Jesus and John Wayne and Changes in Evangelicalism

[KSmom]

21 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Another good Twitter thread on how the theobro Grand Pooh-bahs have been reacting badly to J & JWʻs excellent analyses of their collective failures.

I wonder why these asshats are only throwing their tantrums now -- the book has been out for almost two years.

Were they hoping it would flop or sink without a trace? Were they taken off-guard by the widespread critical praise in so many reviews? Have they now been goaded into reading it because their in-laws or administrative assistants or wives or whoever are reading it and asking them about it?

 

The paperback was just released fairly recently so that could account for some of that.

[stylites]

On 3/5/2022 at 3:02 AM, KSmom said:

The paperback was just released fairly recently so that could account for some of that.

I think as well that they only just got round to start publishing some of their 'rebuttals'.

[Howl]

Also recommended by tweep @fragrantfox: 

In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins by  Elisabeth Fiorenza  

 

[hoipolloi]

This is quite clever -- "Twitter Manhood Council ™️." 

 

[hoipolloi]

More evidence for how right on the money J&JW's analyses are. Linked item is a new report on J6 and American Christofascism prepared by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).

Really hope Congress & the federal LEOs get on the stick and go after these assholes.

Quote

 

New research linking Christian nationalism with a desire to limit voting. People citing their faith as the reason they support trucker convoys that shut down the border over covid protections. And the fact that Jesus’ name appeared all over the place during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection.

Concern about rising radicalism among a segment of White American Christians led this week to what some religious extremism experts call the biggest Congress-related event on the topic in years.

The Thursday evening briefing, called “God is On Our Side: White Christian Nationalism and the Capitol Insurrection,” was hosted by the Congressional Freethought Caucus, a group that includes Democratic House members Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Zoe Lofgren of California and Steve Cohen of Tennessee...

The virtual briefing, which was not open to the public and included more than 50 members, staff and experts, focused on a new, 66-page report about the role of Christian nationalism in the Capitol attack, and on its “implications for the future of Democracy,” an announcement for the event read. Its goal was to bring awareness to Americans about what the caucus sees as the threats of Christian nationalism, organizers told The Washington Post.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by hoipolloi
Clarity

[hoipolloi]

At least one square should name VF -- take your pick of a conference, Faith & Freedom tour, or the film festival!

[Jasmar]

Oh man, I got 16/25 of those, from my fundigelical days. I counted homeschooling my kids for the homeschooling spot. And we never attended a fundie church, and were definitely only fundie-lite. And that was ten years ago. It’s a scary reflection on how far right “average” evangelicals were even before the Election of the Orange Antichrist.

[Howl]

April 1, y'all. 

[Marmion]

I wanted to post a link to an article, about a Southern Baptist pastor, Jared Stacy, who relocated to Scotland, to escape the right-wing politicization of evangelicalism, here in this thread, as it references a quote from Du Mez.  

Quote

Kristin Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the author of “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” said that while churches themselves may claim to be simply spreading the gospel, what many do is deeply political.

“I’ve been told many times from people who attend highly politicized churches that nothing political happens inside those spaces,” she said. “They say, ‘We come, we worship.’ But then I attend, and I hear prayers against the evils of big government." 

But Du Mez said she worries that much of the evangelical community is unwilling to listen to outside criticism. 

Many evangelicals get their news from and form opinions based on a narrow set of media outlets, she said, including Christian talk radio and Fox News — because of a long-standing distrust of mainstream media.

“So their reality is just so different, and the conclusions they draw are so different. That’s where we see the popularity of ‘Stop the Steal’ in evangelical spaces, the idea that Biden is not a legitimate president — that’s a fairly widespread view,” Du Mez said.  Why one evangelical pastor left a radicalized, post-Jan. 6 America behind

 

[neuroticcat]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:48 AM, Howl said:

Cindy Wang Brandt has got it going on: 

You can learn more about her on her Parenting Forward website: cindywangbrandt.com/   "Hi, my name is Cindy Wang Brandt, and I help parents unpack and heal from their religious trauma so they can raise children with healthy spirituality."

Links to her book, blog, and podcasts are on her website. 

We went to school together. It’s wild b/c she (and I) were so incredibly zealous with all the evangelical zealotry you can imagine. 

Also: late to the game but Redeeming Love is as bad as it sounds. CSAM, erotica, mixed in with lots of spiritualized metaphors and a cowboy-savior-husband who reads like a cardboard cutout of some bizarre masculinity ideal. It was the author, Francine Rivers’, first book post conversion. She had written erotica before that so it seems she kind of took some of the common tropes from romance novels of the 90s and merged them with her conversion experience and the (limited details given in the Bible) background on the prophet Hosea. And opted to set it in the Wild West. 

Went to school with her! She was absolutely as zealous as she describes her predeconstructed faith. 

Edited June 24, 2022 by hoipolloi
Removed duplicated material

[Howl]

17 hours ago, neuroticcat said:

Redeeming Love is as bad as it sounds

 20,000+ reviews on Amazon, 90% of them 5 stars.  Just head to the 1-star reviews where the readers who instantly realized the awfulness of this book lay it all out.

Have you been in contact with Cindy Wang Brandt in your adult years?

[JermajestyDuggar]

I’ll say Why I recommend everyone watch “The Janes” on HBOmax. When these women in the 60s started their group, they were just connecting women with doctors they knew of that would perform abortions. And would help women get to states that were allowing abortions. Because before Roe, there were a few states that actually allowed abortion. Like New York. I think this is a very important point to be made. Thank goodness for the internet. We can help women find these places, get transportation, and help with costs. Communication is so much easier than back then. We need to work around this as much as possible. I know there are groups that are already planning this. I’m glad it was leaked before because it helped to prepare. 
 

ETA: sorry this should be on the Gilead thread. But I guess it fits in a lot of threads 🤷🏻‍♀️

Edited June 24, 2022 by JermajestyDuggar

[Howl]

On 4/1/2022 at 4:27 PM, hoipolloi said:

At least one square should name VF -- take your pick of a conference, Faith & Freedom tour, or the film festival!

I noticed "involved in military bible study" in the lower right corner.  I've been following Mikey Weinstein and the MRFF (Military Religious Freedom Foundation) on twitter.  It's a window into the egregious extent of aggressive evangelical infiltration into all aspects of military life.  MRFF fights back, hard. 

Mikey himself has a pretty serious bio.  Check him out here:  

militaryreligiousfreedom.org/about/michael-l-mikey-weinstein/

Links to the most current articles are on the right side of the page. 

[neuroticcat]

6 hours ago, Howl said:

 20,000+ reviews on Amazon, 90% of them 5 stars.  Just head to the 1-star reviews where the readers who instantly realized the awfulness of this book lay it all out.

Have you been in contact with Cindy Wang Brandt in your adult years?

 Not really. We were in contact in early adulthood when she was a missionary but lost touch after that. I follow her on socials, though, and appreciate her voice! 

[frumperlicious]

34 minutes ago, Howl said:

I noticed "involved in military bible study" in the lower right corner.  I've been following Mikey Weinstein and the MRFF (Military Religious Freedom Foundation) on twitter.  It's a window into the egregious extent of aggressive evangelical infiltration into all aspects of military life.  MRFF fights back, hard. 

Mikey himself has a pretty serious bio.  Check him out here:  

militaryreligiousfreedom.org/about/michael-l-mikey-weinstein/

Links to the most current articles are on the right side of the page. 

Thank you for this, I’ve not heard of the group but have been horrified by the evangelization of the military (especially Air Force) for some time now.

[Howl]

1 hour ago, frumperlicious said:

Thank you for this, I’ve not heard of the group but have been horrified by the evangelicalization of the military (especially Air Force) for some time now.

Yes, Mikey Weinstein is retired Air Force (JAG); he, his father and kids attended the Air Force Academy.

As a Jewish cadet at the Air Force Academy, he experienced so much prejudice in the form of pressure from evagelicals that he sued for discrimination and won.  

From that experience and realizing the extent to which evangelicals were infiltrating the military, he decided to form the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. They are quite effective at winning lawsuits; the constitution is on their side. 

This group is facing blatant discrimination: black Muslims in any branch of the military. 

6 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I’ll say Why I recommend everyone watch “The Janes” on HBOmax.

NPR just did a long piece on The Janes.  I just happened to catch it while running errands. 

[Marmion]

I just the other day had read of an F.B.I. raid on a number of churches who'd allegedly been trying to take advantage of soldiers at a nearby military base.  

Quote

FBI agents on Thursday stormed three churches across the South, all of which are located near military installations and have previously faced accusations of being cults.

One, the Assembly of Prayer Christian Church in Augusta, Georgia, is situated less than three miles from Fort Gordon and has for years been accused of sinister activities. Now, one ex-member is speaking out, comparing the organization to the infamous People’s Temple and its leader to Jim Jones, who convinced more than 900 of his followers to commit “revolutionary suicide” in 1978.

Former parishioner Gladys Jordan told The Daily Beast on Friday that she hasn’t been able to see her 28-year-old son, Cesar Vargas, since she left the church nearly six years ago.

“Basically, you leave the church and you’re excommunicated,” Jordan said. “That’s it, they separate you from your family. I haven’t had contact with my son since I left in September 2016. Every time I call him, he doesn’t even call me mom, he says, ‘Ma’am, how did you get this number?’”

Vargas, who has previously dismissed the “cult” label, is now some $50,000 in debt thanks to the church, where he serves as a minister, Jordan continued. He has never held a real job, she said, and dug himself into such a severe financial hole by spending money he didn’t have on materials necessary to conduct services.

“And I know because my son still receives mail at my house,” Jordan said, adding, “The cult leader, Rony Denis, is infatuated with Jim Jones. This is a modern-day Jim Jones cult. That’s my scare, that he’s gonna take my son to another country and do the same thing that Jim Jones did.”

Denis lives in Augusta, according to local reports. He has not been charged with a crime, and no arrests were reported following the raid. The Assembly of Prayer is also known as the House of Prayer, and the names are used interchangeably, Jordan said.

The voicemail on Denis’ cellphone was full on Friday, and he was unable to be reached for comment.

In 2020, advocacy group Veterans Education Success called for an investigation into allegations of abuses of the GI Bill program at the House of Prayer Christian Church’s seminaries. Veterans alleged that the church “targets veterans in order to access GI Bill funding, VA disability compensation, and VA home loans,” according to a letter asking the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to probe the organization.

The church intentionally picks locations near military bases, where it can draw from a steady stream of service members with steady paychecks and educational benefits under the GI Bill, Jordan alleged.

“They have a fraudulent Bible college and a so-called ‘home’ for the soldiers,” she told The Daily Beast. “They bring them in and give them a home-cooked meal, and from there... they have them lie to the VA to get into the Bible college, they steal their benefits, and they never get a diploma from there that’s worth anything because it’s not valid.”  Daily Beast Article

Quote

The Assembly of Prayer Christian Church on Massey Street in Killeen, Texas, was also raided by the FBI on Thursday, according to the Killeen Police Department.

The church is located less than 4 miles from Fort Hood.

Killeen officers arrived to assist the FBI with traffic diversion just after 7:30 a.m., according to officials.

Ashley Demorest, a former member of the church who observed the raid, said she was a member of the church from age 15 to 23, "until I finally escaped."   

Amber Fitz-Randolph, leader of The Ft. Hood Fallen Facebook page, which was started in 2017, said members of the church in Killeen have snuck into the barracks and threatened soldiers.

In a text message Thursday afternoon, Christopher Haug, chief of media relations at Fort Hood, said they are aware the FBI is investigating the church and their police are looking into it.

Demorest said she solicited soldiers on base as a member of the church.

"When I was 16 I would go with other members to [Fort Hood] and do what the church would call 'soul winning' to invite people to the church," she said.

In the Veteran's Education Success's letter to the VA and Georgia SAA in 2020, the organization cited similar solicitations.

"Soul-winning is an organized event coordinated by HOPCC’s clergy," noted the document. "Five days a week, individuals are paired up and sent out to recruit new members on or around military bases. ... Students would recruit at Post Exchanges, barracks, and on-base housing."

The document also cites specific members' experiences recruiting on bases in Georgia.  U.S.A. Today Article

 

[CTRLZero]

We live on the edge of a military base, and we read about a House of Prayer being raided in Tacoma.  We go past one on one of our usual walks, and saw the logo was the same as the church raided, so there are apparently affiliates scattered throughout the area here.  We call it IHOP (like the pancake chain), since the sign includes the word International.

Thanks for the info.  We wondered about that church. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by CTRLZero

[Howl]

Holy schmoley, @Marmion that is some serious, hard-core crime-ing and so, so sociopathic, just evil.  Defrauding the Feds can have some very extremely serious repercussions, like long stays in the Gray Bar Hotel, and this is taking place on a large scale, with major amounts of money, I'm guessing in the many millions.  

...Veterans alleged that the church “targets veterans in order to access GI Bill funding, VA disability compensation, and VA home loans,” ...

...“They bring them in and give them a home-cooked meal, and from there... they have them lie to the VA to get into the Bible college, they steal their benefits, and they never get a diploma from there that’s worth anything because it’s not valid.” 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Howl

[neuroticcat]

On 6/27/2022 at 7:54 AM, CTRLZero said:

We live on the edge of a military base, and we read about a House of Prayer being raided in Tacoma.  We go past one on one of our usual walks, and saw the logo was the same as the church raided, so there are apparently affiliates scattered throughout the area here.  We call it IHOP (like the pancake chain), since the sign includes the word International.

Thanks for the info.  We wondered about that church. 

Is this the same as the IHOP out if Kansas City? It will not shock anyone to know they are all kinds of crazy including the usual sex abuse cover ups and spiritual abuse of everyone. I think they especially target international students and devout Christians who are studying/working in the US.

A guy I once dated ended up as a pastor there, and last I saw his sermons included recovered memories of ritual Satanic abuse. I did not delve any deeper but wow is it a mess.

[MamaJunebug]

5 hours ago, neuroticcat said:

Is this the same as the IHOP out if Kansas City? It will not shock anyone to know they are all kinds of crazy including the usual sex abuse cover ups and spiritual abuse of everyone. I think they especially target international students and devout Christians who are studying/working in the US.

A guy I once dated ended up as a pastor there, and last I saw his sermons included recovered memories of ritual Satanic abuse. I did not delve any deeper but wow is it a mess.

I drive past one occasionally and am always intrigued by what goes on. 

They actually sued  the International House Of Pancakes, some years back, saying they (church) was the original & only “IHOP.”  Stupid publicity ploy, IMO. 

I vaguely recall that when they bought the building they’re in, they also bought a former  firehouse across the street and were later under investigation for housing “volunteers” and “”students” there in rodent-infested conditions.  So that tracks. 
 

Occurs that I never really look at the old firehouse when I’m there. I’ll try to pay more attention.  The church’s street sign advertises a prayer phone line, IIRC. Yeah…NO.  

[Pecansforeveryone]

I have heard IHOP missionaries were behind the initiating and passing of lethal anti-lgbt legislation in Uganda. They are scary and very likely a cult. 

[neuroticcat]

18 hours ago, MamaJunebug said:

They actually sued  the International House Of Pancakes, some years back, saying they (church) was the original & only “IHOP.”  Stupid publicity ploy, IMO. 

What. 😂🤯That is wild that they thought this was a good idea. 
 

An acquaintance who was sexually abused in her nondenom church growing up discovered as an adult that her convicted abuser is now a pastor at IHOP. They are aware and are publicly fine with it b/c he repented and is a pastor for elderly people. 🤬

[neuroticcat]

Edit for clarity: The acquaintance/survivor is not fine with it; she is angry and public about it. The “church” is fine with it and when reporters ask for comment reply with his repentance. 

[47of74]

Just saw this on CNN

Quote

White Christian nationalist beliefs have infiltrated the religious mainstream so thoroughly that virtually any conservative Christian pastor who tries to challenge its ideology risks their career, says Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of the New York Times bestseller, "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation."

"These ideas are so widespread that any individual pastor or Christian leader who tries to turn the tide and say, 'Let's look again at Jesus and scripture,' are going to be tossed aside," she says.

The ideas are also insidious because many sound like expressions of Christian piety or harmless references to US history. But White Christian nationalists interpret these ideas in ways that are potentially violent and heretical. Their movement is not only anti-democratic, it contradicts the life and teachings of Jesus, some clergy, scholars and historians say.

Samuel Perry, a professor of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma who is authority on the ideology, calls it an "imposter Christianity."

Wish to Christ Francis and all the other Romans would realize who they hopped the fuck into bed with and why I'd rather sterilize myself with a rusty spoon than step foot in a Roman church.