LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY catvincent)

Sara at Orcinus has another excellent post this week, where she looks at a plausible future scenario of Dominionist action post-2008-Democratic-victory (assuming, of course, there is one). It's not a very pretty picture...

An excerpt:

' The widespread public disaffection with the religious right is real and growing. The first-generation leaders are dying off; and they're losing unusual numbers of their hand-picked successors (Ralph Reed, Ted Haggard) in corruption and sex scandals. Unless the Democrats really screw it up (always a possibility), they are going to lose the 2008 election -- and with it, most of their power to work their political will on the rest of us. Past history suggests that the religous right won't return as a political force for another 20-40 years; and that the actual length of that exile will depend almost entirely on how thoroughly we manage to discredit them and their ideas. They're falling all on their own; but once they're down, it'll be up to us to make sure they stay there.

However, being out of politics doesn't mean they'll be completely gone from our midst. Those institutions they've built now constitute an entire separate subculture. They've got their own media, schools, arts, resorts, hospitals, nursing homes, malls, and community gathering places. It's entirely possible to live from cradle to grave without ever having to step outside of this carefully-created Christianist reality sphere. Even if this alternate universe loses it worldly power, it doesn't mean its residents will need to ever step outside that bubble if they don't want to. In some form -- the same, or slightly diminished -- this culture will probably continue to carry on along its own separate path. We should not imagine that just because we no longer see them goofing on the air, they no longer exist. FDR-era liberals made that mistake; we should take pains not to repeat it.

Furthermore, they’ve built shadow organizations within our most powerful national institutions -- most notably, Congress, the military, and the legal system. Losing political power will reduce the resources available to this network, hurt recruitment, and weaken its clout; but we can't afford to assume that the whole thing will just vanish on its own. How much of it remains, again, is up to us -- in this case, how effectively we can root out these religious cabals and disentangle them from our public and private institutions. On this front, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy will last precisely as long as we allow it to.

Also, as noted in the post below, they've already raised several million kids in this cultural hothouse, and carefully indoctrinated them to carry on God's work in spite of Satan's (er, our) efforts. So we need to ask: Where will these kids be in another ten or 20 years? '

The previous post she refers to in the text is the one I posted here. The following article at Orcinus on the right wing and domestic terrorism, which mentions Dominionism as a major player, is here.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jehovahsfitness)

A new documentary claims that Catholic images have subliminal messages that have led to the abuse of children by priests. More here.

Berlin parishioners are trying to save Nazi church as a reminder of how the Christian establishment was so closely linked with the Nazi Party. I think it would serve as a great reminder to not only future generations, but the present ones of the dangers of mixing nationalism with religion, and how it is hurtful to religion.

Finally, Scientology is using it's starpower to convince the Arizona legislature to restrict psychiatric meds.
Which begs the question... Scientology is not a Christian group by any stretch of the imagination, but they are well-known to have a history of coercion and tactics similar to Dominionism. I wonder if we should not also cover the CoS's activities as well. Thoughts?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's an article from Christianity Today about the old evangelicals addressing the new ones.

We mainliners had our day in the sun. Remember Prohibition? It was more than an opportunity for cool gangster outfits and Kevin Costner's best movie. The national banning of alcohol by constitutional amendment was a result of Methodist efforts to "spread Scriptural holiness over the land." Oddly familiar, isn't it? Groups like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, led by the great Methodist social prophet Frances Willard, prayed, raised money, and badgered politicians to get their way. The Temperance Union was the forerunner of the cute old ladies of the United Methodist Women (UMW) who, in a church I pastored, often gathered to bake and gossip and pray.

We did then what you do now: We imposed our way on a divided populace by sheer force of electoral muscle and religious rhetoric. Our effort to take America for Christ is now a peculiar cultural artifact, a curiosity gathering dust on the shelf of early 20th-century history. We built triumphant monuments to our importance. At the Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., a prime, front-pew seat features a plaque marking where the President of the United States should sit when he attends—not unlike churches in Constantinople that once featured imperial boxes for the emperor to ride his chariot into without having to dismount. But Caesar's seat goes empty these days, even with a Methodist President.

This is not to denigrate monuments from a more triumphant age of mainline Protestantism—many such places still do fine ministry. But church influence on politics is fickle. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's," our Lord says. The last people in the world who want to be caught dead pledging allegiance to the wrong Lord ought to be evangelicals.

The whole article is excellent. And here is an interesting reply to that article, by another Christian writer.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY bluemoontide)

I stole this article from nonfluffypagans because I thought it might create an interesting discussion on this list about how the rise in Dominionism (which of course is patriarchal in nature) will influence population and global power issues in the United States. Enjoy! (or freak out, whatever)

( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jehovahsfitness)

The other night I watched the movie Kinsey about Dr. Alfred Kinsey whose ground-breaking studies on human sexuality rubbed many of his era the wrong way. Qucikly, I found it easy to relate to.

( spoilers )
We have a challange that did not face Kinsey in his time. Just as with the "intelligent" design issue, certain individuals are trying to use pseudo-science to promote a religious agenda. Repeated experiments have shown time and again that homosexuality, masturbation and other sex-related phenomena considered immoral by some occur in nature. Kinsey notes how homosexuality is anything but unnatural, as many believed and continue to believe.

Rather than own up to the fact that they have been fallen prey to a bigoted mindset, many continue to assert that homosexuality is, dispite the consensus of maintream scientists, unnatural and unhealthy. The likes of Dr. James Dobson ignore scientific evidence that would refute their claims, essentiallty rejecting science. As with "intelligent desgin" we have another religious philosophy which has put on the disguise of science. The challenge these days is that those on the religious right have realized that blatant religion cannot win out against science in our modern society, so they have taken to underhanded tactics.

We cannot allow our society to revert to the days when natural sexuality was denigrated to the point that it has caused psychological harm. My question for you, is how can we do it? By what means will love really win out?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dabroots)

I posted this very old poem by Carl Sandburg in this community, yesterday, but later noticed that it had been deleted by sunfell's co-mod with the e-mailed note, "Not Appropriate." Okay . . . well, here you go, again, with sunfell's blessing. Bear in mind that my reason for posting this poem is not to "attack" our current President but instead to point out that GWB is not the first U.S. President who has wrapped himself in the Shroud of Turin to get more votes. The World War One era and the early 1920's are, in a way, more complicated when considering the political puffing of Christ's corpse, in that some figures, such as William Jennings Bryan, had opposed America's entry into the First World War but were also Protestant fundamentalists. As far as copyright issues, this poem was written and originally published in the early 1920's. I might be wrong, but I believe its copyright has lapsed.

God's Children

I hear Billy Sunday
And the Kaiser and Czar
Talking about God
Like God was some pal of theirs,
Like the rest of us was in the cold outside,
Like they had been drinking beer with God,
Like as though they know whether God
Calls for a short beer or a gin fizz
Or whether God sleeps in a Y.M.C.A. dormitory
And never goes near a booze bazaar.

When I listen to Billy Sunday
Holler out loud
How God "hates a quitter,"
How God "hates a mutt,"
I can't help it---I feel just like God was some cheap dirty thing
born from a fiddler's bitch and kicked from one back door
to another.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY another93)

Thy Kingdom Come
Posted on Thursday, February 16, 2006. From America’s Providential History, by Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, published by the Providence Foundation. The authors hold courses and seminars based on the book that were attended by more than 25,000 people in 2004. Originally from Harper's Magazine, February 2005.
Sources ( read more )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

In the brouhaha over "Intelligent Design, one thing is over looked: the difference in the way Man (Adam) is created... In hebrew, the Earth is called "Adamah", and Man, "Adam". Man being created from the very Earth itself. essentially, then "ID-ers" are calling everyone what racists have long referred to African-Americans, namely "mud people".... In the Sumerian Creation, Man is the creation of the gods Enki and Mami and the sacrifice of a rebel god

The Sumerian Creation

( When in the Heights... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY britzkrieg)

A time traveler from the civil rights era would have been flabbergasted at Justice Sunday III last night. The third annual rally to proclaim God's support for Bush's judicial nominees, sponsored by the Family Research Council, was held at Greater Exodus Baptist Church, an African-American congregation in downtown Philadelphia. The nationally televised event roared with full-throated gospel and foot-stomping enthusiasm. Martin Luther King Jr. was invoked over and over -- his niece, Alveda King, a frequent presence at religious right confabs, summoned the memory of Rosa Parks and sang a yearning version of "We Shall Overcome."

...

The entire evening had a surreal, upside-down quality, as if history had been caught in a whirlpool and come back all jumbled. Appearing via video, David Barton, a theocratic revisionist historian, invoked the words of Thomas Jefferson to argue that the founders intended for religion and government to be intertwined. ("I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just," he quoted, not bothering to mention that Jefferson was talking about the sin of slavery, not secularism.) A cast of white conservatives, several with past links to racist groups, presented themselves as heirs to the preachers who led the fight against segregation. The moral authority of the black church was invoked against the judges who have most fervently defended civil rights.

Full Article

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's a very interesting Fresh Air show featuring scholar Bart Ehrman who talks about how the Bible has been edited and changed through the ages.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

Wish them a "Happy Feast of the Circumcision this January 1st. That's right, folks, just count 8 days from Dec 25, and you get Jan 1. In Judaism, the 8th day after birth is the day infant boys are circumcised as a sign of the Covenant between God and Jew (one can also argue it as a form of menstral envy, but I digress...). Send them cards....

for your edification, Feast Days. This article goes on:

The circumcision took place, not in the Temple, though painters sometimes so represent it, but in some private house, where the Holy Family had found a rather late hospitality. The public ceremony in the synagogue, which is now the usage, was introduced later. Christmas was celebrated on 25 December, even in the ertrly centuries, at least by the Western Church, whence the date was soon adopted in the East also. (See CHRISTMAS). Saint Chrysostom credits the West with the tradition, and St. Augustine speaks of it as well and long estabblished. Consequently the Circumcision fell on the first of January. In the ages of paganism, however, the solemnization of the feast was almost impossible, on account of the orgies connected with the Saturnalian festivities, which were celebrated at the same time. Even in our own day the secular features of the opening of the New Year interfere with the religious observance of the Circumcision, and tend to make a mere holiday of that which should have the sacred character of a Holy Day.

( give us bar Abba )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

"It happens sometimes that princes enter into mutual agreements and carry on a war on trumpted-up grounds so as to reduce still more the power of the people and secure their own positions through disaster to their subjects. Wherefore the good Christian prince should hold under suspicion every war, no matter how just." ~Erasmus, "The Education of a Christian Prince"

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY navytron89)

I recently read an article from guerillanews and am passing it along as well. As a few thoughts which I asked myself while reading about fascism and how it compares to dominionism.

Are Fascism and Dominionism really the same animal, just one has a religious justification/backing to its madness?

Additionally I also am posting from the Council for Secularism and an article about how Hitler was not an Atheist as many Religious Reich members tell their flock of sheeple.

The statement; " That America will see Fascism, yet it will be called anti-facism". Well, I've seen the fascism and its many forms including Dominionism and other religious cults that are out there.  

( Fascism... )

This time, the head of the Reform Judaism movement in the US (the most liberal of the three Jewish denominations) has sent a stinging rebuke to dominionist groups in the US:

(from http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/647755.html)

The approach of American "religious right" leaders toward gays is akin to the anti-gay policies promoted by Adolf Hitler, according to the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie.

Yoffie made the comments Saturday, during the movement's national biennial conference in Houston.

"We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations," Yoffie said. "Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage but there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."

(Yes, he actually stood up and said before one of the largest Jewish groups in the US what hatecrime.org and other groups have said for some time)

Yoffie proceeded to state that the behaviour of dominionist groups is "blasphemous":

(from http://www.forward.com/articles/6927)

"When people talk about God and yet ignore justice, it just feels downright wrong to us," Yoffie said. "When they cloak themselves in
religion and forget mercy, it strikes us as blasphemy."

This could well be the beginning of the two largest congregations in the Jewish community rising up against dominionism, including dominionist-apologists within Judaism itself, according to some observers:

Several Jewish communal insiders based in Washington told the Forward that the Reform union's decision to oppose Alito could prompt several other major Jewish organizations to take a similar stance, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and Hadassah, a women's
Zionist organization that, with 300,000 members, is the largest non-synagogue membership association.

"Does it influence us? Yeah," said Shelley Klein, Hadassah's director of advocacy. But Klein said the organization would withhold judgment until Alito fills out his Senate questionnaire and testifies before the Judiciary Committee.

Like the Reform movement, Hadassah did not oppose John Roberts. The United Synagogue, the congregational arm of Conservative Judaism, endorsed Roberts as "qualified."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Susan Jacoby's Mother Jones article is a real study of history and what happens if you ignore it. I highly recommend it. But it was the last paragraph that really got my attention:

Handed a tabula rasa by a public uneducated in civics, right-wing revisionists are free to ignore not only the strong anticlerical views of so many of the nation's first leaders but also their loathing of all entanglements between religion and government. "Oh! Lord!" Adams complained in 1817 to his old friend and rival Jefferson. "Do you think that a Protestant Popedom is annihilated in America? Do you recollect, or have you ever attended to the ecclesiastical Strifes in Maryland, Pensilvania, New York, and every part of New England? What a mercy it is that these People cannot whip and crop, and pillory and roast, as yet in the U.S.! If they could they would." [emphasis mine -ed]

If they could they would. Wherever and whenever they could, they did—and that is why the revolutionary generation bequeathed the unique gift of a secular Constitution to future Americans. Here is the real history lesson, straight from the pens of the founders, that ought to be taught—and is too often ignored—in every American public school.

If you read the words of the hard core center of the Dominionist movement, you will see their almost gleeful desire to restore "Gods Law" to the land- basically following and enforcing the worst of the 613 laws of the Old Testement. They will kill homosexuals, adulterors (especially women) children who are 'willful', and pretty much anyone they perceive as an 'enemy of God's law'. They are already practicing on their own children, are raising up a generation who will think nothing of whipping and punishing their fellow humans in the name of God.

It's really ironic that nearly 300 years ago, people left Europe to escape that (or establish their own mini-cults) and deliberately created a Constitution that walled that kind of cruelty and legalistic interpretation of the Bible out of our laws. Now, people are chipping away at that wall- bulldozing it, even, and are champing at the bit to reinstate the 'whip and crop, and pillory and roast' as the law here. This isn't a 'might' kind of objective for the Dominionists, it's a 'will'- if they take over entirely.

If you get a chance, read Susan's book, "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism". It's an eye-opening history lesson.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Shaking the Foundation of Faith
By SCOTT M. LIELL

Madison, Conn.

AN event that occurred 250 years ago today stands as a singular reminder that the war between faith and science in America did not start in Dover, Pa., where several school board members who promoted the teaching of intelligent design were voted out of office last week, or even in that Tennessee courthouse in 1925 where John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution. It has been a recurring theme in our history since the very seedtime of the republic.

In the early hours of Nov. 18, 1755, the most destructive earthquake ever recorded in the eastern United States struck at Cape Ann, about 30 miles north of Boston. "It continued near four minutes," wrote John Adams, then a recent Harvard graduate staying at his family home in Braintree, Mass. "The house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins about us."( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

This day in history:

( MASS SUICIDE IN JONESTOWN: November 18, 1978 )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thornewilder)

In the continuing research into potentially dominionist groups...The restoration movement (Stone Campbell) pops into view.

Neophyte Question of the Day:
In reading about this group, specifically in association to the Church of Christ, which I have heard has strong dominionist leanings, I wonder how does this fit - or does it - into the continuum that includes AoG and pente?
Also I have seen a distinction between pente and penta - costal in relation to the trinity. Was this a dream? (lately I've been having horrific dreams)

From Wikipedia:

Original Doctrinal beliefs of Stone-Campbell Movement

"Christianity should not be divided, Christ intended the creation of one church.
Creeds divide, but Christians should be able to find agreement by standing on the Bible itself (from which all creeds are human expansions or constrictions) instead of on the opinions of men about the Bible.
Ecclesiastical traditions divide, but Christians should be able to find common ground by following the practice (as best as it can be determined) of the early church.
Names of human origin divide, but Christians should be able to find common ground by using biblical names for the church (i.e., "Christian Church" or "Church of Christ" as opposed to "Methodist" or "Lutheran", etc.). It is in this vein that conservative members of the Churches of Christ object to the phrase "Stone-Campbell Movement"..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Restoration_Movement
then it moves on to the bell and whistle section

"Another schism which ultimately split the Churches of Christ again, was the Crossroads Movement which started in the 1960s and 1970s. The Crossroads Movement initially started as a somewhat radical, although largely accepted, movement within some institutional churches. Under the Crossroads Movement, each church was divided into "Prayer Cells". Each Cell had a "Prayer Brother" who was assigned newer members in the church. Within each prayer cell the members would confess their sins, in "Soul Talks", and offer support. Each cell's brother would then form Prayer Cells with other Prayer Brothers in a pyramid organization. The Crossroads Movement started at the 14th Street Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida, which became known as "Crossroads Church of Christ", an incubator for the future International Churches of Christ. The Crossroads Movement spread across Churches of Christ as a means to revitalize smaller churches and evangelize college campuses. This movement appears to be directly related to the Shepherding Movement that was gaining influence in the wider Evangelical world at the time..."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dulcinbradbury)

Often, dominionists/the religious right refer to how our country was founded on the principles of Christianity.

I decided to take a look at some quotes of Thomas Jefferson:

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God."

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

Would that there were more who would adhere to such views.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thornewilder)

I was just perusing Wikipedia. (I am unable to leave the FGBMFI group because of its wealth and power, and clearly stealth theocratic ambitions) and went to the latter rain movement founder William Branham. He ends up being considered an important influence in the FGBMFI group. But I noticed the Branham prophecies and thought they were interesting:

1. "Franklin D. Roosevelt will run four terms and take America into a second world war.
2. "The dictator that's now arising in Italy will come into power, Ethiopia will fall. He'll come to a shameful end.
3. "The women has been permitted to vote. And in voting, someday they'll elect the wrong man.
4. "Our war will be with Germany, and they will build a great big concrete place and fortify themselves in there, and the Americans will take a horrible beating.
5. "Science will progress in such a way until they will make a car that will not have to be guided by a steering wheel, and the cars will continue to be shaped like an egg until the consummation
6. "I saw a great woman stand up, beautiful looking, dressed in real highly royals like purple, and I got little parenthesis down here, 'She was a great ruler in the United States, perhaps the Catholic church'
7. "I saw this United States burning like a smolder; rocks had been blowed up. And it was burning like a--a heap of fire in logs or something that just set it afire; and looked as far as I could see and she'd been blown up.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Branham

What I find fascinating is #6 in relation to the Supreme Court. I have been trying to figure why - given the open and bigoted anti-catholic statements made by the RR-

Romanism is a pagan counterfeit of the Christian religion, ancient paganism and idolatry, claiming to be the church which Christ founded…The Roman Church is not another Chirsitian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit…”
Bob Jones Jr., referring to the Catholic Church, FAITH for the Family, 1991, Bob Jones University

-the RR is rabidly pro-Alito.

Does anyone have more info on this? Or is this flaky. ;-0

Also did Branham have any known associations with racist groups?