Hollywood's Sick Obsession with Christian Cults

A Reckoning is Coming

I came late to Shiny Happy People on Prime, but it is a success, unlike 95% of the turgid violent offerings of the channel. Nor did I ever watch the Duggar family on TLC, but as I understand it, they elevated the cable network to major player status, so clearly a lot of people did

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Then the eldest son, Josh, was caught with child porn. His father had hidden that he had been pawing his sisters at night. When outed by one of his sisters, he was taken to a Sheriff, a family friend who gave him a stern warning. But the porn thing was a bridge too far and he went to jail for 12 years. Meanwhile yuk-yuk Jim Bob, the pater familias was caught behaving like the patriarch that everyone thought a patriarch was, which meant women were supposed to shut up, dress in long skirts and pantaloons, grow their hair long and curl it. Mater was submissive with a fake little voice and adoring gaze, daughters were instructed to be agents of mercy, forgiving all. The money went to Jim Bob, even when the children became of age. They were just handed the last page of the contract and told to sign it.

Behind the TLC scenes, the nineteen shiny happy children had been subjected to furious discipline, canings, shaming, beatings, slappings, silencings and so on. “Instant obedience!” shouts the youngest when asked what to do when ordered. God was above, Husband below, Wife below that. Apparently wives signed a contract detailing how and when they would be hit, on which part of their bodies. And whether there would be sex after submission in order to “restore” the relationship.

Apparently, the reason the Duggars and their friends went along with this primitivism is because of a Christian cult, run by a a thorough-going creep called Bill Gothard, with dyed black hair and an obsequious smile who wrote Wisdom Booklets and somehow convinced fundamentalist home schoolers to use them, despite being filled with arrant nonsense. Out of that impressive well of knowledge, was supposed to come a President, Senators, members of the FBI, CIA, Justices of the Supreme Court.

This was called The Joshua Generation. It had its own boot camp, soldiers, etc etc etc.

Breathlessly the filmmakers report that Gothard, eventually removed for sexually abusing girls, had reached two million people.

Two million people educated on Wisdom Booklets filled with nonsense, taking power. Sure, honey, that’s super dangerous.

That this is a revolting corruption of Christianity, there is no doubt. But the film industry loves it. It gets to act superior, it gets to slap the faith around, it gets to preen and shake its ever-so-virtuous tail feathers. It’s easy prey, so easy there is something disgusting about it. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale is another attack on fundamentalism, its subtext that all religion is for the weak and desperate and women are so stupid they go along with it. Sarah Polley’s, Among the Women, which won an Academy Award this year, also on Prime, ploughs the same field. Passive nitwits, brutal men. Rape of children in an Amish-like cult. Paul’s various dictats about women get to be trotted out and aired like the primitive nostrums they are, no doubt written by the geniuses at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

That said, the subjection of women and children in formalized Christianity has led it to become a loathed part of the cultural landscape. The behaviour of priests towards boys, thousands upon thousands of priests and nuns abusing children, particularly indigenous children, put the nail in the coffin of it ever rising again to a position of respect among the educated and concerned. Better just turn all those churches into homes for the homeless, frankly.

Yet, here we are, in the midst of the Fourth Great Awakening where the most surprising people are wearing a cross, and Christ is again back where he belongs, in an underground uprising that is happening all over the world, and is larger by several orders of magnitude than the few churches that remain.

In fact, it is only the hard-core left, the ones who have grabbed the reins of the culture and won’t let go, who don’t believe in an after-life, a Great Spirit, source, or God or the Holy Spirit, there are a thousand names. Much of this awakening is female-centered, like early Christianity in the first few centuries of the faith, where home churches, run by women were the locus of operation. It was only after the Council of Niceaea in 325, that women were thrown out of power. The Church then proceeded to persecute women by burning them for the next 1800 years. This fact was established by a young lawyer, Catholic, Brian Muraresku gaining access to the archives in the Vatican. He believed that the reason he was given access to the information about burned women, hundreds of thousands of them - there were careful lists of the number and date and place - was because the Vatican counsels had become guilt-ridden after the waves of pedophilia scandals.

Atwood, Polley and the women who produced Shiny Happy People are the Catholic Church’s well-earned revenge.

But, fundamentalism is just another cult in a sea of cults. John of God, the Brazilian “healer” promoted so heavily by Oprah was found to be abusing very young women to the point where he had a camp of them to impregnate so as to spread his DNA. Buddhist sanghas are always breaking up because the leader had starting pawing one of his (usually) female acolytes. Give someone religious power and it is axiomatic that he or she misbehaves. Early Christianity was not meant to have intercessors. Each person has his or her own access to God, through the Holy Spirit who is the authority you can decide to engage with, not some scheme-y seedy creep with dyed hair and a big belly.

The biggest cult ever is the one now in power. It is the Great Grandmother of Cults. Leftism, corporate Marxism is a far more powerful cult than any yet conceived and it is more punitive of women than the worst of any of the others.

And children? Actual currency.

A Hungarian friend wrote this recently:

Which brings us, inevitably to pedophilia and real Christianity, the real real real story at the heart of our culture. Our culture has become so debased, so degraded, so power and pleasure seeking, the worst of the worst is starting to surface. And that is the ruthless use of children, usually black and brown children, as sexual objects and sources of organs. There was a terrible report last week from the Ukraine, where Russian soldiers came upon one of the underground labs set up by our glorious leaders, and what they found were dead children, their organs harvested. They realized that this is where some of the eight million children who go missing every year end up.

Last week too, it was announced that Mel Gibson was doing a four-part series on the missing children of the world. He had gone into the Ukraine and emerged with a list of 10,000 who had gone missing. According to the gossip site Crazy Days and Nights, there was a hit placed on his life upon this announcement, and his people declared he wasn’t doing any such thing. And then, they said he was doing it.

On July 4th, The Sound of Freedom, a film about child sex trafficking is being released. Starring Jim Casiezel, who starred in Passion of the Christ, still one of the top-earning films of all time. It is the story of Tim Ballard, a former Marine who dedicated his life to rescuing children from the sex trade. Lara Logan is preparing a four part series on child sex trafficking.

There is no more dangerous subject to expose. This is real courage, not the arrogant preening of feminist filmmakers.

And, the thing about all these producers who are facing down the filth, the corruption at the heart of our culture?

Christians.