The following excerpt is clipped from a post written by a women who successfully walked away from a dominionist cult and now is considered a leading expert. Her articles appear on DKos and Talk2Action.org. She writes under the pseudonym of dogemperor. The dominionist fringe ideas have gradully insinuated themselves into the broader evangelical sects, such as the Southern Baptists. Domionists are a threat to our democracy for the simple reason they hate this country for banning prayer in schools. At least that is why the militancy of the RW Christians is thought to have started. From that beginning each year it became more and more toxic.

In my research on dominionism since (which I have done, in part, to help along my own recovery from the scars of spiritual abuse)…I am becoming increasingly convinced that (especially among the pente/charismatic groups involved in dominionism, possibly increasingly so even among the Southern Baptists) part of the reason people are having such poor success in debating dominionists is because they do not realize they are in essence dealing with someone who is in a coercive religious group.

Dominionist groups, especially those into “spiritual warfare” (cross reference Marguerite Perrin on “Trading Spouses” for an example of this in action–I honestly wish I could say it’s an extreme example, but in some dominionist groups her behaviour is sadly typical), have an entire system designed to isolate their members from “mainstream reality” and to essentially create a dominionist “group-think”.

Speaking from my own experiences as a former dominionist (having been raised in it), here are some of the things that my church has done to pretty much prevent any outside influences:

a) Taught explicitly that everyone outside the group is evil, possibly even in league with Satan, and that Satan may even be “working through them”

Jesus Camp (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

b) Taught that criticism of the group was “blaspheming against the Holy Spirit” and criticism of members or the church was answered with “touch not mine annointed” or “thou shalt not judge a man of God”

c) Taught that demons were the cause of all hardship and illness (including diseases; genetic diseases along with multigenerational poverty were termed “generational curses” and even colds and flu were the result of “solidified demonic corruption”) and that these could be cured by “naming it and claiming it” as well as donations of up to fifty percent of income to the church

d) Taught that “doorways to Satan” could open up and cause “demonic oppression” by things as innocuous as peace symbols (which they preached were Satanic), Nike shoes, and Pokemon (!) (yes, they literally teach that if kids had Pokemon stuff they’d be demonised; they also do book burnings of Harry Potter books for the same reason, and even criticised C. S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” because it was fantasy)

e) Taught people to not associate with “unsaved” people unless for the purpose of conversion, and even distributed “Christian Yellow Pages” to this effect (which required a fundamentalist statement of faith to be signed before they’d list someone)

f) Ran their own TV and radio “godcasting” network (now focusing largely internationally; see here…the fact they are now vomiting this stuff out over the international airwaves makes me sick and sad like you would not believe) and told people that literally all media outside from the church was Satanic

g) Handed out voter’s guides from the AFA and a predecessor group (Freedom’s Heritage Forum) telling people explicitly whom to vote for (by the way, a deacon of the church is the state head of the AFA)

h) Taught explicitly that deceptive tactics are perfectly permissible in an attempt to convert someone (and yes, this is denomination wide; I’ve documented over 40 separate “front groups” used for various forms of targeted prosyletising by the Assemblies, including targeting other churches)

i) Taught people could literally be hexed into conversion by essentially cursing these people in the name of Christ to be miserable and even suicidal unless they converted

j) Taught that involuntary exorcism of people who were LGBT, not dominionists (and openly critical of the group), and so on were perfectly permissible (I will never be able to come out safely to my parents that I’m bisexual or that I’ve always felt like a man in a woman’s body as a result; it would literally be a death sentence in my case–I saw kids being publically outed involuntarily and subjected to involuntary exorcisms during “revival meetings” and know all too well that people have literally gone insane in these “exorcisms”)
I wish this was an abberation.

Unfortunately, a church deacon at the very church I walked away from is head of the Kentucky AFA (one of our two main dominionist groups here–the other is in Lexington and is the state FotF frontgroup), essentially has been at the center of the dominionist movement in the state for the past thirty years, and is busy setting up a multi-station “godcasting” network on shortwave radio (yes, most of the annoying religious broadcasters on shortwave radio are affiliated with High Adventure Ministries, which is a front group of the very Assemblies church I walked away from). It’s also a major stop on the Assemblies “traveling preacher” circuit, is the second largest church in my home state (with anywhere from 7000 to 17,000 in attendance, depending on whose figures you believe and whether a “revival meeting” is in progress there), and no less than Oliver North has been at the church preaching that the Reds were the Antichrist so he pushed the Iran-Contra arms deal as a mission from God (!) It was also one of the first of the so-called “Third Wave” churches promoting the “Joel’s Army” stuff I’ve written about–the same stuff that “Jesus Camp” teaches to little kids–and was pushing this stuff all the way into the 1960s.

Also, sadly, this view is also not atypical–John Ashcroft’s “eccentricities” like being annointed with Wesson oil (!) are typical teachings in those churches, and practices at Ted Haggard’s New Life Church are very similar to the tactics of “deliverance ministry” preached at the church I walked away from.

The particular denomination I’m a walkaway from, the Assemblies of God, is the largest neopentecostal church in the world with estimates of anywhere from ten to 40 million members; they’re powerful enough that they have a de facto political party in Australia (Family First), may in fact be the religious majority in Brazil now, and operate the largest megachurch in the world–one with nearly three-quarters of a million members in South Korea.

And even more frightening, they are getting more and more control of the government–to the point that someday, they could eventually force us walkaways back at gunpoint–or kill us “just like Hitler did to the Jews”–or, worse yet, start a war that kills everyone.

Related articles

• Religious Right and The Council on National Policy(CNP)(planetpov.com)

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• Dominionists – The Mighty Oak Is Not Always a Good Thing(planetpov.com)

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• Scary Jesus Warriors, or When is a Fact not a Fact(theparish.typepad.com)

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• Spiriting away Democracy(slacktivist.typepad.com)

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Here is the URL to dogemporer’s full Live Journal piece: http://dogemperor.livejournal.com/122878.html