LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Hello, all- it's your friendly community founder stepping in for a bit of housekeeping. First of all, I want to welcome all the newcomers who have joined this community in the last few months. I am still astonished at the climb in numbers.

I am not sure if any of you have checked the 'user info' (AKA the Front Door) of this community, so I figured it might be time to post some notes from it here. We do have some posting rules- nothing really difficult, but it helps keep the board running smoothly.

What we're about:

Dark Christianity is a place for the exploration and discussion of the right-wing theocratic elements of the Christian faith, and how these elements are actively eroding the foundations of the seperation of church and state in the US. Its major focus is on Dominionist Theocracy, (also known as Christian Reconstructionalism). This is not a flame or bash board- it is meant to explore, inform, and educate people about this often stealthy and deceptive fringe of the Christian faith. All religions have their 'dark' side, their extremists and 'talibans'. For Dominionists, the focus is on the so-called "End Times" as well as the overt attempt to recreate the mythical Christian America. This site is a place to examine these particular elements of the Christian faith, and understand the growing and very real threat that their rise to power poses to not only Christianity as a whole, but also to the US and the rest of the world.

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar" --1 John 4:20 (NIV)

Posting Rules

If you are a newcomer to Dark Christianity, welcome. Feel free to dig through the archives to get a 'feel' for what this community is all about.

Please Do: Post on topics of interest.

This is a participatory community. If you find something of interest that concerns the subjects we discuss, please post about it. Make sure that you cite the sources of your information, and if you quote an article, please put it behind a cut. We welcome material for discussions from articles, blogs, magazines, books, movies, etc. Please be sure to put a link to the original page in your post so we can check it out.

Reviews of books relevant to our topic are welcome- if you run into a book that is of interest, whether it's a Dominionist book or a book critical to the movement, let us know about it. We would like to build up a 'library' of recommended books for our readers using the 'memories' feature.

We do use the Tag and Memories feature here- from time to time, the owner will go through it and fine tune it.

Please make sure that you read previous posts so that items are not duplicated. This does not prohibit the revisiting of articles- if you find an angle or a recap or essay that might be of interest on a subject already talked about, please post about it. But do go and read back a few posts- just to make sure.

Articles and essays about efforts to counteract the Dominionist takeover, including positive articles about moderate and progressive churches who are standing up to their onslaught are welcome, as are any articles that have a breath of fresh air.

Please use LJ Cuts for longer articles. (The link contains info on LJ-specific HTML code.) Our friends will appreciate your courtesy. If you post images, keep them small, please.

Please Don't: Become a troublemaker.

We respectfully request that you refrain from posting quizzes, flames, bashes, 'spams' for other Christian communities or any religious material which does not fit the simple guidelines above. Such entries will be deleted. This includes "Bush bashing" entries. This community does visit the political side of the church-state debate, so mentioning Bush and his policies is almost unavoidable.

It is OK to criticize the President's (or anyone elses, for that matter) policies, judgement, ideas, etc. if you do so in a civilized and respectful manner. Do not attack the PERSON themselves. Bash away on your own blogs, please.

Please avoid posting speculative or fearmongering articles- what the Dominionists are already doing is bad enough without adding fuel (and foilhattery) to the fire. (The moderators have the ability to do research, and will do so, to determine if an article falls into this category.) Again, save stuff like that for your own blogs.

There are people on this board from many diverse faiths. Please treat them with courtesy and respect.

Thanks again, and enjoy the ride.