How A Gay St. Louis Pastor Triggered A War Within the Presbyterian Church In America
But since Johnson went public with his orientation in Christianity Today, pastors in his denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, have tried to banish clergy who identify as gay, even if they commit to celibacy. Johnson has fought that. He says orientation is largely fixed — but believes there is still a place for people like him in conservative churches.
Greg Johnson describes himself as a “gay atheist teenager” who fell for Jesus — and found himself at the center of evangelical Christianity’s internal battles over sexuality.
For nearly 20 years, Johnson has pastored Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, right across from Forest Park. He says he’s been gay and celibate the entire time. When he came out to his church, he said he received a standing ovation and shouts of “We love you, Greg” from congregants.
But since Johnson went public with his orientation in Christianity Today, pastors in his denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, have tried to banish clergy who identify as gay, even if they commit to celibacy.
Johnson has fought that. He says orientation is largely fixed — but believes there is still a place for people like him in conservative churches.
“I spent a lot of years convincing myself that I was a straight man with a disease called homosexuality that could be cured,” Johnson said on Wednesday’s St. Louis on the Air. “And, perhaps up to a million of us did that.”
The million Johnson is referring to are people who participated in the so-called “ex-gay movement,” which centered on the theory that one can change sexual orientation. The organization leading the charge, Exodus International, shuttered in 2013 after decades of fruitless attempts. Johnson said those efforts did more harm than good.
“I really believe that Jesus loves gay people, and I want evangelical churches to learn to say that and believe that,” he said.
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A Church Without Walls, Behind Walls: How Evangelicals Are Transforming American Prisons
Correctional facilities must grapple with unprecedented levels of overcrowding, violence, and suicide, as well as rampant mental illness among inmates. The tightening of budgets and the resulting loss of vocational, educational, and treatment programs pose additional difficulties. In the midst of these struggles, faith-based approaches, led by faith-motivated volunteers and prisoners, are providing the most innovative, holistic, and effective programs available in correctional facilities today.
It’s hard to overstate the current challenges facing the American prison system. Rampant violence, extremely high levels of offender recidivism, mounting taxpayer cost, and difficulty retaining employees, typify recent headlines from the world of American “corrections.” But prisons do little to meaningfully correct offenders’ past transgressions, nor do they deter future offending.
Many American prisons have become so violent that they comprise what Cambridge University prison scholar Alison Liebling describes as “failed state” institutions. In “failed state” institutions, even the most basic levels of safety and control are not provided by authorities. For an example, look no further than the New York Times, which recently reported on the horrifying conditions at Rikers Island, where whole sections of the prison are run by detainees, who fashion make-shift weapons out of the complex’s crumbling buildings. Staff members and detainees have been beaten and stabbed. One detainee reports having been denied food for two days by the gang that controls his unit. Thirteen people have died at Rikers so far this year.These institutions not only cause more human damage than they prevent, they produce emotionally crippled citizens and elevate the likelihood of reoffending. New research from the nonpartisan Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., moreover, highlights the likelihood of “mass incarceration” becoming a permanent feature of American society.
In the midst of these failures, a new, more successful model of correctional programming is quietly taking hold in the United States. The model draws on innovative work inside some of America’s largest and most violent prison environments. These new approaches are being developed primarily at maximum-security prisons, which have long been under-resourced until lethal violence has boiled over. In the face of this reality, prison administrators have become increasingly open to “outsourcing” rehabilitation programming to religious volunteers. As a result, in an increasingly large number of prisons, religious programming is now the dominant source of inmate rehabilitation.
An Interracial, Ecumenical, Personal Church
For many inmates, religious practice not only provides a momentary escape from prison life. It does something deeper and much more foundational: it helps them redefine and reclaim their lives.
Over the past ten years, as we conducted the research described in our new book, we have had the distinct privilege of sitting with men in prison as they engaged in religious worship. Many of these experiences have taken place in America’s largest maximum-security prisons, including Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Sing Sing (NY), Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman (MS), Darrington Unit Correctional Institution (TX), and Lawtey Correctional Institution (FL), among several others. We have been struck by the reverence, energy, and seriousness with which inmates cultivate a practice of faith.
Perhaps the most striking feature of “church in prison” is the robustly interracial character of the “congregation.” As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out in 1960, American religious practice is nothing if not racially segregated. By necessity, religious worship in prison, however, is both racially integrated and remarkably ecumenical. To witness the sign of the cross and hear a call-and-response during one and the same ceremony—sometimes even from the same practitioner—is not uncommon. For long-time inmate religionists, cross-fertilization of worship becomes a normalized practice, with inmate lifers often referring to themselves as “Bapticostal,” “Catholipalean,” or as one Florida inmate put it, “agnosti-pizza” (“I just come for the pizza”).
Religion in prison is characterized by a relaxed and non-hierarchical openness to various forms of religious practice in a doctrinally neutral space. It is first and foremost preoccupied with the meeting of immediate physical and spiritual needs. Prisoner prayer groups, Bible studies, outside church volunteer groups, yoga practitioners, Buddhist meditation leaders, and many others all combine to create a remarkably elaborate menu of religious options for prisoners. Diverse practitioners and non-believers are welcomed by faithful inmates, who understand themselves to be imperfect seekers. Perfectionism in faith and the performative gestures that often accompany corporate worship are simply not present in prison. By definition, everyone there has fallen.Read More
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Generations of Blessing: How the Historicity of Genesis 1–11 Hits Home
Genesis presents a view of reality that sees individual life as part of the divine, larger, coherent purpose that has continuity and hence a hope for the future. What occurs today is meaningful and bears on our future—efforts at building a life, a family, community, work, and spiritual development results. Henri Nouwen sums this up for Christian readers, “But when our historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to someone on an acid trip.”[2] If we don’t know where we’ve come from, we don’t know who we are or where we are going. But recognizing that our roots go back to the “generations” of Genesis helps us to see our lives in the larger purpose of our Creator God.
In 1977 a miniseries of eight episodes entitled “Roots” appeared on television (ABC network) based on Alex Haley’s 1976 historical novel about his personal ancestry that traced his “roots” for the slave era in America to his present times. It was a national sensation and generated a fascination with people’s personal story of heritage. Today the trend is still alive, fueled by DNA results, as evidenced by commercial internet websites, magazines, and related media.
But in the ancient world when genealogical ancestry was essential to national identities and royal claims of credibility, this was no mere trend. The Israelites deeply valued their ancestry and ensured reliable connections with their ancestors by genealogies and authentic stories preserved across generations. The Israelites identified themselves as the people of God by recalling the divine promises made to their ancestors, especially to Abraham (Gen. 12:1–3; Exod. 3:1–17). The author of Genesis made this connection clear to his first readers, even tracing their roots back to creation. How did the author achieve this?[1]
There is a consensus that Genesis focused on genealogy and blessing, interlacing these two prominent themes. A fundamental aspect to blessing was procreation (Gen. 1:26–28). Among the many ways he accomplished this focus was a framework of a recurring catch phrase. The traditional translation is “these are the generations of” (KJV). Modern versions recognize the heading introduced both formal genealogies and narratives. They offered a broader inclusive translation such as “these are the family records of” (CSB). For Christian readers, the New Testament makes the point of showing the qualification of Jesus, who was the sole legitimate and ideal royal messiah in the family of King David (Matt. 1:1–17). In this article, I’ll explore what the Hebrew word for “generations” is and its significance to Israelite readers and to readers today.
The “Generations” of Genesis
First, the Hebrew word is a noun, toledoth, derived from the verb yalad that means “to bear, give birth.” Second, the expression occurs eleven times, dividing the whole book of Genesis into twelve parts (Gen. 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2). The catchphrase spans the book and effectively holds together into a coherent whole the diverse genre and theological emphases of these fifty chapters. The author was highly intentional in the use of the catchphrase, and it was plainly important to him and his readers. Third, the author was not slavish to an exact wording of the formula every time; he adapted it for the contents of each section. The heading to Adam/Seth’s genealogy in Genesis 5:1a is an excellent example. It reads “This is the document [literally, “book”] containing the family records [toledoth] of Adam” (CSB). This heading indicates a pre-Genesis written source of family records, e.g., “the document containing the family records.” This is one of many indications that the author drew on available written sources for the composition and suggests to readers he also accessed family memories.
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How a Handful of Billionaires Created the Transgender “Movement”: An Interview with Jennifer Bilek
The primary catalysts driving the gender industry are rooted in technological developments entwined with an unfettered market. Medical-sex identities, along with technological reproduction, are at the forefront of attempts to advance our species beyond our current human borders. The strategic linking of an agenda aimed at deconstructing reproductive sex with a civil rights movement centered on same-sex attraction was pure genius—a metaphorical fox in the henhouse, but dressed as a hen. We are on the brink of breakthroughs in genetic engineering, artificial intelligence (AI), and artificial reproduction, each comprising significant industries. The convergence of these fields indicates a trajectory towards a future that transcends our current human state.
I first came across investigative journalist Jennifer Bilek’s work in 2020, when her essay “The Billionaires Behind the LGBT Movement” was published in First Things. It was a stunning piece—there are several journalists committed to exposing the transgender ‘movement’ (or industry, as Bilek calls it), but nobody has peeled away the façade of civil rights, pink-and-blue flags, and ‘trans kids’ like Bilek. If we had a mainstream press truly committed to uncovering and reporting the truth about the forces driving our culture today, her work would be cited by them across the board.
Bilek is an artist, activist, and investigative journalist based out of New York City, and her work has been published in Tablet Magazine, The Federalist, The Post Millennial, and elsewhere. Bilek spent her life on the Left, but now she says that she is in the “political wilderness,” reporting on the biggest cultural story of our day while progressives ignore it or cover it up. Bilek also runs the Substack Jennifer’s Newsletter and the blog The 11th Hour, where she explains her focus:
I write at the intersection of humanity, technology, and runaway capitalism. At this intersection stands transgenderism, what I believe is a glamorous ad campaign generated by elites, invested in tech and pharma, to normalize the changing of human biology.
Bilek is doing something that journalists used to do instinctively: following the money. What she has uncovered is a bombshell that reveals the extent to which the transgender phenomenon has been created by super-wealthy LGBT donors who have a dark and sinister agenda. Her journalism supplies the missing pieces needed to complete the picture of how and why the transgender movement so swiftly achieved cultural dominance. Bilek kindly agreed to an interview in which she shared what she has uncovered thus far.
You’ve done groundbreaking reporting on the extent to which billionaires have been quietly backing the LGBT movement behind the scenes. To what extent are the cultural shifts we’ve seen in the past few years astroturfed by big donors?
The cultural shifts we see today regarding gender identity are largely influenced by huge capital inflows from governments, philanthropists, corporations, and investment management and accounting firms like Blackrock and Ernst & Young. While some believe that the ideology originated in universities, funding is directed to these institutions to promote the idea of synthetic sex identities as progressive, which students then carry into the world.
To comprehend the motivations of governments, philanthropists, and big business in this ideology, we must examine its implications. Gender ideology deconstructs human reproductive sex legally, linguistically, socially, and is also attacking mostly young people’s reproductive organs by sterilizing them. It is marketing disassociation from sexed reality presented as progressive, which is especially confusing to young people in using their naturally rebellious youthfulness as a corporate trap.
Both the money and the ideology come out of the medical-tech sector, which is itself being integrated into culture through a philanthropic structure that has been attached to the LGBT civil rights political apparatus. The Arcus Foundation, one of the largest LGBT NGOs, plays a central role in this regard, not only by providing extensive funding to a plethora of institutions but also by introducing a tracking apparatus called MAP and encouraging wealthy philanthropists to invest in the LGBT constituency. Jon Stryker, the founder of Arcus, has a background in banking and is the heir to the corporate fortune that is Stryker Medical. Stryker Medical, with its ventures into the facial feminization surgery market, exemplifies the interconnection between the LGBT political apparatus and the medical-tech industry.
The Pritzker family in Chicago is one of the richest families in America. Though their fortune evolved out of the Hyatt Hotel industry, their predominant investments now are in the medical-tech sector. Their massive philanthropic efforts have made them some of the biggest drivers/funders of the gender industry. Tim Gill of the Gill Foundation—the second largest LGBT NGO in America and connected to Jon Stryker and his family—contributes significantly as well, originally coming from the tech sector and now involved in a home AI platform business. The tech giants—Google, Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Salesforce, Hewlett Packard, and Amazon—leverage their financial power both to fund this industry in body dissociation and also to browbeat entire states to accept the ideology by threatening the withdrawal of their capital. They did this in 2016, when they signed an amicus brief against North Carolina. After that the state insisted on bathroom privacy for boys and girls in schools.
The rapid proliferation of this ideology is attributed to tremendous financial pressure and mainstream media censorship of critics, which aligns with the media’s ownership by the medical-tech industry. The intertwining of conglomerates like Hearst, Conde’ Nast, and Disney with prominent pharma platforms contributes to the pervasive influence of the techno-medical complex in America.
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