atlanticists. They believe in American domination of
Europe and the larger global sphere. Atlanticism is a pretty paltry expression
of internationalism. Rather it's a framework in which America can dominate its
satellites, proxies, and fiefs while giving it the plausible outward trappings
of democratic partnership. These people are also pro-Wall Street. Deeply
invested in the American system they want American markets to flourish and
American business and industry to not only be able to trade abroad but to
exploit cheap labour and resources in other countries – and they will threaten
and bomb the nations who don't comply. They will rain down missiles from drones
on the noncompliant and without hesitation assassinate international
dissidents. These are rabid imperialists – merely toned down a notch or two
from the sort that White likes. But that hardly makes them peacenik Leftists.
These are not international socialists trying to rally and unify the global
working class. If you placed these people back in the 1950's they'd be
Eisenhower Republicans – a point Bill Clinton conceded in 1993.
No one is calling for nationalisation of the banks, for the
break-up and appropriation of the corporate monopolies, of the insurance
sector, industry, mining, oil or anything else that would be considered basic
to a socialist programme. Are they going to break up Goldman-Sachs and
redistribute its wealth? Not even the phony Bernie Sanders will go that far. He
wants to break them up but he has no plan to do so and when challenged, he
always backs down from truly breaking the system or challenging the basis of
the American Empire. He's silent when it comes to the nature of the US military
empire, the military-industrial complex and the way this interacts with Wall
Street on the global stage. He's either corrupt or simple but he's no
socialist. Sanders' moves are token, mere empty gestures meant to fire up the
progressive wing and as he has repeatedly demonstrated – steer that same base
back into the solidly Establishment and Wall Street and Pentagon-friendly DNC.
Are Biden, Harris, or Pelosi going to break up the
military-industrial complex, the nexus of Wall Street, the Pentagon and the
vast private sector that makes all the weapons and toys? Hardly. If anything
they'll strengthen the hands of these people. Clinton did. Obama did and Biden
will too. They're not even as Left-wing as the Social Democracy governments in
Europe who have employed some elements of socialism within a capitalist
framework. Again, this just demonstrates how far to the Right American politics
have shifted – and how blind are commentators such as White. Today a Centrist
position is considered radical Left and labeled as Communist. It's ridiculous. And
Biden isn't even a Centrist – Center-Right is where he would fall in terms of
the international spectrum of politics.
And as I and others have argued for years, identity politics is
not genuinely Left-wing, let alone Marxist. There are strong anti-Christian
elements to this thought (as is true with the Capitalism and Nationalism
championed by White and his friends) but it is not the product of Socialist
thinking, though some have attempted to draw tenuous connections to frankly
unrelated schools and movements. Rather it is the result of capitalist
individualist decadence. Such things were never manifest in socialist or
communist contexts because identity politics seeks vindication, preference, and
the empowerment of the individual or clique at the expense of the larger
society. A Marxist would call it bourgeois decadence – and rightly so. It's the
rotten narcissistic fruit of individualist and consumer culture gone off the
rails and it's used by politicians in both camps as a means to divide and
conquer and to keep the middle and working classes from uniting and mounting a
serious political challenge to the Establishment.
But if we're talking about facilitators, White and many like him
are just as much to blame if not more so than the so-called Evangelical Left.
They have poured fuel on the fire and helped to create the social climate
within the Church that has led to such reactions. A Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh
emulator, White has proffered silly and sensationalist tripe and has done
little to help his audience truly understand what is going on. The collapse and
the danger is far greater than he can imagine and thus he is blind to the fact
that he is just as much a facilitator as those he would blame.*
He seems to suggest that when the dust settles maybe the
non-Trumpists should be shunned and held to account by being exempted from
office and leadership within the Church. He doesn't say non-Trumpists but
that's what he's getting at – those that defected from the GOP and Right-wing
politics, those that refused to support the Trumpist agenda. Ironically some
did this on the basis of conservative impulse. Trumpism is Right-wing but it
breaks with historic conservative norms, an ideological and historical point
that's way beyond the scope of White and those like him.
Frankly if the Right-wing Libertarian Trumpites want to mark
themselves off – that's fine. In some respects I would appreciate it if the
entire bloc would just break away and go off and sit in the woods with their
gold and their guns and their edited Bibles read through the lens of tortured
hermeneutics. Go, and good riddance.
Or perhaps it never occurs to them that maybe other
Christians are taking note – marking down the traditores of our day, those who sold out and allied themselves
with Trump, a criminal, a thief, a rapist, a murderer –basically (in true
sociopathic fashion) he actually is
what he tried to pin on immigrant Mexicans but because he wears an expensive
suit, has a private jet, supports Wall Street and nationalist policies, and
pandered to Evangelicals, they signed on, sold their souls, lost their identity,
and have destroyed the testimony of the Church in the process. There's no going
back from this. Many of them (White included) fail to understand just what
they've done. As bad as Christian support was for Vietnam, Reagan and even GW
Bush and the murderous travesty that was Iraq – these all pale in comparison to
Evangelical support for Trumpism – indeed for the transformation of
Evangelicalism into theological Trumpism – for that is what has happened. These
Christo-Americans (for that's what they are), these embracers of a syncretic
religion and false Christianity are merely transferring and transforming their
idols. The Enlightenment Baal-Jezebel they worship that stands colossus-style
in New York harbour has thrown aside her torch and replaced it with a sword,
the 1776 emblazoned tabula with
copies of The Prince, The Wealth of Nations, and The Blue Book of the John Birch Society.
In other respects this appeal by White to Early Church
history is an odd argument for him to make. Is he siding with the Novatians and
Donatists? The mainstream Catholic Church welcomed back the traditores, but it was the schismatics
who shunned them and objected to their return to mainstream life and
leadership. Generally speaking in mainstream Confessional circles these ancient
movements are frowned upon as being too severe and schismatic – it's usually
more the type of thing that people like me get charged with. I'm not sure where
White wants to go with the analogy. He likes the idea of punishing those who
didn't go a-whoring after the GOP and Trump (like him) but I don't think he
realises that his analogy is (from his vantage point) a non sequitir.
And while it is shameful to think of Christians supporting
Biden, Mr. James White has no leg to stand on. He is part of the defection from
New Testament Christianity, the destruction of New Testament ethics that has
led these people (rightly or wrongly) to react. We were warned that the false
teachers throughout the Church Age would engage in deeds that would lead people
to speak evil of the Church – not for the gospel but for their evil deeds and
the evil they approve of. This is the heritage of the Crusades, Inquisition,
religious wars, and all the terrible compromises made in the name of power and
mammon. These people will manipulate and make merchandise of God's people.
Through their sorceries they will gain many followers and turn the Church into
a den of thieves. They will pursue the agenda of the whorish Babylonian False
Church even while they manifest themselves as angels of light.
There's such irony in his words. It is White as much as
anyone that has contributed money, time, and his vote to bring about his own
self-destruction and I blame the likes of him for dragging all of us into it. I
deeply resent these people. White and his ilk are the reason why I'm left
having to qualify my profession when talking to the lost. I am a Christian but I'm not one of those – by those I mean the
vile, covetous, mammon-compromised and power-mongering heretics of which White
is a part – or at the very least an ally.** I don't know the man nor his heart
but I know what he has done, what he was said, what he has promoted, who he
allies with, and that he's done well for himself in the process. The irony here
is so thick you could cut it with a knife. He wants to fix blame and he wants
local churches to start making lists and preparing to hold people to account.
The answer is very simple – Thou art the man!
You supported the wars and the government gathering all our
data, reading our emails, listening to our phone calls, tracking everything.
You were the one so devastated when Obama won the White House. I sat there with
my mouth hanging open in November 2008 watching you attempt to comfort your
devastated audience because McCain-Palin hadn't won. Oh, the woe! Oh the
sorrow! I was shocked by your response, the fact that you placed such stock in
these things, that you were so committed to the Bush-era GOP and all its evil.
I was far more disturbed about that reality, than the fact that Obama won the
election or even that some Christians, disturbed by Bush's years of illegality,
lies, and murder had refused to go along with the warmonger McCain and his
tart-heretic running mate. Christians had no business voting for Obama or
McCain, Clinton or Trump.
In 2016 it was the Supreme Court, so we were told by White.
He couldn't defend Trump. He admitted Trump had no policy – the very thing
Christian leaders like Albert Mohler are now suggesting is the reason we should
support him. But we had to vote for Trump because
of the Supreme Court. What has happened to the Christian Church where one's
ethics are being compelled by questions of this nature? The Supreme Court will
burn as will all of the blasphemous experiment that is America. It's not part
of Christ's Kingdom but apparently America's Supreme Court holds such sway over
Christ's flock that they're compelled to go out and support evil so that good
may come – by means of the Supreme Court. Does no one stop and consider how
absurd this argument is? Does no one challenge the shallow and erroneous
theology that undergirds it? And in terms of ethics, does no one make the
connection and realize what things have come to – we are being called by
well-to-do and politically connected Church leaders to ally with and support
evil – that good may come.
Make no mistake. That is White's ethic. It's pure
Consequentialism – the end justifies the means. We have to support and align
ourselves with an unregenerate and evil man so that the Kingdom will be
advanced – by the Supreme Court? Yes, so that in the end we could get a
feminist Catholic woman (itself a sign of judgment on the society) to be our
saviour. I truly pity the people that follow these Christians leaders. They are
truly sheep led to the spiritual slaughter.
They have helped to construct the monstrous authoritarian
state that is emerging and yet like the adulteress-whore in Proverbs 30, they continue
to wipe their mouths and insist they've done nothing wrong.
And did you warn about the technology in the 1990's or the
early 2000's? Others did but no, you embraced it. You fancy yourself a
Christian leader but is it only in 2020 that you finally realised that technology
has a moral component and can be a tool of oppressive power? Are you serious?
Are you just now waking up to the fact that Church led by its blind leaders has
embraced all of this wholesale without ever weighing the costs to not just
their political freedoms but to society, their families and yes, the Church?
The Chinese system of social credit scores is appalling but
you still don't see how we have a lesser and more ill-defined parallel in our
society and its economic order. Here it's privatised and run by banks,
corporations, and credit bureaus. If you don't play along you can't be part of
the mainstream, certainly not part of the middle class. You are relegated to
the margins. It's couched as risk, investment, return, profit, interest rates
and the like but apparently you haven't figured out this has all translated
into power and basic questions of social access. As I'm sure White will
acknowledge the Mark of the Beast isn't a microchip or barcode, it's a life
given over both in terms of thought and deed (head and hand) to the bestial
system. And yes, it has an economic component. I would hope he would realise it
isn't just a one-time end-times event but something that characterises Church
history. Our present hour and the present Western-Capitalist order (itself a
manifestation of the Beast) is no exception.
You champion this usurious, bestial order and again, if Bush
and Cheney had been given free reign we would have had something like the
Chinese social credit system under their watch. They certainly wanted to
implement an Orwellian surveillance state. In the early 2000's the technology
wasn't there and there was resistance but John Poindexter's Total Information
Awareness (TIA) programme did survive. We only know about parts of it due to
the whistleblowers – whose cause you have hardly championed.
How do you get around Big Brother? Well, to start you're
going to have live a different kind of life and your days of plush living will
come to end. One wonders if the likes of James White will do that or will they
sell their souls to some fascist dictator who rises up that's willing to
placate them and use them in order to get what he wants? Given that we've had a
trial run, the answer is pretty clear.
God help those listening to this foolish blind guide.
----
*By way of experiment I put White's Dividing Line on one day in the car and the response from my wife
was almost immediate. "Who is this person, this juvenile clown?" was
the summary of her response. She was less than impressed when I told her he was
one of the most popular teachers in New Calvinist circles and the larger
Reformed and Reformed Baptist sphere.
** White styles himself as something of a heresy hunter, a
would-be Epiphanius and his assessments of orthodoxy and historical events are
often just as silly as his 4th century mentor.