| The Family Voter Bloc | Cultural and political activism targeted on A high marraige rate. Intact Families. Vibrant family dynamics |
| The Mission of The Family Voter Bloc
The New Testament consists of two major strands braided together into a religion. A theological part teaches the relation of the human to the divine. A pragmatic part teaches a pragmatic morality, value system, and Way of Life, that shall guide the Christian thru his or her daily life in the family, in the workplace, and in society at large. This Way of Life continues to attract people into Christianity. Many Christians who regularly attend church attend because of the morality, values and Way of Life they learn there. Theological distortion and dilution, however, compromise The New Testament's pragmatism. When separated out from theology, the pragmatic strand of The New Testament becomes congenial to those who internalize its teachings, and much more effective as a frame and guide for personal behavior. The Family Voter Bloc takes the organizational form of a Christian denomination, and takes its doctrines from The New Testament. It teaches New Testament pragmatism, however, completely excluding theology, whether Christian or any other, from its doctrines. This pragmatism then has a much more positive effect on personal behavior than it has when diluted and distorted by theology. The Family Voter Bloc offers this pragmatism. As a cultural parallel to the traditional Christian denomination, it aggressively urges its doctrines onto its own people, and to such others as respond to its cultural agenda. As a voter bloc, it aggressively promotes a comprehensive political agenda. This political mission replaces the missionary evangelism of the traditional churches. Its cultural and political activism promotes the conjugal, nuclear family. Its members look at all things in terms of how they affect the family as an institition, and families in the real world. Click here for the full text of The Family Voter Bloc mission. Click here to get a list of links to the other pages in this website. Click here to read about the Economy as Sageeny The Origin of The New Testament Dio Chrysostom (40-120 AD) headed a conspiracy which wrote The New Testament. Massively many parallels between his Discourses and the Scriptures make that conclusion easy and inevitable. The Origin of The New Testament, by Arthur F. Hallam, puts on display the most important of these many parallels, and identifies the major sources, including himself, which Dio used for morality, values, and Way of Life he braided into the theological frame which he set up. Hallam shows that three centers, which he calls camps, the Josephus camp in Rome, the New Testament camp in Alexandria, and the Old Testament camp in Jamnia, collaborated to produce the literary foundation of the Judaeo-Christian religion. The eighty-nine, 8.5x11 pages of this book-length newsletter contain 77,612 words of easily readable, closely packed info. Click here for a synopsis of The Origin of The New Testament, or here for a condensation. For your rush copy, send check or money order for $10 to The Family Voter Bloc P. O. Box 2753 North Canton, OH 44720. For even faster shipping, click on the PayPal button. |
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The Family Voter Bloc and The New Testament The New Testament consists of two thematic strands braided together into a narrative. A theological strand provides literary continuity, and a pragmatic, doctrinal, philosophical strand provides the Christian value system, morality, and Way of Life which account for Christianity's early and continuing success. The Family Voter Bloc extracts this pragmatic strand out of the braid and makes it the organizing frame for a person's daily life in the family, in the workplace, and in society at large. From the beginning, the Christian Way of Life attracted converts in explosively growing numbers. Because of its eventual numerical strength, the Emperor Constantine reversed official policy and put Christianity on a political par with its Pagan competitors. Constantine's successors, doubtless drawing on the example of the nearby Persians, took the next step of making Christianity the official religion of the Empire, and combined church and state into one political entity. Christianity now became compulsory, with all the power of Roman government behind it. Its ecstatic content took on the explicit wording of a creed. Everyone had to confess to this creed, and presumably to believe in it. In the lifes of Christians, the theological strand of The New Testament became much larger than its pragmatic strand. The Dark Ages resulted from this Romanization of Christianity. Theology took a severe hit during the bubonic plague of the late 1300s, in which half of Europe's population died a tormented death. The supposed agents of God, the clergy, could do nothing about this plague, not even when it hit them. They lost their credibility, and theological dominance declined. The pragmatism of The New Testament could now more effectively energize the brain's dynamics. The Renaissance put this dynamic pragmatism on brilliant display. Theology took another severe hit in the Protestant Reformation. New Testament pragmatism pushed theology aside. Men who aggressively considered themselves devout Christians, for example, founded The Royal Society of London. Modern science began with this society. Not only modern science, but the whole of modern Western Civliization emerged in the Christian Europe of those years. Scientific insight often depends on the recognition of a pattern, a circumstance or event which occurs more than once, and whose occurences exhibit significant parallels which enable the announcement of a fundamental organizing principle. We have here major events, the Renaissance and the sequels to the Protestant Reformation, which exhibit a striking common element. Severely weakened theological commitment enabled The New Testament's pragmatic, philosophical strand to organize the dynamics of Christian thought streams. These newly pragmatic Christians then went on to produce spectacular outcomes. The Farmer's Alliances of the late 1800s provide a par excellence example and confirmation of this pattern. The National Grange inspired numerous lookalikes, including the Southern Farmer’s Alliance. The Alliance responded to the furnishing merchant and crop lien system which, along with declining prices, kept farmers in relentless, grinding poverty. These farmers hoped to improve their economic role thru collective effort on their own behalf. The Alliances took the organizational form of a Christian denomination. They began their meetings with a prayer and finished with a hymn. These meetings paralleled the denominations in picnics, banners, and other social dynamics. The wagon trains which brought them to their meetings stretched for miles. At one time, the Southern Farmer’s Alliance had more members than either the Baptist or Methodist denominations. They brought a pragmatic Christian mindset to the meetings which enabled them to think coherently about economic issues. Barefoot women, whose faces the sun had tanned to parchment, could speak competently to the point. Alliance competence in economic and political thinking rose to a peak in the Cleburne demands of 1886. Resolutions adopted at Cleburne, a town near Dallas, committed the order to “the education of the agricultural classes, in the science of economical government, in a strictly non-partisan spirit,” and “a better state mentally, morally, socially and financially,” and to care for widows and educate orphans, assuaging the suffering of a brother or sister, burial of the dead, and so forth. This long set of resolutions included demands for the higher taxation of lands held for speculation, prohibition of alien land ownership, prevention of dealing in agricultural crop futures, taxation of railways, new issues of paper money, an interstate commerce law, and other political innovations. The Cleburne demands inspired furious opposition at the time. They nevertheless became the platform of a newly formed Populist Party. William Jennings Bryan raided this platform for his own campaign which he began with his famous Cross of Gold speech. Later they became the organizing principles of Hitler’s revival of the German economy, and of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. John Maynard Keynes recycled and expanded them out into his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Most modern governments today meet most of the Cleburne demands. At its peak, prior to its descent into the oblivion of Third Party politics, the Alliance exhibited the pattern of a Christian denomination which had pushed theology aside in favor of pragmatism. This economic and political pragmatism came to it thru the teachings its members had heard and internalized in their often Fundamentalist churches. These dramatic examples invite the conjecture that The New Testament includes in its text a dynamic for the morphôsis from a theological emphasis to a pragmatic, philosophical emphasis. It does, and in fact it commands this morphôsis. In Hebrews 6:1-3 we read, Therefore let us leave the elementary logos of Christ and go on to completeness, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, with instructions about ablutions, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. The logos of Christ means theology. Completeness means a commitment to pragmatism, to life in the real world. These verses command a morphôsis from theology to pragmatism in general, and in particular to the pragmatic Way of Life taught in The New Testament. For obvious reasons, the theologians ignore this commandment or explain it away. Theology therefore continues to compromise the pragmatic teachings of The New Testament. The mere fact of translation from the original Koine Greek into modern languages contributes decisively to this compromise. When modern scientists want a technical word for something, they raid Greek for it, even if sometimes ludicrously. The Greek of The New Testament contains many words which, if transliterated into English spelling instead of dumbed down in translation, would enable its readers to recognize its pragmatic, philosophical thrust. I consider it the most philosophical book ever written. Since theologians do the translating, however, believing Christians fail to recognize what they have in their hands. A kairon (the New Testament word for opportunity) has long existed for a Christian denomination which, agreeably to Hebrews 6:1-3, dispenses with theology and goes on to pragmatism. This denomination would by now have published a version of The New Testament that puts its pragmatic content on deliberate display, rather than smothering it by dumbing it down. Since that denomination has not materialized, however, the kairon for it remains open. When The Family Voter Bloc reaches a critical threshold of numerical strength, it will step into and exploit that kairon. The phrase, Family Voter Bloc, readily telescopes into the acronym FVB. This acronym, in turn, readily becomes Phoebe in pronunciation. Phoebans identify with Phoebe and implement its doctrines in personal and public behavior. The Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Farmer's Alliances achieved their spectacular achievements because of a morphôsis into pragmatic competence of Christians at the level of personal behavior. Phoebe militantly offers a parallel to that morphôsis to each person who sees an advantage to himself or herself in it. Very many people in our own time, especially in the lower socioeconomic strata of society, would live much improved lifes if they would internalize Phoebe's pragmatic Christianity and implement its Way of Life in their own personal lifes. By offering a comprehensive pragmatism, and offering it independently of theology, Phoebe will appeal to a large population which rejects Christian morality because they do not like theology, whether Christian or any other. As its most innovative feature, New Testament pragmatism makes the nuclear, conjugal family the foundation of society. In New Testament times, neither the Greek nor Roman language had a word which translates into family as we today understand that word. Most people lived together as wife and husband, but even they typically lived in an intergenerational household, and words translated as household came as close as those languages could to the modern family. A priority conflict arises. Both The Old Testament and The New Testament command the married couple to leave their family homes and glue together in one flesh, in one composite person. The biographical narratives in The Old Testament give us little reason to suppose that our modern family figured importantly in their Way of Life, if indeed they ever even thought of such a thing. The Old Testament writers at Jamnia, however, did their work at the same time as the writers of The New Testament in Alexandria. We easily suppose that these two groups of writers collaborated with each other, so that startling parallels between the two books, and the numerous prophecies in The Old Testament of Christ and Christianity, resulted from that collaboration. The modern conjugal family became the norm in Western culture because of the popularity of New Testament pragmatism. This conjugal family, however, has come under successful cultural and political attack in recent years by the Feminists and other Liberal activist groups. The Family Voter Bloc features aggressive cultural and political support for the family in its agenda. We recognize that we require to go up against a well organized antifamily movement, and that winning this battle will take militant competence. It will take a large and committed voter bloc to win this battle, since we require to have political power to impose our agenda onto the Courts, at all levels, from the municipality to state and Federal Supreme Courts. A profamily culture and economy encourages marriage and the formation of new families. This encouragement includes a job system which offers a breadwinner's job to everyone who wants one. This economy has most of the features of a wartime economy, but without the war. Phoebe expects the consumer exchange economy to offer these jobs, as opposed to government, but government policy nevertheless makes the job system its first priority, rather than the supply of goods and services. Phoebe militantly opposes war. We agree with Dio Chrysostom when he says that those best prepared for war can best live in peace. Such war preparations as we make aim at peace as their target. In the invasion of Afghanistan Phoebe sees a police action, the tracking down of criminals. We see the invasion of Iraq, however, as a failure to implement our antiwar policy. Since we base our agenda and behavior on The New Testament, we consider ourselfs a part of the Christian community. A traditional Christian who votes for politicians who implement our agenda can consider that vote an expression of his or her traditional beliefs. |