Erick Erickson Twitter
In the fall of 1517, theologian Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation in part based on his critique of indulgences offered by the Catholic Church. At the time, a friar named Johann Tetzel had been encouraging the faithful to buy indulgences, which entitled the purchaser to forgiveness for sins. Tetzel had been selling the indulgences to raise money to build St. Peter’s Basilica.
On Oct. 31, 1517, in the formal tradition of proposing a debate, Luther nailed to the door of the cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, his now-famous 95 theses. The act slowly began the Reformation. “Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?” Luther asked in the 86th thesis.
The Catholic Church continued the practice, and Luther oversaw the rise of Protestantism and a clear division in faith teachings and practices. Fast-forward to the 20th century and the newest religion on the scene has picked up the practice of offering indulgences.
The Erick Erickson Show 4-19-21. Today on the show Dr. Fauci is a walking contradiction and no longer helpful, Gretchen Whitmer blames Florida for her states covid problems, schools refuse to. Erik Erikson, German-born American psychoanalyst whose writings on social psychology, individual identity, and the interactions of psychology with history, politics, and culture influenced professional approaches to psychosocial problems and attracted much popular interest. As a young man, Erikson. The meeting was organized by Erick Erickson, Bill Wichterman and Bob Fischer. Around two dozen people attended. Around two dozen people attended. 18 19 Consensus was reached that Trump's nomination could be prevented and that efforts would be made to seek a unity ticket, possibly comprising Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich.
Secularism is, in fact, a religion. It has sacraments such as support for abortion rights. It has tithing in which secular adherents give money to various political and social causes. It has liturgies in the new speak of wokeness. It has theological tracts and church services as rally and protest and Episcopal Mass. It has even spurred the rise of terrorist zealots and the new censorious social justice warriors I have taken to calling Woke-O Haram.
Secularism has various denominations. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and The Rev. Al Sharpton, both purported religious pastors who have embraced secular causes, were famous in the 1980s and 1990s for pressuring corporate America to pay indulgences to their various social justice causes, most often aligned with race issues. If a corporation did not pay, it could expect calls for boycotts and protest from the secular religious adherents.
In secularism, there is no concept of grace, which remains a uniquely Christian concept of giving people that which they do not deserve. Likewise, secularism’s eschatology, or study of the end times, tends to be bleak. You die; the worms eat your body; and Simba sings about the circle of life until the sun explodes, everything incinerates and the universe goes dark.
The environmentalist denomination of secularism is one of the most militant. It has both the most violent terrorists and the bleakest eschatology. In it, the world is going to end as the planet heats up due to mankind’s behavior. Salvation is found by abandoning fossil fuels and rejecting many of the pleasures of life. Unfortunately, there is no escape from damnation, even for the saved, so long as the lost are still allowed to pollute. The only way for the environmentalist to save himself is to get rid of the polluters.
There is, however, one exception. Environmentalists have embraced indulgences, relabeled in some cases as “carbon offsets.” FedEx is the latest polluter to discover a path away from the woke mob is to pay up.
On March 3, 2020, FedEx unveiled its plan to become carbon neutral. FedEx, however, has a problem. It has a fleet of 679 fossil fuel-burning aircrafts, and carbon efficiency in aviation is a pipe dream. FedEx’s fleet generates roughly the same carbon emissions as three coal power plants. FedEx will get around the problem of jets through an indulgence.
The company will fork over $100 million to Yale University to fund a climate research facility it will call the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture. It will pay salaries to priests of the environmental religion. Their theological studies will center around creating new ways to employ even more environmentalists and find ways to “offset greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to current airline emissions,” according to their press release.
FedEx, of course, has the money to buy the indulgence. The carbon-emitting family down the street does not. Therefore, they must be deprived of vehicles of reasonable size, plastics, cheap lightbulbs, etc. Their costs will go up. The wokes will sleep well at night while the poor, yet again, suffer the heaviest burdens of secularism.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
We typically don’t go in for images of train wrecks or listicles at Religion Dispatches, but a recent Twitter thread by RedState publisher and notorious troll Erick Erickson prompts us to shake things up a little.
First, the train wreck (I’ll explain why it’s just an image in a bit):
And now the listicle:
- This doesn’t actually explain cancel culture. Also, cancel culture is an idea made up in the past couple of years by conservatives who don’t like how society has decided to hold people accountable for past words and deeds. If it were really such a threat to Christian liberty, you might expect that someone would have noticed it at some point in the past 2,000 years. They have not.
- Eschatology is the study of the ultimate destiny of humanity. What Erickson is discussing here is soteriology, the nature and means of salvation.*
- There are as many understandings of salvation as there are Christians, not nearly all of which require a “direct relationship with Christ,” and even fewer of which involve a direct relationship in the evangelical Protestant sense that Erickson is almost certainly referencing. To name just a few of the major ones, there’s atonement, which may or may not be sacrificial, mediation, adoption, redemption, and reconciliation, each of which have their own variants, and not all of which require a personal relationship with Christ.
- Salvation is never “regardless of others.” It’s true, for example, that Paul instructs the Philippians to “work out your own salvation in fear and trembling,” but that’s a way of saying “mind your own business” and even that advice comes in a community setting. Christian scripture and theology is abundantly clear that salvation is for the world, not individual believers without respect to the people around them. Otherwise, we would have justification for antinomianism, and that’s surely not what Erickson wants.
- Again, it’s “soteriology” we’re after, not “eschatology.” There is no such thing as a secular soteriology, because of course secular systems of thought have no need for external agents of salvation. The only secular eschatology that I’m aware of is the Marxian triumph of the proletariat. This is not that.
- Defining “woke” in opposition to Christianity is problematic, to say the least. There are plenty of woke Christians. (Source: I’m from the United Church of Christ.)**
- The idea that “woke culture” is about silencing its opponents is tendentious to begin with. Claiming that it silences good wholesome Christian values in specific turns it into quite the stretch. Even setting aside a general lack of evidence, salvation is not the same as being held accountable. It’s perfectly consistent with Christian thought to accept that felons have been saved by Christ—but they still have to serve their sentence. Even in evangelical Christianity, the understanding is that initial justification must be followed by sanctification before salvation can be completed. In plain English: you have to repent of your sins and change your ways before St. Peter lets you past the Pearly Gates. That’s as true of saying horrible racist crap or doing horrible sexist things as it is of any other sin.
So that’s three arguments and ten errors by my count, plus one majorly unsupported assertion. Well, besides that, he got several words right, including “this” and “Christ,” though I’m not entirely certain about that last one. I must say, if this were a paper handed in for my section of Theology 101, it wouldn’t do very well, and Erickson is supposedly working on a Masters in the subject.
As Jamelle Bouie quips, “It’s a nice gig [Erickson] has going, just making up stuff and attributing to an ill-defined group that he knows his audience hates.” Exactly. That’s why I’m not linking to the original tweet, or to the thread that follows. It’s just a variation on the troll’s game: say something outrageous, get called on it, then collect the clicks and views to puff up your importance even as you claim to be “silenced” by your detractors.
Erick Erickson Resurgent Twitter
On the one hand, ‘owning the libs’ does seem to be Erickson’s definition of Christianity, so two points to him for living his values, I guess? But on the other hand: it’s a grift. Erickson couldn’t theologize his way out of an open-air narthex, and no one is required to take him seriously as an interpreter of any kind of thought, Christian or otherwise.
Wsb Radio Erick Erickson Email
(Tips o’ the pin to *James Gilmore and **Jack Jenkins.)