LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
keristars)
Over on a doll-collecting board, I brought up the Dominionist ties that the Life of Faith company has as an attempt to let people know how nasty it can be if they don't want their money going to such groups. Most of the responses I've had are very much "wow, I never knew - thanks for the info" or "I knew groups like that existed, but not how bad they could be, thanks for letting me know about the LoF links" -- and nearly everyone has found the recent post here by dogemperor to be very helpful.
However, of course there's someone who is insisting that, despite being against harmful religions/beliefs and being only vaguely Christian herself, the evidence for LoF's ties is biased and "besides, don't all evangelical Christians believe things similar to that?" (The quote: I will say, however, that the actual content on the LOFwebsite is not much different from what is preached in mostconservative Christian churches (not just Dominionist), even themega-churches that are non-denominational. - these megachurches are always Assemblies, SBC, or other similar groups, though, aren't they?)
One of the points brought up is that "plenty of non-Dominionist groups believe in the Rapture and that it's really happening soon, like in Left Behind" (that's a paraphrase, btw). She mentioned Calvary Chapel as being one such group. Now, I know that folks who believe in PMD are actually a subset of Dominionists, but I was under the impression that you don't find them outside those groups. Am I reading the articles and RelTol.org information wrongly? Also, I believe that even if other groups believe in that shit, it's still not very healthy. Please tell me I'm right in saying that! I've been reading Fred's articles at slacktivist on Left Behind, and I'm almost caught up to the current ones, but nothing about it seems like it could be a very healthy way to go about life.
...Actually, I'm going through her response to me and trying to pick out the bits that were the most questionable, and it's probably easier to copy the entire thing here and see what y'all can enlighten me on. I don't think she's going to hear anything other than what she wants to believe, because she has amassed a HUGE LoF doll collection, and spent loads of money on them, but I'd like to know for myself.
( Read more... )
But overall, I'm just not entirely sure how to respond to her, to be able to say if "that's definitely a Dominionist/Assemblies/Joel's Army thing" or if it's more of an "combined with everything else, it reads very strongly as such" or even if it's more of a "we're sensitive to these factors because of our own experiences." I guess...is there a good place to start for folks to learn about what Dominionism is? I sort of fell head-first into it and spent weeks following weeks and just reading, but not everyone has that luxury or interest, or maybe they don't have the attention span.
Any help y'all can give me towards understanding and being able to share this information in the future would be lovely. I've found that it's really difficult to explain exactly why some of the beliefs the "dark" groups espouse are so awful, especially to moderate folks.