The article says the purpose is "ramping up a contest for theocratic power in the nation and the world." I dunno...Trump-linked Christian group reportedly hopes to gain power through 'army of believers' https://t.co/w6evsB3tOv
— Raw Story (@RawStory) June 17, 2023
The movement is centered on "unfriending" anyone who believes any differently, including other less-extreme sects of Christianity, according to Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates. Writing for Salon, Clarkson added that Pennsylvania is the first target.
"'You've got a friend in Pennsylvania!' was the theme of the state's ad campaign to promote tourism in the 1980s. That was a veiled historical reference to the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, the liberal Christian sect to which William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named, belonged," Clarkson writes. But since the early 2000s there has been a quiet campaign in the Keystone State and beyond to unfriend anyone outside certain precincts of Christianity — and most Quakers would almost certainly be among the outcasts."If severe isolation from others was the royal road to theocratic domination, I can think of several denominations that would already be in charge of the world, starting with the MO synod Lutherans, who think they’re the only true Lutherans (and Christians) on the planet. And then there’s the WI synod Lutherans, who think MO synod are too liberal and so, with everyone else, apostate.
Need I mention MO synod has always been smaller than ELCA, and WI synod smaller than MO synod? Groups of true believers tend to shrink, not grow. Especially when their raison d’etre is to be holier than thou.
That thinking creates exclusion even in the group. Which is why the groups tend to shrink rather than grow.
Friends are pretty used to being unfriended (sometimes pretty violently). In England, in Massachusetts...even their own Meetings (e.g., when Nathanael Greene joined the Continental Army and was disowned).
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