“There aren’t that many of them”…
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009I had a dear friend over for dinner last night. Time has done its typical relentless march and before we knew it, a year had passed since we last got together. In our effort to catch up on what was happening in each others lives, as you might well imagine the topic of my research and writing came up (and stayed up) for a fair portion of the evening.
It started out with Palin and what my opinion is as to why she resigned; then on to the GOP and what does it matter seeing as how they lost by a landslide; then my friend said, “I don’t have time to follow all this, and there aren’t that many of them anyway!” How disheartening… So where was I going to begin without turning our evening into a lecture series? It is a tough one. But I had no choice.
One of the biggest problems for us, and a positive for the extremists, is our disbelief and overwhelm. They rely on us essentially ignoring the information and activities right in front of us for a variety of reasons; 1) we really don’t want to hear about it because it is too disturbing; 2) if we were to pay attention to it – just what are we supposed to DO with this information? 3) our lives are so busy we don’t have time to pay attention to all this nonsense – and as she said – there aren’t that many of them anyway.
I hear her! As I sit here writing today, it is perfect outside, 70s, sunny and I can think of a hundred other things I would rather be doing than having to write about these extremists. And granted, my devotion to informing others about these fanatics requires considerably more time than is necessary for the rest of us to be modestly informed and stay aware. I am really not expecting everyone to become an activist. I am hoping that people will at minimum recognize the face of Dominionism when it is right in front of them and not dismiss it.
For example, this friend of mine has a main business partner that she works along side everyday that is a born-again, evangelical extremists and attends services faithfully at a local dominionist church. She avoids conversations with him but doesn’t recognize that he is exactly the type of ‘c’hristian that belongs to these indoctrinated congregations.
I explained to her that he is the embodiment of what I am talking about. I have met and spent time with her business partner so I am not making a generalized statement based on stereo-types.
She was raised catholic and remembers a conversation not long ago where he had never heard of “lent” and chalked it up to “oh, those Catholics”. I pointed out that this is typical. Often times these born-agains have a myopic view of the Bible as taught to them from repeated specific versus – over and over again – without understanding context, NOR having any other concept of how their beliefs fit into a world view of Christianity or (god forbid) other religious ideologies!
It is a faith of rhetoric and rote memorization. That is an equation for dangerous blind followers and total immersion. What does this produce? People like her partner who can’t defend his beliefs other than pointing to the (revised Zondervan Publishing version, NIV) Bible and saying “it’s all in there”, yet lacking the knowledge of what that really even means. In a word? Brainwashing!
Their own movement places the numbers at approximately 30-35% of the population and growing. They go on to proudly claim that the leadership in their movement – who are the only ones truly in “the know” – consist of about 3-5% of THAT population, but they aim to emulate the “jihadists” and grow that to 10% where they will cause a “tipping point” and create a Christian State. Okey-dokey!
Which brought me to the next point in our conversation last night, which is that many in the congregations aren’t even aware of the fine points of the End Times/Apocalyptic agenda pursued by the leadership/salesmen…yet they are equally as responsible in their contributions and complicity. The Sheeples…
The population of the United States currently stands at 304 million people. So when we do the math – they claim a following of any where between 91 – 106 million. Our numbers are far more conservative and have placed their Sheeple numbers between 50 – 80 million. Either way, this is a substantial number of people who subscribe to this “faith”!
“There aren’t that many of them” will echo in my head for the rest of the afternoon while I mow my lawn and wonder what can I do differently? What can WE do differently? It is not enough to reach one person at a time…
I gave her a signed copy of “TheoPalinism – The Face of Failed Extremism” as she was leaving…and she readily accepted and looks forward to reading it. It does carry an introductory message to this craziness and I wish I could afford to mail it out randomly and get it in as many hands as possible…but with that idea off the table I am open to others! I am ALL ears my friends…please share your thoughts.
