| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
19 May 2005 10:02:52 AM |
| Object: |
Harper's Mag. must read articles |
Do any of you have the May 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine? If not it
would be worth your while to get a copy and check out the following three
articles that will be found in it:
Soldiers of Christ: I. Inside America's most powerful megachurch
Soldiers of Christ: II. Feeling the hate with the National Religious
Broadcasters.
Let there be markets: the evangelical roots of economics
Here are a couple excerpts from them
From Soldiers of Christ: II. Feeling the hate with the National Religious
Broadcasters.
Wright promises the audience that as the new president of NRB he will fight
to block the passage of hate-crime legislation, something many Christian
broadcasters fear might be used to halt their attacks on gays and lesbians.
and
What the disparate sects of this movement, known as Dominionism, share is
an obsession with political power. A decades-long refusal to engage in
politics at all following the Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for
Christian "dominion" over the nation and, eventually, over the earth
itself. Dominionists preach that Jesus has called them to build the kingdom
of God in the here and now, whereas previously it was thought that we would
have to wait for it. America becomes, in this militant biblicism, an agent
of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America's Christian
leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian
dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in
which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, Creationism
and "Christian values" form the basis of our educational system, and the
media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Aside from
its proselytizing mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the
protection of property rights and "homeland" security. * Some Dominionists
(not all of whom accept the label, at least not publicly) would further
require all citizens to pay "tithes" to church organizations empowered by
the government to run our social-welfare agencies, and a number of
influential figures advocate the death penalty for a host of "moral
crimes," including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft. The only
legitimate voices in this state will be Christian. All others will be
silenced.
The traditional evangelicals, those who come out of Billy Graham's mold,
are not necessarily comfortable with the direction taken by the
Dominionists, who now control most of America's major evangelical
organizations, from the NRB to the Southern Baptist Convention, and may
already claim dominion over the Christian media outlets. But Christians who
challenge Dominionists, even if they are fundamentalist or conservative or
born-again, tend to be ruthlessly thrust aside.
**************************************************************************************
From Soldiers of Christ: I. Inside America's most powerful megachurch
The city's mightiest megachurch crests silver and blue atop a gentle slope
of pale yellow prairie grass on the outskirts of town. Silver and blue, as
it happens, are Air Force colors. New Life Church was built far north of
town in part so it would be visible from the Air Force Academy. New Life
wanted that kind of character in its congregation.
"Church" is insufficient to describe the complex. There is a permanent
structure called the Tent, which regularly fills with hundreds or thousands
of teens and twentysomethings for New Life's various youth gatherings. Next
to the Tent stands the old sanctuary, a gray box capable of seating 1,500;
this juts out into the new sanctuary, capacity 7,500, already too small. At
the complex's western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a
great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of
New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its
11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to
section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to
Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life's founder.
Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every
Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in
denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is
automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy.
In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association
of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make
up the nation's most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a
smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving
Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life's "free market"
approach to the divine.
Pastor Ted will serve as NAE president for as long as the movement is
pleased with him, and as long as Pastor Ted is its president the NAE will
make its headquarters in Colorado Springs. Some believers call the city the
Wheaton of the West, in honor of Wheaton, Illinois, once the headquarters
of a more genteel Christian conservatism; others call Colorado Springs the
"evangelical Vatican," a phrase that says much both about the city and
about the easeful orthodoxy with which the movement now views itself.
Certainly the gathering there has no parallel in history, not in Lynchburg,
Virginia, nor Tulsa, nor Pasadena, nor Orlando, nor any other city that has
aspired to be the capital of evangelical America. Evangelical activist
groups ("parachurch" ministries, in the parlance) in Colorado Springs
number in the hundreds, though a precise count is hard to specify. Groups
migrate there and multiply. They produce missionary guides, "family
resources," school curricula, financial advice, athletic training programs,
Bibles for every occasion. The city is home to Young Life, to the
Navigators, to Compassion International; to Every Home for Christ and
Global Ethnic Missions (Youth Ablaze). Most prominent among the
ministries is Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family, whose radio programs
(the most extensive in the world, religious or secular), magazines, videos,
and books reach more than 200 million people worldwide.
The press tends to regard Dobson as the most powerful evangelical Christian
in America, but Pastor Ted is at least his equal. Whereas Dobson plays the
part of national scold, promising to destroy politicians who defy the
Bible, Pastor Ted quietly guides those politicians through the ritual of
acquiescence required to save face. He doesn't strut, like Dobson; he
gushes. When Bush invited him to the Oval Office to discuss policy with
seven other chieftains of the Christian right in late 2003, Pastor Ted
regaled his whole congregation with the story via email. "Well, on Monday I
was in the World Prayer Center"--New Life's high-tech,
twenty-four-hour-a-day prayer chapel--"and my cell phone rang." It was a
presidential aide; "the President," says Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for
the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Pastor Ted was on a
plane the next morning and in the President's office the following
afternoon. "It was incredible," wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the
press to note that Dobson wasn't there.
No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of
evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life.
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| User: "The Bandit" |
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| Title: Re: Harper's Mag. must read articles |
19 May 2005 12:02:06 PM |
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wrote:
Do any of you have the May 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine? If not
it
would be worth your while to get a copy and check out the following
three
articles that will be found in it:
I don't know why I read this post, but I ended up finding it pretty
interesting with regards to Pastor Ted and his relationship with Bush.
I am ashamed to admit I havent picked up a Harper in 25 years.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Harper's Mag. must read articles |
20 May 2005 01:08:13 PM |
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"The Bandit" <no-reply@idexer.com> wrote:
:|buckeye-ELO@nospam.net wrote:
:|> Do any of you have the May 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine? If not
:|it
:|> would be worth your while to get a copy and check out the following
:|three
:|> articles that will be found in it:
:|
:|I don't know why I read this post, but I ended up finding it pretty
:|interesting with regards to Pastor Ted and his relationship with Bush.
:|I am ashamed to admit I havent picked up a Harper in 25 years.
I hope you were able to read the entire article, if not I have it on my
computer, in fact I have all three. They are well worth reading.
Hope you didn't overlook how close to the A F Academy they are and how it
has been in the news lately for religious discrimination.
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| User: "Curly Surmudgeon" |
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| Title: Re: Harper's Mag. must read articles |
19 May 2005 01:47:23 PM |
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On Thu, 19 May 2005 11:02:52 -0400, buckeye-ELO wrote:
----------------snip----------------
No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of
evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life.
That's frightening.
-- Regards, Curly
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http://curlysurmudgeon.com/weird/political/bush's_vision.jpg
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