Posted on 08/31/2013 7:51:32 AM PDT by darrellmaurina
The town where J. Gresham Machen, the founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, last preached before his death has shown up again in the news, this time in a horrible way.
While Machen's direct denominational influence was fairly narrow, as the key leader of the secession from the Northern Presbyterians and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, Machen has a lasting role in American Calvinism that is far larger than the Orthodox Presbyterian Church which he founded.
In his own lifetime, however, Machen's role was even more important and went well beyond Reformed circles. As a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, he was regarded as the "intellectual leader of American fundamentalism," and was able to successfully make the case that Bible-believing Christianity is not a religion for stupid people, but on the contrary, is quite compatible with intellectual rigor and serious academic scholarship. The liberal PCUSA takeover of Princeton Seminary, which was then the last remaining theologically conservative Ivy League institution, attracted the same type of national media attention in the late 1920s that the conservative Southern Baptist takeover of liberalizing Baptist colleges and seminaries has attracted in our day.
Machen died an early death on the plains of North Dakota, trying to help small churches organize a faithful witness to Scripture. The last place he preached was at the Presbyterian church in Leith, N.D., which became OPC but has now closed. The building stands vacant today.
Unfortunately, Leith is now getting known for something else.
A group of white supremacists is buying up property trying to turn Leith into "an enclave where residents fly 'racialist' banners, where they are able to import enough 'responsible hard core' white nationalists to take control of the town government, where 'leftist journalists or antis' who 'come and try to make trouble' will face arrest."
New Neighbor’s Agenda: White Power Takeover http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/white-supremacists-plan-angers-a-north-dakota-town.html?pagewanted=all
If a tiny group of white supremacists can attract not just regional but national media attention for their plan to buy property and start a white-power enclave, surely somebody in the OPC or PCA has enough money to buy the last church where Machen preached, disassemble it, and move it someplace where the building will be valued and used, perhaps as a college or seminary chapel, or as a museum, or maybe as a building for a congregation which needs a building and would otherwise have to construct or buy one.
Older buildings were typically built to last, and when made out of wood they can typically be disassembled and rebuilt, and the cost for disassembling and rebuilding may be much less than new construction. It would be really nice to see this building put to use again for conservative Reformed church purposes rather than to have it in a haven of "white power" views which Machen never would have supported.
Here are some more websites with details on Machen's last preaching tour in North Dakota and on the current status of the town of Leith:
http://www.ghostsofnorthdakota.com/2007/05/01/leith-nd/
http://www.thisday.pcahistory.org/2013/01/january-1-death-of-j-gresham-machen/
http://heidelblog.net/2013/07/where-machen-last-preached/
I don't think anyone on FR is defending that, are they? However, I am less horrified about attacks on the Internet, than I am about people being beaten, gang raped, and murdered for nothing more than being white.
It's a nice thought, but I don't think this is worth doing. We honor Machen, and God has him. ("Now he in not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him.")
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“I don’t think anyone on FR is defending that, are they? However, I am less horrified about attacks on the Internet, than I am about people being beaten, gang raped, and murdered for nothing more than being white.”
Sorry, SampleMan, it is now mandatory that each citizen lose his mind at the faintest suggestion of white on black racism. It has also been accepted that black on white racism, particularly of the violent sort, never happened and can never happen. Common sense is strictly verboten. Hell, seeing reality is verboten.
I'm not going to dignify the explicitly anti-Jewish website I'm quoting below with a link, but I was amused to be alerted today to stuff on a white supremacist website in connection with my comments here about the situation in Leith, S.D.:
“I hope it can all be bought up before the jews buy everything around them all up and block them. That Darrell commenting on the site above and copied here below is probably a filthy SHITmite because he runs a small media company and he looks like a weak little girly boy that hates everyone. He is pretending to be the peoples advocate.”
I've been called a lot of things in my life, but this is a new one. So this explicitly anti-Semitic guy thinks lots of people in the media are Jewish, thinks I look “like a weak little girly boy” and therefore jumps to the conclusion I am probably Jewish?
LOL!!!!
Oh well, I guess I've been accused of a lot worse stuff by a lot better people.
This explicitly anti-Jewish writer can call me Jewish when I am not, which I don't take as an insult even though it's wrong, and he can accuse me of being “weak” and “little,” which are both true. He's right that I won't be able to stand up to a stereotypical Aryan in hand-to-hand combat, though I might do a decent job with a firearm,
Taking me on could be easy depending on whether or not I'm carrying. However, I'm guessing he wouldn't be so willing to stand up in person to a well-trained member of the Israel Defense Forces... ;-)
So, what is to be done?
I grew up in Detroit, that prepared me for my service in the Israel Defense Forces where I served in the Reserves being discharged with the rank of Major. My son is currently in the IDF, in a combat unit. My daughter finished and my youngest daughter will be drafted in 2016. We can kick that anti-semite’s butt.
Usually people who call you X are themselves, that very X. Tell him to go $#%%#!@&**(&& himself and be done with it.
A non-Jew being attacked for being a weak Jew...what boredom on his part. How can I help you?
People’s hearts are naturally dark. This type of behavior shows an even deepening of this darkness and rebellion towards the things of God. You can’t fault people who hearts are dark because they are drawn, if you will forgive the reverse analogy, like moths to a flame. That is why our Lord tells us to love those who hate us and pray for them. Someday, there will be an accounting.
Thank you, Netz.
These bigots are far away from me, and while media reports indicate they're part of a particularly dangerous wing of the white supremacist movement, I don't think I'm in any particular danger. If they're stupid enough to come down here and try something in the real world rather than cyberspace, I live in an Army town, my neighborhood is full of minorities (often retired senior enlisted personnel) as well as guns, and we don't take kindly to bigots around here.
I think, given your location in Israel, the best way you and your family can help me right now is by continuing what you're doing right now, namely, proving to the entire world that Jewish people can kick the **** out of those who hate G-d and His Word. Over the last six decades, the Israel Defense Forces has done a fantastic job of changing a thousand years of stereotypes of the Jewish people, and that's a wonderful thing.
Plus, you're fighting people over there so we don't have to fight them over here. After 9/11, every American saw firsthand on our own soil what you over in Israel have to face on a regular basis, and we owe a great debt of gratitude to Israel for not only fighting against but also succeeding spectacularly against evils that most Americans can barely imagine.
Failure to fight evil today means we will be forced to fight that evil tomorrow after it has time to get stronger. We forget that lesson at our peril.
The truth is, is that the Jew in ancient times was a fighter and did not take insults to his G-d or person lightly. A good example of course in King David, King Solomon or Joshua Ben Nun and even the Maccabees. The Jews revolted against Rome, Greece and even the British.
Even today, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu served in the famous Sayeret Matkal commandos and was wounded. His brother, Jonathan Netanyahu was killed freeing hostages in Entebbe, Uganda in 1976.
If you live in a military town, that will be enough protection. I hate those neo-Nazi types because they do not understand what WWII was.
We do indeed share common interests and what the Arabs do not understand, VALUES.
We never ask for American boots on the ground here - we’ll do our own defending and if they force us, fight but we do need US technology and know-how even though we have our own home-based developments and technology as well.
We are sick of war but the Arabs have not yet had thier Okinawa or Iwo Jima and hence they love killing. Look at what they are doing to each other for Pete’s sake!!
We do face terror each day and that is too bad but we have developed counter or pre-emptive measures that the US learns from.
We’re in this thing together...
If white separatists want to create a town for themselves, that’s fine with me, so long as they abide the law. It’s a free country.
In principle I agree. After all, we're conservatives here and we believe in private property and the right to free association.
I'll go a step further... since I've been attacked for supposedly being Jewish, I'll point out that there are already a number of communities where Orthodox Jewish people have done something somewhat similar to this. That's fine with me. Such communities have developed openly with fair prices being paid on the open market by people who are open about their desire to live within walking distance of their synagogue and in areas where they can encourage and support their communities’ distinctive religious practices.
Other groups — the Amish, for example, or the Maharishi followers in Fairfield, Iowa — also have reasons for wanting to live in close proximity to each other and have informally done similar things.
But read the article. What these people are trying to do in Leith is different.
Two of the key differences:
1. Up until very recently they were acting in secret without the knowledge of the current residents of the community where they want to move.
2. If you read the articles I linked, you'll see that they are advocating a takeover of the town government and passing clearly unconstitutional laws including arresting people with whom they disagree.
More could be said, but acting in secret and putting plans for town takeovers on radical racist websites where they propose arresting those with whom they disagree is not the right way to do things. In fact, the secrecy indicates the weakness of this group. If they had 50 or 100 people willing to buy property in this town, they could have gotten most of what they wanted on the up-and-up.
For those Freepers who don't know what that is, or who haven't yet been cured of the old stereotypes of Jewish weakness, read this article:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2001/12/israeli-counterterrorism-200112
I would not want to be on the wrong side of a furious Israeli soldier's rifle. I would even less want to be the target of someone in the Sayeret Matkal, given that I might never even know who or what had “taken me out,” and might think up until my death that the Sayeret Matkal operative wasn't someone I had any reason to be concerned about.
I know more about the South Korean Special Forces than I know about the IDF’s units, but there are obvious similarities in what is publicly known about their approaches, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if some of the things I admire about the way the South Koreans are trained to operate are a direct result of Israeli training.
Dynamite comes in small packages... ;-)
I read the article. And even before I did, I knew that the white nationalists would terrorize the locals, and take over the community without the permission of those who built it. (Yes, I am comparing them to the immigrant invasions they yell about.) These people are thugs and terrorists by nature. We are also generally dealing with mentally ill untermenschen with low IQs. Neo-Nazis cannot accept the simple fact that the greatest murderer of whites next to Stalin, was his sometime-ally Hitler. Perhaps just as amusing, few neo-Nazis in America are Aryan.
The average Israeli soldier is no mercenary nut case who loves guns and warfare, the opposite is true. The average “Matkal” fellow is no 6 foot 5 inch HULK brute who is looking to “kick a**”, no, he is usually a modest Jew who knows that he has no choice but to defend his people and land from repeated Arab killers.
There is no love of warfare here, we're all conscripts, no volunteering so we want to get in, do the job and go back to our families. Nobody in Israel is a Rambo type butt-kicker but due to NO CHOICE, we do it well.
There is also something called “Purity of Arms”, a moral code of conduct in warfare and in clashes that make us THINK before firing. The moral imperative is very high here even though the press makes us look like we are every bit as cruel as the Syrians, who eat the hearts of their victims, no, were not Arabs BUT...having been provoked we can be nuttier than them.
I don't think anyone who hasn't lived in Israel for an extended period of time can fully comprehend what it means to be a country composed of democratic and Western-oriented people living in a thin sliver of land smaller than all but the smallest of American states, and surrounded by a growing mass of people in surrounding countries who are absolutely committed to denying the right of Israel even to exist.
May G-d bless you. You very clearly need all the blessing you can get.
I read an article long ago written by a Jewish man who had been in a concentration camp as a young boy, and who much later in life convinced one of the upper-level German NCOs in his camp to do an interview for a research project.
Much of the interview was about what I had expected. What struck me was that one of the few points at which the German NCO got seriously angry was at the mention of modern neo-Nazis, who he regarded as weaklings and idiots whose organizations should be legally banned. (This was in Germany, not the United States, so the First Amendment wasn't an issue.)
It says something when the real Nazis consider modern copy-cats to be contemptible weaklings.
LOL. The International Jewish Conspiracy won’t even notice these idiots, not even when they throw a tantrum and wet their pants.
No offense whatsoever, I go with the flow...
Israel is about the size of New Jersey, no bigger than that!!
We’re small, compact and moral.
They want to negotiate what little land we have away to the PLO...
Thank you, and agreed!
North Dakota town ready for trouble as white supremacists stake claims
By Dave Thompson
Reuters
http://news.yahoo.com/north-dakota-town-ready-trouble-white-supremacists-stake-120240693.html
BISMARCK, North Dakota (Reuters) - Grant County Sheriff Steve Bay is ready for fireworks if clashes break out between a band of neo-Nazi white supremacists and protesters determined to keep them from taking over the tiny North Dakota town of Leith.
With a population of just two dozen in a mostly white county, Leith is an attractive destination for members of the U.S. National Socialist Movement, who recently revealed that they are joining plans to turn the disintegrating town into an all-white enclave.
Group members plan to be in town on Sunday and Monday to introduce themselves to the community in what their organization's leader, Jeff Schoep, calls an “act of good will and faith.”
“We have every intention of legally assuming control of the local government,” Schoep said in a statement.
The group is America's largest neo-Nazi organization, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
According to the center, for more than a year, white supremacist activist Craig Cobb has been buying up properties in Leith and inviting his fellow supremacists to move in and set up a “Pioneer Little Europe,” as some supporters have called it.
In an interview with WXMB-TV in Bismarck, Cobb said he had gotten a lot of offers to buy up land from what he termed like-minded people who believe white people should not be punished for wanting to live near each other.
“It's fine for all these other minorities, but not us,” he said in the televised interview. “If you merely speak about it, you're going to be defamed in this country.”
Schoep said that the visitors would inspect the new property, raise ceremonial flag poles, and hold a town meeting and a news conference.
“We know that opinion is divided in the town and in the media,” Schoep said in the statement, adding that the trip was “a symbolic gesture of good will and faith.”
Schoep will be met by a grassroots group organized through social media to protest the National Socialists’ presence in the time. Organizers are hoping several hundred will attend.
“We are planning a true grassroots peaceful protest to demonstrate that we are united in a stance against hatred, violence and prejudice,” reads a statement by UnityND, an anti-racism group organizing the protest, on its website. “Join us as we take to main street rural America to fight against racism.”
Sheriff Bay said does not expect any trouble to break out among the 350 people expected at the event and protest, but he is prepared.
He has his officers, members of the North Dakota Highway Patrol and others coming to Leith on Sunday to help in crowd control.
“Both sides say they plan on having their demonstrations,” Bay said. “They have both indicated to me that they will be peaceful demonstrations. They may be a little loud, but peaceful.”
Cobb's plans were revealed in August after the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center published a report detailing his land purchases in Leith, which is located in a county that is 97 percent white.
The center's report also cited county tax and property records showing that other leading supremacists, in addition to the National Socialists, had followed his lead, including Tom Metzger, leader of the White Aryan Resistance, and Alex Linder, who runs the Vanguard News Network, an online forum for the neo-Nazis.
(Writing by Karen Brooks; Editing by Karen Brooks and David Brunnstrom)
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