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02-04-2006, 02:17 PM

Nah, you guys don't get it. This is COLORADO! Sure, Colorado cable TV serves up the same soup of violence and sex as everywhere else, but everywhere else is not THE headquarters for the Christian fundamentalist movement in the US.

Here's a few snips from a recent article in Harper's Magazine

Colorado Springs is home to the greatest concentration of fundamentalist Christian activist groups in American history. The city is home to Young Life, to the Navigators, to Compassion International; to Every Home for Christ and Global Ethnic Missions (Youth Ablaze). Most prominent among the ministries is Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, whose radio programs (the most extensive in the world, religious or secular), magazines, videos, and books reach more than 200 million people worldwide.

The city’s mightiest megachurch crests silver and blue atop a gentle slope of pale yellow prairie grass on the outskirts of town. Silver and blue, as it happens, are Air Force colors. New Life Church was built far north of town in part so it would be visible from the Air Force Academy. New Life wanted that kind of character in its congregation.

“Church” is insufficient to describe the complex. There is a permanent structure called the Tent, which regularly fills with hundreds or thousands of teens and twentysomethings for New Life’s various youth gatherings. Next to the Tent stands the old sanctuary, a gray box capable of seating 1,500; this juts out into the new sanctuary, capacity 7,500, already too small. At the complex’s western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life’s founder, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday.

(By the way, this is the outfit that made me go round to the back entrance when I admitted to being Buddhist)

Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, Creationism and “Christian values” form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all.

The battle over "Faust" out on the Colorado plains may seem foolish and insignificant to the rest of you, but it is in reality a deadly preliminary skirmish carried out by the Christian Right in their efforts to realize "Christian dominion" over the rest of us.

02-04-2006, 02:17 PM	#6
marichiko Guest Posts: n/a	Nah, you guys don't get it. This is COLORADO! Sure, Colorado cable TV serves up the same soup of violence and sex as everywhere else, but everywhere else is not THE headquarters for the Christian fundamentalist movement in the US. Here's a few snips from a recent article in Harper's Magazine Colorado Springs is home to the greatest concentration of fundamentalist Christian activist groups in American history. The city is home to Young Life, to the Navigators, to Compassion International; to Every Home for Christ and Global Ethnic Missions (Youth Ablaze). Most prominent among the ministries is Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, whose radio programs (the most extensive in the world, religious or secular), magazines, videos, and books reach more than 200 million people worldwide. The city’s mightiest megachurch crests silver and blue atop a gentle slope of pale yellow prairie grass on the outskirts of town. Silver and blue, as it happens, are Air Force colors. New Life Church was built far north of town in part so it would be visible from the Air Force Academy. New Life wanted that kind of character in its congregation. “Church” is insufficient to describe the complex. There is a permanent structure called the Tent, which regularly fills with hundreds or thousands of teens and twentysomethings for New Life’s various youth gatherings. Next to the Tent stands the old sanctuary, a gray box capable of seating 1,500; this juts out into the new sanctuary, capacity 7,500, already too small. At the complex’s western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life’s founder, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday. (By the way, this is the outfit that made me go round to the back entrance when I admitted to being Buddhist) Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, Creationism and “Christian values” form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. The battle over "Faust" out on the Colorado plains may seem foolish and insignificant to the rest of you, but it is in reality a deadly preliminary skirmish carried out by the Christian Right in their efforts to realize "Christian dominion" over the rest of us.