Star Trek Meets Mission: Impossible:

Why I just Can't Accept this New Mission

Like everyone a few years ago, I was excited to hear about plans for an upcoming Star Trek movie, especially one set in the original series in Kirk and Spock's Starfleet academy days.

Then I actually saw it. Now, I like JJ Abrams, esp. shows like Lost and in particular Fringe (if you haven't seen Fringe yet, get the DVDs or watch it on Netflix--but you need to watch them in order). However I'm not sure Abrams was the right guy to reboot an almost sacred icon like Star Trek.

To begin with, Abrams is on record as saying he wasn't a fan of the show (though supposedly his associates, writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof are/were). It shows. No fan of the series (or any of its franchises) would blow up Vulcan. I mean, c'mon, it's Vulcan, the home of Surak, T'Pol, Tuvock, T'Pau, Sarek and Spock for the Great Bird's sake! So how do you blow up Vulcan? Andor or Tellar, maybe, even though both, with Earth and Vulcan were founding charter members of the Federation. But Vulcan?

Which brings up another question. I kept waiting through the whole film for Starfleet Temporal Investigations to show up and prevent the corruption of the timeline. But where was Starfleet Temporal Investigations to prevent the corruption of the timeline? Apparently the new film features Section 31, the secretive clandestine black-ops division of Starfleet, but neither this film nor the prequel features the Temporal Investigations Division.  In the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise (which I really liked despite many of its continuity problems with the original series) agent Daniels travels back to Capt. Jonathon Archer's Enterprise to prevent the corruption of the timeline. And in the season five Deep Space: Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations Temporal Investigations agents Dulmar and Lucsly visit DS-9 to make certain Sisko and crew did nothing to alter history when they were unwittingly transported back in time to Deep Space Station K-7 by Klingon agent Arn Darvin (using the Bajoran Orb of Time which they were transporting from Cardassia to Bajor) so Darvin could complete his original mission (foiled some 70 years earlier in TOS episode The Trouble with Tribbles by none other than Enterprise captain James Kirk) of sabotaging a shipment of grain destined for Sherman's Planet and this time also assassinating Kirk.

The re-imaged Star Trek felt like nothing so much as Star Trek meets Mission: Impossible, and not the sixties TV series starring Peter Graves, the recent Tom Cruise adrenaline-laced movie adaptations, also directed by Abrams and written by Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof. I liked the Mission: Impossible films, but they aren't Star Trek.

NBC originally wanted series creator the late Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991; nicknamed the Great Bird of the Galaxy by cast, crew and fans) to simply do a monster of the week show in which the people on the spaceship would defeat the monster. To his credit Roddenberry had bigger ideas in mind for his show and stuck to his guns. Star Trek, as envisioned by Roddenberry was thus never about defeating the monster of the week, less still about blowing up planets or crashing starships (though the TOS and STNG movies blew up and crashed two Enterprises as well as blowing a large chunk out of the Klingon moon Praxis). No, Star Trek as envisioned by Gene, was about ideas.

Roddenberry's overarching vision was one of a future for mankind in which we didn't destroy ourselves or our planet (though we came close during the Eugenics Wars which produced the genetically-altered supermen and dictators Khan Noonien Singh and his peers which was followed by a WWIII). No, in Roddenberry's idealized future, Earth eventually solved most of its problems (war; disease; overpopulation; prejudice; etc.) to take its place among the stars as a founding member of the United Federation of Planets, all of this made possible when Dr. Zefram Cochrane discovered warp drive, thus precipitating First Contact with a Vulcan probe ship.

The Enterprise itself was crewed by a diverse mixture of men and women of several Old Earth nationalities--African communications officer Lt. (later, Capt.) Nyota Uhura (played by Nichel Nichols); African and specialist in Vulcan medicine Dr. Jabilo Geoffrey M'Benga (played by Booker Bradshaw); Asian helmsman Lt. (later Capt.) Hikaru Sulu (played by George Takei); Russian navigator Ensign (later Capt.) Pavel Checkov (played by Walter Koeing); Americans Capt. (later Adm.) James T. Kirk, of Iowa (played by the Canadian William Shatner) and Georgian Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy (played by the late Deforest Kelley), Head Nurse (later Dr.) Christine Chapel (played by Majel Barrett) and psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner (played by Sally Kellerman); and Scottish Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (played by the late Canadian James Doohan). Just to name a few. Such an international, interracial crew was radical for 1966/1967. It was also important; on one occasion, Nichel Nichols met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who praised her work in Star Trek. When Ms. Nichols informed Dr. King that she was thinking of leaving the show, he effectively told her she could not leave the show, as her role as a black woman officer of a starship crew on a popular American TV program was an important role model for African-Americans as well as an important stride forward in the Civil Rights Movement. Nichols thus opted to remain on the show, later reflecting "How do you say no to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?" (The first interracial kiss on TV was also seen in Star Trek.)

Significantly, the Enterprise's original First Officer was a woman, Number One, played by Majel Barret (she later married Gene Roddenberry) however NBC thought late 1960s audiences couldn't relate to a woman in a position of authority hence had Roddenberry recast a man (Leonard Nimoy) in the role and Barrett became Nurse Christine Chapel.

Of course we can't forget the Enterprise's Vulcan First Officer, Cmdr., later Capt. Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy), the son of Vulcan Ambassador Sarek (played by the late Mark Lenard of Here Come the Brides fame) and his first wife the human Amanda Grayson (played by the late Jane Wyman, of Father Knows Best fame; Sarek's second wife was also a human woman). So the Enterprise not only had an interracial, international crew of men and women, it also had an inter-species crew. Yet Again, the Great Bird was ahead of his time.

To write scripts Gene Roddenberry hired not only talented new writers such as Dorothy C. "D. C." Fontana ("Journey to Babel"; "Friday's Child"; "The Enterprise Incident"; etc.) and David Gerrold ("The Trouble with Tribbles"), but noted science-fiction authors such as Theodore Sturgeon ("Amock Time"),  Harlan Ellison ("City on the Edge of Forever") and Jerome Bixby ("Mirror, Mirror").

Original Star Trek played with serious ideas such as the view that just being different or physically unattractive doesn't make you a monster. It'd be difficult to find a more physically different, unattractive creature than the "Monster of M113," the so-called "salt vampire" from TOS's second pilot "The Man Trap" (NBC thought the first pilot, "The Cage," was too intellectual for average viewers hence requested a second pilot, which resulted in "The Man Trap"). The shape-shifting salt vampire doesn't kill for sport or pleasure, but needs the salt in human bodies to survive (the stakes are heightened for the creature as it is also the last of it's species), but unfortunately it kills it's victim when it sucks out the victim's salt. And the Horta of Janus VI from season one's "Devil in the Dark" isn't a murderer but a creature protecting her offspring (silicon eggs) from destruction by the human miners of the planet.

The original series also examined such complex ideas as the nature of reality, as in the original series pilot "The Cage," in which Enterprise Capt. Chris Pike (Kirk succeeded him) is taken captive by the Talosians of Talos IV who can alter his perception of reality to make him see and hear what they wish him to. Unbeknownst to Pike their race is dying and the Talosians need him to mate with the woman Vina and repopulate their world. To make this pleasant for the pair they give the aged and deformed Vina the appearance of herself as a beautiful young woman (before her ship crashed on Talos IV decades ago and she became horribly disfigured) and create beautiful settings for them. 

Other themes dealt with in Star Trek TOS were the right of self-government of all sentient species and the principle that the Federation didn't have the right to interfere with the natural evolution of a less technologically advanced civilization's society (occasionally Kirk felt compelled to violate the Prime Directive, but only due to extenuating circumstances). Only if they were capable of warp drive would the Federation establish diplomatic relations with a world or a species. The dangers of an over-reliance on technology were addressed in the second season episode "The Ultimate Computer." In this episode eminent computer scientist Dr. Richard Daystrom's M-5 Duotronic Computer, meant to replace a starships crew, essentially goes insane, as Daystrom (played brilliantly by actor William Marshall) used his own personality engrams as a model for the computer's personality, which included his psychological problems. The M-5 is uploaded to the Enterprise (which only has a skeleton crew to monitor the computer's performance) and during a series of wargames designed to test the computer's capabilities it begins actually firing on a freighter and then attacking manned starships. Kirk had protested all along that starships needed crews because the crews needed to be there, that people needed the stimulation and challenge of crewing starships and exploring the galaxy rather than turn such tasks over to computers. This episode also examined the possible ramifications of artificial intelligence gone awry, as the M-5 essentially goes insane and starts attacking live targets (TNG would examine artificial intelligence in even more depth through its android character Lt. Cmdr. Data and his twin Lore, as would STV, with its holographic ship's Doctor.) 

So Star Trek TOS examined racism, religion and spirituality, the Cold War, a blind faith in science without wisdom, the tendency of power to corrupt and the misuse of power, artificial intelligence, our quest for knowledge, the nature of reality, the nature of good and evil, human nature, and a whole host of other deep topics, yet all within an adventurous, exciting, futuristic, science-fiction setting.

An original series theme which goes along (at least marginally) with the new film Into Darkness has to do with the ethics of genetic manipulation of human DNA. In TOS first season episode "Space Seed" Kirk discovers the two hundred year-old Earth sleeper ship  SS Botany Bay adrift in space with several people aboard in suspended animation in stasis chambers. Upon reviving these people, Kirk discovers that he's just revived late 20th century Indian Sikh and genetic superman and exiled dictator Khan Noonien Singh (played to the hilt by the late Ricardo Montalban), who promptly repays Kirk by seducing ship's historian Lt. Marla McGivers and persuading her to help him take over the Enterprise, resulting in McGiver's' court-marshal and voluntary exile with Khan (as his wife) and his people on the barren world of Ceti Alpha VI. In the Harve Bennett sequel film Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan we get to see Khan exact his revenge on Kirk, who is dealing with the problems of growing older and feeling like he's an anachronism. In the film we also meet Kirk's former flame Dr. Carol Marcus and illegitimate son Dr. David Marcus who resents his absentee father and Starfleet, which he views as a dangerous paramilitary organization out to co-opt their Genesis Project Device (which creates "life from lifelessness") to use as a weapon--which Khan, not Kirk, ultimately does. Wrath of Khan also explored the themes of death and loss, as Kirk has to admit the possibility every starship captain my face of the no-win scenario (we learn that Kirk never had to face a no-win situation; as a brash young cadet Kirk reprogrammed the Kobayashi Maru simulation so he couldn't lose) and the loss of his best friend and second officer Captain Spock, who sacrifices his life to save the Enterprise.

All of these themes and more made Star Trek what it was/is. I'm just not sure JJ Abrams gets that, what with all the chases, explosions, and romances. I'm sorry, I just don't buy the Spock-Uhura romance. Vulcans certainly have romances however as Vulcans they suppress their emotions. And granted that Spock's father Sarek married a human woman, in the original series (Sarek's reasoning is that "it seemed logical" at the time) and early films Spock suffered much psychological and mental anguish over trying to reconcile his human and Vulcan natures, even going so far in Star Trek: The Motion Picture as to undergo the Vulcan rite of Kohlinar in an effort to once and for all purge himself of the last vestiges of his emotions and human nature. And he rebuffed Nurse Chapel's affection for him for the three seasons of TOS. So I just don't buy that he has a romance with (a junior officer, no less!) Nyota Uhura.

Then there's the new Enterprise. I was hoping in the first film to see the original series Enterprise in all her graceful glory, not the clunky new design they came up with. Who told them this new version is graceful? It isn't. Matt Jeffries (1921-2003), TOS art director who created the original Enterprise is probably rolling over in his grave. 

And from what I've heard about the new film--I haven't seen it--it bears only a marginal resemblance to either TOS episode "Space Seed" or the feature film sequel "Wrath of Khan." As Hollywood.com blogger Christian Blauvelt has stated, JJ Abrams has "assimilated the franchise into something worse than the Borg Collective." Says critic Joel Rubinoff  the new film is "a cosmic disconnect for those who, because our brains can’t be recalibrated to a setting of 'stupid,' resent the film cribbing key plot elements and iconic moments from previous Trek films in a way that feels cheap, gaudy and opportunistic." If this is true, then I couldn't agree more.

I wish JJ Abrams had talked to Harve Bennett (1930-) who produced Wrath of Khan and its sequel The Search for Spock because Bennett got it. Bennett understood what made Star Trek Star Trek. Abrams just doesn't. Heck, he could've talked to the legendary Dorothy "D. C." Fontana (1939-), script supervisor and writer of several TOS and TNG classic episodes. Or any of the folks involved with the various franchises. But he chose not to. He apparently wants to reinvent the wheel, only in this case, without ever seeing one.

For these reasons and others I haven't seen Stark Trek: Into Darkness and probably won't until the DVD release. I simply can't accept this new mission.

My one consolation came in reading a section of the book Star Trek: USS Enterprise Haynes Manual, (for which Michael Okuda, graphic designer and technical consultant on the various TNG-era franchises and author of several books like the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and the Star Trek Chronology, served as technical consultant) which provides schematics and technical data for the various Starship Enterprises from STE and TOS through the feature films and TNG. In a brief section on the re-imaged Abrams Enterprise the authors Ben Robinson and Marcus Riley state that in the new films Spock didn't create an alternate time-line merely a divergent timeline, thus the original series timeline is apparently still in place. I can live with that.  

Live long, and prosper.

Thoughts on Moral Relativism

Many people say that our concepts of right/wrong (morality) are merely societal, in other words, our ideas of right and wrong are taught to us by society. There are no objective rules, there is no objective standard, by which anything can be said to be inherently "right" or inherently "wrong" if this is true. Which creates all sorts of problems.

People (even many people who're Christians) in our post-modern society object frequently that morality is relative-you have your morality, I have mine, she has hers, and they have theirs. They will usually object to the idea of an Objective Moral Law bigger and higher than mankind that we can appeal to when deciding issues of morality. But then these people go back on that a hundred times a day without even realizing it.

Every time they say "What right does she have to speak to me like that?" or something similar. Every time they complain about their politicians being greedy and dishonest. Every time they object that some behavior by someone else "isn't fair." When they object to the War in Iraq as being "wrong" or "immoral." When they argue for or against abortion as being "a woman's 'right'" or "murder."  In each of these attempts they are appealing to an unstated higher standard. In all of these cases, they're appealing to what British Christian philosopher and apologist CS Lewis (1898-1963) called the "Moral Law." It might also be called the "law of right behavior" and its existence in each of the scenarios above is unquestioned, simply taken for granted. What is being examined is whether one action or another is a closer approximation to the demands of that law. People accused of falling short of the Moral Law, such as a husband who is rude to his wife's best friend, usually respond with an excuse as to why they should be let off the hook. They don't ever argue that being nice is a false concept that no one should be held responsible for doing, they simply argue as to why, in their case, an exception to the Rule should be made. To quote CS Lewis, very rarely do they ever respond with "to hell with your concept of right behavior." 

This concept appears to be universal to human beings everywhere. To the objection that it’s a societal construct, I would say just think about it. A kid who rudely pushes another kid in Bombay will get exactly the same response as a kid who rudely pushes another kid in Kiev, or Glasgow, or Des Moines, or Buenos Aries. This sense of right and wrong can be found around the world. But some people argue that differing cultures all have different norms of behavior, hence any conclusion about a shared Moral Law is unfounded. But Lewis, a keen observer and student of different cultures called this "a lie. A good resounding lie. If a man will go into a library and spend a few days with the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, he will soon discover the massive unanimity of the practical reason in man. From the Babylonian Hymn to Samos, from the Laws of Manu, the [Egyptian] Book of the Dead, the Analects, the Stoics, the Platonists, from Australian aborigines and Redskins, he will collect the same triumphantly monotonous denunciations of oppression, murder, treachery and falsehood; the same injunctions of kindness to the aged, the young, and thee weak, of almsgiving, impartiality and honesty." As Dr. Francis Collins, PhD, a former atheist, for many years a Christian, and former Director of the Human Genome Project observes "In some unusual cultures the law takes on surprising trappings-consider witch burning in seventeenth-century America. Yet when surveyed closely, these apparent aberrations can be seen to arise from strongly held but misguided notions about who or what is good or evil. If you firmly believed that a witch is the personification of evil on earth, an apostle of the devil himself, would it not then seem justified to take such drastic action?"

Atheistic sociobiologists sometimes like to argue that morality is a product of evolutionary processes. But this can't be right. Because one impulse of the Moral Law is for people to be altruistic, to "do the right thing," as in the case of jumping into a freezing river to save a drowning man, even at the risk of themselves being killed. The Moral Law may lead humans to make great personal sacrifices that lead to suffering, injury, and death, which goes against the idea of natural selection putting desires, drives and impulses in humans and animals that make them stronger, faster, smarter, willing to do whatever it takes to survive and be on top.

How do we explain the Law of Human Nature, Lewis' Moral Law? Because something unusual is going on here. It can only be explained as Lewis did:

"If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe-no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?"

Lewis thus believed the Moral Law or Law of Human Nature, was put into us by God. I agree. That's why I don't think Moral Relativism is the answer. As I said above, Moral Relativism holds that everyone ought to act in accordance with the agent's own society's code (or perhaps, with the agent's own personal code). What's right for one society or individual isn't necessarily right for another society or individual. You can find this idea expressed in pop culture, everything from Star Trek: the Next Generation to MSNBC to Oprah Winfrey. "Do what you feel is right." For example, society A might hold that adultery is wrong, and society B that it is morally permissible. Put simply, moral relativism implies that moral propositions are not simply true or false. Rather, the truth values (true or false) of moral principles themselves are relative to the beliefs of a given culture. As an example, "murder is wrong” is not true plain and simply; it is "true" for one society but is "false" for another society. Its not just that there is a certain amount of relativity in the application of moral principles. For example two cultures might both believe that "one should maintain sexual fidelity in marriage," but apply this differently due to factual differences about what counts as marriage (one wife or several wives). Such factual diversity can lead to differences in the way a moral rule is applied. However moral relativism goes beyond this type of diversity and asserts that the truth values of moral principles themselves are relative to a given culture. There's a difference between individual moral relativism (subjectivism) and cultural moral relativism (conventionalism)

Because of the major criticisms against it most moral philosophers and theologians reject the idea of moral relativity. There are several reasons I don't think moral relativism is correct.  Here are five:

First, it is difficult to precisely define what a society is or to specify in a given case what the relevant society is. Imagine a woman from society A above (which says adultery is wrong) having an extramarital affair with a man from society B (which says adultery is morally permissible), in a hotel room in a third society, C, which holds a different view from either A or B. Which is the relevant society for determining whether the act was right or wrong?

Secondly, it can be objected that we are often simultaneously a member of several different societies which hold different moral values: our nuclear family; our neighborhood, school, church, or social clubs; our place of employment; our town, state, country, and the international community. Which society is the relevant one for determining moral standards? What if I'm simultaneously a member of two different societies and one allows but the other forbids a certain moral action? How do I decide which society's rule is right?

Third, moral relativism suffers from a problem known as the reformer's dilemma. Christian Philosopher Dr. JP Moreland explains:

"If normative relativism is true, then it is logically impossible for a society to have a virtuous, moral reformer like Jesus Christ, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Why? Moral reformers are members of a society who stand outside that society's code and pronounce a need for reform and change in that code. However, if an act is right if and only if it is in keeping with a given society's code, then the moral reformer himself is an immoral person, for his views are at odds with those of his society. Moral reformers must always be wrong because they go against the code of their society. But any view that moral reformers are impossible is defective because we all know that moral reformers have existed.

Put differently, moral relativism implies that neither cultures (if conventionalism is in view) nor individuals (if subjectivism is in view) can improve their moral code. The only thing they can do is change it. Why? Consider any change in a code from believing, say, racism is right to racism is wrong. How should we evaluate this change? All the moral relativist can say is that, from the perspective of the earlier code, the new principle is wrong, and from the perspective of the new code, the old principle is wrong. In short, there has merely been a change in perspective. No sense can be given to the idea that a new code reflects an improvement on an old code because this idea requires a vantage point outside of and above the society's (or individual's) code from which to make that judgment. And it is precisely such a vantage point that moral relativism disallows."

Fourth, some acts are wrong regardless of social conventions. Advocates of this criticism usually adopt the standpoint of particularism and claim that everyone knows that some things are wrong, such as torturing babies, stealing as such, greed as such, etc., without first needing criteria to know how they know this. Thus, torturing babies is wrong, and can be known to be wrong, even if society says it is right.

Fifth, if moral relativism is true, its difficult to see how one society could be justified in morally blaming another society in certain cases, such as Venezuelan Pres. Chavez criticizing Pres, Bush and US foreign policy. Or the US criticizing China over human rights violations-if moral relativism is right, human rights don't exist. Thus the US has no "right" to criticize China for human "rights" violations. And in the case of Bush and Chavez, Bush should act in keeping with his society's code and Chavez should act in keeping with his society's code. If morality is relative how can either Bush or Chavez criticize the other's actions as morally wrong? How could any other society criticize the War in Iraq as morally wrong?

To the objection that one society may have its own relative moral code but should criticize acts of, say, murder, wherever they occur, one could respond that this rule further points out the logical inconsistencies of moral relativism. Because if moral relativism is true then society A seem to be in the position of holding that members of society B should, in fact, commit murder, since B's moral code says its right to do so but that society A should criticize society B for murdering because A's code tells them to. Thus relativism tells A to criticize B's acts as immoral while at the same time telling them their acts of murder should be done. But why should society B care what society A thinks anyway? After all, if normative relativism is true, there's nothing intrinsically right about the moral views of society A, or any society. For these and lots of other reasons moral relativism is illogical and should be rejected.

The Campbellite Code

Note: What follows is a parody of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code I posted on a Church of Christ website I used to help moderate a few years ago. We were having a discussion about whether Disciples of Christ/Christian Church/Church of Christ "co-founder" Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) was a true advocate of Christian unity or simply did nothing but sow discord among the Baptist Churches with his "Current Reformation" and quest for "the Ancient Order." One poster was convinced that I was obsessed with Campbell, who really wasn't the great unity advocate I said he was (and still do), nor a religious icon worthy of veneration (which I still believe), but a divisive religious fanatic and sower of discord (actually this guy was probably more ticked off at me and my view of Campbell than Campbell himself). As proof that Campbell was a respected religious icon of the mid-19th c. (whether one fully agreed with him or not). I posted a tribute to the Sage of Bethany written by none other than future Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), to which this poster objected that who cared what Lee thought, Campbell was still a trouble-maker. So I started thinking, tongue firmly ensconced in cheek and a bit sarcastically, what if there was a great conspiracy, similar to what Dan Brown set out in his novel The Da Vinci Code, only centered around Campbell and the Church of Christ? So I tried to envision what said conspiracy theory from a CoC perspective might look like. I posted what follows; anyone up on Stone-Campbell/CoC history should get most of the references. If not, don't despair, I have a glossary at the end. 

I should take a moment and say that I'm not laughing at or poking fun at any of the persons referenced below, but rather laughing with them. Even while I might not agree theologically with some of them, like Wallace, McGary or Miller, I respect them and their views. My purpose isn't to offend or insult anyone. Okay, here goes:

"As per The Campbellite Code Robert E. Lee was one of several secretive Elders of Alexander Campbell's Priory of Bethany, which sinister cabal was/is bent on resurrecting long-dead Enlightenment philosopher John Locke from the dead to lead a maniacal millennial kingdom on earth. Lee was put in place by the Elders of the Priory to wage war on the enemies of the Priory via the Civil War, which also served as a diversion from the Priory's true intentions of world domination. Secret clues were coded into the text of Thomas Campbell's Declaration & Address back in 1809 setting forth the location of Atlantis and exposing via prophecy the secrets, both of Area 51, the Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash of 1947, and the identity of the counter-cult organization opposed to the Priory, the Societatis Reformatio; the true purpose of the Declaration and Address was secretly guarded by the secretive member(s) of Piney.com, a group bent on some mysterious purpose known only to him/them, though perhaps also working for the Priory of Bethany.

"Barton Stone, who conducted sinister charismatic spiritual exercises at the Cane Ridge meeting house, and allegedly hid a mysterious treasure in that structure that would supposedly topple the Campbells, hid clues to the treasures whereabouts in the structure. When the curator of the Disciples of Christ Archives in Nashville was discovered ritually murdered in front of a painting of Margaret Campbell (whom conspiracy theorists believe might actually have been Walter Scott in drag), with ritual symbols (which, when deciphered, read “Acts 2:38”) inscribed all over his body, it led to other hidden clues in America, Scotland, Ireland and other countries.

"The Priory of Bethany's evil machinations are opposed by Robert Richardson's secretive Societatis Reformatio, which masquerades as the American Christian Missionary Society (AMCS), currently led by Rubel Shelly, which at the reinstitution of the Nashville Jubilee plans to expose the current Grand Elder of the Priory, Foy Esco Wallace, Jr., who's been sleeping in cryogenic suspended animation in a secret underground vault in Texas since his alleged "death" in the late 1970s.

"Actually it was all part of a sinister plan to overthrow the gov't and set up a millennial theocracy with John Locke as head and Alexander Campbell as his general; to do so Campbell instigated a secret cult known as the Priory of Bethany, which conducted its sinister rituals in the Brush Run Church, which was secretly patterned after a Unitarian meeting house. Grand Elder Campbell actually left coded clues in the Christian Baptist and Millennial Harbinger, as well as on Barton Stone's and Thomas Campbell's tombs, which initiates in the know could easily decipher. These gave cult members instructions on how to start the Civil War, after first sowing discord and division throughout the denominations, especially the Baptists, who had previously expelled Campbell, hence his vow of revenge! Before he could instigate his millennial theocracy he would first have to bring the other sects (and the country) to their knees!

"The curator of the Disciples of Christ Museum in Nashville was found murdered in front of a painting of Margaret Campbell (as already stated, whom conspiracy theorists believe might actually have been Walter Scott in drag) with ritual symbols inscribed all over his body, leading investigators to the old Cane Ridge Meeting House in Bourbon County, Kentucky where they allegedly discovered secret hidden parchments behind the pulpit; these gave them the location of hidden clues, the "New Light Cipher" embedded as a series of odd numbers in Campbell's 1825 Living Oracles translation of the New Testament (I understand that Madonna has stopped studying the Kabbalah in favor of this), which led back to Glasgow, Scotland, where the young Campbell took classes in 1808, to the Haldanean Tabernacle church in Glasgow with clues that led them from there back to Ahorey, Ireland, where Thomas Campbell was once pastor before immigrating to America—all the while they were being followed by an operative of the secretive society code-named "Piney," whose member(s) as an extreme act of penance deny himself/themselves the use of instrumental music in worship and speak in code language about Pindar and Pliny. And then there’s the mystery of Barton Stone’s great wealth and his esoteric “secrets”; many believe that Barton W. Stone retired from Lexington, KY with an enormous amount of money and a “secret” that would destroy the Campbells. But I don't want to spoil the ending of The Campbellite Code.

"Tolbert Fanning was the Priory's second secret Grand Elder, Campbell himself being the first. However, Dr. Robert Richardson unbeknownst to Fanning, founded a counter-organization known as the Societatis Reformatio in order to fight the Priory of Bethany and thwart its evil schemes. Isaac Errett was the secret Grand Elder of the Societatis Reformatio when Austin McGary, current Grand Elder of the Priory of Bethany, in concert with the Pope in Rome, attempted to dissolve it in 1906. McGary thought Errett and the Societatis Reformatio were becoming too liberal and powerful (some say McGary actually coveted the Grand Eldership of the Societatis for himself, but had been rebuffed by Errett). At any rate, the Societatis knew the truth about the Priory of Bethany and had to be silenced. Errett passed the Grand Eldership of the Societatis on to David Lipscomb, unbeknownst to the Priory of Bethany, of which he was also head. Thus Lipscomb pretended to do the bidding of the Priory while all the while secretly working for the Societatis.

"In 1942 Foy Wallace, Jr. discovered these secrets, hence his scathing denunciation of Lipscomb as a false teacher and a heretic. Wallace thus expunged all references to the secretive Societatis Reformatio from official Church of Christ records. However RH Boll continued the Societatis as a clandestine cult group; in 2006 the current Grand Elder of the Societatis, Rubel Shelly (some say it's Max Lucado), intends to disclose the hidden secrets of the Priory of Bethany and the truth about its aims of a sinister millennial theocracy-if it survives the attack of the secret members of the Priory of Bethany. And it would've worked, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids! Zoinks, Scoob!

"Read all about it in the best-selling The Campbellite Code.

"Oh, and all descriptions of art, architecture and secret rituals are of course factual.

"Soon to be a major motion picture by Jule Miller! Coming soon to a filmstrip projector near you!"




Since much of the above may make no sense to many of you, I offer the following Glossary:

Alexander Campbell (1788-1866): Hugely influential former Presbyterian minister and editor, advocate of Christian reform and unity, who took over leadership of his father Thomas' movement. Campbell was postmillennial and pacifist in his views. He believed that the unity of the church would hasten the spead of the gospel which itself would hasten Christ's millennial kingdom. In order to achieve that unity he originally urged a return to what he described as the "ancient order" of the work and worship of the church as set forth in the New Testament, yet later abandoned the ancient order as a catalyst for unity (though he never abandoned belief in the ancient order itself) in favor of a more "catholic" (universal) unity upon the "seven ones" (one faith; one hope; one baptism; one God; one Spirit; etc) of Ephesians 4.

Area 51: Top secret US Air Force base near Las Vegas, Nevada, the subject of numerous UFO conspiracy theories, as, among other things, Area 51 supposedly has the wreckage of the UFO that crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, along with the bodies of the aliens.

Austin McGary (1846-1928): Influential conservative Church of Christ minister and editor from Texas, who disagreed with David Lipscomb on topics such as whether one being baptized must understand that baptism is for the remission of sins for it to be a valid baptism (McGary said "yes," Lipscomb said "no").

Barton Warren Stone (1772-1844): Former Presbyterian pastor, editor of The Christian Messenger, and founder of the "Christian Church," which united with the Campbells' Disciples in 1832. Stone was premillennial (classical, not Dispensational) and pacifist in his views.

Bethany: Virginia (now West Virginia) Home of Alexander Campbell and name of the university he founded in the 1840s. 

Cane Ridge: Barton W. Stone was pastor of the Cane Ridge Presbyterian Church near Lexington, KY in 1801 when the famous Cane Ridge Revival occurred. The revival was the catalyst for Stone's eventual separation from the Presbyterian Church and his founing the Christian Church dedicated to Christian reform and unity. 

Christian Baptist: Name of Alexander Campbell's first religious journal. The second was called the Millennial Harbinger.

David Lipscomb (1831-1917): Hugely influential Christian Church/Church of Christ minister, editor of The Gospel Advocate, and namesake of David Lipscomb University in Nashville. Lipscomb was premillennial, pacifist, and against Christian participation in government and the military.


"Declaration & Address," document advocating Christian unity and reform penned by Thomas Campbell in 1809.

Disciples of Christ: Preferred name of Alexander's group of believers which merged with Barton Stone's Christians in 1832 to become the Christian Church. In 1906 the Christian Church, the communion of churches dedicated to Christian reform and unity, officially split into the mostly Northern Disciples of Christ and the mostly Southern Churches of Christ. The Disciples split again in the 1950s, into Disciples of Christ and Independent Christian Churches.

Foy Esco Wallace (1896-1979): Hugely influential conservative Church of Christ minister and exposer of what he deemed "false teaching," both among the denominations, and among his own brethren. Wallace strongly disagreed with and condemned David Lipsomb's premillennial, pacifist, anti-Christian involvement in government views.

Haldanean Tabernacle Church: One of several congregations of Scottish Christian restorationists Robert (1764-1842) and James Haldane. Alexander Campbell's views were partially informed by those of the Haldane brothers.

Isaac Errett (1820-1888): Hugely influential Northern Christian Church minister and editor of the Christian Standard, also a disciple of Alexander Campbell. Errett attempted to be a peacemaker and uniter during the disputes of the 1870s and 1880s that eventually resulted in the 1906 split.

James A. Harding (1848-1922): Influential Christian Church/Church of Christ minister, editor and co-founder with David Lipsomb of the Nashville Bible School (now David Lipscomb University) in Nashville. Harding had a very robust theology of the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit at a time when many in the Church of Christ were embracing a legalistic, "word-only" theory of the operation of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life.

John Locke (1632-1704): English philosopher whose ideas greatly influenced a young Alexander Campbell. Among other things, Locke taught that human beings possess no innate knowledge; we begin our lives as "blank slates" and ideas are the materials of knowledge and all ideas come from experience. Locke also argued that the Christian faith can be paired down to a set of essential propositions that all reasonable people could assent to.

Jule Miller (1925-2000): Church of Christ minister who developed a popular, widely-used evangelization filmstrip in the 1970s (before VCRs or DVD players). If you grew up in the CoC before the 1980s you know what I'm talking about.

Kabbalah: Medieval Jewish mystical and esoteric method of interpreting Jewish scripture and rabbinical teaching. A modern, reworked New Age version is all the rage among many people like rock star Madonna.

Margaret Campbell (d. 1827): Alexander Campbell's first wife, who died of an illness.

Max Lucado: Popular Church of Christ minister and best-selling author, considered a bit too progressive by many in the conservative and mainline CoCs.

New Lights: Nickname for the sect of Presbyterians Barton Stone came out of.

Piney.com: Website hosted by a very conservative, outspoken, Church of Christ minister. Piney espouses some strange views, it seems to me.

RH (Robert Henry) Boll (1875-1956): Influential premillennial minister in Midwestern Churches of Christ, and a student of James A. Harding's and David Lipscomb's Nashville Bible School.

Robert Richardson (1806-1876): Influential Christian Church minister, scientist, physician, editor and author of Alexander Campbell's memoirs, who in the 1840s and 1850s in the Millennial Harbinger (which he edited) opposed the growing legalistic, sectarian, too-rational approach to the faith, which limited the role of grace and the Holy Spirit, which was being advocated by leaders like Tolbert Fanning.

Roswell, New Mexico: Famous site of an alleged UFO crash in 1947, which many people believe was covered up by the US Air Force.

Rubel Shelley: Hugely influential modern minister and author of Churches of Christ, currently President of Rochester College in Michigan, who abandoned what he viewed as his earlier legalism of works-righteousness for a message of salvation by grace through faith in Christ; Shelley is thus considered too progressive by many of his more conservative brethren. His former congregation of Woodmont Hills in Nashville used to host an annual conference known as Jubilee. It was considered too "liberal" by many in the more conservative congregations of the Church of Christ.

Thomas Campbell (1763-1854): Former Irish Presbyterian pastor, father of Alexander and founder of the Disciples. The Campbells immigrated to America from Ireland, Thomas in 1807, the rest of the family in 1809. Thomas, an advocate of Presbyterian unity in Ireland, felt compelled to sever ties with the Presbyterian Church in America in the wake of his being censured for serving communion to members of another sect of Presbyterians. He and a like-minded group of people then founded a non-denominational "para-church"
organization called the Washington, Pennsylvania Christian Association, dedicated to Christian union and later an Independent congregation. In 1809 Thomas published the "Declaration & Address," calling for Christian reform and unity.

Tolbert Fanning (1810-1874): Influential Christian Church minister, co-founder of the Gospel Advocate, and associate of David Lipscomb. Founded Franklin Academy near Nashville.
 

Walter Scott (1796-1861): Influential Christian Church minister, editor and colleague of Alexander Campbell. It was Scott who formulated what he called the "Golden Oracle," the essential gospel teaching that Jesus is the Christ, as well as the principal elements of the gospel message on his "five-finger exercise," which were: faith; repentance; baptism; remission of sins; gift of the Holy Spirit. Somehow the Church of Christ later changed these into the "five-step plan of salvation": hear; believe; repent; confess; be baptized.