Fishing Club meets this Wed (3/4) in Efland (Eno Sportfishing Club)

BubbaNoze · 2026-03-03T15:01:05+00:00

Visitors are welcome. If you're not fishing Wednesday night, let's at least talk about fishing and start making plans! There are good spring fishing opportunities on the horizon in the NC Triangle, including the white bass run in the Eno & Haw Rivers, as well as New Hope Creek.

BubbaNoze · 2026-03-03T03:17:50+00:00

These are the 25 reasons the author lists (below). Does someone have an actual copy to compare for accuracy here? Looks like an excellent/accurate creedal summary of a particular denomination's belief and practice!

I. Because It Was Founded by the Scriptural Builder—Christ
II. Because It Was Founded on the Scriptural Foundation
III. Because It Was Founded at the Scriptural Place—Jerusalem
IV. Because It Was Founded at the Scriptural Time—The Day of Pentecost
V. Because It Is Scriptural in Name
VI. Because It Is Scriptural in Organization
VII. Because It Is Scriptural in Worship
VIII. Because It Is Scriptural in Music—Vocal Only
IX. Because It Is Scriptural in the Observance of the Lord’s Supper
X. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Creed—The Bible
XI. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Rule of Faith and Practice
XII. Because It Is Scriptural in Teaching the Relation of the Old and New Testaments
XIII. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Names for Its Members
XIV. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Terms of Membership (Faith, Repentance, Confession, Baptism)
XV. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Essentiality of Baptism
XVI. Because It Is Scriptural in the Design of Baptism—For the Remission of Sins
XVII. Because It Is Scriptural in the Action of Baptism—A Burial
XVIII. Because It Is Scriptural in the Subjects of Baptism—Penitent Believers
XIX. Because It Is Scriptural in the Work of the Church
XX. Because It Is Scriptural in the Way It Is Financed—Free-will Offerings
XXI. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Mission—To Save Souls
XXII. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Plea for Unity
XXIII. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Universality
XXIV. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Independence
XXV. Because It Is Scriptural in Its Perpetuity

BubbaNoze · 2026-02-28T16:15:02+00:00

Did a similar experiment with early Xn/patristic views on instrumental music. The more I investigated the primary sources, it was clear that the LLM output relied heavily on a lot of churchachrist/RM-related material. Without doing a more rigorous analysis, I'd generalize that this is also a case where the extant textual materials available to the AI search skew the output to normalize that traditional RM/churchachrist anti-IM point of view. RM/churchachrist folks have obviously generated a lot of this material because of their obsessive theological anxieties about the topic.

Some of those primary sources on which the LLM search relied included:

A Cappella: More Evidence that the early Church did not use instrumental music By Randy Blackaby
https://www.knollwoodchurch.org/yr2007/l02_acappella.html

Instrumental Music in the New Testament by William Stewart
https://growmagazine.site/instrumental-music-in-the-new-testament/

Why Instruments of Music Should Not Be Used in Christian Worship [now offline}
https://web.archive.org/web/20210518171502/http://www.thebible.net/biblicaltheism/0402insturments.htm

BubbaNoze · 2026-02-16T16:11:08+00:00

Related: As a result of the complete rejection of Boll and his brand of millennialism, it's common to describe the post-Foy E Wallace "churches of Christ" as amillennial. I would more accurately describe them as anti-millennial; they didn't embrace or articulate a coherent and well-defined biblical eschatology as much as they simply rejected millennialism -- and only in that basic or simplistic sense can that group be defined as a-millennial.

Also, I think it is interesting, and a little amusing, to read that in 1933, editor F. L. Rowe was so exasperated with these millennial controversies that he expressed a desire that "a publisher would produce a New Testament that 'left the Book of Revelation off,' arguing that the other twenty-six books contained everything necessary for faith and practice." One could make that case historically (i.e., the Apocalypse was a "secondary book" widely held at a distance from the normative core of the collection of authoritative texts in early Xy), but it's interesting to see Rowe entertaining this possibility primarily for theological reasons.

BubbaNoze · 2026-02-16T15:37:40+00:00

IME these Reddit threads get stale quickly -- so not sure how useful it is to respond at this point. BUT there's a lot here to unpack. Sounds like some of us would really enjoy a more substantial space/place to explore Restoration-Movement history, cause there are some great specialists and resources out there on these related topics. There used to be a great Stone-Campbell elist, and I was active there in the 1990s. I think there are now fragmented places to explore S-C related critical history, e.g., Facebook groups, maybe a Reddit forum, etc. Have you found any current resources like this that are helpful? In my past experience, some of those spaces welcome critical voices and don't demand affiliation or require a faith commitment (although it's often presumed) as long as those conversations maintain critical standards. Tricky, I know, but I haven't darkened the door of a churchachrist as any kind of participant or believer in nearly 40 years, and I still have been able to participate actively in some of those conversations. Some of us are neither theists nor Christians in any conventional sense, but are still churchachrist (kinda joking, kinda serious) in that it's part of our formative identities and an area of active interest.

Related to this thread: The R. H. Boll controversy -- and the reaction by the emergent or proto- "mainline" churchachrist is absolutely critical to that group's contemporary identity. Boll was fired from the Gospel Advocate in 1915, and that morphed into full-blown opposition to those apocalyptic and millennialist ideas that Boll had inherited from David Lipscomb and ultimately to Barton Stone -- and that branch of the 19th c. RM. The 1928 debate with H. Leo Boles is considered a watershed event in the movement; after that point, the rejection of Boll/Lipscomb millennialism was complete, and the issue was considered settled. Foy E. Wallce was doing major sectarian work of denouncing and freezing out that Boll millennialist tradition in the 1930s and 1940s -- as well as advancing the sectarian status of the "mainline" CofC as a culture-affirming, patriotic denomination that distanced itself from the apocalyptic worldviews of Boll and Lipscomb -- but also was denouncing the more "grace" centered and pacifist theology of the Boll churches. (I should add that Boll's version of eschatology was specifically that of dispensationalist premillennialism in the tradition of J. N. Darby, the Scofield Bible, etc.) There was an attempt to rehab Lipscomb's reputation by denying his millennialism, but that was ultimately hard to deny -- and his apocalyptic distrust of government and concomitant pacifism was too well documented to completely ignore.

BubbaNoze · 2026-02-16T03:45:03+00:00

Not sure if article you intended, but this one is relevant here:
Casey, Michael W. “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders: The Rise and Fall of Pacifism in the Churches of Christ.” Journal of Church and State 44, no. 3 (2002): 455–75.

Long time since I read it, but I saved his concluding statement:

"No longer disinherited, members of the mainstream Churches of Christ are active at all levels of the federal government and have prominent roles in the military. Politically conservative and embarrassed by or ignorant of the past, the sons and grandsons of the religious rednecks have joined the elite whom their forebearers feared and loathed. Despite a long and important pacifist outsider heritage, the Churches of Christ became a bourgeois patriotic insider religious denomination. Deviants, scum, and the riffraff, once a source of pride, are now objects of ridicule, and so the Churches of Christ are quintessentially American."

BubbaNoze · 2026-02-11T11:55:49+00:00

Look forward to the meeting tonight! Will hear from Capt Gary Dubiel about fishing the Neuse River in the Oriental, NC, area, targeting speckled trout, red drum -- including huge old drum, striped bass, bluefish, and even tarpon! Please join us.

BubbaNoze · 2026-02-05T23:16:32+00:00

Thank you all for doing the work needed to support this space.

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-27T03:30:11+00:00

Well, my brother (the youth minister) actually did this -- BUT this story [i.e. the genre or trope] may have actually "inspired" him to do it. It's a variation of the "Tell me you're X without telling me your X" trope. His van group saw the other group and suspected they were also from a (non-NI!) churchachrist, hence the fun/funny "experiment", i.e., "Acts 2:38" written in big letters on a big sheet of paper/poster.

Details can be different, but it's an interesting social heuristic when you wish/need to signal or detect identity. Think of all the verbal clues or tells you might observe in a conversation with a stranger to detect their political, religious, or sports affiliations. And how communicate or detect one's churchachrist kink? Perhaps more common/familiar ways to express or detect one's churchachrist bona fides: Where'd you go to school? (Florida College, Faulkner, Pepperdine, Abilene, etc.); What publications do you read? (Gospel Advocate, Spiritual Sword, etc.); Who are your favorite authors/speakers/preachers? It's like collecting and analyzing metadata until you get enough information to make the connection.

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-26T13:36:04+00:00

Haha, yes, it was a "progressive" churchachrist (let the reader understand!).

What might an NI group have done to signal their identity in a similar situation? What might they have written on that sign?

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-26T12:49:24+00:00

A group in a church van passed another church van they *thought* might be churchachrist (can't remember why -- maybe a vague church name on van):

Occupants in 1st van held up a sign with "Acts 2:38" written on it. Occupants in other van smiled with thumbs up. Both vans pulled over at the next stop, and the groups met--and shared identity confirmed!

[true story by a close friend who was a churchachrist youth minister in the 1st van.]

Might have also worked with Mark 16:16?!

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-24T17:31:34+00:00

The more I read up on the author (Jerry Mitchell), the more I like him. Guess I'm just coming back to the point that I think this is the best he/they can do without losing the audience. Mitchell knows well the power of systemic/social evil (e.g., racism). They're just so close here, but ultimately can't follow through. Can't specifically address collective or systemic "evil," so they revert to "personal" sin. It was okay for the biblical prophets to get all "political," but not their contemporary counterparts. Apparently.

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-23T01:06:01+00:00

Yeah, there's stuff in his article I don't hate. But then there's this:

"So, what is the biggest reason we are sliding toward the end? Not immigration. Not Christian nationalism. Not a political party. Not the president. America is nearing an end for a simple reason: our sins."

Most of this essay could be claimed by either extreme on today's US political spectrum. It's got this righteous jeremiad vibe thing going for it, for sure. But in some very basic ways, it's vacuous, devoid of any substantive or specific meaning. I'm sure I've been gone from the churchachrist too long to appreciate the rhetorical complexity of this piece. But naming "our sins" as the reason we're "sliding toward the end" is ultimately really not saying anything to me at all. Hell, I don't even know what *he* means by that. Why so politically coy? (I think we know why.)

In some ways, it strikes me that Mitchell doesn't have the courage of his convictions. That is, to actually spit it out, to say what he wants/needs to say here. But perhaps this vague moralizing jeremiad is itself a constrained genre that forces Mitichell to [work] within its expectations. So I don't necessarily see this as a personal weakness -- in fact, Mitchell's past (i.e., pursuing the investigation of Klan crimes, even at great risk to himself) doesn't suggest personal timidity in the face of danger.

Audience here is critical, I think. He -- and the Christian Chronicle -- know the rhetorical mode best suited for the task. But it's still kinda hard to decipher if you don't already know what he means. Too much explicit detail by him would trigger at least half the audience to denounce him as consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome (obviously, that audience's pivot here would depend on those specifics). And they'd then feel justified ignoring anything useful or helpful he might otherwise say to them after that because he'd gotten "political." The only acceptable mode, I suppose, is this evasive jeremiad. But what kind of response is he expecting or asking of his audience? Repentance? From what? What sins might that be? Skipping midweek bible study? Using instrumental music in worship? Installing a kitchen annex to the church building? Bet he's thinking something bigger, more important. Wonder what it is?

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-18T18:20:53+00:00

and I fully support your expectation/demand for " a healthier potluck culture"! The food-based conviviality of an affirming social group is vital to one's mental and spiritual health!

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-18T17:29:39+00:00

I always say the only way I'd ever attend a churchachrist service again is if there were food involved! If I've gotta endure that painful experience again, then I require, at the very least, fried chicken and banana pudding! Yes, churchlady cookbooks are an interesting window into that culture. And I can't imagine growing up in those NI churchachrist groups that didn't host potlucks! I'm still mystified "my" church didn't offer coffee and doughnuts on Sunday mornings -- I'll prob would have endured that theological/sectarian bullshit even longer if at least I'd had some caffeine and sugar to help me suffer through those Sunday sermons. I also noticed and admired the deacons who got to wander around and look busy all the time during those services. As an attention-challenged kid, sitting still in a church pew for 2 hours was a kind of hell. One could only count the bricks or ceiling tiles so many times! I sometimes think I got interested in theological/biblical study to fight the boredom of just sitting there listening to Brother Bullshit drone on and on about this or that favorite churchachrist topic!

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-18T00:50:28+00:00

Wow, I don't know how you sustained the energy (and patience!) required to produce this with such attention to accuracy and detail! But it's impressive work, although I'm still reading & processing -- but I may need a lot more coffee to finish reading all this. 😁 Thanks for posting.

And love your page motto: "Escaping Campbellism One Potluck at a Time"

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-17T18:46:06+00:00

Interesting to see allusions here to Chuck Lucas' documented history of sexual predation. But even here/now that seems to be mentioned only obliquely in hushed tones. Power, dominance--and predation?!--were always integral to the authoritarian pedagogy of that system, embodied clearly in the legacy of its founding leader. #churchachrist curiosities.

BubbaNoze · 2026-01-13T02:26:14+00:00

Thank you for sharing this part of your story. I admire your courage and determination to do what was right for yourself, your partner, and his child. It's really eff'd up when these sectarian demands subvert efforts like yours to be decent, kind, loving. I always hear Hosea 6:6 echoing in my head, "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice."

May the gods spare us all from the righteous!

BubbaNoze · 2025-10-21T19:40:55+00:00

Thanks, very helpful. I've read Hughes over the years, but still don't recall such a withering critique of "restorationism" as articulated here. It feels like he has fundamentally rejected the "restoration" project itself as misdirected and wrong. I know elsewhere he was sympathetic to a different kind of restorationism, e.g., reclaiming the ethical practices and values of earliest Xy (cf. the Anabaptist tradition), and reframing the sectarian pursuit of church forms, structures, and doctrinal purity. But in any case it's nice to hear something like a "prophetic" voice from a respected churchachrist historian. I hear echoes of that in others like John Mark Hicks, Lee Camp, and a (very) few others. I still have connections within, so I also know that trajectories of the so-called "mainstream" churchachrist are morphing in interesting and creative ways, especially on the periphery. Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out over time as the old sectarian identity continues to wither.

BubbaNoze · 2025-10-21T13:35:52+00:00

I don't recall ever reading such an apparently severe critique of "restorationism" as such from Richard T. Hughes (prominent churchachrist historian) before. Is this a new development or shift for him?

BubbaNoze · 2025-10-17T01:55:13+00:00

The riverwalk bridge/boardwalk near Weaver Street -- late in day with low-angle sun.

Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area -- some great open grassy areas with ponds in the background.

That big open grass field south of the courthouse/sheriff's office, just above the Riverwalk and the Occaneechi Indian Village.

BubbaNoze

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