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The Christian Dominionist parallel economy


Hane

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(apologies if this has been posted here already)

 

 

In light of our recent discussions about how fundamentalists (SAHDs in particular, after their headships have passed on) manage to make a living while shunning interactions with "the world," I'm sharing Christian Dominionism's parallel economy.

 

Apparently there's a fairly efficient network which allows Christians of an ultra-conservative stripe to deal directly with each other and avoid the rest of us. Discuss!

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(apologies if this has been posted here already)

In light of our recent discussions about how fundamentalists (SAHDs in particular, after their headships have passed on) manage to make a living while shunning interactions with "the world," I'm sharing Christian Dominionism's parallel economy.

Apparently there's a fairly efficient network which allows Christians of an ultra-conservative stripe to deal directly with each other and avoid the rest of us. Discuss!

The local Christian Radio (Bott Radio Network) advertises one of these business directories.

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If nothing else, I'm going to be more suspicious of pickup trucks and vans with the Jesus fish on them. These stickers seem to be almost functioning as dogwhistles.

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Where, in the bible, does it state that True Christians TM aren't to interact with us sinners?

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Where, in the bible, does it state that True Christians TM aren't to interact with us sinners?

BJU has a section on its site about Biblical separation, with commentary and lots of Scriptural references:

bju.edu/academics/college-and-schools/seminary/preachers-corner/publications/separation/world.php

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I have neighbors who followed that philosophy of only using selected "Christian" vendors. That is until they ended up paying over $10,000 for about $2,500 of plumbing work and getting a lesser quality job.

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Yes I always check my wallet when dealing with such christians. My wife works for this christian company and they will rip their workings off any chance they get. finally had to comply with oregon break requirements and you should hear the complaining.

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Where, in the bible, does it state that True Christians TM aren't to interact with us sinners?

It doesn't. Jesus interacted with them.

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I have known people who only used Christian businesses or who only hired people from their church. It probably helps keep people in church if they know that membership could help them get a job.

Some Christians seem to assume that being part of their religion will prevent another person from cheating or being dishonest. It doesn't and I wonder how many lose money over only supporting businesses owned by those in their religion.

My husband got his last job because of recommendation of a close friend. That close friend got his job because he went to church with the person hiring. The man doing the hiring seemed to gravitate toward hiring like minded people. That meant mainly right wing, white, male Christians. Even at the Christmas party that included gambling and free alcohol, the owner started us off with a prayer. It was bizarre to say the least.

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This is impossible to do though. Where would you buy a car? I've yet to hear of an openly Christian car maker. In fact, if you buy a Honda, Toyota, Kia, Hyundai, etc., chances are the owners, CEOs, and CFOs are Buddhist, Hindu, or Shinto. And yet, I still see Christian Dominionists driving cars. So, they do, in fact, interact with heathens. If they were true to their beliefs, they'd be walking everywhere.

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This is impossible to do though. Where would you buy a car? I've yet to hear of an openly Christian car maker. In fact, if you buy a Honda, Toyota, Kia, Hyundai, etc., chances are the owners, CEOs, and CFOs are Buddhist, Hindu, or Shinto. And yet, I still see Christian Dominionists driving cars. So, they do, in fact, interact with heathens. If they were true to their beliefs, they'd be walking everywhere.

I don't think patriarchs/quiverfull people are that globally minded. As the Duggars have demonstrated on their international adventures, dominionists think that the world revolves around the US, and the people who fall outside of American borders are mysterious "others" who are of little concern. I also think that dominionist think that everyone else is here to serve them, so they probably don't mind the idea of poorly paid Asian people building things for them in a faraway country.

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I have known people who only used Christian businesses or who only hired people from their church. It probably helps keep people in church if they know that membership could help them get a job.

Some Christians seem to assume that being part of their religion will prevent another person from cheating or being dishonest. It doesn't and I wonder how many lose money over only supporting businesses owned by those in their religion.

My husband got his last job because of recommendation of a close friend. That close friend got his job because he went to church with the person hiring. The man doing the hiring seemed to gravitate toward hiring like minded people. That meant mainly right wing, white, male Christians. Even at the Christmas party that included gambling and free alcohol, the owner started us off with a prayer. It was bizarre to say the least.

That really reminds me of a friend who told me in all seriousness about how glad she was to be marrying a religious Catholic guy because she knew he would never cheat on her. :roll:

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A variety of things come into play in this, none of them attractive.

First off, the major screwing people over thing then hiding behind religion. People who announce they are Christian at the first business meeting mean you should watch your wallet.

Second, there is they "Christians don't sue other Christians" thing. That can be used not only to discourage lawsuits, but as a cover as to why someone in business is living with some former problem. We had a contractor who worked for our company years ago. His pay was sent to a company his wife owned, because if he worked under his own name, we learned over time, his salary would have been garnished. The story was he and a partner from a previous business had got in trouble with their taxes. Per the story, it was all the other partner's fault (and, having had partners, that could be true.) However, the other partner somehow lied and put it all on this guy, who "couldn't sue, because Christians can sue each other." So, the IRS and whomever else was going after him. So he never had income in his own name anymore. The longer I knew him, the less likely that story made sense. In a similar situation, if it had been ruining my life or throwing the guy who was falsifying records to the wolves, I'd have been feeding wolves. And I know enough religion to know that the lawsuit thing is not to sue unless the person won't come to terms under church judgment... so it was clearly an excuse/lie, especially once I saw him in action and saw his business ethics.

Third, and to me the most important, is that I find the use of the little Christian fish as very off-putting, because the story is that Christ came to earth to take on the sins of the world, that we are filthy sinners who deserve hell, but Jesus saved us from it, that nothing is more holy in the world than Jesus and Christianity is the one true religion and because of that, I'm using Jesus as a marketing tool, sort of like a cute girl on the hood of a car or a talking cheese burger.

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I used to do medical billing for a chiropractor who belongs to a nondenominational evangelical church. They weren't dominionist but anti-abortion was their big pet cause, holding a rally on the Sunday closest to Jan 22. He even once said he still wouldn't permit an abortion for his wife even if it saved her life. His reasoning was he can always remarry. Anyway he would hire people from his church, his bookeeper was from his church, and another woman who also worked in the medical billing dept was from his church. She was part time temporary, worked 12 hours a week, took time off whenever she wanted yet was paid $2 more an hour than me yet I worked +40/week including some Saturdays. And she did the same tasks I did. I got fired there for questioning some of the billing practices and the job duties. When I was hired there was a huge backlog of insurance claims that needed to be filed, some were as many four years old which was well past the filing claim window. And if you never filed the claim with the insurance company you cannot bill the patient. He wanted me to do that which is illegal especially when you are dealing with Medicare and Medicaid. And I told him that. Plus it would look bad if a patient suddenly got a bill for services from four years ago.

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I used to do medical billing for a chiropractor who belongs to a nondenominational evangelical church. They weren't dominionist but anti-abortion was their big pet cause, holding a rally on the Sunday closest to Jan 22. He even once said he still wouldn't permit an abortion for his wife even if it saved her life. His reasoning was he can always remarry. Anyway he would hire people from his church, his bookeeper was from his church, and another woman who also worked in the medical billing dept was from his church. She was part time temporary, worked 12 hours a week, took time off whenever she wanted yet was paid $2 more an hour than me yet I worked +40/week including some Saturdays. And she did the same tasks I did. I got fired there for questioning some of the billing practices and the job duties. When I was hired there was a huge backlog of insurance claims that needed to be filed, some were as many four years old which was well past the filing claim window. And if you never filed the claim with the insurance company you cannot bill the patient. He wanted me to do that which is illegal especially when you are dealing with Medicare and Medicaid. And I told him that. Plus it would look bad if a patient suddenly got a bill for services from four years ago.

Wow. That's unbelievably cold.

On a related note, I noticed that in one of her comments Kelly Bates recently said that abortion in the case of an ectopic pregnancy would be okay because there would be no chance of the baby surviving anyway, and it would kill the mother. She said that the goal should always be to save both mother and baby but sometimes that's not possible. When you're more conservative on abortion than Kelly Bates you know you've got a problem.

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Wow. That's unbelievably cold.

On a related note, I noticed that in one of her comments Kelly Bates recently said that abortion in the case of an ectopic pregnancy would be okay because there would be no chance of the baby surviving anyway, and it would kill the mother. She said that the goal should always be to save both mother and baby but sometimes that's not possible. When you're more conservative on abortion than Kelly Bates you know you've got a problem.

A relative/in law of mine who is also a politician came out in his last campaign saying that etopic pregnancy would not automatically be something that should be aborted, because "there were cases" of the pregnancy working out. I plan never to discuss this with him, because my head might explode. He has gone so far into "holier than thou" land than I ever dreamed possible, and I think much of it is for political reasons--it keeps getting him elected. I don't go by my married name, so people I know don't automatically know I'm related, so I don't bring it up. But he's well enough known to have got hate mail from around the world.... and part of his "testimony" is that he prayed for people who called and discussed some stupid stance he takes and wants to impose on others, and hope they came around and were saved.... he got all teary about it, which I thought was a good touch. :violin:

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I have neighbors who followed that philosophy of only using selected "Christian" vendors. That is until they ended up paying over $10,000 for about $2,500 of plumbing work and getting a lesser quality job.

:laughing-rolling:

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I worked for a small start up company run by a guy who was recently "saved" and was a member of the local non-denominational mega-church (things I learned after I took the job).

After he hired me as the head business writer (through the classic job ad method), he wanted to hire only people from his church. And every person he hired this way stopped showing up after a few weeks, continually asked for more money or paycheck advances, and absolutely sucked at their jobs (it turns out that barely finishing high school and dicking around with your friends for five years while living off of your parents isn't the best preparation for a career). :roll:

Slightly off topic, but I've always been curious, has anyone else noticed that the kids who are members of the megachurch youth groups seem to have a much higher screw up rate than the general population? It seems nearly every kid I know who was a member of these groups and shoved the Bible down my throat in school didn't go on to college (Christian or otherwise), had money issues, had a baby young and unmarried, had legal issues (DUIs, theft, bankruptcies) and/or had drug issues. Not that these things didn't happen to others kids from my school or that I haven't made plenty of mistakes of my own, but the increased rate of its occurence amongst the Christian kids seemed significantly higher. I was interested in the theories on that.

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Slightly off topic, but I've always been curious, has anyone else noticed that the kids who are members of the megachurch youth groups seem to have a much higher screw up rate than the general population? It seems nearly every kid I know who was a member of these groups and shoved the Bible down my throat in school didn't go on to college (Christian or otherwise), had money issues, had a baby young and unmarried, had legal issues (DUIs, theft, bankruptcies) and/or had drug issues. Not that these things didn't happen to others kids from my school or that I haven't made plenty of mistakes of my own, but the increased rate of its occurence amongst the Christian kids seemed significantly higher. I was interested in the theories on that.

It's funny you mention that because the bookeeper who belonged to the same church as my boss had a daughter who had a baby out of wedlock. And everyone knew because the birth announcement was in the paper. Another good example are the Palin kids. Sarah is quite the biblethumper but I don't know if the kids ever went to youth group. And look at them-Track is a druggie, vanadlized school busses, knocked a girl up before marriage, now divorced and living in Todd's airplane hangar. We all know Bristol's story. Willow-smoked pot, vandalized a house, has had at least one pregnancy scare, called a classmate the F-bomb on Facebook. I hate to see how Piper turns out but she bodychecked a reporter during Sarah's bus tour.

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It's funny you mention that because the bookeeper who belonged to the same church as my boss had a daughter who had a baby out of wedlock. And everyone knew because the birth announcement was in the paper. Another good example are the Palin kids. Sarah is quite the biblethumper but I don't know if the kids ever went to youth group. And look at them-Track is a druggie, vanadlized school busses, knocked a girl up before marriage, now divorced and living in Todd's airplane hangar. We all know Bristol's story. Willow-smoked pot, vandalized a house, has had at least one pregnancy scare, called a classmate the F-bomb on Facebook. I hate to see how Piper turns out but she bodychecked a reporter during Sarah's bus tour.

Its funny how she ran her mouth about family values in 2008 and it now turns out that the Obamas are the better parents.

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Its funny how she ran her mouth about family values in 2008 and it now turns out that the Obamas are the better parents.

I'm not sure we can know that yet. I mean, sure, nothing has come out about them yet, but are they even old enough for pregnancy scares, drugs, etc?

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I worked for a small start up company run by a guy who was recently "saved" and was a member of the local non-denominational mega-church (things I learned after I took the job).

After he hired me as the head business writer (through the classic job ad method), he wanted to hire only people from his church. And every person he hired this way stopped showing up after a few weeks, continually asked for more money or paycheck advances, and absolutely sucked at their jobs (it turns out that barely finishing high school and dicking around with your friends for five years while living off of your parents isn't the best preparation for a career). :roll:

Slightly off topic, but I've always been curious, has anyone else noticed that the kids who are members of the megachurch youth groups seem to have a much higher screw up rate than the general population? It seems nearly every kid I know who was a member of these groups and shoved the Bible down my throat in school didn't go on to college (Christian or otherwise), had money issues, had a baby young and unmarried, had legal issues (DUIs, theft, bankruptcies) and/or had drug issues. Not that these things didn't happen to others kids from my school or that I haven't made plenty of mistakes of my own, but the increased rate of its occurence amongst the Christian kids seemed significantly higher. I was interested in the theories on that.

I taught in a Christian high school for six years. Basically Fundy-lite with a few hardcore fundies and some random less radical people (Lutherans, Presbyterians and such) thrown in because they thought their kids were getting a better education (in some ways they were, in others, not). There are multiple factors in the kids not doing well. In terms of college, a lot of the families were adamantly opposed to public colleges (which are a bargain in our state) but even with financial aid could not pay for Christian colleges, so they chose nothing. The rest...these are kids who are often deeply controlled until they are able to leave home--what they watch, wear, listen to, read, etc...is controlled. They often have no opportunity to develop their own preferences in anything or to pull away from their parents like normal teens do and they rebel fiercely as soon as they have the chance. I worked there from ages 23 to 29 and had an urge to rebel the moment I sent in my resignation letter. I was an adult who was doing what I wanted away from school and still felt so stifled by it that being free from it made me want to indulge. That is multiplied by a 1000 if you are 18 and have had no avenue to be yourself. You don't even know who you are at that point. The other issue is that these kids have been implicitly, if not explicitly, promised that if they do all the right things their life will be perfect (unlike those sinners over there). We all know life doesn't work that way. I know an old country song that says "things get complicated when you get past 18". Imagine starting to encounter that reality when you'd been led to believe that you just had to follow the Christian formula and nothing would ever be hard for you. You end up either realizing you were sold a bill of goods or feeling like you have totally screwed up without even knowing how. Either way, you're going to be prone to falling apart at that point.

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I'm not sure we can know that yet. I mean, sure, nothing has come out about them yet, but are they even old enough for pregnancy scares, drugs, etc?

Malia is 16 years old. Definitely old enough for drugs and pregnancy scares. Sasha is 13 years old, so a little young yet, but not by much.

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