PS: The Statue of Liberty is Demonic, Too

[crabby_lioness]

Last night Mississippi Public Radio aired Terry Gross' interview with New Apostolic Reformation leader C. Peter Wegner on Fresh Air.



My daughters, who I haven't let visit local Christian churches, had never heard Dominionist rhetoric before and were incredulous, outraged, and disgusted at what Wegner said, including but not limited to:

1) the

Comments

[talcat]

I'm a Lib Dem in the UK and even the most bat shit insane of the Tory party (our coallition partners) have never thought that we are are controlled by demons.

Is guy for REAL?!

[crabby_lioness]

Unfortunately. I started hearing this insanity in Fundamentalist Christian churches a little over 30 years ago; it's a large part of why I left. It's the first time I've seen it get this kind of national exposure though.

[msp_hacker]

the Japanese Emperor had sex with the demonic Japanese Sun Goddess in order to cause hurricanes to fall on Japan and crash the Nippon.

I know I am massively missing the point, but every time some nutjob espouses this theory I want to scream. Not only is it just flat out wrong, but why the hell would the Japanese Emperor even consider having sex with his many time great-grandmother?

[crabby_lioness]

I know! I started to point out that it was the equivalent of the medieval Christian warrior's vigil the night before being knighted where they prayed and meditated all night before the symbol of their god, but I didn't want to get off track. There was just way too much batshit craziness to cover.

[swordznsorcery]

Not only is it just flat out wrong, but why the hell would the Japanese Emperor even consider having sex with his many time great-grandmother?

Because of the demons! Pay attention. ;)

[dreamer_easy]

I am no Shinto expert, but my understanding is that no mortal other than the Emperor himself knows exactly what takes place during that ceremony. Is Wagner confessing to being a peeping tom? ;)

[swordznsorcery]

I had never heard of Dominionist Christianity before. It sounds vaguely like Scientology. Is it just me, or is religion getting weirder? The normal bits are as normal and inoffensive as ever, but the nuttier bits seem to get nuttier every year. I can never quite decide whether to be worried about that or not. If this lot are going to keep insulting the Statue Of Liberty, though, I don't imagine they stand much chance of widening their support. Surely the only faster ticket to obscurity is insulting the flag.

They're quite sweet for wanting to protect Sarah Palin from the witches, though. That conjures up a lovely image!

[crabby_lioness]

Speaking as a Witch, the only way to protect Sarah Palin from rituals that will destroy her is to keep people from laughing at her. That's kinda tricky.

Dominionism's been going on since the late 1960s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism It took off with Hal Lindsey's 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late,_Great_Planet_Earth By the late 1970s it had taken over several Protestant Southern churches. By the middle 1980s I gave up trying to find a Southern Protestant church that hadn't been taken over by it and left Christianity

[eumenidis]

Didn't know Hal Lindsey had been so influential, I thought the swing toward extreme & irrational beliefs was just part of a general trend toward irrationality in American religion during the '60s. Thanks for the info.

The American Press seldom covers any important issue, or if they do, they do a disgracefully poor job.

[crabby_lioness]

The shocking thing is how many comments condemned Fresh Air for covering it at all, as if it would go away if no one in the mainstream paid it any attention instead of getting bigger and more dangerous.

Lindsey was hugely influential, but he had fertile ground. Bruce Bawer's Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity has an excellent history of the movement. http://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Jesus-Fundamentalism-Betrays-Christianity/dp/0609802224/

[kiev4am]

Oh man. Maybe I'm sheltered, but that really is several massive levels of batshit!insane higher than I've seen televised without irony before. It reads like a Monty Python spoof of a fundamentalist rant... only it's not. Scary. Then again, one hopes that broadcasting this stuff lays bare its lunacy to more people, which ought to be a good thing.

The scariest thing is the vague sense of organisation and mobilisation in his comments - the aim of filling government with his anti-democratic, superstitious, with-hunting co-religionists. Augh.

[crabby_lioness]

Well, he's already filled the Republican Party. Now all they have to do is win the next election.

[eumenidis]

Well. The Statue of Liberty story is new to me, but the rest is pretty familiar. Dominionist sects have been involved in literal witch hunts in African nations which ended in torture in murder of the accused--who were frequently children--& during the '08 election the alternative media covered Palin's religious beliefs. In fact, a witch hunter from Africa was a guest minister at her church, & actually performed a ritual against witchcraft over her. You might still be able to find the video on YouTube or other sites.

Hell, YES, I think they'd do the same thing here; I've met some people who're spoiling for the chance.

[crabby_lioness]

LJ was starting to choke on me from all the video links, otherwise I'd have put up that one and the one where Bienfel wants to rename DC the "District of Christ" and proclaimed that he had "more authority than Congress".

I honestly don't know what to say when people tell me they've never heard this before. It's been part of my life for 40 years now, since grade school. I've grown up with it, rather like growing up watching a giant poisonous dragon growing up in the same neighborhood to the delight of my neighbors, and having nothing to defend myself or others with against it.

[eumenidis]

& there I go, teaching my granny how to suck eggs. I missed Bienfel's little oration, but I'm not surprised; disgusted, saddened, apprehensive, yeah, but not surprised.

Well, I've stated for the record that I'm a curmudgeon, so you won't be surprised by my view that most people have "never heard this before" because they haven't been paying attention or are denying the implications. Quite honestly, I'm always reminded of the final scene in "Judgment at Nuremburg" where the German judge says that "they never expected it to go so far".