Friday, July 15, 2011

Bachmann Recently Left Church that Holds that the Pope is the Antichrist

Eric Marrapodi at CNN is reporting that Michelle Bachmann and her husband officially left as members of the Salem Lutheran Church in Stillwater, Minnesota, just before announcing her candidacy for the Presidency.

Marrapodi reports:
The Bachmanns had been members of the church for more than 10 years, according to Joel Hochmuth, director of communications for the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the broader denominational body of which Bachmann’s former church is a member.

The church council granted the Bachmanns’ request to be released from their membership on June 21, Hochmuth said.

After declaring at the CNN/WMUR/New Hampshire Union Leader presidential debate that she would seek the nomination, Bachmann formally announced her presidential bid June 27 in Waterloo, Iowa.

The church is part of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. According to Marrapodi:
The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has come under criticism from some Catholics for its views on the papacy, an institution that the denomination calls the Antichrist.

"We identify the Antichrist as the Papacy," the denomination's website says. "This is an historical judgment based on Scripture."
Here are the exact words from the WELS web site:

We reject the teaching that Christians should look for one individual to arise in the end times as the great Antichrist. The characteristics of the Antichrist as presented in Scripture have been and are being fulfilled in the institution of the papacy (2 Thessalonians 2:4-10). We reject the opinion that the identification of the papacy with the Antichrist was merely a historical judgment valid only at the time of the Reformation.

20 comments:

  1. And Ron Paul is the kook?

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  2. What's the problem?
    If we are going to insist that in America everyone has freedom to practice their religion, historically Protestantism considers the pope and Mohammed to be the western and eastern antiChrist.
    But Romanism doesn't has some equally repelling and disagreeable doctrines as far as Protestants are concerned?
    Give me a break.

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  3. She's willing to abandon her religion to have the presidency. What principled convictions does she have, then? She's abandoning her church and she is not even under duress. She's a pushover. It's solely for politics. Even if her church's views are absurd, abandoning them for power says enough about her. It's just like Newt proclaiming himself to be a Catholic, just in time for the election season.

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  4. Ego-driven interpretation on all sides!

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  5. I don't care what religion she is or was. Im not voting for her because her philosophy of government is the same as obama and romney and the rest of the status quo politicians. America shouldn't police the world, the economy or people's personal habits.

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  6. That's pretty bad to try to fit your religion to your politics, isn't it supposed to be the opposite?

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  7. Why do people think this is weird or kooky? It's PRECISELY what many of the Reformers such as Luther, Knox, and Calvin believed, alongside Protestants such as John Wesley, Cotton Mather, and Roger Williams. The notion of a "bid bogey man" Antichrist was the creation of Jesuit priest in the counter-reformation movement, as was the concept of Preterism. Both eschatologies were designed to steer people away from viewing the Papacy and Rome as Antichrist.

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  8. The WELS doesn't preach the usual neocon warmongering "patriotic" jingoism found in many evangelical churches. Maybe that is why Bachmann left. Many Protestant denominations have doctrinal disagreements with Catholicism, so that is really not too unusual. Perhaps the WELS should stop using antiquated wording to voice their criticisms, but the brain dead media is not reporting their position fairly.

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  9. Since we're discussing Bachmann, I'll add that the Wisconsin Synod also properly teaches that God speaks to us today through His Word — the Holy Bible — but not through dreams and visions (to become an IRS tax-attorney, for instance.)

    The Synod does not send pastors to be military chaplains, as it would place them under the orders of the government in matters of doctrine and faith. Sorry if that sounds 'kookish' to Anonymouse.

    Here's an essay which explains more fully its teachings on the antichrist: http://www.wels.net/about-wels/doctrinal-statements/antichrist

    For those interested in source documents and thorough discourse on why the Reformers identified the papacy as the Antichrist, see:
    http://bookofconcord.org/treatise.php

    To refine it to one sentence from Dr. Luther: "The Pope is the very Antichrist, who has exalted himself above, and opposed himself against Christ, because he will not permit Christians to be saved without his power, which, nevertheless, is nothing, and is neither ordained nor commanded by God."

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  10. This is not Michele's problem. The Cath church has many difficult historical issues to answer as it obviously (to me anyway) veered far off course after the apostles died (as the Old and New Testaments prophesied). I don't have a problem with giving someone the leeway to believe that the Pope is an Antichrist. He runs a very large company whose central product is fear--not the Christianity I profess.

    Michele's problem is much like most other politicians--she is one. She and her husband have fed at the federal trough (her husband's clinic and her family's farm) for years. In a past life Michele was an IRS prosecutor. She would not stop the wars, she would not stop the state intruding in our lives. She is a wolf in sheep's clothing. She is a politician.

    She has no honor.

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  11. All these objections to Bachmann are misplaced.

    1. Her church's beliefs. Well, duh, that's what the biggest names in Protestantism have always believed. [And the Catholics and Jews have their own versions of these kind of beliefs].

    Nothing to see here...

    2. Bachmann and her husband took advantage of federal subsidies etc. etc.

    Who hasn't? All of us in one way or other are creatures of the state.

    Use the "private" court system? It's backed by the state.

    Went to a "private" school? They're awash with funds and programs administered by the state.

    Contract your work? Even if you never bid for government jobs, prices and products are skewed by them.

    Run for politics and make money that way (all politicians, including Ron Paul), you're a creature of the state.

    Have a congressional seat and take back pork to your constituents (all politicians, including Paul), you're a creature of the state.

    Hans Hoppe taught in a state school, didn't he?

    This obsession with character assassination is self-destructive.

    Anyone can be made to look "kooky", bad, hypocritical or anything else, in that kind of media scrutiny.

    Examine the woman's publicly stated positions and her performance in politics and criticize them. Trying to do personal purity tests smacks of witch trials.

    [Oh yeah, dump her in boiling water. If she survives, she must be a witch....hang her. If she dies, well, doggone it, she was innocent.]

    People focus on character and personality because it circumvents real thought or debate on the issues and makes hordes of insecure people feel better about themselves because they're harpooning some big fish, from the anonymity of their computers.

    Thus can the meanest, most ignorant, unaccomplished varmint smear poop on the most accomplished, successful, and well-meaning people, all without incurring the slightest risk to their own precious hides.

    Hooray for the mob.

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  12. I think Michelle Bachmann is the antichrist. She promises salvation, but will lead us to ruin and damnation. How 'bout that, suckas?

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  13. I'd like to gently chasten the headline at LRC which brought me to this story.

    Confessional Lutherans are no more "anti-Catholic" than a principled peace advocate is "anti-soldier," or a Pro-Life voter is "anti-woman."

    Confessional Lutherans point mankind to the Cross for the forgiveness of sins and are duty bound to simply speak against persons or organizations which try to interpose themselves between the sinner and the Savior.

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  14. On the contrary, it was the Catholic Church that protected the Deposit of Faith, as Christ promised when He founded her on the Rock of St. Peter (Matthew 16:18), the first Bishop of Rome. In fact, if it hadn't been for the historical Church, with the authority to teach as Christ Himself taught, Christianity would have succumbed to Arianism in the 4th century. After all, the Arians were "Bible-believing Christians"--never mind that they denied the Trinity (the word doesn't even appear in Scripture!) and the divinity of Christ.

    Believe me, I'm not entirely happy about the situation. Part of would just as soon practice happy-go-lucky paganism.

    At any rate, it's no skin off my nose what Michele Bachmann believes about the papacy. As a practicing Baptist, Ron Paul may well share her (now erstwhile) church's misguided and ahistorical views. I support his candidacy nonetheless. I just want to see an end to the Fed and the U.S. military empire.

    I count Protestants, Jews, atheists, agnostics and pagans among my friends. Again, it's no skin off my nose if they believe the Pope is the anti-Christ, Christ was an impostor, or all organized religion is a racket. I hope they enjoy flirting with a Christless eternity.

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  15. Well look on the bright side, folks. The nut already met her Waterloo...

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  16. Bravo brave snarky atheist! Revel in you ignorance! Bachmann's church may be onto something and I'm all for an enlightening discussion about the Roman Catholic Church as well as the EUSSR, UN, Nazis and all the other godless global institutions. I'd welcome a vivid discussion of the RCC support of the WW2 Nazis: Roman Catholic Nazi Leaders, tp://www.liberalslikechrist.org/Catholic/NaziLeadership.html
    as well as The Catholic Church's Holocaust in Croatia, http://www.catholicarrogance.org
    /CroatianHolocaust.html
    Let the discussion begin brave, brave snarkers!

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  17. There is truth in what Bachmanns Church Believes check this out ....


    http://hopevideo.com/media_with_david_asscherick.htm

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  18. It's a shame that Wenzel has jumped with both feet into the tinfoil hat/miltary industrial complex/paranoid quagmire that apparently is so tempting for some.

    Again we're not even discussing tangential topics to the economy, we've stepped right into the ad-hominem world of the Huff Post, Daily Kos or MSNBC.

    Sad that another resource for insight into the dynamics of what is likely the most influential era in our lives has devolved into muckraking and libel.

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  19. As a traditional Lutheran (Missouri Synod) myself, please note also what is meant by the Latin term "anti", namely, not primarily "against", but rather "in front of", or "standing in the place of"....Hence, for Roman Catholicism to claim that the decrees of the Office of the Papacy are infallible (e.g., required celibacy of priests), despite clear contradiction to Scripture (ala 1 Timothy, which merely states that a bishop, that is, a priest/pastor, must be a husband of only one wife) is an example of such "anti-Christ". Hence, Martin Luther declared such in his Smalcald Articles. Get away from the whole Hollywood notion of anti-Christ, which is simply inaccurate as to what is believed, taught, confessed by Luther, confessional Lutherans, and other Protestant reformers. By the way, why isn't it also noted that Rome's Council of Trent explicitly condemns and anathematizes the main tenets of the Protestant Reformation, particular as expressed by the Lutheranism's Augsburg Confession, in which it is confessed that we are saved by grace through faith, apart from works...something which Rome has condemned. But of course, no one cries out if a candidate is Roman Catholic, do they?

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