Watchnight at Bethel Baptist Church in Erie, PA 1971 (and what really pissed Calvin off)

Click to enlarge: DVD cover of the movie Flame in the Wind (1971) from Unusual Films out of Bob Jones University.

I saw Flame in the Wind many, many years go at Bethel Baptist Church during a Watchnight service. (If you're not familiar with the term, "watchnight" is a New Year's Eve religious service.) Pastor Kenneth L Andrus, then pastor of Bethel, prayed into the new year after we'd watched this film and enjoyed our finger sandwiches and punch.

Of course, the temptation was irresistible to know exactly when the new year arrived, so us kids all craned our necks and squinted at the clock at the back of the sanctuary to see exactly when it became 1972.

Flame in the Wind is from Bob Jones University; production values are good and some of the acting deliciously sinister (Bob Jones leadership and students must have had fun playing nasty Catholics).

But there is no Protestant counterpart to Vatican II and the film's theology layers modern sentiments over historical events, so today we see it as Catholics vs. Protestants when in reality it was Christians vs. Christians. As the story goes, the big bad corrupt church is persecuting the noble reformers who want nothing more than to read the bible in Spanish.

(Mr Henry had been none too happy during intermission when he discovered a trail of crumbs leading from the kitchen to the sanctuary, marking the secret refreshment path the kids were using. I think he would have conducted his own inquisition if we hadn't had to settle down for the second reel.)

 

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Click to enlarge: This is Bethel Baptist Church (which was at that time at 737 E. 26th Street in Erie, PA - map >). It also housed Bethel Christian School for many years. I attended Bethel Christian School 7th-9th grade. I have very fond memories of that time and the friends I met there.

Movies in those days were of course large spools of celluloid, an hour apiece. Bob Jones charged venues for each showing, which is standard practice. I think I recall Bethel showing it twice, once on New Year's Eve and later at Bethel Christian School after Christmas break.

I have fond memories of that night. Our best friends, Rich Nickel and his brother Davey Nickel, joined us and enjoyed it a lot. One reason this night was such a treat is we got to see a movie on a big screen, and in church of all places. (Theatrical movies were off-limits to good Baptist, so this incongruity was a welcome exception).

Bethel in fact, as my Grandpa Cairns liked to point out, was built on plans for a movie theater, so in case a church didn't work out, it could be converted. True story. The floor of Bethel "East" was slanted like a movie theater is today.

More information from Bob Jones University on Flame in the Wind is here >

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Click to enlarge: Top: Michael Servetus. Bottom: John Calvin.

Lest we grow complacent in our own self-righteousness, don't forget that reformer John Calvin was instrumental in the burning of Michael Servetus for denying the Trinity. Learn more > 

When Servetus wrote to Calvin about coming to Geneva, Calvin wrote to another person: "for if he came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive."

Want to know what really pissed Calvin off? Servetus had sent him a copy of his own Institutes of the Christian Religion with prolific comments in the margins pointing out where he (Calvin) was wrong.

Nobody likes a critic. But Calvin, bless his heart, asked that Servetus be beheaded instead of burnt. (But alas, he was burnt anyway.)

The Institutes were still taught while I was at Calvin. I didn't take that class; I was able to avoid it by taking REL 301, which was a class on Christ and Culture with Prof Holtrop and noted for being extremely difficult; but I passed with an A and left with great respect for Prof Holtrop. He didn't ask us to agree with him, just demonstrate we learned the material, even if that meant writing something at the end of the bluebook like "I don't agree with what I just wrote," which I did for a few responses.[1]

I won't judge John Calvin any harsher than anyone else from that period, but fair is fair and and if we're gong to judge medieval personalities with modern sensibilities, let's judge them all alike.

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Someone (not me) actually posted the entire movie on Youtube. You can watch it now:

Flame in the Wind (1971) - The Inquisition's Bloody History

 

[2103-06-11]

 

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[1]
I took Prof Holtrop's REL 301 the same year M*A*S*H broadcast its series finale, which was a nationwide event. We begged him to cancel class, which was held once a week on Monday nights, but he refused. I went to class instead of the dorm M*A*S*H party. I was one of only a handful that did.

I of course watched the M*A*S*H finale later (many years later) in reruns, but only once. One particular scene was so disturbing, I can't watch it again, and I'm sorry that's among the images the show has left with me, but I suppose that's fitting, as I'm sure it was the intent.

BTW, the main reason I chose REL 301 over The Institutes was because the Institutes text books cost a gabillion dollars and I wanted to save my money. I'm glad now for the choice; instead of a survey in John Calvin I got a personally challenging perspective on Reformed theology from Holtrop that has stuck with me since, in a good way, like oatmeal at breakfast.

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It's the subsequent layers of hoaxes and wishful thinking that make us suspicious.

Click to enlarge: The Shroud of Turin

I've never felt religious artifacts were necessary for faith, or even a corollary to faith, but when physical evidence lightens the suspension of disbelief, that's a good thing.[1]

I happened upon a recent lecture on the Shroud of Turin in which the speaker was going through most of what I'd heard before, at which point, my skeptical half was saying, "Okay, it's old, it wrapped a dead person, appears to be 1st century, but did it wrap Jesus?

Then the speaker said there was no evidence of decomposition on the Shroud, and bingo, the light goes on.

(If you want to get into all the reasons why the shroud is fake - it's a medieval fraud, it once wrapped some unfortunate soul killed like Jesus, someone stole Jesus' body, Jesus never really died, etc - you can, and they're all good questions, but I've gone over these many times and see little merit in most of them.

You can stretch any explanation to fit, but no one would bother to do this for a lesser historical figure. The only way these explanations sound convincing is if the alternative is unthinkable, in which case you're less debunking and more dismissing.)

Recent tests suggest it's the burial cloth of a 1st century man who was tortured and died and shows no indication of decomposition.

So there it is. No Aramaic graffiti "Jesus was here," just an artifact that looks an awful lot like what an awful lot of people think it is.

There are myriad antiquities with no provenience that certainly at one time belonged to someone we otherwise know from history. There's nothing surprising about a few folks saving something they thought belonged to God. It's the subsequent layers of hoaxes and wishful thinking that make us suspicious (and rightly so).

[2013-06-12]

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Click to enlarge: Turin Shroud (Caravaggio) (c)2003 Rev. Albert R. Dreisbach Jr. Collection, STERA, Inc.

I can't find the lecture I was listening to, but these sources are good:

Wikipedia: Learn more about the Shroud of Turin here > 

Wikipedia: Especially here >
 

 

Proof that the Shroud of Turin is the Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ
(Worth the time if you haven't had much exposure to the religious perspective.)

 

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[1]
More on faith another time.

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Is Anyone Really Normal?

Click to enlarge: Marty Feldman chooses Abby Normal's brain in Young Frankenstein.

I am now listening to lectures on abnormal psychology by Professor Drew Westen, Is Anyone Really Normal? Perspectives on Abnormal Psychology.

What do psychiatrists wear on their feet at night? Freudian slippers. (Bet you can't tell I made that up.)

[2013-06-17]

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Click to enlarge: Protestant Billy Graham (L) and Catholic John F Kennedy praying together in 1961, when such things were rare.

One man's burden.

I once had a close friend who was burdened for pedophiles. He was not one, but may have known of one or a few who were struggling with it. That took a lot of courage. He was working at that time at a downtown ministry that helped folks with some big problems and that problem may have have been among them.

I suppose, like everyone else, I care about some things more than others; one thing that weighs heavily on me is reconciling Christians who are divided over trivial matters, from all denominations that proclaim Christ, but especially those that are exclusive and divisive.

[2013-06-03]

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10 Hours of Gregorian Chant

If you like that sort of thing (I do). I have no idea how the guy got Youtube to permit something that long.

The Best Gregorian Music Sacred
 

[2013-03-01]

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The Gospels are more like Impressionist paintings than photographs.

I've been having an email discussion with brother Tom recently regarding Jesus' awareness of his identity and role.

IMHO, we don't have to accept that the apostles represented Jesus accurately, only that their recollections and interpretations were spiritually accurate. Since Jesus wrote nothing himself, we have no other choice, and in the end, it doesn't matter (to me, anyway) if Apostle X "misremembered" an event because to cast it differently offered an insight the bare facts did not.

(For example: Jesus fasting for 40 days, and his post-resurrection ministry lasting 40 days.[1])

The ancient mentality toward historical documentation was very different from our own, and none of the gospels were biographies in the sense we would use the term today.

If we think of the synoptic gospels as Impressionist paintings rather than photographs, we are closer the truth.

(My own analysis and insight, and all deficiencies thereunto appertaining.)

[2013-06-06]

 

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Overheard on NPR Friday June 7, 2013:

Q: Why do elephants paint their toenails red?
A: To hide in cherry trees.

That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.

Everyone knows it's to hide in strawberry patches.


[2013-06-07]

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[1]
You're welcome to interpret those as literally 40 days, but the writers didn't expect you to. They expected you to see something more important than that.

That being said, the privilege of adjusting the text to interpret events lies only with the original writers, community of writers, or oral transmitters, not the translators or collators or anyone else who came after.

 

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On being sane in insane places.

Click to enlarge: The front gates of Belleview Hospital in New York City, a name once synonymous with "crazy" and popularized on 1970's sitcoms like Barney Miller.

A famous study showed that once we are instructed to regard perfectly healthy people as insane, we will do so despite consistent evidence that they are perfectly normal.[1]

This works for other things, too. Once inclined by influence or experience to view some people as stingy or rich or lazy, that's exactly how we'll view others that match the same general description (nationality, color, neighborhood, language, etc).

Take that into account the next time you cast a filtered light on a coworker, neighbor, or the person next to you in the pew. ("She dresses so beautifully. She manages to find the most beautiful bargains with what little they have.")

Your opinions are infectious.

Good ones, too.

[2013-06-12]

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Click to enlarge: This image speaks for itself. A man is holding signs that say "GO USA" and "Get A BRAIN! MORANS"

Just as wars are mostly fought by kids who have an undeveloped sense of mortality, so those who trade in irreverence, violence, and lewdness have no scars yet from long-term exposure to those things.

By the time they're old enough and the excitement has soured or they've become exhausted by saturation, a new crop of kids are lapping at their feet and it's then about money and habituation rather than excitement.

The result is not only a generation inured to violence and dehumanization, but a generation unable to express themselves above the level of a realty show spat.

Indeed, unable to read this post and understand what I just said.

[2013-06-11]

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[1]
"The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment done in order to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnosis, conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan and published by the journal Science in 1973 under the title "On being sane in insane places". The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis. Source >  

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