Does Heresy matter?

Two items grabbed my attention today on Presbyweb and various blogs. Hardly anyone else, I am almost certain, would have seen these two items as related. The first was, of course, the news found everywhere that Lisa Larges, the lesbian activist, was moved forward in the process of being ordained by the San Francisco Presbytery. The other item, for me had a personal ring. That was the news article, Megachurch leader surrenders. This is the story of a church leader and pastor who used his position, and as I will point out his heretical doctrines, to insist on sex from at least two women in his congregation, including his sister-in-law.

In the very early eighties I was writing papers on a movement that pops up every so often in the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement. It is often referred to as “the Manifested Sons of God.” Its advocates generally insist that the Church must overcome death before Christ returns. Bishop Earl Paulk was such an advocate. He stated that, “The Church of Jesus Christ has not yet conquered death but this last enemy will be totally conquered before Jesus’ return.” In deed, Paulk offered quite a few weird doctrines.

I wrote a review of his book Satan Unmasked as a means of exposing some of his weird doctrines. One of those doctrines is also held by some in the “Prosperity” movement. That is the doctrine that we are all little gods. But Paulk had another strange thing he wrote about. And it was just a hint of where he was going. One of those things I thought about but couldn’t voice my conclusions. First he would quote (Luke 20:34-36) “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of the resurrection.”

Paulk would then go on to state, “Jesus said in order for the sons of this age to become the ‘Sons of God’ and usher in the age of the resurrection, they must enlarge their concepts.” Now we know what Paulk’s larger concepts were and what leverage he probably used to obtain sex from unwilling women.

Paulk was a well known pastor at the time I wrote my review. He would even eventually be among various pastors who taught during conferences at the Crystal Cathedral. When I wrote my review I sent it to him. His reply included the suggestion that I should probably be careful about touching God’s anointed. However, a few people read the review and were wary. But what does this have to do with the ordination of Lisa Larges?

Scripture has to be twisted in just such a manner in order for Larges to be ordained. It either has to be ignored or twisted to say what it does not say. Some have even suggested that God is doing a new thing and that the homosexual person is God’s additional or new revelation.1

Heresy hurts. It has hurt many in Paulk’s church and family. It has hurt Paulk himself. It is tearing our Presbyterian Church USA apart. But worst of all it will destroy the lives of many living a homosexual lifestyle, it will lead many away from Christ. God have mercy on the Presbyterian Church USA.


1 For Instance see, Scott Haldeman, “Receptivity and Revelation: A Spirituality of Gay Male Sex,” or Rebecca Todd Peters, “Embracing God as Goddess,” in Body and Soul: Rethinking Sexuality as Justice-Love. “If we start with women’s bodily experience of sexuality as a window into the divine, its very mutability can offer insight into redefining the way we think about God/ess” (163)