Nadia and HerChurch Circle the Drain: The Icha-peek for Late Night Readers

 I thought about using or only linking the latest from Nadia Bolts-Tattoos, but it was so foul-mouthed that linking it was an act of profanity, so I did not.

"As Priestess Witch for herchurch, Christine offers magical gifts to share and enhance the support and development of herchurch. The monthly astrological reading provides guidance from the stars and is a favorite among many. Together we honor the natural cycles of the year, the Solstices and Equinoxes, and thank the Earth for her bounty. Small group gatherings provide inspiration and direct our attention to instinct and intuition helping us to discover ways to connect to the divinity of nature and thereby the Divine."

https://www.herchurch.org/priestexx

How many years ago did I write about HerChurch and post photos? A dozen years ago!

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Someone added a few details, to illustrate a point.

Making Idols of Canaanite goddess, Is that Still Okay, ELCA Leadership?

by Exposing the ELCA on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 10:28pm

Exposing the ELCA has highlighted Ebenezer Lutheran Church/“her church” in San Francisco in the past (read here on page 6 and here).  This ELCA church is famous for goddess worship, praying the goddess rosary, praying to “Sophia” and “Mother,” as well as the use of female pronouns for the god they worship.  The ELCA has taken no action to stop these practices/beliefs.  We could only conclude that goddess worship is an acceptable practice in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Now we have an actual statement from ELCA leadership about the teachings of this San Francisco Lutheran Church.  Bishop Michael Burk of ELCA Southeastern Iowa Synod spoke with Ebenezer Lutheran Church’s  Bishop from the Sierra Pacific Synod (in August 2010).  Bishop Burk had questions about reports he had heard of non-orthodox practices happening at the church. Here is his account of that conversation,

“After visiting with the bishop and with another synod staff member who knows the congregation and the pastor well, there is an acknowledgement that this congregation ‘pushes around the edges’ on matters that make some of us uncomfortable. Things like what they refer to this ‘rosary’ are seen by many to be outside the bounds, but don't rise to level of anything in the disciplinary arena. Speaking explicitly about the pastor and regular worship experience there, when folks have ‘dropped in unannounced’ they have experienced preaching that is decidedly within Lutheran orthodoxy and worship that is familiar and done with integrity. It was said that this small congregation is serving the local community very well, especially when it comes to reaching out to the local community.”  (read here, go to comment 6)

We have now learned that Ebenezer Lutheran Church is offering women an interesting “spiritual retreat.”  The church website says,

“Celebrate ‘She Who Is’
Encounter the Divine Feminine
with body, mind and spirit”

At this spiritual retreat you will experience -

“Sacred Re-imaging, rituals and work(play)shops, sacred sounds, altar building, meditation with the Cosmic Mother, Christian Feminist stories, beach walks, free time and relaxing with beauty that is around, among and within!”

The experience will include presentations on -

“God/dess Around Us
Language of the Goddess – Pr. Boorn (ELCA pastor)

God/dess Within Us
Connecting with God/dess – J. Dancer

God/dess Beyond Us
Spirit Shrines – Linda Roberts”

The Retreat gets even more interesting unfortunately.  Ebenezer Lutheran Church’s website tells an attendee’s retreat experience where we read,

“Pastor Stacy reminded us of some of the discounted feminine images of God in the Old Testament—probably none of which were the products of female imaginations—and invited us to form our own images in clay of Asherah, the mother goddess of the Canaanites familiar to early Jewish inhabitants of Canaan. I am no artist. Warming and working the clay with my hands, I wondered whether my goddess would look anything like the photograph of an Asherah figure Stacy provided as a possible starting point . . .”

“The next project, led by Kathryn Wagner, was to make a mandala, a circular, meditative image of the self . . .”

“On the shore of Monterey Bay, on Saturday night and Sunday morning, all ten of us prayed the Goddess rosary [some beaded their own Goddess Rosary that afternoon] beside a cross erected of driftwood and draped with seaweed. Stacy called us to remember the sea as the primal water from which life emerged, to think of it as the amniotic fluid of our mother's wombs . . .”  (Read here) http://www.herchurch.org/id10.html

One could write five articles on the non-orthodox, troubling, and heretical statements written about this "spiritual retreat."  But we will just focus on "Asherah."

The image of Asherah, that ELCA pastor Stacy Boorn had the women on the retreat make, is a false god.  As was mentioned above, Asherah is "the mother goddess of the Canaanites" that God continually told the Israelites to stay away from.  Scripture speaks of Asherah and Asherah poles extensively and none of it is positive.  Here is one verse (see more verses at end of this article) -

Deuteronomy 12:3 - Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.

I would be interested in hearing from ELCA headquarters and the synod bishops as to whether this new documented information of "herchurch" making idols of a false god (one the Bible specifically mentions and which is forbidden in scripture) is still considered acceptable practices for ELCA members.  As you can read in the Bible verses below, it is not acceptable to God. 

If making idols and the worship of false gods does not warrant expulsion, I don’t know what does.  ELCA inaction here = acceptance/approval.

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More of what God’s Word says about Asherah/Asherah poles - 

Judges 3:7 - The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD; they forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

1 Kings 14:15 - And the LORD will strike Israel, so that it will be like a reed swaying in the water. He will uproot Israel from this good land that he gave to their ancestors and scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, because they aroused the LORD’s anger by making Asherah poles.

1 Kings 16:33 - Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.

2 Kings 17:16 - They forsook all the commands of the LORD their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves, and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the starry hosts, and they worshiped Baal.

Deuteronomy 7:5 - This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.

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GJ - Notice that DP Doug Englebrecht sent the District VP to investigate The CORE and found exactly the same Lutheran orthodoxy! Twas practically Adolph Hoenecke come to life again.

Readers - HerChurch is a picture of WELS in the future.

No one thought HerChurch could happen when I published about this topic in 1987. Now the same people who ignored the warnings are shocked that it did happen - with their synod's blessing. My classmate from Yale, with a PhD in NT studies, blessed it as well. Now he is an ELCA seminary president.

The problem is with corrupt officials who seem to be spineless shiver-sisters, until someone dares to question the conduct of their office. Then, as Luther wrote, they are ready to tear up trees with their bare hands.

Or as Proverbs says, it is easier to rob a she-bear of her cubs than to encounter a fool in his folly. Prov. 17:12.

 Nadia allegedly had Covid. She may have visited HerChurch, but she started her own wackadoodle congregation and later was called by ELCA to do more of the same "as a witness."

Must Do That Morning Post

There is nothing quite so alarming or charming as a morning visit to the ALPB Online Diss 'n Cussing Board. 

Today's threads included the number of members in each synod, plus their number of congregations. Every since 1970, all of them have decreased by gigantic amounts. 

ELCA gets all its failures in one lump, because the LCA, ALC, and Seminex groups merged in 1987. They went from 5.3 baptized members to 1/3 fewer members. 

Missouri since 1970 has lost a similar number. 

The ELS has already published its epitaph. They will be only a footnote in history books in one generation. I wonder why Justification without Faith, their cause for leaving the Big Norwegians, never caught on. Now they can join their fragments with ELCA, which is also a fan of Universalism.

WELS' two sacraments, the stink-eye and the shun, have worked well in purifying the ranks so the leaders all come from a few DNA matches. Marrying a Name (as they call it in WELS) is like wedding the boss' daughter, a sure prediction of future promotions and alcoholism. This is discussed in excited tones: "He married a Hagedorn! Do you know who they are? A Hagedorn helped start the synod!"

I am amused, drinking pour-over coffee, that so many clergy at ALPB can write so much without addressing the basics of Biblical, Lutheran doctrine. They are all sociologists who enjoy going over the potential reason why their synods - and ALPB - have been sinking in numbers, closing schools, and still flogging the cause and effect from their Fuller Seminary educations.

The Church of Rome also talks about grace, and like their Lutheran counterparts, silences the concept of faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

If we have access to God's grace only through faith in Jesus the Savior, as Paul teaches in Romans 5:2, there is no grace at all in the leadership of the synods, whether they are Roman or nominal Lutheran.

KJV Romans 5 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: 2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.