I have fun with others when it comes to genealogy. I’m adopted, and that family comes from the honest working class on one side, and failed gentry on the other. But my birth mother’s family is in the lists of the Anglo-Irish. The family was founded by a certain Captain Eyre, who took an estate in Ireland after Cromwell conquered it. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Parliamentarians or Roundheads, the Covenanters, who tried to reform the kingdoms of Britain, and failed when they succeeded,

In part, because law requires tradition, and tradition requires teeth. Roger Scrunton about the need for stigma and shaming, for I consider it correct. Without an internal sense of honour, a trained conscience, and a consensus that the traditions of a society are good and should be followed,the trust of one’s neighbour evaporates and laws increase.

Stigma has evaporated in our era, and along with it much of the constant, small-scale self-regulation of the community, which depends on each individual’s respect for, and fear of, other people’s judgment. In consequence, the laws have expanded, both in extent and complexity, to fill the void. Yet as sanctions have been expropriated from society by the state, people feel far more free to follow their own inclinations, to disregard proprieties, and to ignore the effect of their behavior on others and on the common good. For although the law impinges far more on their lives, they experience it as an external force with no real moral authority. In addition, the law increasingly distinguishes the “public” realm, where it is the sole objective authority, from the “private” realm, where it cannot intrude, leaving the private realm less and less regulated, despite the fact that it contains most of the matters on which the future of society depends: sexual conduct, the rearing of children, honest dealing, and self-respect.

Moreover, there is no evidence that the law can really compensate for the loss of social sanctions. The law combats crime not by eliminating criminal schemes but by increasing the risk attached to them; stigma combats crime by creating people who have no criminal schemes in the first place. The steady replacement of stigma by law, therefore, is a key cause of the constant increase in the number and severity of crimes.

There are four texts today,, and I am quoting two of them, for they form a theme. It’s around the duty of the people in times of errors. I’d like to add the passage from I Corinthians about divorce and not remarrying but reconciling and the Teaching from Christ about not building up stores int his life: both apply, but instead I want to look at the manners that a kingdom can self correct when the rulers are corrupt, and consider how this applies to us.

Psalm 149

¹   Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the faithful.
²   Let Israel be glad in its Maker; let the children of Zion rejoice in their King.
³   Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre.
⁴   For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with victory.
⁵   Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches.
⁶   Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands,
⁷   to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples,
⁸   to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron,
⁹   to execute on them the judgment decreed. This is glory for all his faithful ones. Praise the Lord!

2 Kings 11:1-20a

¹Now when Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother, saw that her son was dead, she set about to destroy all the royal family. ²But Jehosheba, King Joram’s daughter, Ahaziah’s sister, took Joash son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king’s children who were about to be killed; she put him and his nurse in a bedroom. Thus she hid him from Athaliah, so that he was not killed; ³he remained with her six years, hidden in the house of the LORD, while Athaliah reigned over the land.

⁴But in the seventh year Jehoiada summoned the captains of the Carites and of the guards and had them come to him in the house of the LORD. He made a covenant with them and put them under oath in the house of the LORD; then he showed them the king’s son. ⁵He commanded them, “This is what you are to do: one-third of you, those who go off duty on the sabbath and guard the king’s house ⁶(another third being at the gate Sur and a third at the gate behind the guards), shall guard the palace; ⁷and your two divisions that come on duty in force on the sabbath and guard the house of the LORD ⁸shall surround the king, each with weapons in hand; and whoever approaches the ranks is to be killed. Be with the king in his comings and goings.”

⁹The captains did according to all that the priest Jehoiada commanded; each brought his men who were to go off duty on the sabbath, with those who were to come on duty on the sabbath, and came to the priest Jehoiada. ¹⁰The priest delivered to the captains the spears and shields that had been King David’s, which were in the house of the LORD; ¹¹the guards stood, every man with his weapons in his hand, from the south side of the house to the north side of the house, around the altar and the house, to guard the king on every side. ¹²Then he brought out the king’s son, put the crown on him, and gave him the covenant; they proclaimed him king, and anointed him; they clapped their hands and shouted, “Long live the king!”

¹³When Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people, she went into the house of the LORD to the people; ¹⁴when she looked, there was the king standing by the pillar, according to custom, with the captains and the trumpeters beside the king, and all the people of the land rejoicing and blowing trumpets. Athaliah tore her clothes and cried, “Treason! Treason!” ¹⁵Then the priest Jehoiada commanded the captains who were set over the army, “Bring her out between the ranks, and kill with the sword anyone who follows her.” For the priest said, “Let her not be killed in the house of the LORD.” ¹⁶So they laid hands on her; she went through the horses’ entrance to the king’s house, and there she was put to death.

¹⁷Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD and the king and people, that they should be the Lord’s people; also between the king and the people. ¹⁸Then all the people of the land went to the house of Baal, and tore it down; his altars and his images they broke in pieces, and they killed Mattan, the priest of Baal, before the altars. The priest posted guards over the house of the LORD. ¹⁹He took the captains, the Carites, the guards, and all the people of the land; then they brought the king down from the house of the LORD, marching through the gate of the guards to the king’s house. He took his seat on the throne of the kings. ^20aSo all the people of the land rejoiced;

The Psalmist talks about the people of God praying, praising God, and fighting. Yes, fighting: at times of great error the people of God are to rebel.

Which is why I chose to add the post about Athaliah, the proto-feminist. Athaliah seized the throne and reigned as queen over Judah, not knowing that Joash had been rescued by his mother who returned to her family who hid the babe until he was old enough to rule with a regent.

And for six years the corrupt rule continued. THe Baals were worshiped, and the people did not have a king in covenantal relationship with God. At the end of this period, Athaliah is killed, the people recommit to God, and the temple of Ba’al is broken down. The great reformation of Judah begins.

Led not by the nobles, but by the priesthood. The people rise, and in their zeal for repentance they don’t bother with mere stigma. They want blood: the praises of God (for they now have a king) are there, but their swords were also bloody.

For if you move too far away from the truth, people rebel. The elite are trying to run everything in their image. Consider Christianity today — where feminism is being seen as Christan insteas of part of the neo pagan socialist project it belongs to.

The church needs feminism because at its core, feminism affirms to us what our faith teaches us about male and female in God’s Kingdom and what Jesus himself preached throughout the New Testament.

Feminism is simply the belief that women are equally as human as men—equal in the eyes of God, equal in image-bearing, equal in ability. (This is why it is possible to be both a feminist and a complementarian, something Elijah Turrell wrote a great blog post about. I don’t agree with him about complementarianism, but still.)

I’m not prissy. Feminism is not an f-word. That word is fuck: and Feminism is fucking dangerous. We are unequal. Before Christ, we are all needy, we are all bereft, we all need the gospel. The teaching of Paul, which I have posted on in the last two days and is again in today’s readings. talks about the need for husbands to die for their wives and children — literally at times. The Spartans took this to an extreme, but in most societies a citizen’s duty included being in the army — not just in ancient times. Zwingly the great renaissance theologian and scholar, died in battle for his city, at age 47.

Consider SSM, who has saved me pulling the scriptures together.

What Ms. Turner misunderstands is that different flavors of feminism are simply different flavors of rebellion. No matter if it is radical feminism, sex positive feminism, first-, second-, or third- wave feminism, or Christo-feminism, the entire impetus for the existence of feminism is rebellion against the authority that God gave men to have over their women.

What does God say about rebellion? Let us consider Isaiah 1:19-20 :

19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;
20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

If you identify as a Christo-feminist, know this: no matter how much flowery social justice language you dress it up in, the purpose of your feminism is to justify your attempt to rule rather than to be ruled as you were commanded by God to be in Genesis 3:16:

To the woman [God] said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

Ms. Turner goes on to explain why exactly the church needs feminism:

The church needs feminism because at its core, feminism affirms to us what our faith teaches us about male and female in God’s Kingdom and what Jesus himself preached throughout the New Testament.

Feminism is simply the belief that women are equally as human as men—equal in the eyes of God, equal in image-bearing, equal in ability.

Virtually everything in her last sentence is wrong. Feminism is not simply the belief that women are “equally as human as men,” because the fact of women’s humanity has never really been the issue. No one seriously denies that women are human. But what about her other three points about equality?

Are men and women equal in the eyes of God? Although I am sure that God loves women and that a woman’s soul is just as valuable to Him as a man’s soul, women are not equal to men any more than men are equal to God. The relationship between God, His Christ, men, and women is not an egalitarian one but rather a hierarchical one:

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)

In other words, the clearly-laid-out hierarchy in Scripture is:

God > Christ > man > woman > children > puppies

Do women and men equally bear God’s image? No, they do not:

7 For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

Man was made in God’s image but woman was made in man’s image. We are not equal image bearers; however, we women have the incredible privilege of being the (re)producers of God’s image on earth because we bear children.

The progressive movement, with feminists and homosexualists as the vanguard, have taken over almost all the institutions of our society and destroyed the liberal church. They are now going for the evangelicals, in the hope that they can also destroy them. And in this, they capture the leadership of our society, the committees, write the policy, and legislate burdensome laws.

And when it gets too difficult, and their injustice egregious, people rebel, There is no difference between the reasoning of Athaliah and the current elite: if one disagrees the cry is Treason.

But that game is dangerous. The elite forget that many a king has faced the executioners block — and if you cannot see this happening in the English-speaking people I have but two words for you:”

Charles I.

UPDATE

I got my reformers muddled up. Melanchton died of fever, Erasmus lived to a good old age, and Farel was banished from Geneva in old age.