Thursday, August 8, 2019

Hank Paulson, who championed the crackpot TARP as Treasury Secretary under Bush 43, is a Christian Scientist

From the story:

But the reality of the existential crisis remained elusive to church officials. In 2005, Nathan Talbot and J Thomas Black, longtime church leaders who had promoted recklessly irresponsible policies encouraging the medical neglect of children, endorsed ambitious plans for raising the dead. Black argued that Eddy wanted to keep alive the possibility of defeating mortality, saying, “What would set us apart as a denomination more than raising the dead?” What indeed? Black himself has had ample opportunity to demonstrate it: he died in December 2011, and hasn’t been seen since. ...
 
So did the softening of some Christian Science attitudes suggest that the church was undergoing a genuine change of heart? Or were they trying to save their jobs, their pride and the institution? At that time, officials were grasping at relationships with ecumenical groups and New Age alternative healers – anything to boost membership. Shirley Paulson, for example, sister-in-law of former US treasury secretary Hank Paulson (also a Christian Scientist, taught by Nathan Talbot), contributed to a series of summit meetings – known as “Church Alive” – which sought to jazz up services with ideas fresh from the 1950s: reading from recent translations of the Bible (more recent than the King James version, that is), singing hymns a cappella, and urging Sunday School students to rap their narcotic weekly “Lesson Sermons”.