Dark Christianity
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dogemperor [userpic]
Verichip Update

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

This is flesh-crawlingly creepy. I get these updates in the e-mail from the verichip company regularly.... Get your tinfoil hats ready!

Hi Eric,

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything,
with prayer and supplication, present your
requests to God, and the peace of God, which
transends all understanding, will guard your
heart and mind in Christ Jesus."

That's from a book in the bible called Phililpians.
I wish that everytime I got worried, stressed
or uptight I remembered those verses. Unfortunately
I don't always remember them.
Philiplians is a book in the New Testament. It's
located right after Ephesians and before Galatians.

Philipians is one of my favorite books. It contains
so many uplifting and calming passages.

Chapter 1 verse 6 comes to mind along with Chapter
3 verses 13 thru 15.
Many people are concerned and worried about the
Verichip and how fast it's becoming a part of society.
Many wonder if someday they'll get forced to put a chip
of some sort in their arm, forehead, or hand.
If that's you, know that God promises us that we don't
have to worry. He wants us to trust and reach out to
Him during these times. Keeping scripture in our mind
is one way of doing that.Read more... )

Current Mood: indescribable
dogemperor [userpic]
Business Week Evangelical avalanche!

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

Business Week Magazine has devoted its latest issue to "Evangelical America", with several articles devoted to the subject.

Earthly Empires: How Evangelical Churches are borrowing from the business playbook

Culture Wars Hit Corporate America: Increasingly, business must weigh in on hot social issues -- and suffer interest groups' slings and arrows

A One-Stop Christian Destination: Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Wharton MBA turned pastor, discusses how his vision to build a prayer center turned into something much bigger

Supersizing Salvation: No cross, no hymnals, and a strong appeal to the "unchurched" -- that approach has helped Bill Hybels build one of the country's megacongregations

Meet the Prosperity Preacher

Evangelism gone Entrepreneurial

Church of the Almighty Dollar

Getting Your Religious Terms Right

The Fashion of the Christ

Slide Show about Willow Creek

These are very interesting and engaging articles from a business point of view. It shows how the churches are growing and the money is being made. It's a peek inside, so to speak. It's always good to look at religious establishments and successes from a non-critical and non-stressful point of view. This is what these articles do, and very well.

dogemperor [userpic]
Dominionist sentiment, only $3.50 a pop

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

I stumbled across a disturbing thing via the Slacktivist today.

to save bandwidth, click for the Bushfish )

dogemperor [userpic]
Excuse me, I think it does.

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

Seshen, a Lycian Wicca priestess (seshen) replied to your LiveJournal post
in which you said:


Mr. Mirman: What about
the others? What does Verizon do?
United American Technologies: Okay. Verizon, what they do is they train
their employees to accept the gay and lesbian lifestyle.



Apparently they say MCI runs kiddie porn sites as well. UAT is a phone provider
gaining almost 2,000 subscribers a week based on sales tactics that
promote hate and fear.


Their reply was:

This does not fit the community theme.

Seshen Community Moderator

I respectfully disagree and ask that you do not delete posts outright. Had you read the blog I was linking to, you would have seen that it is about a phone company that is spreading outright lies about other phone companies to get fundementalist customers to sign on all in the name of Homophobia. They are also funneling money into ppolitical campaigns.

From the article:

With 2000 customers reportedly switching to United American Technologies each month, Christian-based lying and phone homophobia is a lucrative business. But they're not just in it for the money. A cut of the proceeds helps fund conservative political campaigns, via a 527 called "Faith Family and Freedom" created by the Republican floor leader of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. — GREG BEATO

If this does not fit the theme here, I am kind of confused as to what does.

dogemperor [userpic]
"Air Jesus"- a look into the world of Christian broadcasting

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

This AlterNet article is very interesting. (This is a repeat of a post below, but a better copy- without the strange typographical errors.)

dogemperor [userpic]
ABC Rejects UCC Ads during "Supernanny"

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

From Max Blumenthal's blog (click for inline links):

1 May, 2005

ABC to Run Focus on the Family Ads During Prime Time , Rejected Ads from United Church of Christ Last Year

During today's season finale of ABC's schlocky reality show, "Supernanny," James Dobson's Focus on the Family will be running ads promoting its "Focus on Your Child" program, which advises parents on how to implement the parenting principles outlined in his best-seller, "Dare to Discipline." These include spanking with "sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely." Children have to be taught respect for authority at an early age, Dobson preaches, or they'll never develop respect for governmental authority or God.

Dobson's theory on corporal punishment reveals the political underside of his self-help work. The ads Focus on the Family will run are seemingly innocuous offerings of assistance to parents who, like the heroic nanny depicted in ABC's show, need techniques for pacifying "strong-willed" children. As Focus's president, Jim Daly said in Focus's newsletter,

"The show was all about Focus on the Family principles. It was boundaries and using the time-out chair, respect for authority and good parenting skills.”Read more... )

dogemperor [userpic]
Parallel Universes

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

This interesting article talks about the Christian broadcast industry- "How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news."

dogemperor [userpic]
Recent vomitrocious sightings

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

Clicky and you'll get to see a pic! )

Current Mood: disgusted
dogemperor [userpic]
Got clothing?

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

A Kansas retailer is selling 'extreme Christian' apparel.

Strongly worded religious apparel is a growing trend, said Catherine Stellin, vice president of The Intelligence Group in Los Angeles, which forecasts trends. She said Devins "is ahead of the curve" with her stores.

Teens and those in their early 20s see consumerism as a way to express convictions, she said.

"There is a little bit of shock value to this because this is a generation that feels very strong in their convictions," Stellin said. "So if they believe in something, they are going to shout it out. Subtlety is not their strong point."

Noting trends typically start on the coasts, Stellin said, "I wouldn't be surprised if it worked its way to the Midwest because the core values of religion are much stronger in the Midwest and South."

Chris Rainey, director of marketing for Kerusso, Inc., of Berryville, Arkansas, said his company's sales of various religious apparel, including T-shirts, increased by 70 percent in the fourth quarter of 2004 over the same period a year before.

"There has been such a rise in spiritual interest across the country, especially the youth looking for ways to express their faith and values," he said. "They are wearing T-shirts both as a fashion statement and a faith statement."

dogemperor [userpic]
God Assault

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

This AlterNet article talks about the tactics of Dominionist churches.

Calvary Chapel-style Christianity is a complex system with intricate rules. Think of it as God's game.

Because certain trees are sprouting in the Middle East, the world will soon end. Because the European Union has grown to its current size, fiery death and plagues of locusts are about to descend on the planet. Because Israel established a homeland, non-believers will, in a short while, suffer agonizing horrors before being damned to an eternity of pain.

And now a word from our sponsor -- a real estate agent helping Christians find their dream homes.

This summer, I joined the rush hour in San Bernardino. Every day, descending the final hill from Los Angeles into the fastest growing region in California, I tuned into Christian radio station K-Wave. The station broadcast lessons on Christ-sanctioned financial planning as well as sermons on faith-rooted marriages. But its mission of missions was to map out, just the way the Weather Channel describes approaching storm fronts, the end of the world now bearing down upon us.

The deep voice of Pastor Chuck Smith filled my car each morning. Founder of Calvary Chapel, a "mega-church" with a publishing company, Bible colleges, and franchises in every state, Pastor Chuck inspired two followers to write the best-selling Left Behind novels about the Apocalypse. Soon obsessed with the station, I started wishing my Democratic friends in L.A. would join me in K-Wave's freeway congregation.

Each evening I returned home to find them wringing their hands over the possibility that a born-again Christian president, who laced his speeches with secret signals to fellow worshippers and considered praying his most important action before starting an unjust war, might be re-elected -- and re-elected by religious nuts so stupid they believed Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie were lovers.

As it happened, those "nuts" won the election for the president. Ill-prepared newscasters promptly relabeled them "moral voters," showing how little they understood about the new religion practiced in Calvary Chapel.

Democrats could, of course, have turned on K-Wave (or its equivalent), but even then they might not have grasped the most basic element of Calvary Chapel: It isn't guided by the outside world's concept of the Christian right's stern and unforgiving morals code.

While Calvary Chapel encourages Christians to enjoy "fellowship" with God, the doctrine it preaches is guided not by any ordinary sense of morality but by a gruesome vision of the end of the world and a set of instructions for how to deal with it.

Listening to that doctrine each morning and evening, I felt the sensations American audiences first discovering Hong Kong action flicks must have known: a fascination with the exotic combined with awe at the extreme violence it displayed. Granted, my perspective is unusual. Unlike most of my Democratic friends, I was raised in a church that practiced New Thought Christianity just up the freeway from Pastor Chuck's compound. It offered a new agey cocktail of faith, drawing heavily from Buddhism, Hinduism, and transcendentalism. Just the type of stuff Calvary Chapel abhors.

My childhood of crystals and sunshine made Calvary Chapel-style evangelism, with its emphasis on conversion and its belief in testifying to God's power, something strange and deeply mysterious. I felt like an anthropologist investigating a new culture as I listened to its broadcasts, and what I found makes me refuse to picture the organization as an army of moral voters.


Read the rest at the site.

dogemperor [userpic]
Smells like... Jesus Christ!

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

Some enterprising Christians have been selling a candle called "His Essence", which is said to smell like Chirist was prophesized to smell like. I was tempted to make a lot of fun of this latest exercise in what I call 'consumer Christianity' until I took a closer look at the components of this scent, and what their real effect on people would be.

The scent, they say, is composed of Myrrh, Aloe, and Cassia. Here are the aromatheraputic and spiritual properties of these scents:

Myrrh: cleansing antibacterial, promotes spiritual growth, resin from a bush- woody, resiny smell.

Aloe (Lign Aloe)is an Asian heartwood, not the common aloe vera plant. The wood aloe is very rare today. It has an incredible scent. (Morining Star's Aloewood is a great example in Japanese incense.)It is used extensively in Japan, China and Tibet in Buddhist and Shinto rites.

Cassia is a member of the cinnamon family. You can tell cassia bark from regular cinnamon because it rolls up like a scroll, rather than like a carpet. Cassia is more commonly used as the spice. The scent also raises spiritual awareness.

So, "His Essence" is already in wide use among folks who seek spiritual growth, enlightenment, peace, and insight. Who knows, maybe it'll do the same for True Believers™, too. One could hope...

dogemperor [userpic]
"Bushianity" versus Christianity

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

"Don't Let the Car Fool You, My Real Treasure is in Heaven": Bushianity Makes a Mockery of Christ

by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

A few days ago I saw a brand new PT Cruiser with a bumper sticker that, at first glance, didn't make sense: "Don't Let the Car Fool You, My Real Treasure Is in Heaven". Several classy-looking Christian symbols adorned the vehicle, along with the ubiquitous "We Support Our Troops and President Bush" and "W" window seals.

As I stared at this odd assortment, the meaning dawned on me. Unlike the old bumper sticker that read, "My Other Car is a Mercedes", this one wasn't an exercise in self-deprecating humor: It was bragging to passersby about the driver's money, which isn't too shabby, since a new PT Cruiser starts at $14,000. Bob Sheer writes about this new culture of greed, cleverly disguised as "Christian":

"So why gut the bankruptcy law now? Greed, pure and simple. And, pathetically, this bankers' dream is becoming a reality through the support of Republicans who have decided, as they often do with social issues, to selectively pick and choose when to follow the teachings of the Bible.

"A key sponsor of the bill, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), actively opposes abortion and same-sex marriage on biblical grounds yet believes the Good Book's clear definition and condemnation of usury is irrelevant. The Old Testament, revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, mandates debt forgiveness after seven years, as was pointed out earlier this month by an organization of Christian lawyers in a letter to Grassley. "I can't listen to Christian lawyers," said the senator, "because I would be imposing the Bible on a diverse population." The Bankruptcy Bill: A Tutorial in Greed, Commondreams, 3/15/05 Read more... )

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