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February 12, 2006
Letting Satan Speak For Your Church
(Filed under: Off the Wall)I find this hard to believe. I keep thinking I'm missing the joke, like an Onion article you mistake for real news.
St. James United Church of Christ in Limerick, Penn. has the following Bible verse as a slogan on their web site:
"If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine" Luke 4:7
Sound familiar? Those would be the words of one Prince of Darkness while tempting Jesus Christ. As a church's tagline? Seriously?
Like I said, I keep thinking it's a joke. The rest of their site is pretty progressive ("what if church is like spinach?"), but that's a little too progressive. (link via Jordon Cooper via Dashhouse via Between Two Worlds)
Update: Early word is that the church was the victim of hackers. Thought I smelled something fishy. Update: Nope, it was a simple lack of proofing.
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at February 12, 2006 5:31 PM
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Comments
I wondered myself whether this was a joke of some kind so I searched at the United Church of Christ's official site. Sure enough, St. James is an actual UCC church.
Posted by: Keith Plummer at February 12, 2006 6:19 PM
*Said with my best Napoleon Dynamite accent*
"Idiots!....Gosh!"
Posted by: Justin at February 12, 2006 6:58 PM
Going down the list of 10 on the website itself...
#6 is a little shady as well.
Posted by: Erik at February 13, 2006 5:16 AM
Yeah, I'm at a loss to explain this one, too. Any chance of somebody from CMS being able to contact somebody from the church to have them explain what it means?
Posted by: Rick at February 13, 2006 7:56 AM
One suggestion for this church -- Try reading, and following, what the Bible says.
Posted by: Dan at February 13, 2006 8:17 AM
Kevin, you think the site is "progressive"? How about apostate? I think they know exactly who was speaking in Luke 4:7.
Posted by: Danny at February 13, 2006 8:50 AM
When you pick and choose which parts of the Bible you want to believe and which parts you want to discard it doesn't matter who you quote.
Posted by: Joe at February 13, 2006 10:14 AM
Danny, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't know this church, nor do I know anything about them, so I'm trying to keep an open mind rather than deciding they're a bunch of satan worshippers.
I do disagree with some of the theology of the UCC, but even if I did agree with it, that still wouldn't explain the verse. I'm just trying to understand something from their perspective before going completely nuts on them.
Posted by: Kevin D. Hendricks at February 13, 2006 10:17 AM
If it is by accident, it is a good reason why we should all check the context of a scripture after searching it on www.biblegateway.com.
This post merits a big "WOW!" from me.
Posted by: Kent Shaffer at February 13, 2006 10:34 AM
I just found out from Milton Stanley that the church has deleted the text. The phone number, which was previously hard to find, stands in its place.
Posted by: Keith Plummer at February 13, 2006 1:48 PM
The site was hacked.
I wrote the minister when I posted he got back to me yesterday.
Rev. Chuck Currie in the US managed to reach the church.
Take a look at their site meter, they not only have the intrustion to deal with, they have a blog swarm.
Posted by: Bene D at February 14, 2006 3:27 AM
No hack was involved here...although it makes for good reading on an RSS feed. The unfortunate quote was taken out of context from a Biblical quote engine on the web. As soon as we were told about the error we fixed it.
We are in the midst of a site redesign so I apologize for the fragmented nature of the site right now. We've upped the timeline due to the blog flurry that has decended upon us so I encourage you to check back again.
This should be two lessons for everyone:
1. ALWAYS proof your writing more than once.
2. NEVER take the truth in a story for granted.
Art Gelwicks
Webmaster
St. James UCC
Posted by: Art Gelwicks at February 14, 2006 12:28 PM
Honest mistake?
Ok, sure.
Shocking lack of biblical literacy on the part of a community who could look at their website and not see this?
Yes.
Posted by: bob at February 15, 2006 8:55 AM
interestingly, the theology of the quote sounds quite similar to the "name it and claim it" preaching that's been so popular these days...
Posted by: wayne at February 16, 2006 11:09 PM
Yeah, it is incredible to me that such an oversight can be made... Makes me want to go back and re-proof all my sites!
Being From Tulsa, OK I understand full well the Blab it and Grab it phenomenon... and often wondered about the correlation to this verse... but don't go shouting that at one of their services... that's all I can say!
Posted by: Ken Kniskern at February 21, 2006 10:26 AM
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