LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY 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.

I certainly think it's worth more research, but quitefrankly, I hesitate to base my entire decision about a major Christianbookseller and a variety of organizations on one thread by someone on a LJ. There is some information in the post I find inaccurate (forexample, that NIV is directly tied to Dominionism- I have about sixversions that I use and NIV is not much different in most cases thanany other version- yes, it's less accurate but part of that is makingit easier to read). In any case, it makes sense that a children's book would use NIV. Most children's Bibles are also NIV or the Living Bible, because they have the lowest reading level. I think it's probably just the practical choice to allow for easier readability. Most adults Iknow from all denominations (including liberal ones) use NIV for the readability and that it is more poetic than NAS. My personal preference is not NIV, but when I've compared many sections side-by-side, I haven't noticed many passages that have a substantially differentmessage than other versions. Oddly enough, most evangelical andconservative Christians I know prefer KJV, but I guess that isn't thesame group as Dominionism?

Personally, I don't agree with a lot of the advice on the LOF site, but I don't find much of it abusive. I think there is a lot of over-analysis on the part of the LJ site. Fo rexample, the poster of the thread says that the advice to a girl that talks about hearing from "two natures" within her is bad because she might be schizophrenic. It's a stretch to think that's what is going on by her post, especially given the common metaphor of "two natures" or"two voices" in a wide variety of Christian denominations (both liberal and conservative). I guess my bottom line is that I have a lot o ffriends who would say it's good advice, and they aren't Dominionists or wackos or cult members, and their kids are doing fine. (And no, theirkids aren't removed from the world- most go to public school. Iactually know more liberal profs who home-school than Christians- andit has to do with quality of education for those that I know who home-school.)

Also, I disagree that the LOF books are problematic. While I wouldn't have kids read them without parental guidance and review, they're not bad literature and they do bring up alot of important issues, whether you agree with how they're handled or not. I don't know about the original Elsie books, but the modern one that I've read didn't have any erotic relationship between her and he rfather. And they weren't racist at all. In fact, they made the horrors of slavery FAR more clear than the AG books and all the main characters were champions for equality and love of all people. So not sure why people think LOF is racist. Yes, they have one African-American doll out of five dolls. Look at AG and you'll find similar statistics. LOFis just a small company and probably struggles far more to make aprofit than a big doll manufacturer like AG.

I agree that Dominionism sounds like a problematic movement within Christianity, but I don't agree with the identification of much of the LOF stuff that ismuch more broadly supported by a variety of Christian denominations and groups with *specifically* Dominionism. That is, if I continue to delve, I may find that LOF supports some Dominionist groups (will have to see what that really means and how it is distinguisable from you rmainstream run-of-the-mill evangelical/conservative folks), but I haven't found much on LOF's site yet that is shockingly different from your Calvary Chapel, Baptist, and Evangelical ideology.

Apologies for any run-together words. For some reason, my copy+pasting always does that and I don't always catch every one.

Now, she brings up the "two natures" thing, which was a girl asking about how she had two voices that spoke to her whenever she did things and I can see how maybe it was more like her conscience than actual schizophrenia, but that doesn't really answer to the facts that a lot of actual, 100% real mental conditions go ignored because these families don't believe in modern medicine, or they attribute it to God, or whatever their reasons may be.


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.