If anyone has been following the craziness in Polk County Florida, they know that some really strange and troubling things have happened here. We've had multiple separation of church and state lawsuits going at a single time involving multiple entities (the Atheists of Florida really dropped the ball on those IMO), and some of those lawsuits included the sheriff's office. This place can be very unpleasant for non-Christians and non-dominionists because of dominionist activity.
An anthropologist from outer space might be forgiven for concluding that the god of this world is Mammon. (Or, rather, The Market, as depicted by John McMurtry in his book The Cancer Stage of Capitalism.)
The mayor of a mid-size Texan city has emerged in recent months as the newest face of Islamophobia. Aligning herself with extremists hostile to Islam, Mayor Beth Van Duyne of Irving, Texas has helped to fan fears about a Muslim arbitration panel serving the region's Muslim community. She and her allies have framed their stance as a response to the so-called threat of Muslim law, called Sharia, to America's constitutional order. The events in this case provide an example of how anti-Muslim sentiment arises in a community and comes to shape the political landscape.
"I give people Ayn Rand with trappings" - Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan (to Kim Klein of the Washington Post, 1970)
"if a man smite thee on one cheek, SMASH him on the other!" - Anton LaVey, from The Satanic Bible (Section III, paragraph 7)
Ayn Rand has long been the intellectual darling of many both on the secular right but also the religious right, and that's curious given Rand's writing is widely credited with having inspired Anton LaVey, founder of the Church Of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible. Cited in the rather staid academic work Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology, Anton LaVey is quoted as having admitted that his religion was "just Ayn Rand's philosophy with ceremony and ritual added."
Ayn Rand's followers find themselves sharing a lot of common ground with the Christian Right these days. The Tea Party, with its stress on righteous liberty and a robust form of capitalism, has been a rallying point for both groups. Still, the philosophical disharmony between Christianity and Objectivism (Ayn Rand's philosophy) has presented problems for anyone seeking to straddle the two worldviews. Just ask Paul Ryan.
Nigerian human rights activist Leo Igwe has recently written at least two blog posts about how some African Pentecostal churches are sending missionaries to Europe and the U.S.A. in an attempt to "re-evangelize the West" -- and reintroducing fears of witchcraft.
Igwe seems unaware that fear of witchcraft, here in the West, isn't being promulgated just by African immigrants but also by plenty of middle-class and well-to-do white people, especially in the Bible Belt, as part of the teachings of various leaders of the "New Apostolic Reformation."
No doubt exists that Texas mega-church Pastor John Hagee would be loathe to be associated with the theology of Pastor C.T. Russell (wrongly credited with founding the Jehovah's Witnesses) but their theological orbits, while normally poles apart, converge at one crucial point; Christian Zionism.
Or maybe my title would better fit as “Laws, Books, where to find, and the people who trust them.”
What a society we've become!
The wise ones tell us over and over how the more things change the more they stay the same. The more we pride ourselves on invention and the progress of civilized society and it’s technological wonders, the more our majority loses its innocence and the most vital aspect of living … imagination.
This is part 6 of a series by guest front pager Mahanoy, originally dated November 15, 2007 which I had to delete and repost for technical reasons. It is referred to in this post, where links to the rest of the series can be found. -- FC
Welcome to this sixth installment of my series on the Dominionists, one example of radical, theocratic Christianity. As we have seen in the previous installments, the Dominionists desire nothing less than the application of biblical law to every aspect of American society and government.
In this installment we will consider another essay by Thomas Wang, the editor of the booklet America, Return to God! This essay, entitled "Ambush Alert: The Barbarians are Here" traces the history of America's spiritual decline through the great intellectual movements of the past 600 years, framed in the context of the cosmic battle between God and Satan.
After a bruising GOP runoff election for U.S. Senator, current MS Senator Thad Cochran has retained his position and will face Travis Childers (Democrat) in the next senate election. The MS GOP is fractured and torn by infighting, and the far right Tea Party faction as represented by Chris McDaniel is definitely not in a conciliatory mood.
Representatives of a well known faith-based charitable organization were refused a New Jersey bank’s notarization service by an atheist employee. After inquiring about the nature of the non-profit organization and the documents requiring notarization, one of the bank’s assistant managers claimed she couldn't witness the signatures or attach the State's official notary seal to the documents because of "personal reasons."
The Christians later related the story in a Facebook post saying, “Even though we had a valid, legal document and valid, legal identification —she was legally able to refuse me service.”
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