Jesus Christians

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Jesus Christians is a small radical Christian group that practice communal living and distributes Bible-based comics and books. They were founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1980 by David and Cherry McKay.

Contents

[edit] History

The group was started in New South Wales, Australia, by Dave and Cherry McKay in the early 1980s. It has operated under several different names, including Christians; The Medowie Christian Volunteers; and Voices in the Wilderness. The name 'Jesus Christians' was selected in 1996. ("A Change of Name", August, 1996) [1]

[edit] Beliefs and teachings

  • God will provide the material needs of people who stop working for money, and dedicate their lives to obeying the teachings of Jesus

(Luke 6:46, 12:22-23, 16:13, Matthew 6:24).

  • Jesus expects his followers to give up all their worldly wealth (Luke 12:33, 14:33).
  • Jesus (not the Bible) is the Word of God. Although holy writings may be inspired, they are all fallible.
  • Jesus never established any sacraments.
  • Emphatic denial of the doctrine of the Trinity.
  • The teachings of Jesus should be the basis of faith, not religious traditions.
  • Non-Christians can be saved on the basis of their faith in God, even if they have never heard of Jesus. This was made possible through the death of Jesus on the cross. See Universalism.
  • Sincerity is more important than being right.
  • The return of Jesus is likely to occur soon, although not until after the Great Tribulation.
  • Christians will judge the world after Jesus returns, and Jesus will reign over the world for a thousand years.[2] [3]
  • Parts of the Book of Revelation relate to events happening in the world today.
  • There are spiritual advantages to remaining single; however marriage is not forbidden even though it is an inferior option to celibacy.[4]
  • There is nothing sinful about masturbation.
  • When an individual rejects the teachings of Jesus, they are in fact rejecting God. [5]
  • Technology which will one day be used to implement the "Mark of the Beast" is on the earth now in the form of subdermal RFID chips. [6]

[edit] Practices

Members forsake all private ownership, handing over all of their earthly possessions to the Jesus Christian community. ("Forsaking All", from Jesus and Money) [7] The group teaches that all members must have equal say in how funds are to be used. ("Power--Good or Evil" [8], and "Setting Up Your Own Community" [9]) Although there have rarely been more than 30 members of the community, in 2005, the community was broken up into two and three-person teams, with equal portions of the group's funds going to each member. Those teams continue to function autonomously, although members occasionally transfer by mutual consent from one team to another.

[edit] Structure

As of 2006 there was an ongoing team operating in Kenya which receives and disperses funds from other traveling teams in Australia, America and the United Kingdom. The co-founders (Dave & Cherry McKay) are considered to be part of that team even though they spend most of their time in a small one-bedroom apartment in Sydney, Australia.

[edit] Activities

Over the years the Jesus Christians have featured in numerous news and documentary reports, often because of unusual activities undertaken by members. In 1983 they made headlines in Sydney when members of the community offered to do free work for one day for any family or business which requested their assistance. In 1984 six of the youngest members of the community, headed by 15-year-old Christine McKay, walked 1,000 miles across the Nullarbor Desert in the interior of Australia without taking any provisions for their journey. Their success, after seven weeks on the road, led to a front page photo in the Sun-Herald newspaper which was chosen as the news photo of the year for Australia.

They have made headlines for such things as burning money, painting miles of religious / philosophical graffiti and for donating kidneys to strangers. Over half of the members have donated a kidney to a needy person, thus earning them the nickname 'the kidney cult'. [10]

In 2000 the group made front-page headlines in the British tabloids, which declared that they had kidnapped a 16-year-old boy, Bobby Kelly. The boy, who members of the community in England claim had written permission from his grandmother to travel with the community, was made a ward of the state in an effort to pry him away from the group. When the Jesus Christians refused to hand the boy over to the authorities, and when Bobby started doing telephone interviews with the media declaring that he had not been kidnapped, the courts imposed a national media ban on any interviews with either Bobby or members of the Jesus Christians until Bobby turned 18. Bobby was eventually located and placed in a foster home. No members of the Jesus Christians were charged with kidnapping and a charge of contempt of court (for failing to hand Bobby over) was dropped against two members of the community.

In 2005 another charge of kidnapping was made against members of the group in Kenya, this time by the father of a 23-year-old woman who had joined the community. The woman released a video on the group's website declaring that she had not been kidnapped. One member of the community was arrested, however, and held for several weeks in a prison in Nairobi until a worldwide letter writing campaign convinced the Attorney General of Kenya that the charge should be dropped. On release it was learned that the member had contracted tuberculosis while in prison. He and his wife and child left Kenya shortly after release and have not returned since.

In October 2006 the group held a mock trial in Long Beach, California where they charged the parents and two brothers of one of their members with attempted murder and with aiding and abetting others in doing this. It followed an attack on one of their members in which he received a fractured spine, bleeding on the brain, broken teeth and numerous cuts to the head and face. Although the family did not attend the trial, various sentences of 5-25 lashes of the whip were carried out on volunteers from the Jesus Christians themselves, as an attempt to illustrate their understanding of the cross of Christ. "God hates the sin, but loves the sinner", they said, in an effort to summarise what they were doing.

This family also went to the police, claiming that their son, a top student and basketball player with a scholarship to Yale University, had been kidnapped. The FBI acted on the report for a while but when the son turned up at a police station in Kentucky, stating that he had not been kidnapped, the missing persons report was dropped.

Members of the Jesus Christians have, for many years, distributed religious literature, much of it written by Dave McKay. In recent years they have primarily distributed copies of a novel, written by McKay, called Survivors (ISBN 9966-755-00-4) [11], in exchange for "a few cents to help with the cost of printing them". They reported, in 2006, that their sales for this one book alone had topped one-million.[12]

Survivors is a response to the popular Left Behind series of novels on Bible prophecy, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. In its own words, Survivors attempts to include material that was left out of the LaHaye-Jenkins series. Mckay has also published a second book in the series entitled "Listening". It purports to be an equal to Survivors, taking place during the same time period, though from another viewpoint. Supposedly a third novel is also in the works, which is staged in Kenya and told through the viewpoint of somebody that takes the mark of the beast. A third book entitled "Destroyers" has also been published on the JC website.

On December 11, 2007 Dave and Cherry McKay were interviewed on stage as part of a two day feature on the nature of religious cults on the UK television programme The Jeremy Kyle Show. Alongside them were two other members of the Jesus Christians. As well as asking David McKay several times to explain the purpose and activities of the Jesus Christians, Jeremy Kyle put questions on behalf of invited guests to Mckay seeking explanations or clarification about what appeared to be unacceptable "cult-like" activities of the Jesus Christians.

In February 2008 a Jesus Christian family was featured on the Channel 4 program WifeSwap, where the freegan wife of the Jesus-Christian family went to live with the millionaire family of an IT consultant, living the capitalistic dream.

[edit] Books By David McKay

[edit] Jesus Christian Pamplets

  • Jeremiah's Lament - A modern paraphrase of the book of Jeremiah.
  • Christian...but NOT religious!
  • Radical Christian Truths. ISBN 9966-755-15-2
  • Churchianity vs Christianity.

[edit] External links

[edit] Favorable

[edit] Unfavorable opinions on the Jesus Christians

[edit] Media Reports