Prologue: This post is for share-button slacktivists.
For you new political activists who just can’t help yourself in turning my Facebook feed into a firehose of {nothing} to say about our new President- with misguided memes and faltering bleats directed against straw man arguments. I can easily find news articles anywhere I please, so you are not “stimulating conversation” by psycho-eposting like a jilted ex-girlfriend and shoving links into my face, thank you. Especially those offered by you without comment (or with a short dumb comment because you have nothing helpful to add to the conversation). You have completely displaced my nice normal feed of cats, club sandwiches and cats with club sandwiches (not to mention my friends’ kids playing sports) with this unhelpful piffle.
We have reached the point in the history of our nation where any moron can finally see that things are amiss in politics. And, Boy, are they letting us know! Previously, you had to have a modicum of intelligence to grasp the actual mess of it all outside of the obligatory partisan whining. And now we are showing the true power of the American people amassed as one, armed with clever memes proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that certain politicians are undeniably identical to Hitler as well as monkeys.
If I were to tell you how & where you’re academically wrong in your approach, you’ll think I’m defending him. The truth is: you’re overplaying your hand and sanity must be restored at the risk of this appearance.
So I’m going to show you how to put a little thought and research into what you have to say, which -right or wrong- is so much better than a mindless, effortless, glib contribution that you didn’t research or originate. No wonder Donald thinks you’re a loser. You’ve already proven yourself toothless. But you’re not going to read this-you’ve already shown that you don’t have the discipline.
The rest of you will love this!
As you can tell, I’ve pretty much given up on politics. I have no emotional reaction to this election, but I am enjoying watching the whole system burn down. I must admit, the Basketball-style face stuff of Hillary Clinton right at the net was pretty sweet. Ultimately, I am sure that Trump will do nothing to slow the inevitable march to Globalist “enlightenment” and will most likely hasten it.
I consider myself (to steal a term from one of my old Profs) an archaeologist of religion – to which politics are inextricably tied. My Prof was an Academic. I am of the Armchair variety. My only interest in Donald Trump would be if there were some grand metaphysical model driving him. Sure enough, there is. To understand Donald is to know his churchin’ . We have to talk about Swedenborg, Megachurches, Jimi Hendrix and Oprah. A lot of this is new to me, as I don’t study modern religion because it’s too fragmented and fractious. But my central Thesis of religion was reaffirmed again and again while researching this, which I am delighted to see in new material.
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Well! What a personality we have in Donald Trump. This is what you Libs get for chasing off the Conservatives. Are you happy now? At least you could debate Bill Buckley. You can’t debate this guy. He’ll just tell you that you suck. And Conservatives: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??! At what cost victory, King Pyrrhus? You had the upper hand in the “dignity of the office” conversation and this guy is going to destroy it without having one erogenous zone breached. So what exactly gives him the will to overpower us like this?
Like I keep saying: History is fascinating but the metaphysical (can’t always call it religious) motives behind the people who make History are even more so. I don’t know how anyone can think that 40-year UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller being a disciple of Alice Bailey while creating a world-governing body that officially only recognizes the Bahá’í Faith which regularly holds audiences with the Pope can think that this will not affect his or her life in a strong way. Did Hitler use a pile of Ostara magazines as a pillow? Not sure, but it may be important.
It’s not always entirely a metaphysical drive. Bill Clinton is a super-smart dude. You know him if you read Carroll Quigley and through him, Cecil Rhodes (though allegedly a Theosophist), and through him, John Ruskin.
When Obama climbed wet-behind-the-ears out of the Faculty lounge, those on the watchtower alerted us to Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, Edward Said, Jeremiah Wright and his Dr. Strangelove: Zbignew Brzezinski-but Obama has a cadre of Jesuits just like any Republican would. Jimmy Carter also kept new-ager Brzezinski in a closet apartment like Lazlo from ‘Real Genius‘, but being a good Southern boy, was also all for the new progressive evangelicalism. Do these ideas agree?
Reagan consistently quoted Theosophist Manly Hall and was a known stargazer, but Billy Graham, who was likely what is known as a “short-robed Jesuit”- leading wayward Protestants back to Rome via Ecumenism, helped Reagan create the first post of Ambassador to the Holy See, something for which Truman got his ass handed to him. Owing to the Reagan, JPII, Gorbachev Axis efforts, Russia has had an ambassador since 1990. Was it just politics? No one ever really figured out what wind was under Reagan’s wings.
Hillary? What was she reading? Surely not the Hite Report. This is clearly a person without a driving philosophy beyond her presumptive Beatified Assumption based on jobs given to her by men and her ability to carpet bag. She pulled a Bob Dole: “It’s my turn…plus I have a vagina. I don’t owe you anything”. And she got pretty well steamrolled (if you look outside of New York and California). Then in her concession speech she was suddenly a devout Methodist?
The Clintons will seemingly throw anything against the wall to see what sticks (‘member when Bill was Pro-life and loved everyone who signed the “Southern Manifesto”?). Hillary isn’t pandering (for once) to the religious voting block. This is very important. We will get back to Hillary’s Methodism later. Bill was working on his “electable” haircut at age 15 while Trump has been just moving forward like a bulldozer. He is going to succeed massively because he can’t recognize anything else, even when he fails. Here’s why:
This is a long chain and each link connects to the one before and after:
The Fredrick Trump family worshiped at Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. Methodist Minister of the Reformed Church of America, Norman Vincent Peale, famous for the book, “The Power of Positive Thinking” grew that church from 600 to to 5000 members effectively making it the first ‘Megachurch’. ‘Methodist Minister’-did you catch that?
Norman Vincent Peale married Donald to Ivana. Donald met Marla Maples in that church. Funeral services for Donald’s parents were held there. Donald routinely offers Peale as one of his favorite speakers. Trump hosted Peale’s 90th Birthday party. Trump’s book, “Art of the Deal” alludes to Peale’s “Art of Living” radio show. Peale was also very close to the Nixons and Married Julie to David Eisenhower not to mention ministered to the family during the Watergate troubles. Lucille Ball married her second husband at Marble Collegiate. Liza Minnelli married David Gest here. It goes on.
Marble Collegiate Facade.
Perhaps your grandparents remember him. Peale’s ‘Positive Thinking’ method offered higher satisfaction in life through affirmations and visualizations. His ‘Positive Imaging’ book is strong mix of theology & psychology. He established a religio-psychiatric outpatient center and wrote books with psychoanalyst Smiley Blanton until Mental Health associations disavowed Peale which caused Blanton to distance himself. Criticism includes the fact that Peale’s method is based on unsubstantiated anecdotes and not empirical data.
Marble Collegiate with Empire State looming.
Hypnotists recognized that Peale’s methods include hypnosis, self and otherwise, concealed and otherwise. Eventually, Peale was criticized and eschewed by most religious communities as well as the mental health groups, not that his church got smaller. It grew to over 5,000 active members. For this he got a 1984 Presidential Medal of Freedom. Where did Peale get his ideas? They Ain’t Methodist. They ain’t Christian.
Not long before America’s Civil War (The War of Northern Aggression, for some of you) a guy with the finest snake oil salesman appellation ever given, Phineas Quimby, combined the philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg with Franz Anton Mezmer’s theory of ‘Animal Magnetism’ to form ‘New Thought’. Basically, in “New Thought” what we know as ‘positive energy’ and ‘good vibes’ are thought to influence physical life, right down to curing any disease. Mary Baker Eddy was under Quimby’s care, but denied his influence in her forming the Christian Science movement, which clearly reflects his views. Quimby didn’t necessarily elucidate his views to the public, so Eddy felt free to steal from him. Quimby’s proxies such as Emma Curtis Hopkins and Warren Felt Evans are given credit for “organizing” New Thought. Hopkins’ students, Charles & Myrtle Fillmore used “New Thought” to form the Unity Church (now Unitarian Universalist). Evans finally got everything into print incorporating Swedenborg’s influence. Swedenborg surmised that the Bible describes a human’s transformation from a materialistic to a spiritual being, which he calls rebirth or regeneration-similar to Gnostic Apotheosis or alchemical lead-to-gold exotericism.
The New Age / Christianity crossover scene went nuts with this. Harshing one’s mellow officially made you totally a negative-vibe merchant, man. Clearly, Quimby’s positive energy / mesmerism is reborn in Peale’s affirmations/visualizations and suspected self-hypnosis. Quimby, along with Helena Blavatsky and Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are pretty much the axis upon which the entire modern New Age movement rotates, often filtered through Alistair Crowley for modern acolytes.
Peale did not put ‘New Thought’ into Methodism. That was done in the late 19th Century by Charles Wesley Emerson at Emerson college, under the influence of Henry Drummond, author of Natural Law in the Spiritual World. At Emerson, E. W. Kenyon, learned New Thought Methodism (Possibly urged by Ralph Waldo Trine, possibly urged by Ralph Waldo Emerson (a lot of Ralph Waldos out there) and became the “father of the New Faith movement”. The “New Faith movement” is the well from which your modern Televangelists spring. The father of the “Word of Faith” movement is Kenneth Hagin, whom you know from TV. He was a student (plagiarist, really) of Kenyon. And from this eventually came Megachurches, Marble Collegiate being the first. So what do New Faith Preachers teach?
First, they teach that those freed by Christ’s sacrifice have been freed from the law and live in the Spirit. The theology mixes Joseph Benner’s “I Am” – that God is all of us (Kabbalic Pantheism) with Phineas Quimby’s “New Thought”-that we all become equal to God in spirit (Gnostic Polytheism). Joel Olsteen even wrote a book called “The Power of ‘I am’.” It espouses the same ideas but gave no credit to Benner.
“Word of Faith” defined: thoughts and words spoken aloud affect your physical world. This includes material gains and blessings of health. New Ager Jane Roberts’ “Seth Material” mirrors this in claiming that consciousness creates reality and matter, though centered on beliefs and thoughts and not necessarily vocalizations. It was a natural move for Jim Henson to become a follower of hers after leaving Christian Science.
Word of Faith, however, requires vocalizations.
Joel Olsteen’s “Believe & Receive/Prosperity Theology/Positive Confession” theology teaches that God wants you to be healthy and wealthy and you can do this by simply calling it into being. God wants you to rise above your condition and be successful so that you can do acts in God’s name. You may think of these non Catholic churches as Protestant, but this doctrine denies Sola fide. This is why Olsteen thinks his giant house is from God. They teach that you can will success into being by “Visualizing” and “Magnetizing” the needed elements for success- somewhere between “good thoughts bring good things” and God will reward you for acts with material wealth. This is why Trump is a steamroller.
The idea from Kabbalah that words and their vibrations and resonance have magical interactions with the omnipresent power of God (The God of Kabbalah is pantheistic: God in everything)-especially how the universe was created via the Hebrew alphabet or the meditations on the 72 names of God to get through the gates of the Sefirot (or however it works) is a deep and fascinating one, but for our purposes let’s just say that Quimby’s ‘New Thought’ expresses this as ‘The Law of Attraction’.
Pure New-Agers call it ‘Thought Power”. It ties into their ‘we are energy’, ‘we are at one with the universe which IS the pantheistic God, which IS just vibrations of light and love’ and what have you. So thoughts or words (or the “cosmic vibrations” of words) influence realty and outcomes in the physical world from willing your sickness away to reaching for that Rolls Royce. Literally anything is possible.
Theosophist Helena Blavatsky wrote: “That which science calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediaeval hermetists called magnetism, attraction, affinity. It is the universal law, which is understood by Plato and explained in Timaeus as the attraction of lesser bodies to larger ones, and of similar bodies to similar, the latter exhibiting a magnetic power rather than following the law of gravitation.” ~Isis Unveiled., 1887
Annie Besant: “This is the secret of right receptivity. The mind responds according to its constitution. It answers to all that is a like nature with itself. We make it positive towards evil, negative towards good, by habitual thinking, thus building into its very fabric materials that are receptive of good, unreceptive of evil. We must think of that which we desire to receive, and refuse to think of that which we do not desire to receive.” ~Thought Power, Its Control and Culture, 1903
Today, people are not literate enough for passages like the above so Joel Olsteen has dumbed it down to: “Your words affect your future” just “Believe, Visualize and speak out loud”. “You’ve got to send your words out in the direction you want your life to go,” “Words are like seeds, when you send them out- if continue to believe them and listen to them, they can come to a reality.” “Like a magnet, we draw in what we are constantly thinking about.”
Sounds just like Deepak Chopra, right?
Gloria Copeland (Ken’s wife) thinks that you can control the weather in this way:
Well, if your thoughts and words call results into being, that’s no different from The Creator speaking the world into existence, no? As if they teach that you are a god. In fact, their “Little gods” doctrine states that as you are a child of God made in God’s image, you are in fact, a ‘little god’.
Paula White, present personal minister to Donald Trump, will chair the Evangelical Advisory Board in his Presidential administration. She is also the “personal life coach” of Tyra Banks, has ministered to Michael Jackson & Darryl Strawberry and curiously is married to the Keyboard player for Journey, Jonathan Cain. She has expressed the New Faith Little gods Doctrine:
“You tap into what you really are. Do you know what the Bible calls you? It says you are little Elohim. You are a little god.”
Here are other examples:
Kenneth Copeland (student of Ken Hagin, student of E.W. Kenyon):
“You are anything that he is” “You don’t have a God in you. You are one.” “When I read in the Bible where he {Jesus} says ‘I am.’ I just smile and say, ‘I am, too!’ (video)
Benny Hinn: “You say, ‘Benny Hinn, am I a little god?’ You’re a son of God aren’t you? You’re a child of God aren’t you? …What else are you? Quit your nonsense. What else are you? If you say ‘I am’ you are saying I am a part of him. Is he God? Are you his offspring? Are you his children? You can’t be human.” (video)
TD Jakes: “When God created Adam…God said, “I wanted to see what I looked like, so I made you to be my image. You have my DNA You {are} created out of me. You are a derivative of me.” (video)
Earl Paulk: “Adam and Eve were placed in the world as the seed and expression of God. Just as dogs have puppies and cats have kittens, so God has little gods. Until we comprehend that we are little gods and begin to act like little gods, we can not manifest The Kingdom of God.”
Many more in my notes.
They also teach that Jesus’ spirit left the cross,”became sin” and went to Hell for three days to personally fight and overcome Satan, but that is beyond the scope of the Trump discussion.
That was his upbringing. Now let’s look at Trump’s Religiopolitical activity.
Trump has pandered to both Catholics, “I have a message for Catholics: I will be there for you. I will stand with you. I will fight for you.” and Protestants: Franklin Graham (Billy’s son) called Trump’s the most critical election of our lifetime”, coalescing the whole wide world of Evangelicals during Prayer Rallies. Trump adding “You (churchin’ people) are the most powerful group in the country, but you have to band together”. Trump claimed to Pat Robertson to have gotten rid, by executive order, of the Johnson Amendment that threatens the loss of tax-exempt status to churches that speak politically or endorse candidates, which actually applies to all 501(c)(3) organizations, not just religious ones. He seeks to put the final nail into the coffin of the amendment with Congress.
His steering committee included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Bob Vander Plaats, Kenneth Copeland and Gary Bauer.
His Faith advisory council includes most of these people and many others, including Tony Suarez, Jerry Falwell Jr., Jack Graham, Ralph Reed and of course, Paula White. Copeland touts that he can now be a direct conduit from God to the President as never before, even with having presidential influence in the past. Most of these preachers are in a strong ecumenical relationship with the Vatican, so be leery of on-camera hostility between Trump and Francis. Mike Pence calls himself a “Born-again Evangelical Catholic” and fills the Joe Biden’s Token Catholic role perfectly, right down to the Phil Donahue hair. Conspiracy theorists claim that Trump’s education by Jesuits at Fordham assure his control by them. But as a friend pointed out to me, “I would feel better if anyone had control of this guy.” All of these people want the churches and government to work together tightly.
Now to switch gears without a clutch for a moment
Existentialist Peter Drucker is the father of the modern Corporation. Though “Corporations” are evil capitalist baby-eating bugbears in modern Liberal society, the original concept was almost Communist. Drucker’s “corporation” was to be a productive community wherein all involved shared in the success of the corporation’s product, making people feel part of something bigger than themselves, thus healing the existential alienation brought on by displacement of modern technologies. Over time, of course, corporations became systems with those at the top owning airplanes and living in gated communities and those at the bottom being wage slaves. This is not a result of Capitalism, this is a result of human interactions. Just as Corporations are accused , Communism creates a model where those at the top are well-fed in beautiful towers and those at the bottom are in bread lines. And your liberal friends hate corporations but love Communism because they can’t follow the idea beyond the initial sell. That or they think that can make it incorruptible. If Corporations are evil, it is because they follow a Communist model. Just study history. Speaking of feelings of displacement by the industrial revolution (not to mention humiliating results of the Prussian war) this is what led the German farmer as well as the German Coffee House University Intellectual to be sympathetic to the concept of Lebensraum and need to return to “natural roots”.
Peter Drucker grew up Lutheran in a house where politicians, intellectuals & scientists like Friedrich Hayek hung out, but he was more interested in Keynes’ “Behavior of Commodities” which changed his management style to be based on personal relationships rather than number crunching. He admired Zen Buddhism and Martin Buber’s existential “I & Thou” theology. Drucker adopted Kirkegaard’s notion of upper & lower duality of life (provable absolutes/improvable in-absolutes -similar to exotericism/esotericism in Mystery religions or Sartre/Heidegger’s inner & outer worlds). As a social ecologist and management consultant he helped develop the first MBA programs. He brought order, hierarchical structure and growth plans to the Red Cross, Girl Scouts. He invented concepts of “Management by Objectives” and “Knowledge Workers” and espoused importance of Marketing. He was given a 2002 Presidential Medal of Freedom from President W.
Drucker did not self-identify as a born-again Christian, but after seeing Nazism & Communism, determined that Western Civ was fundamentally sick and ascertained that the key to social reform was in Churches (owing to masses of people being influenced, not in correction of sin), so sought to bring corporate structure to evangelical church communities. Simply, he saw that they actually got things done without being bogged down with bureaucracy like the Government is. With that in mind, please revisit W’s ‘Faith-Based’ initiative. He said the same thing.
When Robert Schuller of Crystal Cathedral fame wanted to grow his church exponentially, he contacted Peter Drucker and Norman Vincent Peale. They got together and established the ‘Institute for Church Growth’. Drucker’s Protégé, Bob Buller created the “Leadership Network” which has touched almost every recognizable church out there. Two of the institute’s best students were Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, Pastors of two of the largest megachurches in America. What do the Megachurch progeny of ‘Institute for Church Growth’ teach?
Follow along now. This is when it starts getting scary.
Megachurches have only one goal: Growth. They are called “seeker-sensitive” meaning they want only unchurched people to come in and they openly refer their ministries as a “product”.
The theology is mostly based in self-fulfillment & acts in the name of God replacing a true relationship with God. Acts that fulfill the needs in others fulfill your own need for self-worth. The “narcissism as the root of altruism” argument is not a new one- ask Calvin. But New Faith gets naked and rolls in it.
Schuller was the self-esteem preacher. Self-esteem is a need. Rick Warren says that “God is happiest when you have unlocked your personal potential” in vocation & charity while repeating “It’s not about Me”. No message of repentance or sin is given by him, as if Acts are method to salvation, not the result of being saved. Bill Hybels redefines sin as ‘flawed ways to gain personal fulfillment’. To these people, feeding the poor or fighting AIDS is the path to Heaven. To heck with those silly commandments. And in this they have made the Church experience into a giant self-help therapy session rally.
Now let’s talk about this sticky subject of hypnosis and self-hypnosis. The nice thing about this is that it is not alleged by people with vendettas against preachers, or anti-religion people or conspiracy theorists. It was noticed by hypnotists. They watched Norman Peale and said, “Yep, he read our books”. Just like anyone evaluating a Megachurch management structure can say “Yep, these guys read Drucker”.
It’s not anything magical, it just a way clever people have figured out to get to your decision making process while you are unaware, usually because your ego is being stroked. Peale’s “visualizations” were to be focused upon to a degree that excludes normal, discerning thought, right into auto-hypnosis. Peale then endorsed New Age authors who promoted hypnosis and guided imagery as a means to help with visualizations.
Most religions incorporate some kind of trance or chanting. Despite Biblical admonishments against “vain repetitions…they think they will be heard for their many words”, you have mantras, chants and meditations on the name of God. Praying the Rosary has been called the same, as they resemble Hindu prayer beads. Theosophist Annie Besant wrote:
“Memorize a number of short affirmations, invocations or aphorisms, and begin each day by saying one. If at any time during the day your mind is unoccupied, repeat the saying silently to yourself. An example of one is the following; ‘From the unreal, lead me to the real, From darkness lead me to light, from death lead me to immortality, Peace to all beings.'”
Similarly, Rick Warren calls for you to learn “Breath Prayers” to recite with almost every breath, which are no different than mantras. “Emerging” churches tout mystical contemplative prayer in the vein of Richard Foster and Dallas Willard or Brennan Manning, or even the third century Desert Fathers of North Africa. This is not true prayer, but shutting off your mind as much as possible which is supposed to put you into an alpha-wave trance wherein your mind becomes open to the positive influence of the verse. Mystical chant music does the same. When you groove, you stop thinking and become open to ideas. Jimi Hendrix and Timothy Leary talked about this extensively.
Modernly, this is also marketed secularly as NLP- NeuroLinguistic Programming. Look up Christiane Turner for more on that.
How else could this influence through Ego-Feedback work?
Corporate Churches are all about marketing and Neuromarketing is not off the table. This has been in political marketing for a very long time, too. There is nothing on the Earth more high-stakes than a US Presidential election and Neuromarketing is surely used for much lesser products. Look up Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays for more on that.
We all know that our personal internet experience is shaped largely by algorithms on Google and Facebook servers. They know us better than we do and have figured out our motivations because all of humanity acts in predictable fractal-like patterns. All they had to do was watch you for a while. They record every single thing you do down to things you erased and rewrote in a Facebook field before you hit “post”. Somewhere on a Google server(s) sits effectively a record of your subconscious that they use to create an echo chamber for you that feeds your ego. An echo is a mantra. What do they use it for? To sell you stuff. They sell you objects and they sell you philosophies. They influence your politics just like they sell you Snickers bars.
You know that the word ‘narcissist’ is a buzzword these days. A narcissistic person is more susceptible to the echo chamber because it strokes their ego. You keep hearing what you want to hear and get sold a lot of B.S. with it. So a narcissistic culture is cultivated by those selling you objects and politics. This is not really different from those TV commercials that got you to drink crappy light beer by convincing you that you were cool enough to talk to the girl in the bikini.
Think about your most annoying internet friend that assaults you non-stop with political emails and Facebook posts. This person is kind of smart but not as smart as he or she thinks. This person feels called to enlighten the masses like Jehovah’s Witnesses feel called to show up unannounced at your door every other Saturday. This person has politics zipper-locked to Ego and is angry, snarky and condescending and is indifferent to your fatigue or annoyance at their deluge of out-of-context crap. They may have lots of supporting data memorized but no understanding of the other side of their debate, only the straw man that has been fed through some manner of demagogue or pundit. John Stewart or Stephen Colbert make you feel witty and sell you a line to whip out on social media. Rush Limbaugh and NPR spend a lot of time telling their audiences how intelligent they are while only serving least-common-denominator material can get you an audience as large as theirs. In this, the fine art of rhetoric is murdered. In every good debate I’ve watched, the guy who gets to speak first begins by reciting what the other guy is going to say and proceeds to smash it into 1000 pieces. Then the other guy starts his side of the debate by picking up his own pieces. No one has this skill now. No one knows the other side of the debate. And the less they are able to, the haughtier they become, because they can only perceive their own echo.
In these churches you are fed a constant stream of self-worth, self esteem and assurance that your decisions are backed by the Almighty and that you wield holy power, reinforced with mantras & contemplative thought. It’s a different kind of echo chamber. Then the two cross! Your religio-political friend says, “How can you be a Christian if you support that or don’t support this!”- all based on some concept of social justice that has been spoon-fed to them that completely ignores the corruption of the system that touts the issue.
As stated, the only metric these churches care about is growth. How much growth are we talking? Rick Warren’s Saddleback church has a mere 20,000 weekly members. It’s in the American top 10 Megachurches, but not a pimple on the rear of David Yongii Cho’s church of 830,000 in South Korea. Rick’s book “The Purpose-Driven Life” is one of the best selling books of all time. In 2005, Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame called Rick Warren and said that he read “Purpose-Driven Life” and invited Saddleback to provide management training through Rick’s P.E.A.C.E.* plan (featuring Drucker’s 3-legged stool concept) to create the first “purpose-driven country”. Soon, other African leaders were interested and now Warren hosts an annual 30+ African leader summit in hopes of creating the first purpose-driven continent. Since most Catholics are non-committal or only participate on major holidays, Warren is probably the most influential person on the planet speaking on behalf of the lord.
*P.E.A.C.E. stands for Plant Churches, Equip servant leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, Educate the next generation.
Unless there are Muslims in the crowd, then P = Promote reconciliation.
HuffPo recently tried to make a scandalous story out of “Trump’s Minister” Paula White “bilking” her followers out of money which is “… a tactic that other religious leaders frown upon.”
Say WHAT? The New Faith and seeker-sensitive guys have been raking money in by the bulldozer-push for decades! You ever go to McDonald’s in suburban Georgia and count the “Lord’s Gym: His Pain My Gain” T Shirts?
They are all under tax investigation, the bankrupt Crystal Cathedral had to be sold to the Roman Catholic Church, all of these guys take the money to the grave and they want to freak out and call her a charlatan for asking for $115??? HuffPo have nothing to say about Paula’s “little gods” doctrine and they have little to say about Obama sidling up to Rick Warren in 2008 and less to say about Warren’s Inaugural invocation for Obama where Warren referred to God and Jesus in idioms of Islam (the Jesus who is not divine, The God who does not need offspring, with which some Christians have a problem) again and again.
And Oprah is selling this stuff like crazy. She has given T.D. Jakes a television show. She features Rick Warren or Joel Olsteen at every round-table. She pushes positive-thinking New Agers like Marianne Williamson, who just repackages Helen Schucman’s ‘A Course in Miracles’ (supposedly automatically written by Jesus) for a modern generation- selling millions of books. She is clearly a disciple of New Thought, and has profound influence over a very large number of people. She single-handedly put the “The Secret” at the top of the Best-Seller list (here’s a tip: The Secret is ‘The Law of Attraction’). Oprah preys on low-self-esteem women worse than Charlie Sheen. She sells self-esteem in a way that makes Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral look like a lemonade stand. Her level of New Agerism makes Shirley MacLaine look like…well I can’t think of anyone who isn’t ultimately a New Ager.
And now you know why Hillary is a Methodist. It’s code for New Age Thought Power. Put a Christian name on something (-anything!) and the rubes in flyover country will be none the wiser. And this is why you can witness your atheist/agnostic friends, to whom religion is an anathema, ignorantly spouting the same ideas as those preachers. “I don’t believe in the church but I’m sending you good thoughts or vibrations”. It’s all the same now.
So here is the evolved, matured world of Norman Vincent Peale (and Phineas Quimby) and the world that produced Donald Trump: A New Age/Church Corporation that teaches that you are the same as God and can call forth victory and success by sheer will and vision. The result of Acts mean more than the motivations behind them and justify the means to them. He’s a garden-variety New-Ager with Jesus-y words all over the New Age concepts.
This is still under construction
One small piece of my politics: To me, a Republican sees the only way to help the economy is to get out of the way of it. But he wants to make deals and tweak things. That’s big-D Democrat in my book. It used to be small government vs big government. Now it’s big government vs. freaking huge, all-encompassing government. That’s all we’re dealing with, here. There are no good guys. He’s a new age Democrat, just like Hillary.
So Trump has the will and strength to simply step out of piles of muck and move on. Bankruptcy? Infidelity? That’s in the past, brother. We’re moving forward! It’s funny to me that no one has compared this to Hillary’s ability to step out of scandal after scandal while her business associates go to jail or end up dead while she shimmies out with her ambition and white-knuckle grip on the coat tails intact. It’s not coincidence that she and Donald have the same religion.
And if you think this is small potatoes, you are fooling yourself. If you Bill Nye pimps think some grand, secular enlightenment is coming and the religions will be exposed as daft, don’t hold your breath. This stuff is taking over the world. It has a secular side and a “spiritual” side. Popular Christianity will just write out and diminish Jesus and re-define itself as a collection of cultural dress and songs, while elevating the accomplishments of man. It will have as goals things like picking up highway trash in place of surrendering to Jesus. And even the New-agers, including the ones who claim to be atheist are usually Quimby-ites whether they know it or not. “Gee Whiz, Aw shucks, I just speak for the little guy” politics are dead. Stop letting them sell to you that way. You live in a world of high tech manipulation and I see manipulated people every day. They scream it at me.
As Bill Cooper would say: “The Truth Doesn’t Matter. What the people with the money and power over you believe is what matters, because it is going to affect your life.” So you might as well familiarize yourself with some of these concepts. If you live through this in continued haughty ignorance, that just means more bad things for my Facebook wall.
Published 13Jan17
25Jan17 Addendum:
Four days after I wrote this, Dilbert’s Scott Adams appears in a podcast and declares that as a trained hypnotist, he recognizes the Trump has been trained at the very least in “persuasive body language”. If you could identify it, you would see it in the Megachurch preachers all of the time.
Last Update: 30Mar18