God is raising up a network of locally-led Military Ministry-coached Campus Crusade for Christ ministries on military installations and ships across the world. The Military Ministry is working to help leaders like you build movements that will transform their installations or ship to "Reach the World through the Military of the World".

Our desire is to develop a movement on every installation and ship that is not merely a club, but rather a transformational community. We envision a community where lost personnel and their families are being transformed by the gospel of Christ (Col. 1:13-14); where Christians are being transformed in "grace and truth relationships" (Eph. 4); and where military bases and the world are being transformed by laborers who are sent (Matt. 9:37-39).

Lost, eh? That was a word that was used quite frequently by my former roomie. Sounds like they're still at it.

by Lorie Johnson on Fri May 19, 2006 at 11:14:27 AM EST

People honestly have no idea just how extensive this imagery is within dominionism, and in particular the pente and neopente churches in which dominion theology emerged.  (In fact, "dominion theology" is in fact the prototypical "spiritual warfare" movement, and the extent of military and police imagery has grown the longer dominion theology has been around.  It's particularly bad in what used to be known as the "Toronto" and "Brownsville" movements (and what is now known as "Third Wave" pentecostalism--partly because it's spread to so many churches, and partly because it's increasingly recognised that the roots were around far before Toronto or Brownsville; to note full disclosure, I'm a survivor of a "Third Wave" pente church that was doing "Brownsville" type madness a good thirty years before the Pensacola "revival").)

It is really only now as a walkaway--and having had experience talking to what I term "sane Christians"--that I can truthfully say that the type of religion that is promoted in the pente-dominionist churches in particular (one of the biggies being Ted Haggard's New Life Church, which has been linked with the USAFA religious coercion scandals) is not what mainstream Christianity would recognise as "Christian".  Dominionist theology is very, very different from mainstream Christianity, I'm realising, and people whose main frame of reference is from a moderate or even conservative non-dominionist Christian church almost uniformly tell me they are utterly shocked at how spirituality was twisted in the group I escaped.

In some ways, the closest analogue is with another group altogether--Scientology, which is highly coercive and also has strong "spiritual warfare" memes (the SEA Orgs, signing people up for 1-billion-year "tours of duty", etc.) and even a deliverance-ministry movement of its own.  Literally, it is as if the same base of coercion, conspiracy theories, and military imagery was used by both groups--only one wrapped it up in Biblical imagery, and the other wrapped it up in bad space opera.

The military theology isn't new in the most hardline dominionist churches.  One thing I keep remembering--and, especially now with the fact that threatening noises are being made over nuking Iran and how relations with Russia are going south, having nightmares about again--is a scene from the early 80's, when relations between the US under Reagan and the USSR under Chernenko had gone south to the point that people thought the Cold War might well go hot soon.

The preacher was talking about how God's chosen would be "raptured up"...and they would get a heaven-side seat as the USSR invaded Israel, the US launched a retaliatory strike against the USSR, and most of humanity was annihilated in literal nuclear hellfire--and at the end of the Tribulation, the few survivors who hadn't converted would be slaughtered as the "warriors of God" (who had been watching the holocaust and were laughing--yes, the preacher emphasised this--laughing at the poor bastards who got nuked because they were Getting Theirs) came down and slew everyone who wasn't explicitly a God Warrior.   Then God would provide a new heaven and new earth, thanks to this one being rendered uninhabitable until the death of the sun. :P

As they were describing everyone getting nuked and people having a heaven-side seat to it, the place was going nuts with orgiastic joy, especially the preacher, over the fact that over 99 percent of the human population was going to die because they were not dominionist pentes.  And yes, they went over how most Christians would burn too, because God would see them as "lukewarm".

The people in my church wanted a nuclear fucking war that would destroy the planet and most of humanity.  Were happy about it.  Were literally dancing in the aisles and praising God that it looked like Mutually Assured Destruction was about to come to pass.  (And people talk about people celebrating when the World Trade Center fell :P)

It still makes me sick and sad and scared to think of it, and recent world events are bringing the flashbacks of that back to me in nightmares. :(

by dogemperor on Sat May 20, 2006 at 10:26:09 AM EST

You certainly showed more patience and forbearance than I would have.  Did you ever ask your ex-roomie what kind of god she was following? I'm a firm believer in "By their fruits shall ye know them."
I am also "old school" Army and I remember our chaplain in Vietnam. He was a Jesuit priest who was always ready to pray with and counsel us no matter what our religion was.  
BTW, the savage militarism in Christianity is definitely not from the teachings of Jesus but rather from the "germanization" of Christianity which began under the Emperor Charlemagne in the 8th and 9th centuries. This has been going on for a long time.

by Frank Frey on Mon May 22, 2006 at 11:44:55 AM EST