The Scriptures are clearly opposed then as now in:
James 5:12-But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.
Matt 5:33-37-But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation. But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
As per the Leslies: "Across the country, parishioners are now being challenged to take oaths, perform vows and sign covenants."
What in the world is going on?
Do pastors learn this way of "doing" church from their seminary training? In part, yes. The other source is perhaps Rick Warren via Peter Drucker. Another would be the church growth methods of the "Leadership Network" http://www.leadnet.org/ for so-called "next generation pastors" running multi-site church "campuses" into change agents (facilitators) as described in:
To quote the Leslies again: "Drucker has dedicated much effort into bringing the church into conformance with the “systems” model of governance, which is known as Total Quality Management in the corporate world.""In this model, parishioners are “customers.” "The focus shifts to “outcomes” which means that people will have to be held “accountable” for “performance.”" "Peter Drucker grew up under the influence of the German philosophies of the 1800s." "The Corporate and the Church subsume their identities and comfortably merge with State into one comprehensive “system” of governance for mankind."
The following will demonstrate how, in the further words of the Leslies and supported by history that:
"Wherever the nationally established Christian religions have taken root they have tried to use religious oaths as a means to bind the wills and consciences of men to their own expediency and have used various methods to argue that Christ never meant what he plainly said concerning the taking of oaths."
Dr. Robert Klenck, orthopedist/apologist, speaks of this "new covenant agenda" which uses the diaprax method of incremental change by mixing truth and error, in the video below (2HR/43MIN):
Two examples of the influence of Leadership Network are the following videos of two well known emergent church pastors who attribute their successes to Leadership Network:
Steven Furtick: http://leadnet.org/resources/video/steven_furtick_find_your_rocks
Mark Driscoll: http://leadnet.org/resources/video/mark_driscoll_two_sparrows_in_a_hurricane
Followed by videos of the merger of church and state in Hitler's Nazi (National Socialist) Germany:
Let's not allow this to be repeated again!
