[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

First is when did Christ become so old, that He had to become so new?

Second, if this "new Christ" doesn't care about the poor, the sick, and the weak then He is probably a "different Christ" that Paul was warning us about. If this was a Christ where we said to the rich man "You sit here" and to the poor man, "You sit over there, under my footstool", then this was a different Christ that (James 2:1-4) warned us about. If this was a new Christ where we elevated men and made distinctions among ourselves, and then ignored righteousness when our elevated men (our "Moses" and "Noah") were found to be with feet of clay like the rest, what kind of Christ is this? All the excitement and shouting cannot cover a lack of discernment.

Just some things to think about. I'm not trying to present anything definitive here. Just thinking aloud. Asking questions.

I felt that InOmnibusCaritas answered the question of the Pauline-warned "different Christ". So I'm content the let the matter drop.

But Amcasci's testimony is valuable because it opens a window into a time of great change in the United States, and in this time the LC as most of us knew it came into being. First off, it was a time of the Baby Boom generation. A large group of young people came of age. What was different about this generational cohort? Well, for one it was disproportionately large, thus the "Boom" part. As any of us know, when growing up we at some point make a transition from accepting and copying everything of our parents' generation, to questioning everything, and challenging it. Nothing new or remarkable there.

But in this era, the 1960s, a number of social issues were coming into a head. Looming over everything was the threat of nuclear annihilation, with a continual intransigence between the heavily armed Super Powers (U.S. vs. U.S.S.R.). Then there was the environmental crisis, with Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", Barry Commoner's "The Closing Circle", and so forth. There was the Women's Movement. The Civil Rights Movement. An unpopular war (Vietnam) taking over the public discourse.

All of this served to highlight the questioning of the status quo. So the popular verbiage of the day was, "Stick it to the Man", i.e. don't cooperate with the current power structure. They sometimes called it the "System", a tightly woven oppressive regime which controlled culture, commerce, religion, and politics. The process of actively resisting the "System" was called the "counter-culture". Hippies, Yippies, Dopers, rebels... "Tune in, turn on, drop out." Don't participate in "the System".

And my point was that WL made a lot of this: he continually denigrated the status quo, not just in civil society but also in religious society. He both claimed to be from orthodox Christianity, and yet rejected it completely. His disciples were isolated from, and hostile to, organized Christian religion, which they ironically claimed to purely represent! WL was simultaneously the leader of the most orthodox Christian group (so he said), and completely hostile to all forms of orthodox Christian expression. Even the Protestants were "daughters of the harlot".

So it's no surprise to me, looking back, that this was all seemingly wonderful to people like Casci and others. And not only with WL: look at what happened in Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa CA, with Chuck Smith. They grew from 20 people to 500 within 2 years. And it is no wonder that in the 1970s when the excesses of the unconventional ways occurred, notably Jim Jones and the Jonestown Guyana tragedy, that the cultural pendulum swung the other way and the "social deviance" of the LCs was scrutinized by the cult watching press.

When you step back and look at it, none of it seems too surprising at all. That is why Amcasci's testimony is so valuable. It opens a window into a time in history.

And secondly, I wanted to make the point that the so-called "counter-culture" was just more culture. It formed as an alternative to an existing culture, but it was yet one more culture, with its own norms and behaviors. And likewise WL's "new Christ" was really just repackaged religion. An old gambit with a shiny new label. But it really was nothing new at all. It was just fallen man, reacting to fallen man. Same old, same old. I could see it on the faces of the LC faithful when the latest "move" came along, courtesy of the "oracle in Anaheim". Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.