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Rapture Ready?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY [info]sunfell)

Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle talks about The Rapture.

Let us consider the Rapture Index. This is a real thing prepared by serious people. If it makes you laugh, you have not gotten the memo. You probably have not read any of the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series, the best-selling books in America today.

Those Left Behind are those who did not experience the Rapture, which is an instant in time when all the truly holy people are taken directly to heaven, leaving their clothes in small neat piles behind them. The rest of the ungodly losers are left to deal with natural disasters and wars and the armies of the Antichrist, after which they die in various colorful ways while the ranks of the saved watch with compassion tempered with an understandable sense of satisfaction.

The Rapture Index, as of this writing, stands at 153. Anything over 145 is labeled by the Rapture Actuaries as "Fasten your seat belts." In other words: Repent for the End Is Near. You may see all this for yourself at RaptureReady.com, should you think I'm making it up.

The Rapture Index is based on 45 prophetic categories, things like drought, plague, floods, liberalism, beast government and mark of the beast. "Beast government" is apparently the European Union; the news that the EU is looking for a new president is seen as a sign that the end time is drawing nearer. The latest "mark of the beast" is a plan by the Antichrist that will result in said mark being implanted in the right hand or forehead of unbelievers. The relatively high number of this indicator is explained thusly: "Wal-Mart is falling behind in its plan to bar code all products with radio tags." There are some parts of this belief system I have not yet grasped.Read more... )

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Deep background on the Dominionist movement

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY [info]sunfell)

This article from Insider Magazine goes into great depth and detail about the roots and shoots of today's Dominionist movement and how it is tangled in with the US Government.

It's a long read, but worth your time.

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Sith Lords of the Ultra Right

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY [info]sunfell)

This Daily Kos article talks about the Dominionist movement and its penchant for secrecy:

"We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure in this country." Paul Weyrich

Lots of detail, and some very interesting comments too. Here's a sample, where they talk about the very secretive "Council of National Policy":

In the summer of 1981, Woody Jenkins, a former Louisiana state lawmaker who served as the group's first executive director, told Newsweek bluntly, "One day before the end of this century, the Council will be so influential that no president, regardless of party or philosophy, will be able to ignore us or our concerns or shut us out of the highest levels of government."

From the beginning, the CNP sought to merge two strains of far-right thought: the theocratic Religious Right with the low-tax, anti-government wing of the GOP. The theory was that the Religious Right would provide the grassroots activism and the muscle. The other faction would put up the money.

The CNP has always reflected this two-barreled approach. The group's first president was LaHaye, then president of Family Life Seminars in El Cajon Calif. LaHaye, a fundamentalist Baptist preacher who went on in the 1990s to launch the popular "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic potboilers, was an early anti-gay crusader and frequent basher of public education and he still is today.

* * *

Bringing together the two strains of the far right gave the CNP enormous leverage. The group, for example, could pick a candidate for public office and ply him or her with individual donations and PAC money from its well-endowed, business wing.

The goals of the CNP, then, are similarly two-pronged. Activists like Norquist, who once said he wanted to shrink the federal government to a size where it could be drowned in a bathtub, are drawn to the group for its exaltation of unfettered capitalism, hostility toward social-service spending and low (or no) tax ideology.

Dramatically scaling back the size of the federal government and abolishing the last remnants of the New Deal may be one goal of the CNP, but many of the foot soldiers of the Religious Right sign on for a different crusade: a desire to remake America in a Christian fundamentalist image.

Since 1981, CNP members have worked assiduously to pack government bodies with ultra-conservative lawmakers who agree that the nation needs a major shift to the right economically and socially. They rail against popular culture and progressive lawmakers, calling them the culprits of the nation's moral decay. Laws must be passed and enforced, the group argues, that will bring organized prayer back to the public schools, outlaw abortion, prevent gays from achieving full civil rights and fund private religious schools with tax funds.


Yep- they want "moral renewal"- whatever the heck that is. Will we be seeing 'morality police' on the street corners like in Iran?

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