Jesus Christians
Encyclopedia
Jesus Christians is a small Christian
group that practices communal living and distributes Bible-based comics
and books.
Cherry McKay in 1975. 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)
All", from Jesus and Money) The group teaches that all members must have equal say in how funds
are to be used. ("Power--Good or Evil", and "Setting Up Your Own Community") 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.
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. ("Excommunicated" Chapt. 5). 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. ("The Walk of Faith", 1984)
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'.
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 them, 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. ("Boy found safe..." Guardian, 28 July 2000)
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. Upon his release it was learned that the member had contracted tuberculosis while in prison. He and his wife and child left Kenya shortly after his release and they have not returned since. ("Persecution in Kenya", Pine Rivers World News, 3 September 2005)
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. An amateur video was made of the attack, but the police never prosecuted the case. 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 summarize what they were doing. ("The Trial")
In July 2009 Civil action was taken against the family members involved in the attack, the outcome of which is still pending and a restraining order has also been taken out against them.
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.
On December 11 2007, Dave and Cherry McKay were interviewed on stage as part of a two day feature on religious cults on the UK television programme The Jeremy Kyle Show
. The show attempted to link the Jesus Christians with such groups as Jim Jones
' People's Temple, and the Children of God
sex cult. Dave and Cherry and two other members of the Jesus Christians were questioned by Jeremy Kyle
and several opponents of the Jesus Christians. At one point, as a form of protest, members refused to reply to any more questions and McKay walked out of the interview. In spite of the seemingly negative report by Jeremy Kyle, the Jesus Christians have reported an increased number of sympathetic inquiries.
In February 2008, a Jesus Christian family was featured on the Channel 4 program Wife Swap
where the freegan wife of the Jesus-Christian family went to live with the millionaire family of an IT consultant.
In June 2008, The ABC in Australia aired a report on one young Jesus Christian's fight for his right to donate a kidney to a stranger. The documentary covers the attempts of the parents to thwart the young man's intentions and his final success.
religious literature, much of it written by Dave McKay. In recent years they have primarily distributed copies of novels written by McKay, the main one being Survivors (ISBN 9966-755-00-4), 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.
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 "equel" (sic) to Survivors
, taking place during the same time period, though from another viewpoint. A third book, also set during the same time period as the first two, is entitled "Destroyers". It is available on the JC website, and was released in paperback form around Christmas, 2008. The story for that mostly takes place in Kenya and is told through the perspective of someone who takes the mark of the beast.
As of 2009, the Jesus Christians had produced several videos, including a documentary expounding on various aspects of their lifestyle. They have produced several music videos. Their latest two videos include a documentary about the implementation of RFID microchip implants (see The Tyrant Within)and a video about the justice system, it's effect on society, and a radical Christian approach to mixing justice with mercy (see Beyond Justice)
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
group that practices communal living and distributes Bible-based comics
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
and books.
History
The group was started in New South Wales, Australia, by Dave andCherry McKay in 1975. 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)
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). (21. "A Unique Teaching", circa 1996)
- Jesus expects his followers to give up all their worldly wealth (Luke 12:33, 14:33). ("How to Be Saved")
- JesusJesusJesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
(not the BibleBibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
) is the Word of God. Although holy writings may be inspired, they are all fallible. ("The Word of God", August, 1995) - Jesus never established water baptism as a form of sacramentSacramentA sacrament is a sacred rite recognized as of particular importance and significance. There are various views on the existence and meaning of such rites.-General definitions and terms:...
, nor did he ordain other sacraments as such. ("Water Baptism", January, 1991) ("I Will Have Mercy", March, 1998) - Beliefs about the doctrine of the TrinityTrinityThe Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...
are of little consequence. ("Father and Son--Two for One", January, 1994) - The teachings of Jesus should be the basis of faith, not religious traditions. ("We Believe in Jesus Christ", circa 2000)
- 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 UniversalismUniversalismUniversalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal application or applicability...
. - Sincerity is more important than being theologically correct. ("The Good Hindu") ("In Search of Truth", November, 1986)
- The return of Jesus is likely to occur soon, although not until after the Great Tribulation. ("Signs of the Times", June, 1986)
- Christians will judge the world after Jesus returns, and Jesus will reign over the world for a thousand years.
- There are spiritual advantages to remaining single; however marriageMarriageMarriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
is not forbidden even though it is regarded as an inferior option to celibacy. - There is nothing sinSinIn religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...
ful about masturbationMasturbationMasturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
. ("Wanking, the Last Taboo") - When an individual rejects the teachings of Jesus, they are in fact rejecting God.
- Technology which will one day be used to implement the "Mark of the Beast", is on the earth now in the form of subdermal RFIDMicrochip implant (human)A human microchip implant is an integrated circuit device or RFID transponder encased in silicate glass and implanted in the body of a human being...
chips.
Practices
Members forsake all private ownership, handing over all of their earthly possessions to the Jesus Christian community. ("ForsakingAll", from Jesus and Money) The group teaches that all members must have equal say in how funds
are to be used. ("Power--Good or Evil", and "Setting Up Your Own Community") 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.
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.Activities
Over the years the Jesus Christians have been featured in numerousnews 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. ("Excommunicated" Chapt. 5). 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. ("The Walk of Faith", 1984)
They have made headlines for such things as burning money, painting miles of religious / philosophical graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
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'.
Controversy
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 them, 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. ("Boy found safe..." Guardian, 28 July 2000)
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. Upon his release it was learned that the member had contracted tuberculosis while in prison. He and his wife and child left Kenya shortly after his release and they have not returned since. ("Persecution in Kenya", Pine Rivers World News, 3 September 2005)
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. An amateur video was made of the attack, but the police never prosecuted the case. 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 summarize what they were doing. ("The Trial")
In July 2009 Civil action was taken against the family members involved in the attack, the outcome of which is still pending and a restraining order has also been taken out against them.
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.
On December 11 2007, Dave and Cherry McKay were interviewed on stage as part of a two day feature on religious cults on the UK television programme The Jeremy Kyle Show
The Jeremy Kyle Show
The Jeremy Kyle Show is an award-winning British daytime television tabloid talk show presented by Jeremy Kyle that has been broadcast on ITV since 4 July 2005. The show is recorded and produced by Granada Television at the Granada Studios on Quay Street in Manchester city centre and broadcast each...
. The show attempted to link the Jesus Christians with such groups as Jim Jones
Jim Jones
James Warren "Jim" Jones was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip.Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in...
' People's Temple, and the Children of God
Children of God
The Family International , formed as as the Children of God and later named Family of Love and the Family, is a new religious movement, started in 1968 in Huntington Beach, California, United States. It began in the late 1960s, with many of its early converts drawn from the hippie movement...
sex cult. Dave and Cherry and two other members of the Jesus Christians were questioned by Jeremy Kyle
Jeremy Kyle
Jeremy Kyle is an English radio and television presenter, best known for his British daytime television chat show on ITV, The Jeremy Kyle Show. Kyle is also the host of an American talk show of the same name that premiered on 19 September 2011.-Radio career:From 1986 to 1995, Kyle worked as a...
and several opponents of the Jesus Christians. At one point, as a form of protest, members refused to reply to any more questions and McKay walked out of the interview. In spite of the seemingly negative report by Jeremy Kyle, the Jesus Christians have reported an increased number of sympathetic inquiries.
In February 2008, a Jesus Christian family was featured on the Channel 4 program Wife Swap
Wife Swap
Wife Swap is a reality television program, originally produced by UK independent television production company RDF Media and created by Stephen Lambert. It was first broadcast in 2003 on the UK's Channel 4. Since 2004, a US version has also been broadcast on the ABC network...
where the freegan wife of the Jesus-Christian family went to live with the millionaire family of an IT consultant.
In June 2008, The ABC in Australia aired a report on one young Jesus Christian's fight for his right to donate a kidney to a stranger. The documentary covers the attempts of the parents to thwart the young man's intentions and his final success.
Publications
Members of the Jesus Christians have, for many years, distributedreligious literature, much of it written by Dave McKay. In recent years they have primarily distributed copies of novels written by McKay, the main one being Survivors (ISBN 9966-755-00-4), 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.
Survivors
Survivors (novel)
Survivors is one of several books by Dave McKay, though written under the pseudonym Zion Ben-Jonah.Distributors are found mainly on busy high streets in city centres. A donation is asked for to pay towards the printing and binding costs, otherwise, the book is free of charge...
is a response to the popular Left Behind series
Left Behind (series)
Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological viewpoint of the end of the world. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation...
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 "equel" (sic) to Survivors
Survivors (novel)
Survivors is one of several books by Dave McKay, though written under the pseudonym Zion Ben-Jonah.Distributors are found mainly on busy high streets in city centres. A donation is asked for to pay towards the printing and binding costs, otherwise, the book is free of charge...
, taking place during the same time period, though from another viewpoint. A third book, also set during the same time period as the first two, is entitled "Destroyers". It is available on the JC website, and was released in paperback form around Christmas, 2008. The story for that mostly takes place in Kenya and is told through the perspective of someone who takes the mark of the beast.
As of 2009, the Jesus Christians had produced several videos, including a documentary expounding on various aspects of their lifestyle. They have produced several music videos. Their latest two videos include a documentary about the implementation of RFID microchip implants (see The Tyrant Within)and a video about the justice system, it's effect on society, and a radical Christian approach to mixing justice with mercy (see Beyond Justice)
Books by David McKay
- Bin Raiders copyright 2000.
- Armageddon for Beginners, copyright 1999 ISBN 9966-755-14-4.
- Survivors, copyright 2002 ISBN 9966-755-00-4.
- Strong Meat, copyright 2003.
- Listening, copyright 2008 ISBN 9966-755-40-3.
- Destroyers, copyright 2008 ISBN 9966-755-42-X.
- More books found here: http://jesus-teachings.com/JC/Library.php
Jesus Christian pamphlets
- 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.
External links
- Jesus Christians Videos
- Jesus Christians Music
- 'Body and Soul' "Australian StoryAustralian StoryAustralian Story is a national weekly documentary series, produced and broadcast on ABC Television.Since 1996 Australian Story has featured many Australians from diverse backgrounds and reputations...
", ABC TVABC TelevisionABC Television is a service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched in 1956. As a public broadcasting broadcaster, the ABC provides four non-commercial channels within Australia, and a partially advertising-funded satellite channel overseas....
, aired June 2 2008 Television program on the group, and the decision of one member to donate his kidney. - 'Kidney cult' man's donation refused. CanWest News ServiceCanWest News ServicePostmedia News is a national news agency with correspondents in Canada, Europe, and the United States and is part of the Canadian newspaper chain owned by Postmedia Network Inc.-History:...
. June 05 2007. - Australia might OK kidney transplant barred in Canada. CanWest News ServiceCanWest News ServicePostmedia News is a national news agency with correspondents in Canada, Europe, and the United States and is part of the Canadian newspaper chain owned by Postmedia Network Inc.-History:...
. June 08 2007.