{"id":31281,"date":"2016-02-11T18:33:02","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T23:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=31281"},"modified":"2016-02-11T18:33:02","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T23:33:02","slug":"always-submit-to-the-church-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/02\/11\/always-submit-to-the-church-administration\/","title":{"rendered":"Always Submit to the Church Administration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s a little video from the Church of Christ (Not That One) recently highlighted by Christian Nightmares<\/a> and many others:<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3nmYOQIidqo<\/a>\n

This achieves that rare feat of being simultaneously charming and creepy as hell. The kids are adorable, gamely attempting to lip-synch along to the ghastly lyrics, which aren\u2019t really in kid-friendly language and thus, one hopes, strike those poor kids as incomprehensible strings of syllables.<\/p>\n

Some thoughts:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0<\/strong>The first thing I thought of watching that video was this:<\/p>\n

\"z1cgz\"<\/a><\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> The \u201cChurch of Christ\u201d here is not the same as the Churches of Christ<\/a> \u2014 the \u201crestorationist\u201d Protestant denomination known for its a capella<\/em> singing and for Richard Beck<\/a>. And it\u2019s not the same as the International Church of Christ, known for its \u201cflirt to convert\u201d outreach efforts and for its insistence that it is not<\/em> a cult, not at all, definitely not that<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This<\/em> Church of Christ is the Iglesia ni Cristo<\/a> \u2014 a charismatic denomination that began in the American colony of the Philippines in the early 20th century. Its doctrinal language and statements about the authority of the Bible read much like that of any other white evangelical\/fundamentalist group on the charismatic\/Pentecostal side of the family. But, as the lyrics of that song reveal, scratch a little deeper and you\u2019ll find some far-out, freaky stuff that it\u2019s hard to refer to as anything other than heresy:<\/p>\n

Always submit to the church administration
\nFor they were placed by Lord God to lead his nation
\nIf we obey then we will receive salvation
\nSing along with me<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, then, a big scoop of dominionism\u00a0paired with\u00a0the belief that salvation depends on unquestioning obedience to authoritarian church administrators, rather than on Jesus Christ. Phew<\/em>.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Of course, the bonkers authoritarian cult stuff and the tomorrow-belongs-to-me dominionism really don\u2019t distinguish this group from many\u00a0other\u00a0charismatic\/Pentecostal evangelical groups here in the U.S. Just go have a look-see at Charismanews.com<\/a> and you\u2019ll find endless variations of this same stuff all over their site. List a bunch of statements from the ICC along with a bunch of statements from, say, the International House of Prayer and you\u2019d have a hard time telling them apart. Heck, people from ICC and IHOP would have a hard time telling them apart.<\/p>\n

This theology may be wacky, incoherent, anti-biblical, and heretical, but hey \u2014 it won in Iowa and came in second in New Hampshire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong>\u00a0Given the authoritarian streak in the ICC,\u00a0would anyone want to bet against the likelihood that some sort of hideous, horrifying sex-abuse scandal is eventually going to blow up in this outfit?<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> The ICC is another example of why the conservative\/liberal framework distorts more than it clarifies when we talk about religion and theology. Groups like this get placed on the \u201cconservative\u201d end of that theological spectrum \u2014 somewhere out near Bob Jones and Al Mohler and Ken Ham and Michele Bachmann. You\u2019ll find a lot of ideas out there, but you\u2019d have a hard time explaining why any of them should be regarded as theologically conservative<\/em>.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> The Iglesia ni Cristo is an example of the kind of two-thirds world Christianity that is often cited as evidence that evangelicalism is a global phenomenon rather than a peculiarly white American invention. That misrepresents what we see in churches like this one. What we see here is simply colonial white evangelical theology reflected back from the colonized.<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> I would very much like to hear a hard-core punk version of this song. And also maybe a K-Pop rendition. Or maybe just Regina Spektor transposing it into a minor key.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cult-like Church of Christ (the other one) has produced a video that manages the tricky feat of being simultaneously charming and creepy as hell. The kids are adorable, the message is ghastly. It’s not hard to find this kind of theology in places like, say, Charismanews, but I’ll never understand why such bonkers heresies continue to be described as theologically “conservative.” Anyway, I’d really like someone to do a punk version of this song. Please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[120,92,14,28,50],"class_list":["post-31281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-charisma","tag-church","tag-dominion-theology","tag-religious-right","tag-theology"],"yoast_head":"\nAlways Submit to the Church Administration<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The cult-like Church of Christ (the other one) has produced a video that manages the tricky feat of being simultaneously charming and creepy as hell. The kids are adorable, the message is ghastly. It's not hard to find this kind of theology in places like, say, Charismanews, but I'll never understand why such bonkers heresies continue to be described as theologically "conservative." Anyway, I'd really like someone to do a punk version of this song. Please.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/02\/11\/always-submit-to-the-church-administration\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Always Submit to the Church Administration\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The cult-like Church of Christ (the other one) has produced a video that manages the tricky feat of being simultaneously charming and creepy as hell. The kids are adorable, the message is ghastly. It's not hard to find this kind of theology in places like, say, Charismanews, but I'll never understand why such bonkers heresies continue to be described as theologically "conservative." Anyway, I'd really like someone to do a punk version of this song. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Always Submit to the Church Administration","description":"The cult-like Church of Christ (the other one) has produced a video that manages the tricky feat of being simultaneously charming and creepy as hell. The kids are adorable, the message is ghastly. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}