http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/621950.html#cutid1At Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Snoop Dogg figures in sermons, housewives cradle babies in tattooed arms -- and religious fundamentalism rules. Meet the Disciple Generation, the fierce new face of American evangelism.
By Lauren Sandler
From Salon.com
Sept. 13, 2006 | SEATTLE --
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The way Driscoll sees it, the more babies his conservative Christian congregation can produce in this child-poor city, the more they can redirect local politics, public education, and culture in one of the liberal capitals of the world. To complete his trifecta of indoctrinating, voting, and breeding, Driscoll has developed a community that dwarfs any living experiment of the '60s. To say that Mars Hill is just a church is to say that Woodstock was just a concert.
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Following Driscoll's biblical reading of prescribed gender roles, women quit their jobs and try to have as many babies as possible. And these are no mere women who fear independence, who are looking to live by the simple tenets of fundamentalist credo, enforced by a commanding husband: many of the women of Mars Hill reluctantly abandon successful lives lived on their own terms to serve their husbands and their Lord. Accountability and community is ballasted by intricately organized cells -- gender-isolated support groups that form a social life as warm and tight as swaddling clothes, or weekly coed sermon studies and family dinner parties that provide further insulation against the secular world. Parents share child care, realtors share clients, teachers share lesson plans, animé buffs share DVDs, and bands share songs.
After Driscoll prays for the continued fertility of his congregation, and the worship band cranks out a few fierce guitar licks, the sermon begins. Pacing the stage like a stand-up pro, blending observational humor about parenting with ribald biblical storytelling, Driscoll peppers his message with references to his own children as midget demons and recalls his own past in stories about duct-taping and hog-tying his own siblings. He riffs about waiting in a supermarket checkout line behind a woman who said to him, "You sure got a lot of kids! I hope you've figured out what causes that."
"Yeah," he flipped back. "A blessed wife. I bet you don't have any kids." The congregation hoots and hollers. "That shut her up," he mutters.
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The Mars Hill community resembles the shared-land communes of the '60s far more than any traditional society of churchgoers. It's a little shocking to see this experimental model exploded into a megachurch that is rolling back the achievements of the '60s generation, its current emphasis on connection and meaning a tool to convert purpose-seeking postfeminists into self-described proud submission.
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At a weekly Bible study class at a Mars Hill pastor's home, Abolafya first heard about the doctrine of wifely submission. The pastor's wife gave Abolafya a book to study called "The Fruit of Her Hands," which can essentially be summed up in Ephesians 5:22: "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord." When Abolafya stretched out on her couch one evening to read the first chapter of the book, she screamed and threw it across the room. But she prayed to God and was led back to the Bible, to understand Wilson's perspective. In the Bible, Abolafya found story after story about women being willfully deceived, following their own desires, wreaking travesty in their relationships and homes. In these stories she saw signs of her own past, her mother's behavior, her friends' actions. She began to submit to Ari about purchases and plans she wanted to make.
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