An American Kingdom

[sinkingfeeling]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/11/mercy-culture-church/

At Mercy Culture, the nations fastest-growing Christian movement is openly political and central to Trump’s GOP

The church is called Mercy Culture, and it is part of a growing Christian movement that is nondenominational, openly political and has become an engine of former president Donald Trump’s Republican Party. It includes some of the largest congregations in the nation, housed in the husks of old Baptist churches, former big-box stores and sprawling multimillion-dollar buildings with private security to direct traffic on Sundays. Its most successful leaders are considered apostles and prophets, including some with followings in the hundreds of thousands, publishing empires, TV shows, vast prayer networks, podcasts, spiritual academies, and branding in the form of T-shirts, bumper stickers and even flags. It is a world in which demons are real, miracles are real, and the ultimate mission is not just transforming individual lives but also turning civilization itself into their version of God’s Kingdom: one with two genders, no abortion, a free-market economy, Bible-based education, church-based social programs and laws such as the ones curtailing LGBTQ rights now moving through statehouses around the country.

This is the world of Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White and many more lesser-known but influential religious leaders who prophesied that Trump would win the election and helped organize nationwide prayer rallies in the days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, speaking of an imminent “heavenly strike” and “a Christian populist uprising,” leading many who stormed the Capitol to believe they were taking back the country for God.

[Wounded Bear]

1. Tax the churches!

[2naSalit]

2. Amen!

[lindysalsagal]

3. These people aren't kidding....

That is where the pastor wearing the bright-red T-shirt, Landon Schott, had been on the third day of a 40-day fast when he said the Lord told him something he found especially interesting.

It was 2017, and he was walking the streets of downtown Fort Worth asking God to make him a “spiritual father” of the city when he heard God say no. What he needed was “spiritual authority,” he remembered God telling him, and the way to get that was to seek the blessing of a pastor named Robert Morris, an evangelical adviser to Trump, and the founder of one of the largest church networks in the nation, called Gateway, with nine branches and weekly attendance in the tens of thousands, including some of the wealthiest businessmen in Texas.

It's a friggin' cult.

[onethatcares]

4. I could not link due to paywall

and was trying to find the denominations that have joined together.

Doess anyone have a listing?

Thanks

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. The Seattle Times has it too, and a limited number of free views

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/an-american-kingdom/

I don't think there's anything about denominations joining together, though. The point is more that each church operates as a business on its own. That's why they're "non-denominational".

[onethatcares]

7. thank you

I thought it might have had Assembly of God, the Calvary Chapels, whatever Joel Olsteen preaches along with the Liberty University group.

They, as denominations, would be joining together. Not really denominations per se.But convoluted christianity none the less.

SollyMack pretty much sums up my thoughts in the post down below.

[Solly Mack]

5. They are enemies to democracy.

All theocrats are enemies of democracy. You're not protecting your religion by dominating every facet of the lives of people - you're exerting control over them to serve the purpose of those in power, so they can remain in power.

Oh, the American Christian variety of theocrat tells themselves otherwise but they're full of shit.

These people are unable to live in a multicultural pluralistic society. It frightens them because it is seen as an attack on what they have chosen to believe from fear and ignorance. Or taught to believe from childhood (also in fear and ignorance) - and they never challenged the thinking to decide if they truly believe that way - which becomes acceptance of how they were told things are supposed to be - and if their group is the favored group, why even challenge since you've been told from childhood that you are superior or chosen by some god to lead the way.

Since they can't live in a world of tolerance and respect, they need to force everyone around them to think as they do or to at least be forced so far underground as to not make a difference in how things work.

People like this will enslave, imprison, and kill to create the world they want.

They'll create laws to limit the freedom of people they would rather not exist. They'll limit the jobs they can have, where they can live, and how they can live.

They'll expect everyone to obey or at least live in fearful silence. Ridding themselves of those seen as a threat.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. Because it is the same with all bigoted/structural racist/sexist/homophobic societies - fear based, rooted in ignorance, and deadly. Abusive laws and regulations meant to prop up a dominant culture.

That this comes from right-wing evangelicals should be of no surprise.