I found this article today, and just wanted to share it

[hyphenate]

I found it to be chilling in many aspects, and have to admit, it's very scary to know people like this exist. It's a bit long, but it's worth a good read.
______________________________________________________
The Nightmare of Christianity
By Max Blumenthal

September 9, 2009

(The following is an excerpt from Max Blumenthal's new book, Republican Gommorah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, published by Nation Books.)

A few miles down the road from Colorado Springs , in the quiet bedroom community of Eldredge, a deeply disturbed young man named Matthew Murray followed the unfolding debacle at New Life Church with an interest that bordered on obsession. Murray, a sallow-faced, bespectacled 24-year-old, had been indelibly scarred by a lifetime of psychological abuse at the hands of his charismatic Pentecostal parents. Murray's mind became crowded with thoughts of death, destruction, and the killings he would soon carry out in the name of avenging what he called his "nightmare of Christianity."

On an online chat room for former Pentecostals, Murray heaped contempt on his mother, Loretta, a physical therapist who homeschooled him to ensure that his contact with the outside world was severely limited. "My 'mother,'" Murray wrote, "is just a brainswashed church agent cun,t . The only reason she had me was because she wanted a body/soul she could train into being the next Billy Graham..."

He went on:

...my mother was into all the charismatic "fanatical evangelical" insanity. Her and her church believed that Satan and demons were everywhere in everything. The rules were VERY strict all the time. We couldn't have ANY christian or non-christian music at all except for a few charismatic worship CDs. There was physical abuse in my home. My mother although used psychotropic drugs because she somehow thought it would make it easier to control me (I've never been diagnosed with any mental illness either). Pastors would always come and interrogate me over video games or TV watching or other things. There were NO FRIENDS outside the church and family and even then only family members who were in the church. You could not trust anyone at all because anyone might be a spy.

An authoritarian Christian-right self-help guru named Bill Gothard created the home-schooling regimen implemented by Murray's parents. Like his ally James Dobson, Gothard first grew popular during the 1960s by marketing his program to worried evangelical parents as anti-hippie insurance for adolescent children. Based on the theocratic teachings of R. J. Rushdoony, who devised Christian schools and home-schooling as the foundation of his Dominionist empire, Gothard's Basic Life Principles outlined an all-consuming environment that followers could embrace for the whole of their lives. According to Ron Henzel, a one-time Gothard follower who co-authored a devastating exposé about his former guru called A Matter of Basic Principles, under the rules, "large homeschooling families abstain from television, midwives are more important than doctors, traditional dating is forbidden, unmarried adults are 'under the authority of their parents' and live with them, divorced people can't remarry under any circumstance, and music has hardly changed at all since the late nineteenth century."

At the Charter School for Excellence, a school in South Florida inspired by Gothard's draconian principles that receives $800,000 in state funds each year, children are indoctrinated into a culture of absolute submission to authority almost as soon as they learn to speak. A song that the school's first-graders are required to recite goes as follows:

Obedience is listening attentively,
Obedience will take instructions joyfully,
Obedience heeds wishes of authorities,
Obedience will follow orders instantly.
For when I am busy at my work or play,
And someone calls my name, I'll answer right away!
I'll be ready with a smile to go the extra mile
As soon as I can say "Yes, sir!" "Yes ma am!"
Hup, two, three!

Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is among the 2.5 million Americans who have attended Gothard's Basic Seminar. According to Huckabee, who once earmarked state funds to distribute Gothard's literature in Arkansas prisons, Gothard was responsible for "some of the best programs for instilling character into people." But to the deeply alienated Murray, Gothard was the original source of his pathology. "I believe that the truth needs to be exposed," Murray wrote in a September 2006 discussion forum of recovering Gothard followers. "People need to see through errornious and destructive doctrines and teachings including Bill Gothard's."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090921/blumenthal

[rve300]

1. I room full of kids chanting that song would be creepy

But if I could get my 7 year old to grasp the concept of even a couple of those lines, my life would be much easier.

[RLBaty]

2. A link??

I notice the article references the private school movement.

Anyone else see the connection between the growth of private "religious" schools since 1970 and the issues discussed in the "REVOKE Revenue Ruling 70-549" thread in this forum.

I continue to get reports that the filing of the suit to challenge IRC 107 is making progress.

It can't come too soon!

I hope it does become a reality.

Sincerely,
Robert Baty

[hyphenate]

3. The only link I had

was the one in the OP, for The Nation. There are likely some links at the original website as linked above.

[RLBaty]

5. A link?

The link I had referenced to his described in the text of my message.

It does not have reference to an Internet address.

Sincerely,
Robert Baty

[moobu2]

6. Here's a link to the article if you still want one

The Nightmare of Christianity

[DeSwiss]

4. I remember well when this happened....

...and Max Blumenthal is to be commended for his hard work and risks with so many of the exposes that he's done on these creeps, including Rev. John Hagee (of the Catholic Church is a whore, fame), and Youth With A Mission (And who I might add, happen to be the organizational owners listed for the C Street Republican Jukejoint,Whore House and Group Therapy Center).

K&R



on edit: spelling

[Why Syzygy]

7. k/r

[ZombieHorde]

8. Why does the text turn red when I place my cursor over the letters? nt

[Why Syzygy]

10. The original

has comments in brackets which don't appear when copied to DU's html post window.

[laconicsax]

17. Try this:

type [ for [
type ] for ]

To get something like [sic], just type [sic]

[Why Syzygy]

19. You should post that

in the computer group where it can be found for reference later.

[charlie]

21. Easier just to substitute parentheses

If you use character entities and preview what you write before posting, they'll get converted back into brackets. Which means you've got to fix them with every preview.

[Why Syzygy]

26. I was able to use this

today. Really helpful.

[imdjh]

9. I hate these people. But we also have to accept that there is a gap in our vision.

Organized ritual philosophy complete with an understanding of morality and consequences for immorality works, and appears to be necessary in a society. For thousands of years, religion has performed this role. If we are to effectively put to death these old religions, then a new religion must replace them, a better one which doesn't run on demons and gods, but which does recognize that there are moral and immoral acts. The problem as I see it, is that many people on our team do not completely understand the difference between right and wrong in a society which recognizes individual rights.

Chanting "hate the rich" or promoting other forms of theft or denial of individual rights doesn't make sense to a child you just told to ask before borrowing and to respect the property of others.

[Why Syzygy]

11. Rather than relying on conventional

religion to control "immorality", perhaps a better course would be mandatory studies of Jung's archetypes.

The Shadow
The Shadow, is a psychological term introduced by the late Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl G. Jung. It is everything in us that is unconscious, repressed, undeveloped and denied. These are dark rejected aspects of our being as well as light, so there is positive undeveloped potential in the Shadow that we don’t know about because anything that is unconscious, we don’t know about.

The Shadow is an archetype. And what an archetype simply means is that it is typical in consciousness for everyone. Everyone has a Shadow. This is not something that one or two people have. We all have a Shadow and a confrontation with the Shadow is essential for self awareness. We cannot learn about ourselves if we do not learn about our Shadow so therefore we are going to attract it through the mirrors of other people.

http://www.shadowdance.com/shadow/theshadow.html

[imdjh]

12. I'd be a liar if I said that I didn't wonder if the world would fall apart without gods.

It appears that there are large populations in the world which simply will not live in peace and reason in the absence of religion. I have long theorized that the burden of the Pope is that upon election, he opens the book that only the Pope reads, and it says "We made this shit up because the people need it. You must keep it going because the average person needs to believe in God."

[Why Syzygy]

14. Understadning one's psyche

doesn't rule out a reverence for spirit. It does rule out 'punishments' inflicted by one human upon another human.

[Why Syzygy]

15. Bottom line ..

From the end of the article:


This sort of reasoning had been seen before, from figures ranging from Ted Bundy to Tom DeLay to Ted Haggard. When confronted with their own crimes and sins, these movement icons found that faulting the prince of darkness was far easier than accepting personal responsibility.

[hyphenate]

18. Unfortunately you are more correct than you know

Some years ago, I was a member of another board run by a humanist who had a very strange experience. Her husband had been in seminary training as a minister, and at one point was being given a tour of one of the churches he was going to be working in, and that very conversation came up, and yes, that actual admission was made. After this woman and her husband talked about it, and were shocked. Evidently, since hubby was going to be there as a minister, he was entitled to know the "truth" about the church's beliefs. The other fact that came out was that the minister who gave the tour also said that running the church was like running any other business and little more. Having idealists in the priesthood was a lot harder to deal with, it seemed.

[jonnyblitz]

24. yes, the leo strauss theory. gods are needed to keep the

ignorant and unwashed masses in line and in fear even if these gods don't exist.

[rd_kent]

25. I disagree

I think the world would be a better place WITHOUT religion. The question remains: How do we get there without letting the world fall apart?

If religious leaders were to start telling their flocks that it is OK for other people to believe something different, people could start moving in a new direction. The reason this does not happen though, is because those religious leaders are corrupted by the POWER they have, much like our politicians, and will do/say just about anything to keep that power.

[laconicsax]

16. Why does an old religion need to be replaced with a new one?

[imdjh]

20. Because nature despises a void.

[laconicsax]

22. Do you evidence or is that just your opinion?

The majority of people in the several countries don't seem to mind not having a religion.

[imdjh]

23. Only a couple of thousand years of human history.

Name a country that doesn't have a dominant religion. On the off chance that you can do that, name one that matters.

[rd_kent]

13. The only difference between a cult and a religion

is the size of the congregation.