A Free for All Wednesday With a Touch of Michael Brown to Get the Juices Flowing.

Posted on by April 30, 2025avatar

A binary pair of actively forming stars is responsible for this shimmering hourglass of gas and dust. NASA/ESA/CSA/STScl

“I’ve got no respect for anyone who tries to take the easy way out.” Hank Williams III

Construction is continuing at my house. I need to spend some time making some decisions for the contractor. This is going to go on all through the summer. We have decided to stay in our home and are making some changes to make the house more livable. We have combined our dining room, living room, and formerly screened porch (now rebuilt and glassed-in) to create one large room for my family to gather in when they visit. We are also making a downstairs bedroom into a master bedroom. Hopefully, I can get everything together before our annual family vacation, which happens in a week. As usual, I will have someone living in my house to allow construction to go on while attempting to keep the pugs happy.

I want to discuss the Michael Brown situation on Friday. Last night, Melissa Hobson and I participated in a podcast with Church Diaries Unlocked. Brown’s situation has disappointed many folks in the charismatic tradition. Here is James White discussing his concern.

Comments

A Free for All Wednesday With a Touch of Michael Brown to Get the Juices Flowing. — 50 Comments

  1. 9Marksist Caleb Morell has written a book on the history of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. He was scandalized to find out that evangelist Amy Lee Stockton preached there repeatedly in the 1920s and 30s.

    When Morell told his mentor Mark Dever about the ministry of Stockton and song leader Rita Gould at the church, this was Dever’s reaction:

    “He said, ‘Amy Lee Stockton, Rita Gould? Two female traveling evangelists?…sounds weird!”

    at 56 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP_zAN0S5wI

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  4. Max:
    Didn’t Michael Brown facilitate handling the mess at IHOP when the news broke about Bickle’s multiple transgressions?

    Yes he did. And he was one who defended Bickle (until he became too much of a hot potato). Nothing like have an “Elder Accountability Team” of Yes-men and toadies to ignore the 3rd party investigation and “restore” Brown to ministry. Especially if the Elders’s paychecks are signed by Dr. Brown.

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  5. Jerome: “… female traveling evangelists? … sounds weird!” (Mark Dever)

    Someone once said “Women were last at the cross, first at the tomb, and the first to be told to “Go and tell others.””

    There are many Gospel-preaching women in the Bible who would take offense to Dever’s statement: Mary and Martha, Phoebe, Chloe, Priscilla, Lydia, Junia, the four daughters of Philip, Euodia, Syntyche, the Samaritan woman at the well, etc. And there are many Gospel-preaching women today throughout the world who are not weird – Praise God for them!

    It’s Dever who sounds weird. Was he ever at the Cross or the Tomb, or has he ever told others the ‘true’ Gospel? (New Calvinism is another gospel which is not ‘the’ Gospel)

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  8. Max: It’s Dever who sounds weird. Was he ever at the Cross or the Tomb, or has he ever told others the ‘true’ Gospel?

    To paraphrase Ken Ham:
    “Was HE there? HUH? HUH? HUH?”

    (New Calvinism is another gospel which is not ‘the’ Gospel)

    “There is no Christ, there is only CALVIN.”
    CALVIN who alone Has God All Figured Out.
    And WE are Predestined to be His Special Pets.

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  9. I want to do a little role swapping here……

    Question:
    What do y’all think would have happened if one of the women in the ministry, say a secretary or a SS teacher, had treated a male church member the way Brown…. or any of the multitudes of men who’ve been given free passes, have treated women.

    Do you think the elders have dismissed the woman’s behavior in such a reprehensible fashion?

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  12. Nancy2(aka Kevlar),

    Adam: “She’s the problem! Me? I’m your golden boy!”

    Eve: (good grief…. your lack of awareness of your own actions does not bode
    well…)

    God: (she has a point, there)

    the woman in ministry would be cast as public enemy #1, and exploited in every way possible to consolidate the organization into a Victorian era gentlemen’s club

    (symbolically taking advantage of women who sold the only thing had the opportunity to sell in order to survive, and then blamed them for it)

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  17. Muff Potter,

    women who have to disappear themselves and assume male identity in order to use their skills and talents….

    christian women who do use their gifts and talents as freely as any other kind of human being, and are castigated with a branded letter A for Anathema…

    and christian women who decline to use their gifts and talents….

    -because it’s easier & they seem to get approval for not using them?
    -to score gender role points with God? (God has no such points)
    -to not rock the church boat and God’s boat? (God has no such boat)

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  18. Some erroneous pronouncements made by 9Marxist Caleb Morell, when interviewed about his new book on the history of Capitol Hill Baptist Church:

    He claims that “in 1926…when the Northern Baptist Convention was in the District of Columbia, we were the home church for the Conference on Baptist Fundamentals…a pre-conference before the Convention”.

    Actually, there was no Conference on Baptist Fundamentals that year. That usual meeting of moderate fundamentalists had been cancelled, and it was a meeting of the more militant Baptist Bible Union that the church hosted.

    And Morell wrongly says that “at that very Convention in 1926, W.B. Riley of Minneapolis brought the motion that [Northern Baptists] adopt the New Hampshire Confession as a statement of faith.” “That lost in the Northern Baptist Convention”. “We know in 1925 the Southern Baptist Convention, just a year before, had adopted essentially the New Hampshire Confession”.

    Morell has the year wrong, and thus the events backwards. It was years before that Riley’s proposal of the New Hampshire Confession failed at the Northern Baptist Convention (in Indianapolis, 1922).

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  20. Max: Jerome: “… female traveling evangelists? … sounds weird!” (Mark Dever)

    Someone once said “Women were last at the cross, first at the tomb, and the first to be told to “Go and tell others.””

    Assuming one counts Quakers, there are people like Mary Fisher (c. 1623–1698), a Yorkshire housemaid who became a Quaker missionary. Her travels included Barbados (fairly successful), Boston (imprisoned though she escaped being hanged), the Ottoman Empire (she met the Sultan). Or Margaret Fell (later Fox) who is probably the best known early female Quaker; she wrote, among many other things, “Womens Speaking Justified” (1666; second edition, 1667).

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  25. Nancy2(aka Kevlar): Question:
    What do y’all think would have happened if one of the women in the ministry, say a secretary or a SS teacher, had treated a male church member the way Brown…. or any of the multitudes of men who’ve been given free passes, have treated women.

    Do you think the elders have dismissed the woman’s behavior in such a reprehensible fashion?

    Yes

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  29. Morell dismisses Amy Lee Stockton’s preaching at the church as an idiosyncrasy of John Compton Ball’s pastorate. But I’ve found documentation of women exhorting and teaching the congregation BEFORE and AFTER Ball’s 1903-1944 tenure.

    Besides the Stockton-Gould Evangelistic team, women welcomed by Ball or his predecessor/successor pastors include:

    Mrs. C. Hoffman, Janet McKay, Mary Stone McClendon, Lucy Peabody, Nell Mays, Margaret Suman, Helen Hunt, Elizabeth Aldridge, Betty Weakland, Mrs W. F. Nash, Mrs. J. W Dawson.

    Caleb Morell wrongly states: “that didn’t happen from 1944 on”.

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  30. Muff Potter,

    Great video, Muff! Thank you for sharing. I thoroughly enjoyed the video.
    Back in the early ‘90s, I took a History of Mathematics class. We had to do midterm papers. Being only one of three females in the entire class, I chose to write my midterm on women in mathematics. I found enough information to include a couple of sentences about Germain and Fermat’s Last Theorem. But, in the ‘90s there was very little accessible info available (I checked Austin Peay State University, Western Kentucky University, and Vanderbilt!)

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  35. Nancy2(aka Kevlar): Back in the early ‘90s, I took a History of Mathematics class. We had to do midterm papers. Being only one of three females in the entire class, I chose to write my midterm on women in mathematics. I found enough information to include a couple of sentences about Germain and Fermat’s Last Theorem. But, in the ‘90s there was very little accessible info available (I checked Austin Peay State University, Western Kentucky University, and Vanderbilt!)

    Having so much stuff online helps, if one knows how to evaluate it. Mary Somerville was a well known Scottish scientist, Caroline Herschel an astronomer, Sofya Kovalevskaya a Russian mathematician, Maria Gaetana Agnesi an Italian mathematician and so on.

    I wonder how they would think of the possibly legendary Jenny Geddes who in 1637 had a vigorous reply to a change in her church in Edinburgh.

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  50. Headless Unicorn Guy: and when America is Restored to a CHRISTIAN Nation, Biblical Honor Killing will take care of that problem. Permanently.

    Just like according to reviews I read, in the recent drama “Adolescence” (by adopting what Dallas Willard calls “sin control”, the spiritual world has indeed influenced agnostics unlike what the new evangelicals complain).

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