William Booth Exército da Salvação

Por Mareclo Dutra

Todas as denominações evangélicas surgiram a partir do ideal de algum cristão consagrado. Com o Exército de Salvação - organização religiosa e filantrópica - não poderia ser diferente. Sua história começa em 1864, quando William Booth (1829-1912), cristão metodista Wesleyano, criou, juntamente com a esposa, Catherine Mumford, a Missão Cristă, em Londres, Inglaterra. O casal, então, a partir desse passo, iniciou o que seria denominado de movimento salvacionista, com base na filantropia e na pregação do Evangelho. A entidade era uma espécie de ONG (organização năo-governamental) que se dispunha a ajudar os miseráveis, os quais, naquele tempo, proliferavam no império britânico por causa dos efeitos da Revolução Industrial, que deixou multidões sem emprego e perspectiva.

Após uma infância e juventude pobres, Booth e sua esposa se sentiram tocados pelo sofrimento daquela população e decidiram dedicar a vida a apoiá-los. Ex-prisioneiros, mulheres perdidas, moradores de rua e alcoólatras foram os primeiros a experimentar esse amor e, ao mesmo tempo, receber a Palavra de Deus. Só em 1878, nasceu o Exército da Salvação com uma estrutura de comando paramilitar.

Caldeirão de ofertas - O nome escolhido - Exército da Salvação - justifica-se. Na época, o império britânico estava em guerra com a Rússia. Por isso, os missionários da igreja utilizavam em seu discurso evangelístico temas e linguagem militares - com base na idéia de que o exército de Deus está sempre em guerra contra as potestades do mal. A idéia deu certo. Booth se intitulou general e se dedicou, incansavelmente, ao desenvolvimento de sua organização, que, a partir de 1880, propagou-se por todo o mundo. Surgiram, então, naquela mesma época, as bandas de música e o caldeirão para colocar ofertas, coisas que ficaram marcadas na história dessa denominação e, até hoje, fazem parte da sua liturgia.

O Exército de Salvação possui uma estrutura eclesiástica distinta das demais, tem como base as patentes militares e, atualmente, pode ser encontrado em 103 países. Seus 25.400 oficiais são auxiliados por mais de 1 milhão de soldados. A entidade administra escolas, hospitais, clínicas, albergues, lares para crianças e idosos, creches e centros comunitários.

Se estivessem vivos para ver o crescimento espantoso da organização, Booth e a esposa ficariam extasiados. O Exército da Salvação dos dias atuais é fruto do empenho dos salvacionistas do século 19, os quais sofreram muito para manter o trabalho. Muitos foram derrubados ao chão, pisoteados ou brutalmente agredidos; alguns que, como Booth, pregavam a Palavra e as boas obras foram presos. No entanto, Booth e os demais salvacionistas perseveraram, pregando nas ruas, em portas de bares, tendas de lona, cinemas e teatros. O grupo que marchava pelas ruas de Londres logo começou a ser conhecido como os Soldados de Jesus e fundamentava seu discurso na luta contra o pecado e a degradação humana.

Uniformes - Surgiram, então, os uniformes, a bandeira e as insígnias, imitando a postura militar. Em dez anos, a entidade cresceu e alcançou toda a Inglaterra: Deus recebeu tudo o que havia em mim. Há homens com inteligência maior que a minha, homens com mais oportunidades do que eu, mas, a partir do dia em que coloquei os pobres de Londres em meu coração e tive uma visão daquilo que Jesus Cristo poderia fazer pelos pobres de Londres, decidi que Deus teria tudo o que havia de William Booth, comentou o fundador do Exército da Salvação, algum tempo depois.

Um dos segredos do sucesso de seu ministério era o fato de que a entidade estava sempre presente quando necessária. Para tanto, o patriarca envolveu a família na batalha contra o sofrimento. Sua mulher, Catherine, contribuiu para a obra com sermões e numerosos escritos. O filho, William Bramwell, sucedeu o pai como general. A filha, Evangeline, foi fervorosa apóstola da organização e, com apenas 18 anos, já realizava a sua obra no East End, bairro muito pobre de Londres. Realmente, Evangeline teve de vestir uma farda militar quando organizou postos de acolhida no front francês durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial. Depois de passar por todos os graus do Exército da Salvação, Evangeline chegou ao generalato em 1934. Nada mal para uma mulher em uma época em que sequer lhe era concedido o direito de votar.

Exército no país - No Brasil, o Exército da Salvação começou a operar em 1922, por intermédio dos coronéis David e Stella Miche, que se instalaram no Rio de Janeiro em um período em que já não havia mais perseguição aos cristãos; pelo contrário, a entidade foi aceita, reconhecida e apoiada pelas autoridades brasileiras.

A obra foi implantada na cidade do Rio de Janeiro e, posteriormente, em Niterói (RJ), ainda em 1922. Em 1924, o Exército da Salvação ampliou sua presença para São Paulo e, a partir dessa sede, criou bases em Santa Catarina, Paraná, Minas Gerais e Rio Grande do Sul. Só em 1968, foi iniciada a obra da organização em Brasília. Na década de 80, o Exército, finalmente, cercou o país de Norte a Sul, fincando sua bandeira no Nordeste, particularmente, nos estados de Pernambuco e Paraíba.

O coronel William John Jones, que preside a denominação no país, afirma que a igreja dá ênfase às boas obras, pois elas são demonstrações de amor: "Não temos a menor dúvida de que foi o sacrifício de Jesus na cruz que nos deu a salvação. Portanto, Cristo não ficou só nas palavras e nos ensinamentos; Ele pagou o preço por amor a nos. Cremos que devemos seguir Seu exemplo e não ficar, simplesmente, no discurso. Há muitas pessoas que precisam de ação, do nosso esforço e empenho", explica ele. Jones trabalha na sede nacional da instituição, oficialmente denominada "Assistência e Promoção Social Exército de Salvação", localizada no bairro do Jabaquara, em São Paulo.

William Jones conta que a igreja tem cerca de cinco mil soldados no Brasil e outros 143 oficiais, dentre eles, os pastores das 45 igrejas da denominação no país.

O Exército da Salvação tem uma peculiaridade: para um soldado tornar-se oficial, ele deve, por um período de dois anos, cursar com a esposa, o Colégio dos Cadetes em São Paulo, uma espécie de seminário. Quando concluem o curso, marido e mulher galgam, juntos, os postos de comando: tenente, capitão e assim por diante. O cargo de general, ocupado atualmente pelo inglês John Gowans em Londres, é único.

Are We Creating a Culture of Moral Misfits?

By Gary DeMar

Nothing I write or say will do anything to comfort the parents of the children who were murdered by an evil person. I remember the effect the cancer deaths of three of my very young cousins had on my aunts and uncles. They were never the same.

Sending children off to school and then getting word that a madman has entered their school and killed more than 20 students elevates the anguish to an unbearable level. At least my aunts and uncles had time to prepare. Even so, when death came, they were devastated. Attending the funeral of my 17-year-old cousin when I was in the 9^th grade is an engraved memory that will never leave me.

So what’s to be done? Liberals say controlling guns is the answer. Controlling alcohol and drugs haven’t worked. What makes liberals think controlling guns will?

Gun ownership wasn’t a problem 30 years ago. The culture has changed. There are no longer any social or moral taboos. Anything goes. Isn’t that what young people are taught today? Governments and the libertine culture create a problem and then promise that given more authority and power they are the ones to fix it.

Our nation has a deep moral problem brought on by a belligerent secular worldview. And it’s not just religious people who have seen its impact. Yale Law Professor Arthur Allen Leff (1935–1981) put it this way:

“We are never going to get anywhere (assuming for the moment that there is somewhere to get) in ethical or legal theory unless we finally face the fact that, in the Psalmist’s words, there is no one like unto the Lord. . . . The so-called death of God turns out not to have been His funeral; it also seems to have affected the total elimination of any coherent, or even more-than-momentarily convincing, ethical or legal system dependent upon final authoritative, extrasystemic premises.”

Put more simply, with God out of the picture, “everything is up for grabs.”^[1]

In another article, Leff wrote, “I will put the current situation as sharply as possible: there is today no way of ‘proving’ that napalming babies is bad except by asserting it (in a louder and louder voice), or by defining it as so, early in one’s game, and then later slipping it through, in a whisper, as a conclusion.”^[2]

Of course, the murderer was responsible despite what is going on in the broader culture. War tears down all sorts of moral barriers, but that does not excuse war crimes. Most wars themselves are crimes against humanity.

The blame-game has begun. It reminds me of a scene from the movie The African Queen(1951). Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) and Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) are traveling down the very dangerous Ulanga River in Africa during World War I in an attempt to avoid capture by the Germans. Rose is a conservative Christian missionary and Charlie makes his living operating a small, dilapidated mail boat hauling supplies.

After passing out after one of his regular bouts with the bottle, Charlie wakes up to see Rose pouring the contents of one of his precious gin bottles into the river. He’s visibly upset as he pleads with her: “Oh, Miss. Oh, have pity, Miss. You don’t know what you’re doing Miss. I’ll perish without a hair of the dog. Oh, Miss, it ain’t your property.”

Seeing that he’s getting nowhere with this line of argument, he tries a kinder more subtle approach:

“Uh, how’s the Book, Miss? [referring to the Bible]. Well, not that I ain’t read it, that is to say, my poor old Mum used to read me stories out of it. How’s about reading it out loud? I could sure do with a little spiritual comfort myself.”

After getting the cold shoulder, Charlie lets his emotions fly and yells at her: “And you call yourself a Christian! Do you hear me? Don’t ya? Don’t ya? Huh?” She shows only a slight reaction but doesn’t say a word.

He backs up and goes about cleaning the relief valve on the boiler that’s shaped like a cross — symbolic of the impact Rose is having on him. He asks for mercy: “What are ya being so mean for, Miss? A man takes a drop too much once and a while; it’s only human nature.”

Without looking up, Rose says, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

The problem is, our current culture — through the educational system — is telling young people that they are animals, in some cases, less than animals. “So genetically we are no different (really) from a worm, a bug, or a dandelion.”^[3] If taught long enough, there will be some people who will begin to believe it and act accordingly with no regard for what we regard as a moral worldview.

Endnotes:

1. Arthur Allen Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law,” Duke Law Journal (1979), 1229–49. [↩]
2. Arthur Allen Leff, “Economic Analysis of Law: Some Realism about Nominalism,” 60 Virginia Law Review (1974) 454–455. [↩]
3. John Naisbitt, High Tech High Touch: Technology and our Accelerated Search for Meaning (London: Nicholas Brealey Limited, 1999), 163. [↩]

O CRESCIMENTO DA IGREJA PRESBITERIANA NA CORÉIA DO SUL

Por Reverendo Hernandes Dias Lopes 

O CRESCIMENTO DA IGREJA PRESBITERIANA NA CORÉIA DO SUL 

Retirei este estudo do Boletim Dominical da Primeira Igreja Presbiteriana de Vitória (ES). Creio que é muito importante para a nossa reflexão.


A Coréia o Sul é 82 vezes menor que o Brasil em extensão territorial e apenas 3 vezes menor em população. O país tem cerca de 99.000 Km 2 e 46 milhões de habitantes, dos quais, 30% são evangélicos. A Igreja Presbiteriana representa 75% dos evangélicos e possui 10 milhões de membros. Embora a Igreja Presbiteriana da Coréia seja 28 anos mais nova que a Igreja Presbiteriana do Brasil, ela é 20 vezes maior. Enquanto os presbiterianos do Brasil representem apenas 0,3% do população, na Coréia representam 22%. Só em Seul, capital da Coréia do Sul, uma cidade com 12 milhões de habitantes, há 10 mil igrejas presbiterianas. As principais denominações evangélicas da Coréia são:

1) Presbiteriana – 10.000.000 de membros

2) Metodista – 1.500.000 membros

3) Assembléia de Deus – 1.000.000 de membros

4) Batista – 500.000 membros

As principais causa do crescimento da igreja evangélica coreana são:

1) Uma Igreja que é Cabeça e Não Cauda
A igreja sempre esteve à frente nas grandes lutas e tensões sociais, determinando o rumo das mudanças mais importantes do país. Os crentes ocupam os principais postos estratégicos de liderança da nação. A Igreja, na verdade, é a esperança da nação.

2) Uma Igreja de Mártires
Deus sempre honrou o sangue dos mártires. Como dizia Tertuliano, ilustre pai da igreja: “o sangue dos mártires é o fermento da igreja”. A plantação da igreja na Coréia do Sul foi regada por muitas lágrimas e banhada por muito sangue. Centenas de crentes foram decapitados, estrangulados e mortos com requinte da mais perversa crueldade. Milhares de cristãos foram torturados por causa de sua fé, selando com seu sangue o testemunho do evangelho.

3) Uma Igreja com Vida Intensa de Oração
Não existe na Coréia do Sul, igreja evangélica sem reunião de oração de madrugada. Eles não acreditam em crescimento da igreja sem prática efetiva e intensa de oração. Os crentes afluem para o templo de madrugada para buscar a face de Deus, mesmo sobre o frio implacável de 20 graus negativos no inverno. Os pastores oram em média de 2 a 4 horas por dia. Oração é para eles prioridade fundamental e a causa precípua do crescimento da igreja.

4) Evangelismo Através de Grupos Familiares
A base da evangelização e da comunhão dos crentes são os grupos familiares. Para eles esse é o investimento estratégico mais importante para ganhar novas pessoas para Cristo e discipulá-los.

5) Grande Ênfase no Discipulado e Treinamento de Leigos
Estando na Coréia com um grupo de 80 pastores em abril de 97, visitamos igrejas de 6.000, 12.000, 18.000, 30.000, 55.000, 82.000, e 700.000 membros. Em todas elas vimos a forte ênfase no treinamento da liderança e no discipulado dos novos convertidos. A igreja, na verdade, é um exército em ação, onde cada crente exerce o seu ministério, conforme os dons que recebeu.

6) Grande Zelo Missionário
A igreja coreana investe pesado em missões. 25% dos pastores formados na Coréia do Sul estão se consagrando às missões. Há igrejas que investem 62% do seu orçamento em evangelização e missões. Em 1995, no Estádio Olímpico de Seul, 100.000 jovens coreanos consagraram-se para a obra missionária.

Cremos que a qualidade de vida dos crentes coreanos daságua num fenomenal crescente numérico. Qualidade gera quantidade. Quando a igreja anda com Deus, Deus a faz crescer. Creio que Igreja pujante, guerreira, ousada e viva da Coréia do Sul é um modelo digno de ser imitado por nós, se queremos ver aqui nestas plagas os mesmos resultados.

Cristãos são mortos e igreja é destruída no Sudão

As Forças Armadas do Sudão, nas últimas duas semanas, bombardearam áreas das Montanhas Nuba - matando três cristãos, destruindo duas estruturas de agência de socorro e o prédio de uma igreja.

De acordo com relatos, Dawla Angalo, 60, um membro da Igreja em Heiban, morreu durante o bombardeio em Kordofan do Sul. Fontes disseram que ele morreu enquanto estava sendo levado às pressas para um hospital. A explosão matou ainda Khamisa Kuku (40), que era uma mulher cristã.

O ataque à bomba, feito por um avião de fabricação russa, feriu Mariam Hamdan (55) e quebrou suas duas pernas. Suliman Kuku, um cristão de 42 anos de idade e uma menina de seis anos de idade chamada Nadia Tutu também foram encontrados mortos. Três casas, incluindo a de Kuku foram destruídas no bombardeio, de acordo com relatórios online de notícias do portal Nuba.

"É muito triste - estamos perdendo nossos membros", disse um pastor da região, que pediu anonimato.

Mohammod Idris, 25, e Stephen Yousif, 23, foram feridos no ataque, segundo relatórios de Nuba. "Eles estão mirando igrejas - eles destruíram a escola bíblica da última vez, e agora a Igreja local", disse o pastor. A Escola Bíblica já havia sido reduzida a cinzas em 1º de fevereiro também num atentado aéreo por um avião Antonov.

O Sudão foi divido entre norte e sul em um referendo realizado em 9 de julho 2011. Com a divisão do país em Sudão do Sul e Sudão (norte), o Sul ficou com uma população majoritariamente cristã, e o norte, muçulmana. Desde que o conflito militar começou, militares sudaneses bombardearam igrejas Nuba, escolas e fazendas, causando muitas mortes. 
Milhares de civis supostamente se refugiaram em cavernas nas montanhas Nuba. Muitas pessoas têm queixas de negligência, opressão e conversões forçadas ao Islã em uma jihad*. O movimento rebelde crescendo nas Montanhas Nuba provocou tensões e o Sudão teria bombardeado civis no Sudão do Sul Estado de Bahr El Ghazal do Norte, em novembro,matando sete pessoas.
* "jihad" é o esforço e empenho em fazer a pessoa se converter ao islamismo, através de uma ação.

Pedidos de oração

• Ore para que haja paz de Deus, no norte e no sul do Sudão e para que esta paz guarde o coração e a mente dos cristãos em Cristo Jesus.

•　Peça a Deus que proteja seus filhos de qualquer ataque físico ou espiritual que os impeçam de segui-lo.

Fonte: ANS

Digital Education vs. the Ruling Elite

By Gary North

Ruling elites as recently as 1600 appealed to God to justify their continuing rule.  This was called the divine right of kings: rulership beyond any earthly court of appeal.  That began to be undermined in the second half of the seventeenth century.  A century later, Enlightenment democratic theory had replaced the divine right of kings. The divine right of Parliament or the divine right of the People replaced it.

This forced a major strategic change on the ruling elite.  The ruling elite has to pretend that it does not exist.  It formally acknowledged the legitimacy of the People as the final court of appeal.  This involved training and screening the judges.

Basic to maintaining this deception has been control over the media.  Also vital has been control over the schools — compulsory attendance laws, teacher certification, tax funding, and school accreditation. Above all has been control over textbooks.

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This control is ending in the area of printed media, especially newspapers, which are dying.  Control over TV news is fading.  Digits are killing them.  Now control over education is about to be undermined.  Same reason: digits.

COMPETING DIGITAL CURRICULA

I have recommended to Ron Paul that he hire a director of curriculum development in one of his educational organizations.  The director should then contract with Ph.D.s to create a comprehensive K-12 curriculum.  Once it is ready, Paul’s organization can post it online for free. I have presented this plan here:

http://GaryNorth.com/public/6786.cfm

Some parents will want courses taught live.  Paul could also put together a faculty of graduate students with M.A. degrees or retired Ph.D.s to provide real-time lectures.  The exams can be administered digitally. Record-keeping is digital.

He could charge a minimal $250 per course and split the money 50-50 with the faculty member who teaches it. This should be a profit-seeking venture.  It could easily generate $25,000,000 a year.  I have explained this here:

http://GaryNorth.com/public/6773.cfm

Free academic software now allows this.  It’s called Moodle.  Any medium-size organization can now afford to create an online high school or even a university with this open source software.  The Mises Institute now has its own online program called Mises Academy.  People pay a minimal $250 to take a weekly class.  Dr. Tom Woods is teaching a course on Roosevelt’s New Deal this fall.

http://academy.mises.org

The existing system of government-funded education is facing a technological challenge.  The Web can deliver content for free.  The model for this is Salman Khan’s wonderful Khan Academy.  Students from all over the world start with 1 + 1 = 2, and go from there through calculus. It is all done with free 10-minute YouTube videos.

http://KhanAcademy.org

He did this in his spare time just because he wanted to. Now he has funding to create an entire curriculum.

In contrast, this is the model of today’s high school:

http://bit.ly/bFUclY

Right?  Right!  You know it.  I know it.  We have known it all our lives.  It never improves.  It gets more expensive.  It gets less efficient.  We know it has no hope.  Every few years, reformers announce a “new, improved” approach.  It is not widely adopted, and wherever it is adopted, scores get worse.  They will call for reforms forever.  The system will just get worse.

It is paid to get worse.  Tax money is automatic.  No one stands up locally and runs for the school board on this platform: “Let’s cut the budget by 10% next year, and another 10% the year after next.”  That would be considered the equivalent of blasphemy.  Yet we know the tax-funded schools will not improve.  Anyone who is so naive as to believe that the Next Great Reform will be successful throughout the country probably ought to be institutionalized — at a minimum, he should be kept away from sharp objects.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE ACADEMIC CARTEL

The problem has been that private schools, also burdened with physical classrooms and buildings, are expensive.  Not many parents have been willing to pull their children out of the tax-funded schools and enroll them in a private academy.  They grin and bear it.  “Our schools are not like those other communities’ schools. Ours are highly rated.”  Really?  Rated by whom?  When? Using what methodology?  How long ago?

Who produces the textbooks?  New York publishing firms staffed by anti-capitalist Leftists?  The same textbooks used in those other communities’ schools?  You don’t say!

With the Web, a PDF file can be downloaded for free. This PDF can be a textbook.  If it’s in the public domain, it’s free.  You can print it out.  Cost: toner and paper. Maybe you will want to buy a 3-hole punch and a $7 binder. After all, that 3-hole punch is a permanent investment. Amortize it over a 30-year period.  You can afford it.

Do you want a video-based course?  Salman Khan offers them.

How about MP3 audio files?  There are free MP3 hosting sites.  Anyone can post lectures.

MIT has put 2,000 courses online for free.  Did you know this?  It’s here:

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Local colleges have resisted this.  If you were a faculty member of Podunk State University, would you want the whole world to see you and your peers online, 24×7? Would you be confident that parents and students would then be willing to pay $50,000 to get a degree from your backwater institution?

So, university faculties are now in a difficult position.  They must justify the absence of online lectures and course plans.  Silence is embarrassing.  The story of MIT’s program is getting out.  They will have to argue that MIT’s online curriculum is a fluke, that a normal university would not be wise in posting its lectures and course notes for the general public to view free of charge. Yes, MIT can do this, but it’s different.  It’s different because. . . .  Well, anyway, it’s different.  It’s not fair to use it as a model.  Why not?  Because it’s the best.  The academic world knows it’s the best.  As an MIT T-shirt says: “Harvard: Because not Everyone Can Get into MIT.”  The best doesn’t count.

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By the way, Salman Khan went to MIT and then the Harvard Business School.  Now look what he’s done.  What’s Podunk State to do?

Podunk State knows it is delivering a substandard product.  It knows that it can keeps its doors open only because tax money subsidizes its program.  If it is possible to provide digital education, with digital exams, digital grading, and digital record-keeping — and it is — then what does Podunk U bring to the table that (say) the 100 best colleges and universities could not do better? What is the justification for Podunk State?

Accreditation.  That’s it?  That’s it.

The collegiate system is a cartel.  It is now being threatened by the University of Phoenix, with its 500,000 students at (probably) $10,000 each per semester.  The academic community sees the threat of profit-seeking universities.  With 15,000,000 students enrolled, it would take only three dozen University of Phoenixes to teach them all.  Let’s be generous.  Say that 100 schools could do this.  What would happen to the other 4,000?

Cartels always collapse.  Only the threat of government violence against “cheaters” can sustain cartels. The collegiate cartel in the United States is maintained by a series of Federal government-recognized but privately run accrediting agencies — agencies staffed by members of the cartel.  Here is the list:

http://bit.ly/EdCartel

What breaks cartels?  Price competition.

PRICE COMPETITION

Decades ago, management expert Peter Drucker observed that whenever a new production technique lowers costs by 90%, it comes to dominate.  The old producers can fight it, but they cannot prevail.

He said that existing producers can fight by pointing to the prestige of owning an expensive version.  This is an appeal to the rich.  It is an appeal to status.

People who are really self-confident about their status do not play this game.  I remember seeing an interview of Denzel Washington.  He showed his watch: a Casio.  “It cost $35, and it keeps perfect time.”  That kind of statement sends a chill down the spines of people working for Rolex.

Today, the cost of delivering a good education has fallen by far more than 90%.  It has fallen to the cost of bandwidth.  Bandwidth keeps getting cheaper.

Back in 1997, Drucker gave an interview to “Forbes.” In that interview, he offered this assessment and prediction.

Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won’t survive. It’s as large a change as when we first got the printed book.

Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care — without it the kids have no future.

Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis.

http://bit.ly/DruckerCollege

If he was correct, the large physical universities have only 15 years to go.

Do I think they will disappear this fast?  No.  Why not?  Because control over education is the #1 control device of the ruling class.  It is even more important than the control over central banking.

The American educational system absorbs something in the range of 6% of the country’s GDP, which means over 10% of the private sector’s output. The finished product is a curriculum built on the presuppositions favored by the ruling class.  State-funded institutions teach respect for state funding and the bureaucrats who control the flow of funds.

If state-funded education were ever to end, the major means of control by the ruling class would end.  The ruling class will not surrender this control without a fight.  But it will lose this fight.

The tools of this fight are digital.  The basis of this fight is ethical: the right of parents to control the content of their children’s education.  The state-funded bureaucrats know this.  They have fought ever since the foundation of the modern educational system in Prussia after 1810 to insulate their class from political control, while collecting tax money.  This is the basis of the doctrine of academic freedom.  It means freedom from interference by taxpayers and politicians.

By severing payment from control, the educrats have gotten themselves a sweet deal.  Like the Congregational ministers in New England before 1819, they are on the state’s payroll, but they insist on autonomy.

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The cost of this arrangement is skyrocketing.  The educational cartel is facing a revolt.  Parents who don’t like the content of tax-funded education are breaking ranks.  They are teaching their children at home.  This was fought by the states in the 1980s, but a series of court cases undermined the laws against home schooling.

Now budget cuts are forcing public school districts to adopt distance-learning programs.  This is the death knell for the system.  The tax-funded schools are facing budget ceilings.  Meanwhile, education is getting steadily cheaper.

Dr. Art Robinson’s Robinson Curriculum costs $200 for K-12.  It’s a one-time payment for the entire family.  Yet it could be placed online and given away for free.  The curriculum is self-taught.  Students who pursue it can quiz out of two years of college, as his children did.  They can enter college as juniors at the age of 16.

Of course, a wise parent will not send a child off to college at age 16.  So, the child can take the last two years in a program such as Louisiana State University’s distance learning program, or at Excelsior College, a private online campus.

Total cost of college?  Under $11,000.  The student can work part-time and pay his way through college.

Or else he can ask his parents to foot the bill of a conventional on-campus program ($50,000 to $250,000).  He can also take on $20,000 in personal debt, which is now the national average.

If he flunks out, all this money is down the drain. Yet about half of students who enroll as freshmen do not graduate.

Which approach makes more economic sense?

What are you buying?  An education or a shot at status?  Is it a Casio or a Rolex?

There are not many Rolex-type watch firms.  There are only about three dozen Rolex-type universities.  They enroll about 2% of the college population.

What is the future for the 4,000 others?  Extinction or adjustment to the world of digits.

Digits are cheap.

A DIGITAL DAGGER

This is a digital dagger at the heart of the ruling elite.  As this spreads, it will be the end of the nearly monolithic educational worldview, a worldview that rests on the assumption that ideas must be controlled, and that this control is best accomplished through screening.  Such screening procedures must be in the hands of gatekeepers. These gatekeepers must be certified by other gatekeepers and protected by the state.

The Internet has destroyed most of the walls that give power to control over the gates.  The center will not hold. The many competing views of how the world works will act as acid for the worldview of the power elite.

The historical mark of the collapse of the strategy of gatekeeping, after 5,000 years, was Matt Drudge’s 1998 story about “Newsweek,” which had suppressed the story of the unnamed intern and Bill Clinton.  Soon, she was named. Then Clinton was impeached.  His Teflon charm let him avoid conviction, but his reputation never recovered.  He will always be remembered as the smiling rogue with a roving eye and a cigar.  This is not what a member of the ruling elite expects after his successful lifetime effort to shinny up the greased pole of political success.  It takes all the fun out of it.

We need an image that represents the digital transformation.  I think it ought to be Alex Jones’s bullhorn.  He posts those video clips of him and some of his supporters standing outside a Bilderberg meeting or some other closed-door conclave of the ruling elite.  He has his trusty bullhorn in hand.  He shouts at them.  He tells them that the People are watching.  They don’t know what to do about this.

Are the People watching?  A few may be.  Probably not all that many.  They are watching funny videos, or pornography, or some other entertainment.  But, from the point of view of the ruling elite, nobody is supposed to be watching a Jones video.  They hate him and his bullhorn, but they can do nothing about it.

CONCLUSION

We are living in the era that will go into the textbooks.  If I had the influence to name it, the way that historians designated 1946-1991 as “the Cold War,” I would call 1995- “the end of the gatekeepers.”  It is the Berners-Lee era, but that reference is too obscure.

Every ruling elite rules on behalf of a basic idea, and this idea usually has a slogan.  I think the ruling idea today is this: “the mixed economy.”  Digital technology and state bankruptcies are going to unmix it.

Karl Marx called capitalism’s system “the cash nexus.” Others summarize it as “money talks.”  I call it price competition.

The ruling elite has justified its claim to sovereignty and therefore legitimacy in terms of superior technological wisdom — the unique possession of an elite. One institution stands as a testimony against such a claim: Wikipedia.  I think it will still be around in 2100.  I don’t think today’s ruling elite will be.

Have We Reached the Cultural, Moral, and Political Tipping Point of No Return?

By Gary DeMar

In the 1980s, I wrote a three-volume book series titled God and Government. It has sold nearly 250,000 copies. A better title would have been God and Governments (plural) since the series attempted to show that in biblical and historical terms there are three governments — family, church, and civil. Underpinning these three institutional governments is the necessary requirement of self-government under God.
Today, we’re repeatedly told that when the word “government” is used, it refers to civil government – the State. It’s gotten so bad that there isn’t any room for self-government. The State has subsumed them all. Even the individual has given up his individuality and has become part of the collective.
Joel Belz’s article “Tipping Point?” that appears in the December 1, 2012 issue of World magazine states the issue well:

“Elections tell us what voters believe about important matters. And the evidence of the 2012 election is pretty overwhelming that most Americans have now become practical secularists. Their second nature is to believe that government is there to be their helper and provider. Anything that messes with that secularist assumption these days is messing with a root belief of at least 51 percent of American voters. These are folks who got John Kennedy exactly backward: ‘Always ask,’ they say, ‘what it is that your country can do for you.’ These folks are now dominant — and these are the voters who elect presidents. The American public has been going through a massive change — and the evidence grows that that ‘belief’ change has now passed a tipping point, beyond which it may be very difficult to go back.”

Mr. Belz is no defeatist. Like me, he believes that the solution to this national problem is not found in politics. Of course, this very clear observation does not mean that we should not be involved in the governmental process at the civil level, as long as we understand the biblical and historical definitions of government. That’s why I wrote the God and Government series. Government is not a synonym for politics.
Let me ask you two questions: Where do your children go to school? Who’s educating them? The fact that 51 percent of the voters in America see the State as their parent does not absolve us of the responsibility and the freedom to do the right thing in the areas of self-, family, and church government. Education is not the domain of the State, either at the national or state level. As parents, we are responsible.
Right now we can make a difference in the future of our nation by getting our children out of the hands of the one institution that fills their minds with Statist propaganda six or more hours a day, five days a week, ten months every year for at least twelve years. We don’t have to wait until 2014 or 2016 to change America; we can do it tomorrow.
I know some of your will say that your school is different, that it’s all those other schools that are the problem. The parents of those other schools are saying the same thing – about your school!
I received the following email from a parent who is a pastor regarding a school board meeting that will take place this evening (Nov. 29, 2012):

“There is an attempt to establish gender ID confusion laws to bathrooms permitting children from elementary school and up to use the bathroom with the opposite sex because another child may get his/her feelings hurt. I have an idea and want to see if you can help me. The Civil rights act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in employment based upon race, ethnicity and sex. Was the definition of ‘sex’ simply male and female?”

Conservatives have been trying to save the public (government) schools for more than 50 years. We’ve been on defense for 50 years while educational budgets have grown, the schools have gotten more statist, and the graduates (when they do graduate) become spokesmen for the State. Yes, I know there are exceptions. But there aren’t enough of them, and there never will be.
Can you imagine where we would be today as a nation if parents had removed their children from government schools in the early 1960s before prayer and Bible reading had been prohibited?
What parents didn’t do 50 years ago must be done today — before we are told we can’t do it.

No estado de Taraba (Nigéria), o número de mortos sobe para dez

13º país na classificação de nações que mais perseguem os cristãos, a Nigéria está sempre no noticiário internacional por conta da violência religiosa que ocorre no norte do território. Dessa vez, o problema se instalou na parte sul: dez pessoas já foram mortas.

O número de mortos na violência que eclodiu na manhã de domingo (18), entre muçulmanos e cristãos, na cidade de Ibi, estado de Taraba, subiu para dez.
Entre os que foram mortos na segunda-feira (19), um policial faleceu na tentativa de resgatar alguns refugiados que fugiam da cidade para evitar serem pegos no fogo cruzado.

Soldados do 93º Batalhão de Takum agiram a fim de restabelecer a normalidade à cidade. Os oficiais prenderam um número desconhecido de pessoas vestidas com o uniforme do Exército e, acredita-se que eram mercenários de Sarkin Kudu, uma aldeia localizada na fronteira do estado de Plateau.

Armas perigosas, incluindo três fuzis AK 47, uma espingarda, 12 canhões de barril único, fabricados localmente, um lançador de foguetes, uma pistola, 23 armas e 55 munições dinamarquesas, bem como 20 anéis e vários encantos, foram recuperados por soldados liderados pelo tenente-coronel N.J Edet.

Além dos mortos, mais de 200 pessoas sofreram diferentes graus de lesão e estão recebendo tratamento em vários hospitais em Ibi e no Hospital Geral de Wukari, que se diz lotado, sem condições para cuidar de mais vítimas.

Domingo (18), cinco pessoas foram mortas pela violência desencadeada a partir da tentativa de um homem de passar pela barricada montada em frente à Igreja Cristã Reformada da Nigéria (CRCN, sigla em inglês). Enquanto o culto ainda estava em andamento, a Boys Brigade (Brigada dos Meninos, tradução livre) resistiu ao ataque, com o objetivo de proteger aqueles que estavam dentro da igreja.

Presidente do governo local de Ibi, Alhaji Ishaka Adamu, disse ao jornal THISDAY que a violência tem um tom político e também parece ser uma crise religiosa. Ele confirmou que várias casas foram incendiadas nos ataques.

Por conta dos levantes violentos, o governo estadual declarou toque de recolher de 24 horas na cidade, como parte dos esforços para evitar uma nova escalada dos ataques.

Uma equipe de soldados do 93º Batalhão de Takum e policiais anti-motim estão espalhados pela cidade a fim de combater a violência. Em comunicado assinado pelo Comissário Estadual da Informação, Sr. Emmanuel Bello, o governo afirmou que não vai parar enquanto não devolver a paz à cidade conturbada.

Fonte: All Africa