Unfortunately, saying “you need to admit this” is part of the tactic. Ryan was 19 years old at the time. Men who were 19 years old know what that phase of life means and how youthful zeal feels and functions. “Wiser” older men did not deal with him accordingly; they just went to shoot a bolt into his head and heart. As many criticisms as can be leveled at Ryan, more can be leveled at his accusers. I am never willing to put anyone’s Christian zeal through the wood chipper. We have a duty to these young men and women to communicate the proverbial life, so that they may fully flourish in Christian wisdom and fruit-bearing, returning the favor to future generations. It is foolish to pretend that a 19-year-old can only be validated if and when he conforms to the 60-year-old. So, yes, be critical of Ryan, but do not spare the wolves who devoured him when they were required to be his shepherd.
“1. Have your legitimate criticism shot down by synod hierarchy, get the word out by using the platform of a couple of guys who are probably demon possessed (James 3:10).”
Initially Ryan very smartly got his denouncements of the CTCR/CPH/ChiCom-manufactured LLCACA via his own postings. Repeating such valid LLCACA criticisms on podcasts and elsewhere with (allegedly demon-possessed) people does not make Ryan’s LLCACA claims false and “shot down”.
“2. Record and publish a meeting in which you are being disciplined by your pastor and elders. I would not call these things sinful, but they are stupid.”
Recording and publishing about a meeting that was shown to be nothing but a “kangaroo court” is smart, not stupid.
The attempts to shoot down Ryan’s LLCACA criticisms have only backfired and punched a gaping hole in the credibility of synod hierarchy. This was seen at the 2023 LCMS convention when the floor committee withdrew the Res. 5-14 endorsement of LLCACA, because of the "risk of bringing up a lot of painful stuff" (i.e., the embarrassing truth).
If there is something to call “stupid, it would be CPH still selling LLCACA.
We must never lose sight of the fact that a clutch of WY pastors who are not dummies objected to some of the LCACA content and raised several red flags the summer before. They were ignored.
As I read the beginning of the post, Solzhenitsyn immediately came to mind. I see that the parallels could not be lost on you either.
"...in every village there were people who in one way or another had personally gotten in the way of the local activists. This was the perfect time to settle accounts with them of jealousy, envy, insult. A new word was needed for all these new victims as a class--and it was born. By this time it had no "social" or "economic" content whatsoever, but it had a marvelous sound: podkulachnik-"a person aiding the kulaks." In other words, I consider you an accomplice of the enemy. And that finishes you! The most tattered landless laborer in the countryside could quite easily be labeled a podkulachnik."
Spot on. Virtually all his work has examples of the rat neighbor or the faithful wife. The rat denounces as soon as he spots a uniform from 200 yards. The wife waits out the 20-year hard labor sentence, never disavowing despite losing everything and being ostracized. If necessary, she packs up a single suitcase to undertake a dangerous journey to live in the shadowlands near the camp, hoping to catch a glimpse of her husband and smuggle food to him if possible. He shares it with the other Zeks, and they know he has a Proverbs 31:10 wife who is the last connection to kindness and love.
I read somewhere once that Solzhenitsyn was writing for the Jews or something. Can't remember what was stated. Maybe I'll try looking it up. Maybe not.
Given the rumors of the intelligence community subverting churches such as Rome at Vatican 2 or the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodoxy, it makes me wonder. Have globalist elements of the intelligence community began the process of subverting the LCMS? Perhaps I am overthinking this. This is Satan working in our Church using the communist tactics that worked so well for him in the past.
Dr Alfred Rehwinkel in "Communism and the Church" saw this already happening in the late 1940s and warned the Lutheran Church then of infiltration. It's gotten way worse since.
We don't need to be conspiratorial to see what is straightforwardly evident: political actors have always sought to infiltrate and subvert the church for their purposes. Exactly how this plays out is not all that interesting, but we can look at the FBI spying on Latin mass Catholics (obviously not the only ones under suspicion), the mysterious emergence of the Jesus Movement and Contemporary Christian Music, and the conversion of the mainstream churches to homophilia to understand some of the dynamics.
The more dangerous subversion of the church happens without actual agents of the state, simply by the church absorbing state ideology and, wittingly or not, passing it off as Christianity, what I refer to as "The American Interim" in my blog and at my speech at the Bugenhagen Conference, for which I was denounced a few months ago.
That said, the intelligence community infiltrating/investigating/pressuring the LCMS like they have Latin-Mass Catholics is not a speculative possibility. It is a fact. I know of more than one pastor who has been visited by an FBI agent and interviewed to find out whether he was a white nationalist or favored the overthrow of the government. I had an FBI agent worshipping on Sunday with us for over a year, and although I believe that he was there to hear the word of God and liked the man, it was odd to have it happen during the time in my ministry when I had been subject to denunciations by LCMS anti-fascists.
There are reports of pastors and laymen in the LCMS keeping files on people not only to share with ecclesiastical supervisors but with federal agents. Only a fool would imagine that the kind of infiltration and government surveillance of churches that happened in East Germany and Latvia can't happen here. Unfortunately, we have more than a few fools in the LCMS.
Are you, Ryan Turnipseed and Corey Mahler the ones being victimized from your reading of the Concordia St. Louis Seminary Board of Regents member Tim Wood's perspective as articulated in this article? When it comes to white nationalist rhetoric and propaganda, are you saying the LCMS should support white nationalist positions rather than act against them?
Is this a confession? Are you telling me that the LCMS was somehow involved in passing information to the FBI on its members and pastors? Is this a recent thing or was this going on while you were district president?
Thank you, Pastor. Your series on the American Interim has been excellent and provides the broad context in which denunciations function. You are indeed a victim of the cultivated smear that is part of these tactics. Did Jordan Cooper ever apologize to you and Bugenhagen for lying about your presentation?
A more erudite response to such conduct than I am able to give. Let those who most need to hear this, hear it and not shut their ears. But more importantly, let those who are targeted for pressure for ritual distancing, denunciation, and disavowal, and who have their good work attacked and undermined as a result, remain resolute and firm against it.
Great article. Timing is perfect with the anti-semitism and anti stone choir resolutions going around. The corollary in the corporate context was described in SJWs Always Lie. If they dont denounce Luther for his antisepticsm then they are not serious lefties.
"Under culture capture, moral clarity is redescribed as rigidity, and adherence to Scripture becomes “harm.” Public actions are detached from public meaning so that the language of love and tolerance, borrowed wholesale from late-modern therapeutic and political discourse, is imported to justify what would previously have been recognized as scandal." So then in this upside-down world, the only true "scandal" is adherence to Scripture?
Yes, Christ and His Word are stumbling stones for the "new realities", and once again, it is another round of Pharisees and Sadducees demanding loyalty.
If your IQ is high enough you don't have to repent because you will never be wrong in the first place.
But also you're being too harsh on Turnipseed. Really you're denouncing him, and therefore I denounce thee in like manner.
Unfortunately, saying “you need to admit this” is part of the tactic. Ryan was 19 years old at the time. Men who were 19 years old know what that phase of life means and how youthful zeal feels and functions. “Wiser” older men did not deal with him accordingly; they just went to shoot a bolt into his head and heart. As many criticisms as can be leveled at Ryan, more can be leveled at his accusers. I am never willing to put anyone’s Christian zeal through the wood chipper. We have a duty to these young men and women to communicate the proverbial life, so that they may fully flourish in Christian wisdom and fruit-bearing, returning the favor to future generations. It is foolish to pretend that a 19-year-old can only be validated if and when he conforms to the 60-year-old. So, yes, be critical of Ryan, but do not spare the wolves who devoured him when they were required to be his shepherd.
“1. Have your legitimate criticism shot down by synod hierarchy, get the word out by using the platform of a couple of guys who are probably demon possessed (James 3:10).”
Initially Ryan very smartly got his denouncements of the CTCR/CPH/ChiCom-manufactured LLCACA via his own postings. Repeating such valid LLCACA criticisms on podcasts and elsewhere with (allegedly demon-possessed) people does not make Ryan’s LLCACA claims false and “shot down”.
“2. Record and publish a meeting in which you are being disciplined by your pastor and elders. I would not call these things sinful, but they are stupid.”
Recording and publishing about a meeting that was shown to be nothing but a “kangaroo court” is smart, not stupid.
The attempts to shoot down Ryan’s LLCACA criticisms have only backfired and punched a gaping hole in the credibility of synod hierarchy. This was seen at the 2023 LCMS convention when the floor committee withdrew the Res. 5-14 endorsement of LLCACA, because of the "risk of bringing up a lot of painful stuff" (i.e., the embarrassing truth).
If there is something to call “stupid, it would be CPH still selling LLCACA.
We must never lose sight of the fact that a clutch of WY pastors who are not dummies objected to some of the LCACA content and raised several red flags the summer before. They were ignored.
As I read the beginning of the post, Solzhenitsyn immediately came to mind. I see that the parallels could not be lost on you either.
"...in every village there were people who in one way or another had personally gotten in the way of the local activists. This was the perfect time to settle accounts with them of jealousy, envy, insult. A new word was needed for all these new victims as a class--and it was born. By this time it had no "social" or "economic" content whatsoever, but it had a marvelous sound: podkulachnik-"a person aiding the kulaks." In other words, I consider you an accomplice of the enemy. And that finishes you! The most tattered landless laborer in the countryside could quite easily be labeled a podkulachnik."
Qui legit, intellegat.
Spot on. Virtually all his work has examples of the rat neighbor or the faithful wife. The rat denounces as soon as he spots a uniform from 200 yards. The wife waits out the 20-year hard labor sentence, never disavowing despite losing everything and being ostracized. If necessary, she packs up a single suitcase to undertake a dangerous journey to live in the shadowlands near the camp, hoping to catch a glimpse of her husband and smuggle food to him if possible. He shares it with the other Zeks, and they know he has a Proverbs 31:10 wife who is the last connection to kindness and love.
I read somewhere once that Solzhenitsyn was writing for the Jews or something. Can't remember what was stated. Maybe I'll try looking it up. Maybe not.
"Writing for the Jews" What's meant by that?
tbh I don't know or remember. It was something about how he was actually a kind of regime writer trying to frame the problem a certain subversive way.
This dialogue is, then, an example of the podkulachnik phenomenon.
lol found it: https://slavlandchronicles.substack.com/p/i-was-solzhenitsyn-a-fraud-and-a
the author of course is a flaming antichristian, so I denounce him as well and everything he writes
Denounce the regime writer!
Given the rumors of the intelligence community subverting churches such as Rome at Vatican 2 or the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodoxy, it makes me wonder. Have globalist elements of the intelligence community began the process of subverting the LCMS? Perhaps I am overthinking this. This is Satan working in our Church using the communist tactics that worked so well for him in the past.
Probably. So be WELS.
(Read this as the tongue-in-cheek jibe it is.)
Dr Alfred Rehwinkel in "Communism and the Church" saw this already happening in the late 1940s and warned the Lutheran Church then of infiltration. It's gotten way worse since.
We don't need to be conspiratorial to see what is straightforwardly evident: political actors have always sought to infiltrate and subvert the church for their purposes. Exactly how this plays out is not all that interesting, but we can look at the FBI spying on Latin mass Catholics (obviously not the only ones under suspicion), the mysterious emergence of the Jesus Movement and Contemporary Christian Music, and the conversion of the mainstream churches to homophilia to understand some of the dynamics.
The more dangerous subversion of the church happens without actual agents of the state, simply by the church absorbing state ideology and, wittingly or not, passing it off as Christianity, what I refer to as "The American Interim" in my blog and at my speech at the Bugenhagen Conference, for which I was denounced a few months ago.
That said, the intelligence community infiltrating/investigating/pressuring the LCMS like they have Latin-Mass Catholics is not a speculative possibility. It is a fact. I know of more than one pastor who has been visited by an FBI agent and interviewed to find out whether he was a white nationalist or favored the overthrow of the government. I had an FBI agent worshipping on Sunday with us for over a year, and although I believe that he was there to hear the word of God and liked the man, it was odd to have it happen during the time in my ministry when I had been subject to denunciations by LCMS anti-fascists.
There are reports of pastors and laymen in the LCMS keeping files on people not only to share with ecclesiastical supervisors but with federal agents. Only a fool would imagine that the kind of infiltration and government surveillance of churches that happened in East Germany and Latvia can't happen here. Unfortunately, we have more than a few fools in the LCMS.
Are you, Ryan Turnipseed and Corey Mahler the ones being victimized from your reading of the Concordia St. Louis Seminary Board of Regents member Tim Wood's perspective as articulated in this article? When it comes to white nationalist rhetoric and propaganda, are you saying the LCMS should support white nationalist positions rather than act against them?
Is this a confession? Are you telling me that the LCMS was somehow involved in passing information to the FBI on its members and pastors? Is this a recent thing or was this going on while you were district president?
This is scurrilous behavior for anyone, never mind a pastor.
Thank you, Pastor. Your series on the American Interim has been excellent and provides the broad context in which denunciations function. You are indeed a victim of the cultivated smear that is part of these tactics. Did Jordan Cooper ever apologize to you and Bugenhagen for lying about your presentation?
No, I never heard from him.
Where did I find your blog?
https://karlrhess.substack.com/
denounce: To claim the right of working a mine that is abandoned or insufficiently worked.
The children yearn for the mines!
A more erudite response to such conduct than I am able to give. Let those who most need to hear this, hear it and not shut their ears. But more importantly, let those who are targeted for pressure for ritual distancing, denunciation, and disavowal, and who have their good work attacked and undermined as a result, remain resolute and firm against it.
Great article. Timing is perfect with the anti-semitism and anti stone choir resolutions going around. The corollary in the corporate context was described in SJWs Always Lie. If they dont denounce Luther for his antisepticsm then they are not serious lefties.
Great analysis. Too often, the substance of a pastor’s actions are less important than the political allegiance of those challenging his errors.
"Under culture capture, moral clarity is redescribed as rigidity, and adherence to Scripture becomes “harm.” Public actions are detached from public meaning so that the language of love and tolerance, borrowed wholesale from late-modern therapeutic and political discourse, is imported to justify what would previously have been recognized as scandal." So then in this upside-down world, the only true "scandal" is adherence to Scripture?
Yes, Christ and His Word are stumbling stones for the "new realities", and once again, it is another round of Pharisees and Sadducees demanding loyalty.
This is perhaps the biggest challenge for the LCMS today.
Thank you for articulating this. Something becomes okay or bad, not because it is okay or bad, but because “our guy” says it’s okay.
An excellent article.