The Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International (a major force that the Assemblies of God has used to practice "sheep-stealing" and to "seed" dominionist groups in churches--a tactic the IRD is now borrowing) is pretty clearly linked with the whole "Catholic Charismatic" movement, even encouraging people at first to stay in their parishes so they can convert more members to being essentially Mass-attending pentes.  The people leaving Catholic churches to go to large Assemblies and neopente megachurches is no accident--quite often, they've either had "Catholic outreaches" or "charismatic Catholic" groups started in Catholic churches decades beforehand.

(In some cases, particularly in Central America, this has even spilled over into dominionism of the American kind--El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala all have rather serious problems with dominionist movements started in the US, and it is known that the FGBMFI and various pente groups actively funded the Contras in Nicaragua (and in fact Oliver North has gone stumping at Assemblies churches claiming what he did in the Iran-Contra scandal was "God's work").  In my history of dominion theology within the pentecostal movement I've documented some of the FGBMFI's misbehaviour in Central America--behaviour bad enough that even the Peace Corps documented it.)

by dogemperor on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 03:43:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

How is such a characterization not tantamount to hate speech ? Please explain.

by Bruce Wilson on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 10:18:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

But then, it seems you have already made up your mind, in which case, there is no answer that will satisfy you.

But if anyone cares to answer your question, despite the skeptical and argumentative way it is posed, I am sure they will do so.  

As for Joe Bageant, I know him a bit. I like him. He is a fine man, and a great story teller and an astute observer of the American scene. He cares deeply about people. He is also the first to say that he is not an expert on the religious right, and does not wish to be thought of as one.

by Frederick Clarkson on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 11:14:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

a) Group within a dominionist denomination (formerly pretty much the Assemblies of God and other neopentecostal groups, but now expanding to the Southern Baptists to an extent) decide that as part of their "missionary outreaches" they are going to target Christians for conversion to dominionism.

(As an aside, I should note that groups like the Assemblies of God et al generally don't consider non-dominionist Christian groups as truly "Christian".  They may play nice with the groups for purposes of recruitment, but in the churches themselves if you aren't waving around "swords of the Lord" and yammering in tongues they do not consider you Truly Saved.  Hence they--unlike practically every other Christian denomination--consider conversion of non-dominionists, including by methods of deception, to be completely ethical.)

b) Either groups seen as potentially friendly to the dominionist cause (in aspects of theology) are recruited, or they will actively "seed" a group.

In the case of the group I'm a walkaway from (the Assemblies), typically they will target either a group in the church that accepts "tongues" or that is seen as "conservative" theologically, and establish friendships with them through a group called the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International; if they're lucky enough to get a pastor who is sympathetic, they also try to get groups that are various "fronts" of the Assemblies (like Royal Rangers, or Chi Alpha, or the Bible Bowl) as "partners".

If no existing group like that exists, they don't see it as a problem; what they do in this case is convert one or a few members, then expressly encourage those members to remain in their original congregation and recruit more members.  The Assemblies of God has bled off a rather substantial number of Catholics in Central America using these tactics, and this is also largely where the whole "Charismatic Catholic" movement comes from; they also use this same tactic in things like promoting "Messianic Judaism" (basically Assemblies churches that set themselves up as "Synagogues" and follow Jewish kashrut law), and even as of late "Messianic Islam" movements as well.  (No, I'm not making this up.  I wish I was.)

c) These movements are bred--largely in stealth--in mainstream churches until there is a "critical mass" of followers which can either hijack or split the denomination.

One of the methods that is used in these groups is of "cell churches"--small parachurch groups that essentially play "big brother" on members and enforce toeing the line.  There is some amount of evidence--Sara Diamond's book "Spiritual Warfare" describes this best, but there is at least one good article which largely uses Diamond's book as reference that discusses how the "cell church" or "shepherding" method was even specifically designed to split churches and to make it easier to hijack them.

Of note here--"cell churches" as described in the article are generally seen as one of the single most coercive and spiritually abusive tactics practiced by these groups.  Most exit counselors now consider it a major "danger sign" if a church has a heavy focus on "prayer cells" and the like, because of serious abuses (most well known in the International Church of Christ, but also very well documented in the Assemblies, neopentecostal groups, and even parachurch groups like Promise Keepers).  At least one exit counseling group documents how this operates in at least one neopentecostal group, and there is an excellent book called The Discipling Dilemma which discusses "cell churches" and the abusive tactics promoted therein (not only within the International Church of Christ but within the Assemblies and other neopente groups into the "Third Wave" movement in particular); even Wikipedia's entry on spiritual abuse details how this movement is harmful.

One of the particularly interesting things that has been found in research of people who have been recruited into "cell churches" is that on psychological tests they tend to converge to the same personality profile in commonly used diagnostic tests and a followup study shows  that this sort of "merging into a hive mind" occurs with any coercive religious group (i.e. it's not just restricted to "cell churches" but also shows up in persons involved in the Moonies, in Scientology, etc.--in fact, one of the groups it showed up in was Maranatha, a dominionist group closely connected to the "charismatic" movement that was so coercive that it was literally banned from multiple state college campuses and to this day is recognised as one of the more highly coercive "Bible-based" groups (and which was heavily promoted in the Assemblies, of note)) and mainstream churches which were used as "controls" did not show these changes.

As spiritual abuse is prevalent in the dominionist movement and in fact is part of the core theology of some groups including the originators of dominion theology, the use of spiritually abusive tactics to recruit members can't be discounted.

One method, too, of actively "farming" dominionist movements is converting people to dominionism and then encouraging those persons to remain in their original congregations to convert others.  As noted, the "Catholic Charismatic" movement is largely the result of this (there is documentation showing that the FGBMFI explicitly encouraged Catholic converts to pentecostalism to remain in their dioceses and start "Catholic Charismatic" movements), and there is evidence that the Southern Baptist Convention hijacking may have been in part the product of this (both by the Assemblies courting dominionist Southern Baptists in early attempts to hijack the Republican party and start "Christian Nation" movements, and by at least one of the persons behind the invention of "cell churches" being a Southern Baptist who was recruited through a "Charismatic Baptist" group and who now is a regular on Assemblies "traveling preacher" circuits).

The timelines here are not short--we're talking in the realm of multiple decades (starting in the late 60's-early 70's in most cases, and all the way back to the 50's in some cases--very similar to the timeline for active promotion of dominionism within the US itself, and again, starting from the Assemblies and similar groups and spreading out to the mainstream).  In many of these cases, these movements have been literally festering for decades gaining momentum, and are now reaching critical mass.  This is actually in part a strategy that the groups that invented dominionism have had for decades in terms of "sheep-stealing"--the hope is that these denominations will split or be hijacked, go dominionist, and then eventually take on all the aspects of dominion theology as practiced by the Assemblies et al--or that their members will leave their parent churches and then join the dominionist movement (either joining dominionist denominations or becoming "independent" neopentecostal or "charismatic" groups).

by dogemperor on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 11:36:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

When it is posted online, I will write about it here.

by Frederick Clarkson on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 11:55:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]