LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY britzkrieg)

The Atlanta edition of the free weekly Creative Loafing contains a cornucopia of satire concerning the doctrine of the Rapture:

The Rapture, A Special Report: Your fun-packed guide to the end of time. Who goes, who stays, what to wear.

Rapturous Politics: There's a reason the right rejoices at a heresy
What to Wear?
How Can I Leave This Behind? Reading LaHaye's blockbusters about the Rapture
Learn more!

The first article also concisely explains the (fairly recent) origin of the Rapture idea.

Enjoy.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

I found a bunch of interesting websites when I googled "Religious Walkaways", but was unable for some reason to post links to them. One in particular was worth a second try, since it concentrated on Dominionist oriented cults.

Blessed Quietness has a lot of interesting links to articles about cults. And ReGain has a great article about post-cult recovery. [EDIT: Yes, the Blessed Quietness site is run a couple of looney tunes, but they do have some interesting links.]

Here's a quote from ReGain, which is very true: "...the most helpful tool for recovering ex-cult members is learning what mind control is and how it was used by their specific cult. Understanding that there are residual effects from a mind control environment and that these effects are often transitory in nature helps diffuse the anxiety."

David Sutphen's classic The Battle For Your Mind is a very interesting dissection of techniques used in certain churches and cults to 'entrain' people into pretty much doing what the leaders want them to do. These techniques are very powerful, and in the wrong hands, quite devastating. It's worth a read. The 'voice roll', for instance is a tool that many preachers use, to get people into a particlarly receptive state of mind.

And this article entitled "How To Detect Mind Control" is also interesting and useful.

Pursuasive techniques are used on people all the time- from churches to ads to the way things are arranged on your grocery store shelves. The key is to recognize these things, and to conquer them through knowledge and self-understanding. That is the path to genuine healing.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's AlterNet's look at yesterday's "Justice Sunday"...

At the beginning of the event, Family Research Council President and event organizer Tony Perkins stated, "We are not saying that people who disagree with us are not people of faith." However, the flier promoting the event read, "The Filibuster against People of Faith: The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith." This was not the only attempt to rewrite history during the telecast. In denouncing the filibuster, Frist claimed, "I don't think it's radical to ask senators to vote.... I don't think it's radical to restore precedents that worked so well for 214 years." In 2000, Frist was among a group of conservatives who voted to filibuster an appeals court judge nominated by then-President Clinton, because he had already decided Judge Richard Paez was "out of the mainstream of political thought and ... should [not] be on the court."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Tom Paine talks about the Right's 'siege mentality'.

To hear them tell it, conservatives are always the underdog, besieged and kept down by those with the real power. The act of hanging an American flag on their porch could bring a Molotov cocktail thrown through their front window by roving gangs of thought police; a cross worn on a necklace sure to bring arrest; the ordering of a Budweiser greeted with withering contempt from the microbrew cognoscenti. The triumph of liberal totalitarianism, with the abolishment of the family and religion and free speech that all honest people hold dear, is forever around the next corner, at the bottom of a slippery slope down which we find ourselves eternally tumbling. Like end-timers assuring us that though they were wrong last year and the year before, this New Year’s Eve will surely bring Armageddon—they are slowed not a bit by being proved wrong again and again—the coming American Sodom always a result of next year’s wedge issue.

Look at some of the titles offered by Regnery, the right’s premier publishing house: Invasion Within: Overcoming the Elitists' Attack on Moral Values and the American Way; Epidemic: How Teen Sex is Killing Our Kids; Mugged by the State: Outrageous Government Assaults on Ordinary People and Their Property; Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges Are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage; Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity; Power Grab: How the National Education Association is Betraying Our Children; Reckless Disregard: How Liberal Democrats Undercut Our Military, Endanger Our Soldiers, and Jeopardize Our Security .

The message of each is the same: Sinister, powerful liberals are attacking you, your children and everything you believe in. While good Americans lie slumbering in their complacency, the mighty liberals continue their assault, and if we don’t wake up soon it’ll be too late, as our nation tumbles into a moral abyss and the streets run red with the blood of innocents. The end is near.