April 14, 2005

A New Cult?

The hot topic on local talk radio lately has been a church called Remnant Fellowship, and whether it is trying to take over the government of the suburban city of Brentwood by importing members and temporarily housing them in Remnant members' homes, and registering them to vote. Remnant Fellowship is a creepy proto-cult, in my opinion - and not just because of this latest flap. Here are some links for more info:

Brentwood election may have church tie - Nashville City Paper, April 13
Voter flap stumps Brentwood officials - Nashville City Paper, April 14
Church ties weigh down Brentwood election - The Tennessean, April 14

Also, Donald Sensing applies his theological knowledge to the story, in a rare post on local politics from the Franklin Methodist pastor.

By the way, Remnant Fellowship isn't just one bizarre church in suburban Nashville - that church is at the hub of a fast-growing denomination - "Remnant Fellowship Churches" - that rejects both the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of salvation by grace and exerts over its members a high level of pressure and control over their daily lives. Their website proclaims that "there are now over 130 Remnant Fellowships in 130 cities in the continental United States, Hawaii, Canada, and the Bahamas" and that Remnant Fellowship is "The New Jerusalem."

UPDATE: For my Nashville-area readers, Remnant Fellowship is located on Franklin Road, south of Concord Road, in Brentwood. Just to the north of Remnant are two other churches, Brentwood Baptist and Fellowship Bible Church. Despite the similarity in name, Fellowship Bible Church is unrelated to Remnant.

UPDATE: If you read the Donald Sensing article I linked to above, you'll see at the end he links to another recent essay he wrote on the topic of "Christian Dominionsm." It's a very long essay explaining the difference between Christian Evangelicalism, Christian Dominionism and Christian Theonomy. I urge you not to miss it, for reading it will give you a much greater understanding of the various strains of Christian political activism in 21st Century America.

I learned a lot from it, and it cleared up a little personal mystery. A few years ago, when I was in the thick of the ideological battle against a proposed state income tax, I was invited to appear on a televised talk-fest on NewsChannel5-Plus, a local TV news station's second cable station in the Nashville area. Also on the panel was a representative of the liberal activist group Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, Martha Wetteman. TFT was, and still is, pushing for creation of a progressive state income tax.

After the show, Martha asked me if I was a Christian Reconstructionist. It was a bizarre left-field question as I argued against the income tax - both on the show and in my writing - from an economic perspective and by carefully investigating the data and math that income tax proponents were using. I did not and do not make religious arguments against the tax. Ironically, TFT representatives sometimes do use (or should I say mis-use) scripture to justify their calls to increase taxes and fund larger government. Their website prominently features a report titled "A Judeo-Christian Analysis of Tax Form," which claims it is a Christian's duty to pay higher taxes to support government redistribution of wealth.

I wasn't sure what Christian Reconstructionism was but, as Donald Sensing explains, that's just another term for Christian Dominionism.

So, No, Martha, I am not.