For what reads like a pretty fair summary of the broader issue of sola scriptura click on this AI link.

This post is about my personal experience with the doctrine.

I was baptized at the behest of my parents when I was a young teen in a United Methodist Church in Maryland.  I did it mostly for my parents, which is probably typical for all Christians who are baptized while a child of any age.  That is to say that baptism at that age is more about the adults who surround the child than the child.  They are too young to have any rigorous theological or philosophical understanding of the liturgy.  The Church community contextualizes the event in the months that follow.  As months turn into years the child becomes a man and grows in his responsibility to fully understand the indelible spiritual quality of what happened when the Church baptized him.

I was presented with an inscribed Bible by the Church at the baptismal liturgy.  I have it today, some fifty-five or so years later.  I think the sola scriptura idea/doctrine was probably mentioned to me as part of the preparation for the baptismal liturgy, but I’m not certain.  I remember having a special feeling about the inscribed Bible.  I read from it periodically as a child.  I never developed a habit of daily Bible reading.

I found written and visual material of an erotic nature to be much more meaningful than Bible verses as a teenager.  While I wanted to act out what I read, and viewed, in the “literature” I never developed the habit of fornication beyond self-stimulation inspired by the jewish-promoted “literature” known as porn.  I always knew that the Bible I owned was critical of the habit, and of all forms of lust.  Talmudically, I chose to rationalize the dichotomy.

I fell in love at eighteen years old with the woman I would marry.  Raised in the Pentecostal Church she had a deeper, more emotional, connection to sola scriptura than did I.  We both attended Protestant Bible College where she studied music, and I obtained a degree in Religion & Philosophy.  I accepted the doctrine uncritically all through this process until 2020 when I entered the Roman Catholic Church. That’s when I started to think deeply about it.

As I write this blog post I’m celebrating the end of my sixth year as a Catholic.  I find deep peace in having a Priest, and the Bible, in my life.  My Priest spent years sorting through the theological and philosophical issues/controversies that followed Luther’s articulation of sola scriptura’s modern form in the 1500s.  I trust my Priest on this point mostly because the alternative in America is Protestantism, which has disintegrated into tens of thousands of small groupings that each rally around some novel interpretation and/or charismatic personality.

The oldest of the Protestant groupings are all woke now.  Their biggest concern is transgendering. They’ve developed all sorts of theological and philosophical “reasoning” to support the insanity.  They get away with it because almost nobody attends their “worship” services anymore.  They are all closing, along with the Catholic Churches that maintain a relaxed attitude toward jews and their Talmudic ideas.

During my lifetime the only christian churches that enjoyed growth were evangelical zionist enterprises.  They were captured politically by the Republican Party at the time of Ronald Reagan.  The zionism was buried in eschatology that probed from the margins of daily and weekly worship until Trump was elected for a second time.  It appears that zionism is now a major dogma of the evangelicalism that I defended for twenty years as leader of the Christian Civic League.

I never defended zionism.  I stayed away from eschatology.  I’ve always reasoned that the future belongs to God and I was never comfortable with current event, headline driven “prophets”, teachers and preachers.

I’m not surprised to see what is happening right now in Washington D.C.  After spending four years leading a Christian community that ministered to troubled souls I entered Maine’s political world at the highest layer of engagement.  I spent twenty years as the spokesman for the century old Protestant institution who’s job it was (and is) to influence public policy, The Christian Civic League of Maine.

What Trump is doing makes perfect sense to me.  He has surrounded himself with evangelical “judeo-christian” Americans who sincerely believe that Old Testament verses are as timely, relevant and authoritative today as they were when they were written.  Sola Scriptura requires that the social order honor the absolute right of every individual Christian to interpret and apply the Bible for themselves alone. Protestant pastors teach this duty, and each denomination develops unique and independent rules to tamp down the inevitable chaos.

Most teach that the Old Testament must be interpreted through the lens of the New Testament, which introduces Jesus into the interpretation and application of Old Testament ideas.  But … never forget … that the doctrine empowers every individual to interpret and apply any, and all, Bible verses themselves.

This highly individualized and sovereign characteristic, encouraged by the doctrine, creates men like current Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.  The Pope recently reminded the world that the gospel cannot be used to justify war, “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

The American Evangelical Christians who are the most enthusiastic supporters of Trump’s war of choice against Iran are quoting the Old Testament out of context.  Hegseth quotes from it regularly.

I’m not a theologian.  Never have been.  I’m barely a philosopher having merely earned a Bachelor of Arts degree.  I do, however, have practical experience at 65 years of age.  And it is from those decades of experience that I respectfully offer my perspective.

Christians in the West desperately need the help of educated Priests with their spiritual lives as they work to sort out the world that is emerging from the ashes of the American empire.

Protestantism isn’t helping.  It will end up in the dust bin of history because it has always been nothing more than a heresy.

Selah

Below you’ll see a tweet from Richard.  He’s commenting on some outstanding political work performed by Maine superstars, Tim Bodnar and Nick Blanchard.  Last night they peacefully spun up the Trans cult to the point where they revealed their true nature.  They are the most violent among us.  And all this violence is made possible by the decades long cowardice of Maine’s institutional “leaders.”

I’m probably going to write a more lengthy essay on all this for a future Weekly Issues Summary.  It’s free to subscribe.

Selah.

There’s plenty of outrage. 

Absent morality. 

There is no moral outrage in Maine.

I shouldn’t suggest that there is absolutely none.  Institutionally it is true.  None exists.

There are individuals starting to get a bit of traction online.  Three courageous men come to mind.  Nick, Tim and Richard.  They are active on X, and showing up in the real world.  Nick and Richard started showing up when the West collapsed the world into madness over the flu in 2020.  Tim joined them in the last couple years.

While pastors and priests remain hidden in their stained glass fortresses these men hit the digital and real world streets with their moral outrage.  Jesus Christ is proud to stand alongside these sinners.  He approves of their masculine expression against obviously unhinged insanity.  Why aren’t you standing with them?

I’ll tell you why.  Laurel Libby, Alex Titcomb, the Dinner Club, the Republican Party, the Catholic Chancery and the Christian Civic League of Maine provide you with a pass.  All you have to do to express moral outrage is send them an occasional fifty bucks, show up at their pot lucks, and speak out nicely when they give you permission.  This grift was permissioned by law and practice over the decades by the Israel loving Jewish revolutionary spirit.  None of this has anything to do with Making Maine or America Great Again.  The womanishness of Maine men is a direct result of the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit that pornified their souls.  Full stop.

Christianity hates porn.  Jews love it.  They own it, in fact.  Google it.  Jews defend and promote abortion.  Christianity doesn’t.  Jews hate the idea of a Bible showing up on a teacher’s desk.  Christianity, of course, recognizes that ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of basic morality.  Maine’s institutional culture does not benefit from the influence of Christianity.  Holocaustianity defines the lingering pathetic influence of religion on Maine.  Just beneath the surface is deeper dedication to Israel and Jews than to Maine as our collective home.  And there are hardly any Jews in Maine!  They’ve never been here in big numbers.  Their influence, however, is nearly all that’s left of religion. 

Especially in politics.

Stop the grift.  Unplug from holocaustianity. 

How about we save Maine before sending another batch of our young men off to die for the jews in Eastern Europe or Iran?

Amen.

Five days before a brand new Maine institution called the Christian Civic League of Maine (CCLM) pledged to encourage all the people of Maine in good citizenship Wilhelm Reich joined the human race in what is now Ukraine.  Reich was born on March 24, 1897.  Since that time the CCLM has worked to enact good laws, provide for their impartial enforcement, and elect honest and competent public officials.

The President of the Farmington State Normal School (Now the University of Maine at Farmington), Maine’s college for public school teachers, joined with the President of Bowdoin College to create the CCLM in 1897.  Forty three years later Reich discovered the latent atmospheric power of sexual orgasms while camped on the shore of a Maine lake near Rangely.  He was thirty miles from Farmington.  He was on the same rural dirt road — Bald Mountain Road — on which my grandfather created Wildwind Camps one year later in 1941.

Reich would return to Maine many times in the 1940s and 50s, going so far as to purchase a one hundred and thirty acre farm in 1942 that he used as a laboratory for his experiments.    He died in a Pennsylvania prison in 1957.

Wilhelm Reich matters.  He literally wrote the book on the sexual revolution … in 1930.  You think the crisis started in the U.S. in the 1960s.

According to Manus.im:

“The Sexual Revolution” was originally published in German in 1930 by Muenster Verlag under the title “Geschlechtsreife, Enthaltsamkeit, Ehemoral” (Sexual Maturity, Abstinence, Marriage Morality). It was later republished by Sexpol Verlag in 1936, and then translated into English and published by the Orgone Institute Press in 1945 and 1949. The book has been republished multiple times since, including by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1962 and most recently by the Wilhelm Reich Museum Press in 2023.

Reich is a major, if not THE major, thinker inspiring the rise of sexual libertinism in Maine and the West.  After being thrown out of Europe he headquartered his work out of New York City and Western, Maine.

Maine’s current Governor, Janet Mills, is daughter to the lawyer who both legalized — and later criminalized — Reich’s work in the United States of America.  The Governor is locked in a pitched political battle of international import with Donald Trump over the latest expression of Reich’s ideology.

Her brother Paul, also a lawyer, is directly tied into an illegal Chinese marijuana grow operation that affects nearly three hundred properties in Maine.  Paul’s father, Peter, served as Wilhelm Reich’s personal lawyer during the 1940s.  He then pivoted to prosecuting the controversial Jewish European immigrant when he became the Federal US Attorney.  Reich died in prison in 1957.  Mills had six tons of Reich’s books destroyed.

Reich’s theories about sexual orgasms were aimed at undermining the authority of religion, especially the Roman Catholic Church.  He argued that only good can come from following one’s sexual impulses wherever they lead.  He hated all forms of authority and traditional marriage.

Under the leadership of Janet Mills Maine erased civil marriage in the first decade of the new millennium.  And she is a forceful advocate for Reich’s rubrics related to sexuality.

Reich invented a device that he believed was capable of absorbing and concentrating sexual orgasmic energy from the atmosphere in such a way that he could affect the weather.

Ideas have consequences.  I’ll be exploring the fascinating life and work of Wilhelm Reich in blog posts going forward.

Amen.

A couple hours ago I got to meet Tim and Jen for the first time.  They are known on X as “Truthslinger” and “Hippie Chick.”  They left their Maine wilderness hideout and drove to Augusta to support Maine’s political intelligentsia who were rallying to support an end to males competing against females in sports.

I was in the middle of a 9.3 mile jog on a gorgeous sunny late winter day in Maine’s Capitol City.  I thought of the rally about two miles into the run.  I decided I’d detour to meet Tim and Jen.  I had no interest in the Rally.  For twenty years I was either the guy, or one of the guys, on stage.  So glad those days are behind me.

I didn’t see many familiar faces.  I saw a couple folks I recognized on stage. I’ve been on the outside of Maine politics for a couple decades.  I’m super thankful to God to be on the outside not caring to look in.

I didn’t see the heroine of the hour there — Laurel LIbby.  Maybe she was there.  If she was leave me a comment.  I did see Corn Pop.  He’s doing some good stuff online, and with the Augusta School Board.  Mike Soboleski was prominently visible on stage, and he’s been showing up in Gardiner making a legal/jurisdictional argument against the proposed Tranny Clinic.

There were a respectable number of folks there.  I don’t do counts so look elsewhere for that estimate if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Anyway, as my favorite movie critic on YouTube says, “That’s all I’ve got for today.  Go away now.”

Amen.

Christianity elevated the idea of preaching to a new level of significance in religion.  To be more specific Paul the Apostle told Christians living in Corinth that the preaching of the Apostles, the Church, would draw heaven and earth closer together.

America isn’t allowed to have a Church.  The First Amendment to the Constitution empowered business and government at the expense of religion’s unity/authority.  This fracturing of Christianity means England, the birthplace of this revolutionary thinking about religion, now celebrates Ramadan instead of Lent.  If that can happen to a legally Christian nation that still holds on to a Monarchy where do you think America is headed?

We got a foretaste last night six miles from where I’m writing this blog post.  The elected leader of the town’s legal body responsible for raising children from age five to eighteen mounted her pulpit and declared the path forward.  She did this after employing the long arm of State law to silence a loud and hilarious social media influencer by abusing harassment statute.  This womanish “leader” is calculating that Maine people are so dumbed down now that they will see in her preaching the marks of seriousness and maturity appropriate to her authority.  Especially in comparison to a religious zealot on X.

And you know what.  Before the November election she might have gotten away with this play acting.  I don’t think she will be able to now.  If the Trump administration were smart they’d globalize the Gardiner Tranny Clinic debate.  But maybe we’ve reached a point where America’s constitutional system is going to start working and we don’t need centralized control to realize that children ought not be worshipped.  Maybe we’ve realized that children must be raised to goodness from the fallen state in which we are all born.

Bellows is an incredibly stupid ideologue.

The Human Rights Act is not in the constitution.  It is a creature of statutory law.  It is blatantly unconstitutional.  It carves out “rights,” absent any responsibility, for citizens based on how they decide to manage their sex organs.  Everybody knows that if you mismanage your sex organs you can hurt yourself and others.

The constitutional freedom she mentions should have nothing to do with sexual evil, or biological nonsense.  Mainers should be free to choose to love, or hate, the good.  Individual choices against society’s good will bring trouble … or it should.  Bellows, and her fellow travelers, conflate all sorts of truths and realities in order to avoid thinking about, and applying, the moral law using practical reason.

For one thousand years Christianity shaped the West, referencing the moral law using practical reason.  Theology gave birth to science, and was known as the Queen of the Sciences.  Economics replaced theology as the arbiter of all value in the West, beginning in the Anglosphere.  And now the world’s hegemon (America) is forty trillion dollars in debt.

The Bellows ideology is designed to excuse sexual sin to make us docile.  Sexual evil distracts us from the real work of building strong families and communities.  Bellows cut her political teeth on the bodies of Maine babies.  I met her many years ago when she was being paid handsomely to push legislators to legalize baby murder as a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood.

Maine people have been so distanced from their own State House that they either chose to excuse baby murder, or they participated, without reasoning practically about the consequences.  The chickens are roosting all over the place in Maine now.  Horrors too numerous to name are all connected by our willful choice to neglect the moral law.

Since it’s unrealistic to replace the entire governmental class we’ll have to seek opportunities to bring incremental change using the means God makes available.

I’ll continue to blog.

Amen.

Last year I overcame my allergy to social media enough to dive deeper into the cesspool on X, formerly Twitter.  I’d always known it is the haunt of men while Fakebook haunts the ladies.  I didn’t reckon with how addictive the scrolling could become when you limit the post length to a snipe or insult.  It seems to fit my emotional state better than Zuck’s offering.  The insulters X while the emoters Zuck, I guess.

Another aspect of X that appears unique to me is the sophisticated use of anonymous accounts.  I’d always equated that use of the internet with the darker corners of the web.  I didn’t think of it as powerful and effective on an American Big Tech platform.  How wrong I was.

Some great political work is being done by keyboard warriors on X.  I’ve highlighted one Mainiac above.  Tim and Jen produce a two hour morning LIVEstream on X every weekday.  His brand, “WARTIME Preacher, Patriot & COMMIE SLAYER.”  He fully identifies with Jesus Christ, salting his narrative with F bombs, smoking pot and tolerating sodomy among adults.  I’ve personally heard him defend powerful Right wing Pro Trump sodomites Richard Grenell and Scott Presler.  And in a weird sort of way I love him for it.

Christians are familiar with a Gospel story where John asked Jesus to stop a non-follower from casting out demons.  Jesus answered, “Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.”  That’s the way I think about Tim and Jen.  He, and the keyboard warriors he runs with on X, are literally casting demons out of two school boards that are local to me.  He may choose not to be my follower after reading this blog post because I choose not to smoke pot, throw F bombs and approve of adult sodomy.  I, however, can assure everyone that I’m not going to do anything to interfere with his X activism as long as he’s casting demons into the abyss.

And boy does Maine ever need her political demons to be exorcised at the moment.  One need look no further than the shameful behavior of Jezebel Janet Kills attempting to work her witchcraft on Donald Trump in HIS White House.  Talk about an exorcism.  Wow.  And the whole world is watching.  It couldn’t happen to a more deserving Maine political family and individual.

The Mills family is guilty.  Maine voters, especially Christians, are complicit.  Christians are required to demonstrate not just common sense, but a theological sense.  As religious people they have a duty to defend their morals in reference to religion, especially against political push back.  This is precisely what the Christian Civic League of Maine and the Maine Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church decided not to do many years ago.  Maine Christianity conceded to entirely non-religious argumentation in favor of sexual immorality.  They adopted the political strategy of hunkering down inside their stained glass fortresses.

Consequently the defense of the moral law now falls to the likes of Donald Trump and my pot smoking friends Tim and Jen.  Trump tolerates sodomy.  It’s no surprise his defenders would adopt the same political posture.

And that’s why I have to admit that I love all of them in a weird sort of way.

Amen.