* * *Cindy Kunsman responds to the censorship of the FreeCWC’s petition demanding an apology from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
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Note from Julie Anne: This article, by Cindy Kunsman was originally posted at her blog, Under Much Grace, and she has given me permission to post it here. Cindy has an encyclopedia of information at her blog on spiritual abuse she has studied and observed in the Homeschool Movement subcultures. She has greatly benefited the Spiritual Abuse Survivor community and I’m so thankful for her work in this area. ~JA
* * *
The Freedom for Christian Women Coalition (FreeCWC) and Jocelyn Andersen have used the Christian Newswire in times past to distribute press releases. The news service featured an announcement of the Seneca Falls 2 Evangelical Women’s Rights Convention on July 2, 2010, noting the formation of the FreeCWC.
Perhaps that is why the Coalition was so shocked to learn this morning that the Christian news distribution service, a subsidiary of the Christian Communication Network, has decided to censure their press release concerning the petition to the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). The FreeCWC decided to wait to submit a press release to celebrate the collection of 200 signatures, and the submission was made by co-founder Andersen on Saturday, April 5, 2014 at 10:55 AM. Christian Newswire sent the notice of decline by email on the evening of April 6th.
Andersen spoke with an individual named Gary McCullough at the agency on the morning of April 7th. She was told that a committee reviews submissions, and it was their decision to “not distribute” the news release. McCullough would not disclose the reason for the censure.
Read the email that Andersen received as well as the original press release below.
We encourage the public to contact Mr. McCullough to let him know how disappointed we are that the Christian Newswire will only support press releases in favor of the subjugation of women.
And naturally, the reader is invited to sign the petition if they have not already done so.
Also of interest is the appearance of the Biblical Womanhood Statement arising from Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary (SWBTS). One wonders how this substantially differs from the True Woman Manifesto and their program. The Associated Baptist Press published an article suggesting that this new initiative at SWBTS was a response to the FreeCWC petition. Read more about the president of the seminary, his wife, and their participation with CBMW at a recent article at The Wartburg Watch.
Apparently, they’re also preparing to make a submission to the Christian Newswire. May theirs be approved.
* * *
From: Dan McCullough dan@christiannewswire.com
To: Jocelyn Andersen, newsdesk
Subject:We have chosen not to distribute your news release “Freedom for Christian Women Coalition petitions CBMW to repent of war against women”
Apr 6, 2014 11:44:12 PDT
Receipt No: 2601-5764-1199-0128
Dear jocelyn e. andersen,
Christian Communication Network just sent you a full refund of $140.00 USD for your purchase. If you have any questions about this refund, please contact Christian Communication Network. This refund will appear on your credit card statement as credit from PAYPAL *CHRISTIANCO. If you have any questions, please contact Christian Communication Network.
Dan McCullough,
Christian Communication Network
2020 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20006
202.546.0054
www.ChristianNewswire.com
* * *
Freedom for Christian Women Coalition
petitions CBMW to repent of war against women
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
In 2010, the newly formed Freedom for Christian Women Coalition (FreeCWC) sent by FedEx a demand that the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) apologize for their destructive teachings against women as outlined in the Danvers Statement, a harmful document released in 1987 which has united churches across denominational lines and has been adopted and implemented within denominations and local churches worldwide.
To date, almost four years later, CBMW’s response has been dead silence.
However, in 2010, Al Mohler, a council member of CBMW and President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary which is headquarters to CBMW—an influential seminary that aggressively supports the oppression of women through the precepts of the Danvers Statement—did attempt to censure FreeCWC through a tweet suggesting that supporters of the Apology Demand seemed to be “confused and poorly organized.”
After four years with no response from CBMW, the FreeCWC has now taken their demand to Change.org in the form of a petition to Owen Strachan, Executive Director of CBMW.
With 200+ signatures, and rising, Christian men and women are uniting in demanding change within the evangelical community regarding the derogatory attitudes and teachings against women propagated through CBMW, an organization committed to the complete subjugation of women both on earth and—according to Dr. Bruce Ware, a council member of CBMW, Professor of Christian Theology, and Father-In-Law to Executive Director Owen Strachan—throughout eternity.
The petition can be viewed and signed at: http://chn.ge/NrF3eV
Co-founder of FreeCWC, Shirley Taylor, and Special Consultant to FreeCWC, Cindy Kunsman, are both available for comment.
Shirley Taylor can be reached by email at: bwebaptist.women AT live DOT com
Cindy Kunsman can be reached by email at: undermuchgrace AT gmail DOT com
History of FreeCWC and the Apology Demand at ABPNews/Religious Herald:
Links to FreeCWC:
Spiritual Sounding Board 
It looks like you mean censored, not censured.
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I didn’t get enough sleep last night.
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Thank you, Peter. I changed the title. It sure feels like censure — and Jocelyn’s been using the term. I’m blaming it on her! 🙂
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For those of us who have read CBMW website for years keeping up with their errant teaching, we have found doctrines that are more in line with Jehovah Witnesses (ESS) and Mormonism (Eternal subjugation of women). Some of these articles they have scrubbed after too much publicity in social media. Some of us think they have gone way off the rails even after making up the Orwellian term: Complementarian. . The Danvers statement was a response to the culture and over the years the issue has progressed to be taught as a salvic doctrine at most SBC seminaries and within the larger evangelical movement. The issue made many rich, btw, with many books, conferences and speaking gigs over the 90’s when it was at its peak. It has been dying a slow death since then.
They are working hard to make a comeback because in the words of Russ Moore, President of the SBC’s ELRC, we need less comp and more patriarchy. He says comps are wimps and too many comp marriages operate as egalitarian which in his view is a sin.
If they preach another Gospel……we all know the ending to that. Comp/pat doctrine is NOT the Gospel.
Only Satan could be delighted when Christians try to shut up over half the Body of Christ from ministering to anyone regardless of gender.
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Who is the Christian Newswire afraid of offending?
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Lydia –
My guess is “M”money.
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Lydia,
We didn’t name anyone in the 2010 press release, and we weren’t noting specifics about people or other agencies, save ourselves and the speakers.
We name Mohler, Strachan, Ware, and we mention CBMW in this one, and we commit the act that some people think is a crime for Christians: We demanded something. Our $140 likely wasn’t worth the hassle they must believe that they would get.
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Every time I hear “subjugation”, I think of the bad-guy spy organization of the old Man from UNCLE series, THRUSH. The last three letters of THRUSH stand for “Total Subjugation of Humanity”.
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“We didn’t name anyone in the 2010 press release, and we weren’t noting specifics about people or other agencies, save ourselves and the speakers.
We name Mohler, Strachan, Ware, and we mention CBMW in this one, and we commit the act that some people think is a crime for Christians: We demanded something. Our $140 likely wasn’t worth the hassle they must believe that they would get.”
Cindy, ooooh You named names this time. That is it. Good point. Especially Mohler is an untouchable.
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Bridget, I am constantly amazed at how much money there is in Jesus.
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Anyone thinking about signing a petition on Change.org may want to think twice. I once signed a petition posted at that site regarding a local issue and subsequently received spam e-mails for months Many of those messages were of an ideological nature, and for the most part those ideologies differed from mine. I’ll never do that again.
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Singleman,
They offer a check box which allows you to decline further emails from Change.org. I’ve signed several of the petitions related to the Independent Fundamental Baptist teen homes, and the BJU issues, and I’ve received only two emails from Change.org in two years.
You can also sign the petition but decline to have your name published so that no one knows that you signed it.
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singleman, I can attest to what Cindy says because I checked that box, too, for this and in the past and have received no emails from them. In fact, every single thing I do online I make sure I check or uncheck those boxes. . You also can opt for your real name not to show if you want.
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As for the Christian News Service let me see if I can understand them. They will take a paid ad by Lyall Mercer calling Janet Mefford an enemy of the church but won’t take a paid ad about a petition concerning CBMW and their Mormonistic/JW type doctrines?
Is there something wrong with this picture. An ad calling a woman an enemy of the church by a PR hack is ok, though?
Methinks they have lost credibility. Why not take them all? Let the reader decide?
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Lydia, I tweeted your comment! Hee hee. And I made it a new blog post, too.
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Lydia – That is so wrong. I’m really surprised that they would do this. Everybody knows that advertisements are not meant as endorsement. It’s just like my blog – my commenters here do not represent me or my opinions. It seems there is something bigger behind the scenes going on.
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Sheesh! I would have edited it better. :o)
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too late, purple girl.
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Okay, I slogged through that entire bit on CBMW by Dr Bruce Ware. He never explains what the ‘new creation’ will look like regarding multiple spouses who have passed on before. Oh, he asserts that the ‘egalitarian’ perspective is wrong, but he never does get back to the basic question, which I would put this way: in the Resurrection, to which husband is the woman still submissive? What a crock. I need a shower.
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Sheila,
That article was written by a fellow named Walton, but there are similar things in Bruce Ware’s book. Ware and his son-in-law are committed through CBMW to these teachings. They were embarrassed enough to take the HTML version off line until we balked about it, but when pressed about it, they put the article back up. They stand behind it.
The subordination of Jesus and women is permanent, from eternity past through eternity to come for Jesus. For women, our souls and spirits are innately female, and we too are eternally subordinate — just like our alleged counterpart in the Trinity. That’s why I say that CBMW put Jesus in a dress — the only one of the Divine Three who had an earthly body that was male.
Here’s some stuff from Ware’s book:
http://undermoregrace.blogspot.com/2009/03/against-subordinationism-section-c.html
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Julie Anne,
I don’t know that Christian Newswire actually has “advertisements,” but they definitely have a newswire/press release service. I’m not sure if people are just calling them advertisements, or perhaps they do offer some kind of advertisement service as well. I guess we’ll find out when TWW gives it a try.
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OOOoo. I put this on the wrong thread.
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Cindy, I’ll fix things when I get home. No worries. Just put it where you want it and I’ll delete the extra one.
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It actually fits in the Mormon Koolaide topic, so you can just leave it. 🙂
Cute, huh?
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“Okay, I slogged through that entire bit on CBMW by Dr Bruce Ware. He never explains what the ‘new creation’ will look like regarding multiple spouses who have passed on before. Oh, he asserts that the ‘egalitarian’ perspective is wrong, but he never does get back to the basic question, which I would put this way: in the Resurrection, to which husband is the woman still submissive? What a crock. I need a shower.”
Sheila, The first time I read that article on CBMW years ago, my first thought were all those polygamous marriages in the OT! Right. Polygamous marriages on NewEarth with Jesus. Oooookaaaay.
These guys are not scholars. They are propagandists.
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No kidding, Cindy, it sure does fit on that article. I’m surprised CBMW didn’t offer it as a resource on that article.
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Is there any video, audio or transcripts from yesterday’s CBMW conference? Supposedly 1,300 people attended.
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How many people would be there if it were elsewhere and not just before this T4G hero worship fest? I haven’t found anything. And I wonder how many students were there and whether they received class credit. (not that this is unusual at a school)
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Carmen S,
Here are some pics.
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23CBMW14&src=tyah&mode=photos
Right now, I’m live streaming T4G, but I can’t hear much of it because my husband is here offering “commentary.” What kind of sign language does this Chandler guy use? I’m fair at ASL, but I don’t know what language he’s gesturing. They could play music and it could be aerobics for men.
Oh, husband person just said, “Now there’s something that made sense.”
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This guy could get a second job waving in planes from the runway to the terminal. Maybe he’s doing flag semaphore without the flags?
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Matt Chandler has studied under the John Piper school of hand gestures. It’s overdone and phoney, wouldn’t you say? Did you watch the panel discussion on sanctification? Hopefully they will post the entire conference.
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Only Duncan and Mohler make any sense, and that’s only when they stick to basic/essential/central doctrine. It breaks my heart. They so lose it on their hobby horse agenda stuff.
That Chandler guy couldn’t even finish one thought and didn’t finish half of his sentences. I had to read tweets to figure out what the heck he was trying to say. And it took him nearly 20 minutes to say anything about Scripture or Jesus…. Content absent speech. Unreal.
Why are people so fascinated with these people?
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You could take out the voice track, add in some funky music, and then market Chandler’s video as aerobics for men. I wonder how many calories he burned?
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Carmen,
I’m glad that I didn’t watch the sanctification panel. Piper preaches salvation by works and I’d call it Roman Catholic, but that would be an insult and misrepresentation of Catholicism. And these New Calvinists seem to think that we have to earn justification by works. I thought that one of the benefits of Calvinism was the eternal security clause. And they call themselves Reformed. I’m so disappointed in them, especially Duncan and Mohler.
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Cindy,
I was watching a youtube in which Mohler ( along with Duncan and DeYoung) specifically said that there is nowhere else for young people who are looking for solid theology to go. The New Calvinists are the only game in town.
The Bible promises eternal security and assurance. Calvinism does not. So, to answer Dr. Mohler, I will go to the Bible, sir.
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Well, look how many seminaries and Bible schools can just close up shop! What would we do without these guys who intercede for us. We should thank God for the New Moses that can go up into heaven and bring the truth down to us poor, ignorant saps. It really does seem like they read Matthew 23 and made it their model.
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We believe that those who teach and preach the word of God are God-appointed agents to save God’s people from ignorance.
Albert Mohler, Sermon, First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Florida; January 30, 2011
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