Female Ordination Statistics

A:  Episcopal church, taken from https://episcopalchurch.org/files/2004GrowthReport(1).pdf Red line shows female ordination.

B: Evangelical Lutheran Church: Ordination of females was instituted in 1990.  1990 membership stats from their executive summary shows  2,919,270 active Evangelical Lutherans, or 262.16 confirmed active members per congregation on average. In the 2000 report membership stats show 180.66 confirmed active members per congregation on average, and the 2001 report gave 173.66.   The Evangelical Lutheran Church was formed in 1997, and have never grown.

C: Disciples of Christ: They were already struggling before 1970, Which sealed their fate.

D: Unitarian Universalist: Possibly the only congregation to report getting their membership numbers back up.  Women reportedly started seeking to be ministers around 1970, according to here https://www.meadville.edu/files/resources/v2n1-sangrey-the-feminization-of-the-unitarian-uni.pdf, they lost a solid 15% of their membership in 12 years before turning the trend around.  There's no way I see to determine what percentage here is active attendees- Blue line marks end of decline, though they still have not broken even with their 1960 numbers.

E: United Church of Christ: Pretty much always allowing female ordination, but had less than 20 female clergywomen (among thousands) until roughly 1970s with the women's suffrage movement, according to the UCC's article.  http://www.thearda.com/denoms/D_1463.asp shows They gained members until about a year before 1970s, and then immediately entered a decline which has not recovered.  In the 40 years since, they have lost over *half* their membership.

F: United Methodists: Beginning ordination in 1968, they show the exact same trend as the United Church of Christ.  They have lost three million members in 40 years.

G: RLDS (Community of Christ) - 1984 - Can't really find any good data on this one, the only statistical set I can find shows gains and losses over 50% from year to year at random.  I assume there's been a lot of change in how they've done their statistical reporting.

Major churches which do not echo the death spiral (and do not ordain women) include Jehova's Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ, Roman Catholic, and Southern Baptist. https://ifphc.wordpress.com/2017/05/10/church-stats-1975-2015-charts-show-decline-of-mainline-protestants-and-growth-of-pentecostals/

General Conference and Multiple Witnesses

Short talk I gave in church today.  Mostly unedited notes other than the markers regarding parts I could cut out if I was short on time.

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

There I was, in the Mississippi Jungle, fried chicken in one hand, Bible in the other, name tag on my shirt signaling intent of preachin' the word o' God.  I was lanky and dangerous, and the miles of daily biking had boosted my metabolism to scientifically improbable levels.  I'd eat two subway footlong sandwhiches for lunch and twice that for dinner, and members showed their appreciation for the missionary work I did by taking me to all you can eat buffets just for the spectacle of the thing.  I was maybe slightly skinnier than I am now.  Often the people throughout the land were heard to exclaim: "That's obscene!  I'm pretty sure gluttony is a sin!".  So I, like a good little Elder, pulled out my scriptures for personal study and looked up gluttony, and you know what I found?

Its not a sin!  The Bible doesn't condemn gluttony anywhere! The only place the word is used is when Pharisees accuse Jesus himself of being a glutton!  So it went that when I was met with accusation of gluttony, I would reply "Bible don't condemn it!". I was rationalizing, but it justified my lifestyle and that's what scriptures are for, right?  But that all changed when general conference came around.  You see, we were in the church listening to the sessions on the screen and it was going pretty good until some guy named Jorg Clebenskot, in the middle of some irrelevant talk on making a happier marriage or something, pauses, and he looks right at me, and says "Oh and by the way pay attention to what and especially how much you eat, because it will affect your ability to be in tune with the spirit."

October 2014 general conference.  Ruined my life. 

Anyway I was convicted, the spirit stripped my rationalizing away and told me what was right and what was wrong on a completely obscure topic that I had gotten off track on, and it did this on a screen in front of 15 million people who as far as I know for the most part didn't need that particular correction.

A common critisicm of the Church of Jesus Christ is that we have and study from the Book of Mormon, and accept it as the word of God.  They say, quote, "A bible, a bible, we have got a bible, and we need no more bible!".  What these people don't understand is that God is too big to contain himself in just one revelation, like it says in the last verse in John's gospel. There's nobody on Earth who you could just write a book about and encompass every aspect of them and their personality and experience.  Some churches try with creeds, but those don't take into account history past or future, and fall short because a list of attributes, no matter how thorough, will always fail to encapsulate how a person will feel, think about, and react to, another real person or situation.  They have to be generic, and in doing so they lose some accuracy.  Personality tests are the same way.  They are great for introspection and learning about yourself, but always end up a poor descriptor of others, though as C.S. Lewis put it "we'd all like to think we've got each other taped."

So you have a Bible, and you have a Book of Mormon.  As missionaries we'd teach about this, that since the Bible fails to capture everything about God, you end up with over 30,000 different sects of Christianity, with their own creeds and ideas about who and what God is.  But if you add a second witness, then it is much more difficult to go astray.  There are diverging sects of the Church of Jesus Christ, but all except I think 2 have under a thousand memebers, and most died out completely shortly after their inception. Two witnesses anchors the gospel in place. 

If you nail a board to a wall with just one nail, the board can be rotated to point any number of directions, but if you add a second nail, in a differnt location, then the board is firmly anchored.  Now, we're all children of God, and we all have the promise of the companionship of the holy ghost, so what do we need prophets for?  This is a common critisicm I've heard.  Why not, the thought goes, just have a "personal relationship with Jesus" and not bother with religion at all?  Well, what I've seen is that too often overreliance on "a personal relationship with God" becomes basically an excuse to charicature God entirely, and God himself becomes a puppet concept to mirror back to us our own desires. its perhaps always a temptation to make God in our own image.  But besides that, sometimes we receive revelations of all sorts and say "is this God?  Is this myself?  Is this something else?"  And that's okay.  What a living prophet does is place a second nail in the board.  Also, it goes the other way too.  Just the living prophet with no personal experiences with God is just a single nail.  Your conference experience will be far more vibrant if you've been working on your living relationship with God, and there's two weeks now to prepare, so.

I have sometimes received revelations that I wasn't sure about, and even some that contradicted what I felt was right.  This is rare, but when it happens, what I have found and I'd like to bear testimony of is that when God sends a dicey revelation, if you're seeking his will, not yours, if it is a true revelation he will send more than one witness.  You will hear it echoed from the pulpit, from those with priesthood keys and the stewardship.  We often think of Priesthood keys as simply authority to direct God's work, but there is more to them than that. 

In the gospel of John 18:14 Caiaphas gave counsel that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.  James E Talmage saw in this the spirit of prophesy working in the High Priest of Israel, EVEN THOUGH this man was not righteous.  He talks about this in his book Jesus the Christ.  He was trying to kill God, but the keys were still active.

So we should seek revelation from God through every resource he makes available to us, so that we can be sure that we are on the straight and narrow path.  As we do this our testimonies will be strengthened and we will come to know God in a richer, deeper, and more vibrant way, as we gain more perspectives than ours and collect witnessess along the iron rod and gain the sweetness of the tree of life. 

The Priesthod Restriction.

Discussions of the Priesthood restriction always start with several assumptions which are necessary to divest before any real understanding can come.  Most I have found aren't particularly interested in looking for conclusions other than "Brigham Young was evil," but this post is for anyone who is curious for other perspectives.

Nearly always, it is explicitly assumed that the priesthood ban was a bad thing, and then using problem of evil-type reasoning the conclusion of "and therefore was not inspired of God" is jumped to.  Thinking about the priesthood ban is boiled down to just a few heuristic bullet points such as "racism", "premortal punishment", "prophetic fallibility", and "curse". These heuristics are used to reach the conclusion that the ban was not of God, but the heuristics are not neccessarily (as is the nature of heuristics) accurate to reality, and I believe if a person were to reason carefully, from God's perspective as given in the scriptures, upon the related principles, they would not find it as objectionable as the charicatured version.  I will be reasoning on a strict scriptural basis here, so those who already do not believe the scriptures to be inspired will not find these thoughts compelling.  I would insist that the priesthood restriction must be evaluated first from a perspective "as if" the church and scriptures are true, since that is the assumptiom Brigham Young and others would have been working from.  It should be no suprise that when a person starts with radically different assumptions that they find the restriction makes no sense.

The first idea I wish to address is the idea that the restriction upon blacks was due to their actions and "valiance" in the premortal life.  Since the priesthood equals leadership which equals power (at least, in the worldly mind; remember God's kingdom doesn't work like that at all, and that priesthood is about responsibility and being a servant as in Matt 20:25-29), the thought is that since blacks had less (worldly) "power" during the restriction they must not have been as "valiant."  Here's the fallacy:  "Valiance" does not have a 1:1 relation to "blessings" in the gospel.  It is especially important to note that trials themselves are often blessings in the gospel sense, because God's priority is our personal development, not our comfort.  Thus we see in Genesis 3:17 God cursing the ground for Adam's sake; that by this curse Adam may have the ability to become like God, the greatest of blessings.  The curse upon Adam was thus an enabler for certain divine blessings, which is a divine pattern seen in such as the Lamanites being a scourge on the Nephites to stir them to repentance, and the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's overcoming the curse being so strong in the gospel as to never fall away (Alma 23:6) they were known for their righteousness, despite their race's "curse" (Alma 27:27).  Keep in mind that the 2000 stripling warriers of whom not a single one could be killed in battle sprang from this "cursed" lineage.       .  No, none of these instances are an absolute parallel to the Priesthood restriction, but it does suggest a different avenue of study, a better alternative to simply assuming God just kind of let the church careen out of control for a century or so, and gives I think a much better view on what Brigham and others may have been thinking when they referred to African Americans as "cursed" which likely many have not thought about.

Occasionally, people take exception to the idea that the priesthood restriction was based on the "Curse of Cain."  I have seen quite often people say "Black skin is not a curse." It seems to me that that is forcing the conclusion to fit the formula and not the other way around, but either way it must be remembered that the mark of cain was different than the curse of cain; the mark was given as a protection for Cain.  Black skin (even if it was somehow the mark of Cain) would not, doctrinally, even if this folklore was taken for granted, make a person inferior. 

A third argument brought up fairly often is that "a child is not guilty because of the transgression of a parent" (Alma 30:25) But the question is not whether a child is guilty, but a question of punishment.  Does the God of the scriptures curse or punish for something you didn't do?  Uniquivocally, Yes.  (Deut 5:9, 23:2-3 and D&C 124:50) For example, we all have mortality and sin inherent from our first parents, Adam and Eve.  We inherited the curse their transgression brought upon us, though it is an article of faith that we are not judged by it.  Rather, we are judged by how we respond to the circumstances we find ourselves in.  In fact, one of the most astonishing theological points of Mormonism is that the hereditary chain also goes backwards, with the fathers being literally redeemed by the efforts of their children in temple work, and perhaps in other marvelous ways we aren't yet privy to.  (2 Nephi 4:6?)

The dynamics of the various "cursings of God" is a very interesting study, for which additional points are given in the compass.

Is it possible, like the man born blind, the restriction was to allow the glory of God to shine forth?  The body of the church has many parts.  Can the eye say I have no need of thee?" For a time, perhaps we need the blessings only a cursed-yet-faithful generation could bring upon us.  For every blessing, there is a law upon which it is predicated.  Perhaps, and I speak only as a man, God saw fit in the premortal world to provide a way that some spirits could gain a powerful blessing, obtainable no other way than by taking upon them certain restrictions in this life.  I know from revelation from the almighty himself that this has been the case in at least one major trial in my life, for which I praise God and am ever thankful.

Amen.
----------------compass---------------
Alma 17:15 - The curse of God had fallen on them because of the traditions of their fathers, but the promises of the Lord were still extended to them.

2 Nephi 40:6 - The scales of darkness shall fall from their eyes and after several generations they shall be pure/white and delightsome

Alma 23:18 - they became industrious, and the curse of God did no longer follow them.

Alma 45:15-16 is an interesting mirror to Genesis 3:17 - Alma blesses the earth for the righteous sake, that it should be cursed to those who do wickedly, which is then called a blessing.

Helaman 13:21 - ye are cursed because of your riches, and also are your riches cursed because ye have set your hearts upon them. 

Deut 23:3 - An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord until the tenth generation.

"we have been unconsciously evaluating others solely in terms of material welfare, instead of in terms of faith, charity, kindness, spirituality, and other Christian virtues." -Blacks and the Priesthood, Setting the Record Straight, Marcus H., Ph.D. Martins

Sam Young And Sharem

In the interest of Sam Young's recent excommunication response, I reread Jacob 7 this morning.  The Book of Mormon always provides precedent for the archetypal events of our day.

Here are some of my highlights:

v. 2 "He preached many things which were flattering unto the people; and this he did that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ" - Keep in mind that the real goal of the movement is to abolsih the law of chastity (forefront) and repentance as a principle (background).  Repentance is the second principle of the very gospel, yet Sam's main thrust in his offensive swordplay is "commandments cause shame and guilt, and shame and guilt is damaging".  Whereas we have dozens of archetypes in the scriptures where guilt and shame were the explicit catalyst for a man finding Christ.  Consider Alma the younger, in Alma 36: v12 "I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins." v13 "Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell" and his repentance: v2 "And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea,, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!"

Jacob 7 again, v3 "he labored dilligently that he might lead away the hearts of the people, insomuch that he did lead away many hearts" - Who in our day has been more dilligent in leading people away from the church? Sam's efforts have been consistent, subversive, and dedicated.  I am reminded of Rev 3:15: "thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot."  I have heard it said that every so often the Lord sees fit to "sift" his church, and we are met with trials such that force us to either stand with or against God.  I believe God has allowed Sam so long that he might force people to choose whom they will serve/cast allegiance to.

v4 "And he was learned, that he had a perfect knowledge oft he language of the people; wherefore, he could use much flattery, and much power of speech, according to the power of the devil." - His recent response to his excommunication letter is written with, in my judgement, incredible sophistry and skill.  He primes many pumps and poisons many wells, and rigs the whole thing in such a way that if the church takes action against him he can claim they were dishonest because they didn't meet his contrived demands.  He almost oozes sincerity, and honestly if I wasn't already poised to view him negatively I might have taken the post at face value, and missed all the clever little sleight of rhetorical hand underneath the surface. 

v5 Of course Sam aims to shake confidence in our leaders, and by extension God's ability to guide his leaders, and by extension whether the church is truly led by God.

v10 I wouldn't expect to be able to get such a straightforward answer from Sam.  When I asked him if he thought the church was true, he responded as Pontias Pilate with an existantial deflection on the nature of truth: "what is truth? What does it mean?" Which is certainly a tacit admission of guilt. Sam and his followers do not believe the scriptures.  They do not care about the scriptures. Christ exists only as a prop to bludgeon the church into conformity with their doctrine (that repentance is not necessary to salvation) which they do using the hippie "Christ says love" charicature, thus rigging the discussion.  If you disagree, you're both unloving and not following Christ.  This is not the Christ of the scriptures, who taught harsh judgement in parables, but again, they don't really believe the scriptures anyway. There's no interest in finding the will of God unless it happens to be useful.

v13 and 14 - Sam Young's insistence on meeting with leaders amounts to little more than sign seeking.  If a leader had come and sat in his chair, he would still defy them.  He only asks as a spectacle to bolster himself and as part of his posturing.  I would be interested to find if his sign seeking, like Sharem, is soon to be fulfilled to his condemnation.  If so, verses 16 and 17, though sad, offer hope.

Ayn Rand on Rationalization

"Men do not accept a catch phrase by a process of thought, they seize upon a catch phrase—any catch phrase—because it fits their emotions. Such men do not judge the truth of a statement by its correspondence to reality—they judge reality by its correspondence to their feelings.

If, in the course of philosophical detection, you find yourself, at times, stopped by the indignantly bewildered question: “How could anyone arrive at such nonsense?”—you will begin to understand it when you discover that evil philosophies are systems of rationalization.

...When a theory achieves nothing but the opposite of its alleged goals, yet its advocates remain undeterred, you may be certain that it is not a conviction or an “ideal,” but a rationalization."

-Ayn Rand

Paycheck to Paycheck

According to CNBC, 70% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 10% of people who make more than $100,000 yearly struggle to make ends meet

As a missionary, I witnessed many missionaries who I described as living "p-day to p-day" missionary work was drudgery unto them, and P-day was the only beacon of hope that kept them going. If missionary work would be particularly hard one week, they would burnout, and would crash, leading to petty-disobediences like sleeping in, dragging feet going out, hanging out at members, etc. These petty disobediences fail to adequately energize; a disobedience, to properly energize, must be deliberate (Rev 3:16). Say to your companion "I'm tired, lets take a break for one hour to just unwind at X member's house." This will give you very different spiritual results from saying "lets go to X members house for an active member lesson" when both of you know you will be there for hours and no lesson would be taught. 

The problem is that for many missionaries the day-to-day activities were more emotionally costly than they could afford. Its important to recognize when you are in a state of burn, and to switch gears to be able to make it over the hills. Switching gears doesn't have to mean disobedience; but one should work to save energy so that when horrible uphills hit, it doesn't zero you out. Here are principles to practice:

-Exercise to stay in shape, emotionally and physically and mentally. To continue the bike analogy, hills will always hit. Gears will help, but gears will help more if you're fit in the first place.

-Shift your stance to make your load more bearable. Lift with your back or with your legs. As a missionary: Lift with your sense of humor, lift with your charity. Whatever muscle is strong for you. Your inner self knows, you just need to let it drive. Some missionary's strongest muscle is their work-drive, but other missionaries are play focused and if they see work as drudgery they won't be able to keep up a high pace. They will need many breaks, losing efficiency. The best for such would be to see missionary work as play, so that they are lifting with their strongest muscle.

-Shift gears when hitting hills. Maybe the aforementioned missionary will hit an investigator who has no sense of play whatsoever. If the missionary expects play from them, they will be drained. The missionary must, in this instance, lift with a different muscle.

-Pace yourself. Relax. Don't make things more work than they are, especially in your mind. Dread increases weight and resistance.

-Save up. Carry a little bit of P-day with you, via memories, attitudes, learnings, etc.  I always was on the lookout for fun memories to write home about, and that helped it feel like I was having fun. 

-Learn to recognize burn. This single skill will allow you to address the situation in a mature way, rather than drift into the mire via petty thefts and disobediences.

The Cult of the UPS

I just the other day applied for a job at U.P.S, and I thought that it would be great! I would do work, earn money, and make a living. I went eagerly in the interview, when I was shocked find UPS is a CULT! The BITE model illuminated my path, and I was able to escape without taking the job. Now I'm unemployed, but I am free. Tell your friends! Let them know that the united parcel service is a cult! Do you know any friends and family trapped in the UPS? Share the BITE model with them!


Behavior Control


1. Regulate individual’s physical reality - UPS workers must be located only where the UPS store is.

2. Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates - UPS workers must associate with UPS customers and coworkers (which reinforces the groupthink cult environment)

3. When, how and with whom the member has sex - You can't even have sex on the job! How totalitarian can you get!

4. Control types of clothing and hairstyles - UPS employees must wear UPS uniform. UPS members cannot even have facial hair or wear things that don't match UPS colors!

5. Regulate diet - food and drink, hunger and/or fasting -You can only eat at certain times. The give advice on what foods to use at work (sandwhiches and sugar for energy) and everything!

6. Manipulation and deprivation of sleep - UPS employees can have to wake up very early in the morning.

7. Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence - UPS employees are forced to rely on UPS for money.

8. Restrict leisure, entertainment, vacation time - UPS employees can only take scheduled breaks!

9. Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination including the Internet - UPS regularly gives "training" (indoctrination) courses to its employees

10. Permission required for major decisions - you have a manager over you, and that manager has a manager over then, and you have to report anomalities to them!

11. Thoughts, feelings, and activities (of self and others) reported to superiors - a log is kept of your day to day activities which you give to the manager over you.

12. Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative - A bonus is given for working every day of the week; the threat of being fired constantly looms.

13. Discourage individualism, encourage group-think - see everything above

14. Impose rigid rules and regulations - see everything above

15. Instill dependency and obedience - " "

16. Threaten harm to family and friends - the threat of unemployment. "Without us, who will feed your family?". Its all about control.

18. Instill dependency and obedience - " "


Information Control


1. Deception: -UPS employees kept in the dark about UPS' financial holdings

2. Minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information -You can't use a cell phone or computer on the job!

3. Compartmentalize information into Outsider vs. Insider doctrines -Managers are priveledged with more access and information than peons

4. Encourage spying on other members - employees are encouraged to report other employees violating "the rules" and there are even rewards for doing so

5. Extensive use of cult-generated information and propaganda - There is all kinds of pro-UPS propeganda on the wall, designed to make you feel like you're a part of the UPS "family"

6. Unethical use of confession - they can withhold raises or punish you if you admit to doing things wrong, and they can use it against you in the future!


Thought Control


1. Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth

2.Change person’s name and identity - You're a UPSer now!

3. Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words - all kinds of buzzwords and shortcuts are used in the propefanda and safety literature. "Never back, keep on track" for drivers, etc

4. Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts - being depressed or performing poorly could lead to discipline!

5. Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking and even to age regress the member -see propeganda

7. Teaching thought-stopping techniques which shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts -I didn't see this, but I bet they do.

8. Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism -"we don't pay you to think!"

9. Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed - Check

10. Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful - Check


Emotional Control


1. Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish - if you spend all day whining every day, you could be fired!

3. Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault - Check

5. Instill fear, such as fear of:

a. Thinking independently - Oh yes, you can't talk back to your boss and expect things to go well.

b. The outside world - We watched a video the first day about how dogs would chase and bite you.

c. Enemies

d. Losing one’s salvation (job) - check

e. Leaving or being shunned by the group -check

f. Other’s disapproval -check

6. Extremes of emotional highs and lows – love bombing and praise one moment and then declaring you are horrible sinner -praises/promotions/discipline/firing

8. Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority - Again, holding a person's welfare above their head to keep them complicit is part and parcel for the UPS.

So that's like a 95% match. Which is more I think than even the LDS church.

Ever since Fred W Anson and other enlightened individuals shared the BITE model with me, I've been able to successfully evacuate a wide range of cults, including work, church, the military, the United States Government, my family, Facebook, my own mind, eating out, my sofa, Star Wars, and the internet. I spend all day doing nothing and believing nothing, but at least I am free.

------- Compass --------

https://dismythed.blogspot.com/2012/10/hassan-toothless-bite.html?fbclid=IwAR0xvlG13Q0-RfpcSElHrDqZb6v53cEX2j4UdtN-gW0o_3MllzmXdUCa5zQ