A Jacox Elementary teacher who anointed students with "holy oil" in the classroom has resigned.

School officials say she may have performed inappropriate religious practices during her three years with the division[...]

[...]Earlier this year, the division conducted an investigation at Oakwood Elementary after teachers told the state that their principal had led staff and students in prayer prior to Standards of Learning testing. Teachers also said they felt pressured by the principal, Sheila Tillett Holas, to attend prayer or Bible sessions before school.

(Submitter's note:

(This is indicative of possible widespread NAR infiltration of the school. The style of "annointing" here is NOT the use of sacramental chrysm (as is common in Catholic and Episcopalian/Anglican/CoE churches) but rather is a form of "spiritual territorial pissing" that is a veritable hallmark of NAR and neopentecostal groups. (Often the "oil" used is Wesson oil straight off the shelf; supposedly its very use by NARasites in "territorial pissing" supposedly blesses it.)

(Probably the best discussion of this form of "territorial pissing" in print, besides one of my artlcles here (which discusses the supposed theology behind the practice), is in the article "Soldiers of Christ" by Jeff Sharlet (published in the May 2005 issue of Harper's and available courtesy of Sharlet's website here). Sharlet, who went on to do an expose of the secretive "Family"/"Fellowship" dominionist group, describes an incident involving the NAR-linked New Life Church (yes, Ted Haggard's former church) wherein a massive "territorial pissing" of this type was done by spraying entire city blocks in Colorado Springs with a 5-gallon garden sprayer full of Wesson oil, in what is probably one of the more extreme versions of NARasite "annointing".)

[editor: This story is about a radical right wing movement in charismatic Christianity that claims to fight demons but, leaving demonology aside, is demonstrably close to seizing the reigns of power in entire US states.]

They claim to be able to raise the dead and cause miracles, such as the multiplication of Thanksgiving turkey dinners. They burn "witchcraft items" and "idols." They hold mass exorcisms to cast out alleged evil spirits they say cause lust, pornography, addiction, homosexuality, bisexuality, and perversion. They claim to be able to heal HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis C, Glaucoma, and cancer, and to break "generational curses" and "witchcraft curses." Who are they? Here are a few overviews[...]

Over the past few days, I've written articles for Wayang Party on the international involvement of Joel's Army groups in the steeplejack of AWARE ¹ and the actual agenda of the American-based "Christian Nationalist" group Focus on the Family ². From the responses received here, it's obvious that steeplejacking and the growth of "Christian Nationalism"--especially the Joel's Army variety--is of such a national concern that even the Home Affairs Minister has issued a statement warning of the threat to the secular state ³.

In this particular article, I wish to present essentially a layman's guide to the internal mythology of "Joel's Army"--and how it tends to radically differ from mainstream Christianity or even evangelical Christianity.

A "Joel's Army" mythological primer

Firstly, just to note--in this particular sense, I'm using the term "myth" in the way sociologists use it, not in the term that it's used in common parlance. Basically, in social sciences, "mythology" and "myths" are used to refer to stories people tell to teach a certain cultural and spiritual path--there's no value judgement made on this. (I note this, as an aside, because people in modern living faith systems sometimes get offended when sociologists refer to their religious or spiritual paths as "mythology" or "myths".)

Anyways, much like other faith systems (including mainstream Christianity), "Joel's Army" groups have their own faith system that is often at radical odds with mainstream Christianity.

One area where the Joel's Army groups diverge from mainstream Christianity is with the common Christian story of the fall of man from grace--where Eve and Adam were tempted to eat the fruit despite God's warning. Joel's Army groups tend to teach that at this moment Satan was given dominion over the world ⁴--this becomes very important later, because it can be argued the whole general theme of Joel's Army theology is dominion--literally a Biblical mandate to take over the world.

The Wagner-linked Joel's Army groups, as well as some of the older Assemblies-linked "Joel's Army" groups, go even further and promote concepts not noted in the Bible at all. Specifically, they rely on a very odd claim by William F. Branham ⁵--an early "Latter Rain" preacher ("Latter Rain" was a sort of proto-"Joel's Army" movement popular in the 30s and 40s)--that claims that Eve made love to the Serpent and that Cain and his descendants were, literally, sons of the Devil.

Branham's concept of interspecies and interplanar adultery--what he termed the "Serpent Seed" theology--ended up going in two different directions. One branch, promoted by racists (Branham was a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) became the racist theology known in the US as Christian Identity; the other branch--which held that people who opposed the "Latter Rain" and its agenda were the "sons of the Devil"--became what we know now as Joel's Army or Elijah's Army. (Interestingly, Branham himself may have well coined the "Elijah's Army" branding--he promoted himself as a reincarination of the prophet Elijah. ⁶)

This isn't the only area at variance with traditional Christian eschatology. In traditional Christian belief, Jesus' death and resurrection ultimately defeated the devil. "Joel's Army" churches have a decidedly neutered interpretation of this--usually they preach that Jesus was tortured in hell or wrestled the devil in hell for three days (the so-called "Harrowing of Hell"), and his death and resurrection only merely bought the keys for man to take back dominion--and it is "Joel's Army", acting as "regents for Christ", who must reclaim the world and society for God. (Yes, you're reading this right; essentially these groups promote Christ as being too weak to free humanity. Christians may be free to be utterly mortified at this.)

In "Joel's Army" theology, the world is at perpetual war, with the "Army of God" at one end, the literal sons of the devil at the other, and most of humanity and humanity's diverse societies seen as literal battlefield "territory" to be "named and claimed". This is, in part, why there's such a heavy emphasis on steeplejacking and taking over institutions (including other churches) from within--in their viewpoint (as I'll note in the next few paragraphs), the people within aren't really "Saved" and thus are seen as legitimate territory to "name and claim". ⁷

In addition, the "Joel's Army" groups tend to be neopentecostal (often labeled as "charismatic" in denominations that aren't traditionally part of the pentecostal movement)--and these tend to have some rather unique claims regarding salvation, especially those close to traditionally neopentecostal denominations.

Most mainstream Christian churches either believe one is saved at baptism (the Baptists and a number of other "adult baptism" Protestant groups) or upon confession and formal dedication to the church including first Communion (Catholics, Anglicans, and most of the Christian denominations that practice infant baptism). Most Christian churches also tend to believe that once one has been saved, one retains that salvation short of really messing up (things like mortal sins like murder, etc. or outright conversion to another religion).

"Joel's Army" groups, and neopente groups in general, are a little different. In these groups, you are not seen as truly saved unless one has had an additional "baptism in fire" or "baptism in the Holy Spirit"--and in these groups, the invariable sign of this is some form of supernatural manifestation. In pentecostal churches, this has traditionally been "speaking in tongues" (usually without someone translating what is being spoken, and usually noted as being a "heavenly language"); in the "charismatic" groups in "non-denominational" churches and steeplejacked churches, this tends to be in regards to other "divine gifts" (usually someone being a prophet or an "apostle")--you hear a lot about something called the "fivefold ministry" ⁸, which is a term used for a specific division of "divine categories" of preachers and pastors in these groups.

Even in the mainstream churches that do accept "speaking in tongues" and divine gifts of the Spirit, the practice is a lot different. Typically "speaking in tongues" requires the tongue to be in an earthly language and translated to be accepted (for example, this is how it works in evangelical Methodist churches in the US); other divine gifts also have similar "testing of the fruits of the Spirit". There is little or none of this testing in churches infected with Joel's Army theology; in fact, people who attempt to do so are often accused of "denying the river" or of being possessed by the Devil and trying to "rob God's blessing" ⁹.

In general, there is a huge emphasis (compared to mainstream Christian churches) of "signs and wonders"--up to and including claims that the "outbreaks of miracles" are proof that these groups are the only ones truly saved, and that only they have the "key" to thwarting the Devil and unlocking all the blessings that are rightfully theirs (as direct descendants of God via Adam). In Singapore itself, this imagery has even included references to the "red packets" traditionally given out at Lunar New Year's ¹⁰.

Conversely, it's also taught that it is very easy to lose salvation, to "backslide", to even lose one's blessing if it is not aggressively "named and claimed". This leads to things like 40-day "fasting and prayer marathons" (where they don't eat for 40 days in fasting that is more severe than Puasa/Ramadhan fasting) where people pray for wealth or healing, the "prophetic conferences"--and massive calls for censorship of anything that could be opposed to their theology, because the mere act of being exposed to such things can lead to "demonic oppression"--essentially remaining not-rich and in strife--or even frank possession by the devil. (This, incidentially, may be why AWARE itself was targeted--not only is LGBT tolerance considered controlled by demons, but feminism in and of itself is promoted as being controlled by "Jezebel spirits".) The term for this is "deliverance ministry", and in practice tends to lead to people being isolated from all info sources other than that led by the church ¹¹.

It's not only what you do that may mess things up as well. Even "saved" people can be "demonically oppressed" due to the actions of their ancestors up to seven generations back, according to their theology--there's even a term for it called "generational curses". (Those of you who have respect for the ancestors are free to be rightfully horrified.) This has led to literal purges of pre-Christian cultural references en masse in some countries (sub-Saharan Africa in particular as well as in Guatemala ¹²).

This has led to another thing at wide variance to mainstream Christianity--the practice of Joel's Army exorcisms ¹³. Most Christian churches do not conduct the rite of exorcism, or tend to have only specific people trained in the rite who have also had psychological training to be able to differentiate mental illness from potential "spiritual illness"; Catholic priests trained in the Rite of Exorcism are essentially to a one licensed psychologists in their countries. "Joel's Army" groups conduct it all the time, and for such perceived things as being a feminist (and thus being possessed by "Jezebel spirits") or a child being "willful" or someone being depressed; this has led to suicides and worse in the US and elsewhere ¹⁴.

The demon-haunted world of Joel's Army also directly leads to their "mandate from God" to steeplejack everything.

In Joel's Army theology (unlike mainstream Christianity, which typically teaches--even in its evangelical variants--that the kingdom of God is not one of this world) it's taught that businesses and countries and entire cultures, just like people, can gain and lose God's blessing depending on how strictly they follow the "battle plan"--and that just like people, businesses and countries and cultures can be literally possessed by Satan en masse. (In the States, it's popularly promoted by Joel's Army groups that Moslems as a whole are possessed; this, despite large populations of moderate Moslems in Singapore and Malaysia.)

In order to secure not only their own "blessing" but "blessings for their nation", Joel's Army groups feel they must take over all institutions, essentially "exorcise" them, and "name and claim" them for God--converting everything to a Joel's Army owned-and-operated tool for theocracy that, taken to its ultimate extent, forces non-NAR people--including Christians not part of steeplejacked churches--to submit or die. (And yes, they have stated rather blatantly internally this is the intent.) There are even specific seminars on this subject--the "Transformation" conferences (of which a branch is held in Singapore sponsored by LOVE Singapore) promote a particular branding of this strategy called the "Seven Mountains Strategy" ¹⁵ that goes into rather graphic detail on how not only governments but NGOs, schools, entertainment industries, the military, and all pillars of society must be taken over as "strongholds from the enemy".

Other uniquely "Joel's Army" theologies

The evidence of "Joel's Army" and "Christian Identity" groups being "brothers" shows up in other ways as well that don't show up in any other group claiming to be Christian.

"Joel's Army" groups have been documented promoting the "Phinehas Priesthood" (named after a famous Israeli priest who impaled a man and his Midianite lover in the temple, led a bloody revolution, and went on to almost cause fully a fourth of the tribes in Israel to be slaughtered over a misunderstanding over building a second temple) as an example of the levels of dedication needed to take over the world ¹⁶; there's a Christian Identity group in the US that has used the same name as a call for extermination of interracial couples (and has occasionally committed pro-racist domestic terrorism here in the US) ¹⁷.

In addition, the endtime theology of these groups is so variant that it deserves a special mention.

Most mainstream Christian groups tend to fall in one of three categories regarding their concept of the end of the world: postmillenial (meaning that Jesus reigns for 1000 years and then the end of the world comes), premillenial (meaning that Jesus "raptures up" the Faithful, seven years of literal hell on earth breaks out in what is called the Tribulation, and then evil is defeated and Jesus reigns for 1000 years) or amillenial (in which the millenial reign is seen as rather irrelevant and the important thing is "doing what Jesus would do"). Typically most Protestant groups trend towards postmillenial or amillenial thought, with evangelical groups trending towards either being postmillenial or premillenial.

The denominations that spawned "Joel's Army" (the Assemblies of God and Foursquare) started out as premillenial--and some of the unique quirks in their versions of premillenial theology come from a particular reference bible called the Scofield Reference Bible ¹⁸. Premillenial theology, more often termed premillenial dispensationalism, is actually pretty young as a theology (dating back to John Darby in the 1820s and with what would become the Brethren), and Scofield's version even younger than that (1907 at its earliest). Much of Scofield's version did become the basis for the theology promoted in "Assemblies linked" groups like Campus Crusade and FGBMFI, and later on Youth With A Mission.

The Wagner line started out as postmillenial--with a unique twist, based on a version of Latter Rain theology called "Manifest Sons of God", that claimed that in essence the church was the "corporate Christ" and that the millenial reign could not begin until everything was "named and claimed".¹⁹

There's been quite a lot of cross-fertilisation, and now the dominant theology can't really be said to be premillenial or postmillenial--more of "quasi-premillenial" theology that goes something like this ²⁰:

a) Satan has dominion over most of the world, so "strongholds" and in particular spiritually powerful areas known as "gates" have to be secured, purged of Satanic influence, and converted to "Godly strongholds" to secure blessings for those peoples in the area. (Of note: Singapore has been mentioned as a "gate" in Wagner's "Joel's Army" groups ²¹.)

b) Areas "named and claimed" will be sites of great miracles and "outpourings" which will cause people to convert en masse, adding foot soldiers to "Elijah's Army". It's taught that until a critical mass of people are converted ("every nation", and/or 144,000 Jewish people, and/or 1/3rd of the human population total--there's a huge emphasis on "second billion" (as in "second billion Christians") in some Joel's Army circles) Jesus cannot return--hence there's the whole "regents and holding army for Christ" thing going on.

c) Rapture happens, two people convert post-Rapture and are martyred in Jerusalem (where every Jewish person in the world has been herded by the Russians--this is one of the Scofield weirdnesses that was originally a reference to Tsarist progroms) and this causes a massive revival about three and a half years into the Tribulation

d) At the end of the Tribulation, all the Raptured along with General Jesus descend from Heaven and join the convertees, who all proceed to slaughter the rest of humanity, consign them to Hell, and are granted a "new heaven and new earth" as reward.

Amazingly enough, this very scenario has been laid out for public view in a book series. Tim LaHaye, who has not only written several books on this particular endtime scenario but has co-published (along with Jerry Jenkins) what amounts to Joel's Army fanfiction (the "Left Behind" series). It's a wildly popular series among the Joel's Army set in the US, and a writer called "Slacktivist" has been conducting a read-through including notes on the rather bizarre theology promoted therein (at least from a mainstream Christian viewpoint) ²².

Scofield's contributions bear special note. Among other things, Scofield is directly responsible for claims that Russia and Iran will go to the Final War with the US and Israel; this was used to frighteningly good effect by early Joel's Army groups who promoted themselves as "anti-Communist" (and now are being promoted as "anti-Islamist" as well, though being arguably as dangerous). This has led to some very interesting conspiracy theory, including claims that the United Nations is run by the Russians or is otherwise secretly a Soviet plot. In addition, Scofield's view of how the world will end can literally be described as a sort of "Hopscotch with the Bible"--hopping to one verse, then another, then another, often in separate testaments much less books or chapters, and typically taking verses wildly out of context ²³. (This has often led to even evangelical Christians wondering just where they're getting this stuff.)

In addition, Joel's Army groups also have a heavy emphasis on "divine revelation" completely outside of the Bible altogether--they put as much stock in utterances of "prophets" and "apostles" (as long as their utterances fall under the general "party line" of the Joel's Army group in question) as the Bible itself, and if the "prophecy" is justified at all it's often in terms of other "prophecies" or a Bible verse taken out of context. (There's an amazing amount of examples of this "in action" over at the main Joel's Army site online, "Elijah's List" ²⁴.)

All in all, Joel's Army groups can legitimately be said to be about as divorced from mainstream Christianity--or even mainstream, non-NAR evangelical Christianity--as, say, the Unification Church or other "Bible-based" groups. (Many Biblical scholars at the least state they should be essentially treated as a third denominational grouping separate from Catholicism/Orthodoxy and Protestantism; some have more recently argued that these groups should be considered a religion wholly separate from historical Christianity ²⁵.)

_Footnotes:

_{1) http://wayangparty.com/?p=9047 "The AWARE steeplejackers and their deep connections to Joel's Army and American dominionists", self, 10 May 2009.}

_{2) http://wayangparty.com/?p=9175 "Focusing on 'Focus On The Family': An export of American-style 'Christian Nationalism'", self, 12 May 2009.}

_{3) http://wayangparty.com/?p=9337 "Wong Kan Seng sends a stark warning to religious fundamentalists: don't mix religion with politics", Wayang Party admins, 15 May 2009 (also reported in Straits Times and other Singaporean news sources).}

_{4) http://tinyurl.com/dominionist-mindsets "Dominionist Mindsets (a prelude)", self, 24 July 2007. This is part of a series on the "parallel economy" promoted by "Christian nationalist" groups in the US. Also discussed much further in detail in http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/12/19/155228/97 "A history of Dominion/'Kingdom Now'/Restoration Theology", self, 5 October 2006. Aspects also treated at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/3/114749/049 "Dominionism as a coercive religious movement (part 2)", self, 3 October 2006; http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/17/11272/3341 "'Deliverance', involutnary exorcisms, and abuse", self, 17 July 2007.}

_{5) A history of Dominion/'Kingdom Now'/Restoration Theology", plus http://www.apologeticsindex.org/b05.html Apologetics Index, "William Branham" article; http://tinyurl.com/branhamquote1 "An Exposition of the Seven Church Ages", William M. Branham (Jeffersonville IN, WBEA, 1965) p.98; Burgess and McGee, editors, Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. p.96; http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain4.htm "The Teachings of 'the Prophet' William Branham", Let Us Reason, undated; http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain6.htm ibid.}

_{6) Apologetics Index ibid from D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, Hendrickson Publishers Inc., Peabody, MA, 1988. p. 166; http://watch.pair.com/rain.html "The Latter Rain Revival", Barbara Aho. A large number of articles referencing William Branham is at http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/312350.html?thread=1928222#t1928222 (Of note, a great number of sites focusing on Joel's Army groups are from conservative Evangelical Christian groups in the US opposed to the movement; very little writing in non-apologetics circles has been done until fairly recently.) Also extensively documented at http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain6.htm ibid, http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain3.htm "W. Branham's History", ibid.; http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain9.htm "William Branham's basic beliefs" ibid.}

_{7) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/4/102528/740 "Dominionism as a coercive religious movement (part 3)", self, 4 October 2006; also some discussion on this by Jeff Sharlet, "Soldiers of Christ", Harper's Magazine, May 2005 (Internet Archive copy at http://web.archive.org/web/20070307090843rn_1/www.harpers.org/SoldiersOfChrist-20061103288348488.html) in regards to New Life Church of Colorado Springs. Also discussed in part in "A history of Dominion/'Kingdom Now'/Restoration Theology" and "Dominionism as a coercive religious movement (part 2)". The general neopentecostal/"Joel's Army" concept of territorial "marking" is discussed at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/1/14/232742/509 "Senate 'annointer' curses WV mine families", self, 14 January 2006 (in relation to imprecatory prayers and an attempt to "name and claim" the Chambers of the US Senate by a Joel's Army group).}

_{8) A plethora of links on this are at Eastern Regional Watch (http://www.erwm.com/Latter%20Rain.htm), a conservative Christian organisation opposed to Joel's Army groups. Explicit description of the "fivefold ministry" in regards to Joel's Army groups is available at http://tinyurl.com/fivefoldministry "Fivefold Ministry Makes A Comeback", Christian Research Journal, Vol. 22 No. 1 (1999); http://www.cephasministry.com/toronto_background_of_holy_laughter.html "Background to the Holy Laughter Movement", Tom and Sheila Smith; http://members.ozemail.com.au/~rseaborn/New_Apostolic_Reformation.html "The New Apostolic Reformation", Orrel Steinkamp (particularly relevant re Wagner-lineage Joel's Army groups and Assemblies/"Australian Community Churches" linked Joel's Army groups); http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/24/82239/9750 "The Lions In The Pews", Ruth (of New Apostolic Reformation Research Team), 24 September 2008; http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10167 "Christian Fundamentalism Permeates The Republican Party: Sarah Palin's Links to the Christian Right", F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 12 September 2008; http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/8/114332/7479/Front_Page/Sarah_Palin_s_Demon_Haunted_Churches_The_Complete_Edition "Sarah Palin's Demon Haunted Churches: The Complete Edition", Bruce Wilson (of NARRT), 8 September 2008 (of note, NARRT is probably the sole secular group doing fulltime research on Joel's Army groups, and in the nature of full disclosure I do resarch for NARRT); http://www.discernment-ministries.org/content/dominionism-and-rise-christian-imperialism "Dominionism and the Rise of Christian Imperialism", Sara Leslie, Discernment Ministries (of note, Sara Leslie is also a walkaway and now operates an anti-Joel's Army apologetics group). C. Peter Wagner himself is shown to make direct reference to the concept of the "Fivefold Ministry" in http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/12/28/13255/764 "C. Peter Wagner Fights The 'Religious Spirit'", Bruce Wilson (of NARRT), 28 December 2008.}

_{9) Numerous examples of this exist that have been documented on websites of walkaways and parties critical of Joel's Army theology, particularly the use of the term "in the river" as a eupehemism for being "manifesting". An example of an ex-Assemblies of God minister who was expelled from the denomination for raising concerns re spiritual abuse related to Joel's Army groups has compiled a list of articles regarding this (http://www.timefortruth.com/ForYourSpirit/StateOfChurch.aspx), and another site has noted that criticism of pastors is generally not allowed (http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/the-new-revival-characteristics-the-third-wave-outpouring/?referer=sphere_related_content/); I myself have noted this as a defining characteristic of these groups in http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/11/24/235826/75 "Dominionism and Coercive Tactics (part 1)", self, 24 Nov 2005 and http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/11/21/103824/67 "Dominionist groups as coercive religious groups?", self, 21 Nov 2005. Documentation of these tactics by recently disgraced Joel's Army promoter Todd Bentley is noted at http://www.letusreason.org/Latradir.htm (Let Us Reason Ministries' extensive archive on Latter Rain and "Joel's army" promoters); Jacob Prasch has also attempted (unfortunately without much success) to stop the steeplejack of the entire Australian A/G by NAR promoters (http://www.hnlc.org.au/rensford/toronto_footnotes.htm).}

_{Groups in the Assemblies targeting youth seem to be especially "NAR-infected" in this manner and there are indications the denomination as a whole has been well and truly taken over by the NAR proponents (particularly damning info on this at http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/youthalive.html from "Deception In The Church"); the same site has descriptions of the Brownsville A/G "Pensacola Outpouring" (a major Joel's Army revival in the 90s) at http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/pensacola.html including resignation statements of deacons forced out of their own churches by NAR proponents, and info on the "Third Wave" branding of Joel's Army theology at http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/gen_thirdw.html including, again, information from walkaways including a former Assemblies pastor in the UK (http://christian-witness.org/pdf/TheUK%20Assembliesof%20God-ADifferentMovementwiththeSameName.pdf "The UK Assemblies of God: A Different Movement With The Same Name", Phillip L. Powell, Christian Witness Ministries, October 2008). Of particular note here with this last article is revelation that the Assemblies of God as a whole apparently have a book, "The Seduction of Christianity" by Dave Hunt (which is critical of Joel's Army theology from a conservative Christian perspective), on its list of books officially forbidden for members or pastors to read; there are indications that C. Peter Wagner's works are also being given official sanction on a denomination-wide level.}

_{10) http://www.coos.org.sg/resource/index.php?coospg=ce2008/ce2008janmay.html Church Of Our Saviour "Cell Edification Notes", with 14 March and 11 April lectures entitled "Heaven's Red Packet" (http://www.coos.org.sg/resource/index.php?coospg=ce2008/ce2008janmay.html#14mar); the notes for the 14 March lecture are especially egregrious in this regard (http://www.coos.org.sg/resource/ce2008/cenote_20080314_a_people_of_blessing_pt2.pdf). Of note, these are lesson plans designed for use by "cell church" leaders for cell churches, and similar appropriations of "gifting holidays" have tended to occur with NAR groups (including Christmas, New Years Day in eastern Europe, and Ephiphany/"Los Tres Reyes" (Three Kings' Day) in Spanish-speaking countries).}

_{11) A far more in-depth discussion of "deliverance ministry" is included at "Dominionism and coercive tactics, part 2" (link above); of note, experts in coercive religious groups have made direct comparisons between tactics common in groups using "deliverance ministry" and those used in the Church of Scientology, a group considered so coercive and such a threat to public safety that it is banned in Germany under its laws against extremist organisations. A very in-depth discussion of these coercive tactics in practice is included in Sharlet's article "Soldiers of Christ" (link above), and also at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/9/511990/-A-weekend-at-Hagees-Jesus-Camp-for-grownups and http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/10/511810/-God-of-Chunder:-McCains-spiritual-advisor-will-make-you-puke,-literally. self, May 9-10 2008 (and based in part on information from http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke/1 Matt Taibbi, "Jesus Made Me Puke", Rolling Stone, 1 May 2008 and excerpted from Taibbi, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, Spiegel & Grau, 2008).}

_{12) Sources regarding sub-Saharan Africa and "spiritual warfare" campaigns include: http://tinyurl.com/muthee1 "Palin, dominionist intimidation, and actual witch-hunters", self, 22 Sep 2008; http://timesonline.typepad.com/uselections/2008/09/palin-linked-el.html Hannah Strange, "WBLG: Palin linked electoral success to prayer of Kenyan witchhunter", Times Online, 16 Sep 2008;http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2008/09/15/sarah-palin-and-the-thomas-muthee-witch-hunt/ "Sarah Palin and the Thomas Muthee Witch Hunt", J.Clifford, Irregular Times, 15 Sep 2008; http://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0923/p15s1.html "Targeting cities with 'spiritual mapping', prayer", Jane Lampman, Christian Science Monitor, 23 Sep 1999; http://www.choicesforliving.com/spirit/part4/kenya.htm "The power of prayer over witchcraft", Choices for Living (pro-Joel's Army magazine), undated; http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/946438.html (archive of "Christianity vs. the Old Gods of Nigeria", Dulue Mbachu (via AP), 4 Sep 2007).}

_{Documentation of destruction of cultural artifacts and "witch hunts" in Guatemala include: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/20/171755/145/Front_Page/Palin_Muthee_and_the_Witch_Journalists_Miss_the_Major_Story "Palin, Muthee and the Witch: Journalists Miss The Major Story", Ruth (of NARRT), 20 Sep 2008; http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2004/05/31/doug-giles%E2%80%99s-brother-in-law-wants-men-to-fight-demons/ "Doug Giles' Brother-in-law Wants Men To Fight Demons", Bartholomew's Notes on Religion, 31 May 2004; http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/20/2406/2232/786/259560 "Rios Montt, Yonggi Cho, New Life, and the strange history of dominionist juntas", self, 19 Oct 2006; http://dogemperor.livejournal.com/122935.html "Guatemala: a case history of dominionist hell", self, 7 April 2007 (and sourced in part from "Accounting for fundamentalisms", Martin E. Marty, R. Scott Appleby, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, University of Chicago Press, 2004; in particular chapter 5 of this book, "'Jesus Is Lord of Guatemala': Evangelical Reform in a Death-Squad State", David Stoll; pp99-100 describes an incident where members of the Joel's Army linked El Shaddai attempted destruction of a pre-Columbian monument to Quetzalcoatl; in a perhaps ironic footnote, Quetzalcoatl aka Kukulcan is the god of learning and enlightenment in most Mesoamerican mythologies).}

_{Examples in the US include, again, Sharlet's "Soldiers of Christ" (link above) and numerous book-burnings (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/21/400793/-Albus-Dumbledore-publically-outed;-dominionist-apoplectic-fits-imminent and http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/12/596291/-More-info-comes-out-on-Palin-and-dominionism,-Armageddon,-and-book-bans to list but two major categories of examples); in the case of a pastor in the Wasilla, AK area who authored a book entitled "Pastor, I'm Gay" (designed to assist mainstream Christian pastors with assisting LGBT parishoners) the local Joel's Army groups (heavily active in the area since the 1960s) went to the point of harassment of bookstores and attempts at picketing the pastor's home and church (personal communication with author Howard Bess as well as http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=talkbackCommentsFull&talk_back_header_id=6554706&articleid=CA6594759 and http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5766173&page=1).}

_{Of note, this is one example where a direct parallel can be made to the tactics of another extremist group in a different Abrahamic faith, namely, the Taleban and its destruction in 2001 of the famous Buddhas of Bamyan, Afghanistan (one of the very few "Western-style" representations of Buddhas known to have survived to that period) by order of a fatwa declaring them "idols"; this is precisely the same argument used in "deliverance ministry" NAR-linked groups to justify destruction of cultural artifacts.}

_{13) Cases targeting adults are well known; aside from the information in "Dominionism and coercive tactics, part 2" there are numerous court cases resulting from attempted neopente "exorcisms" (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/17/11272/3341/129/358866 "'Deliverance', involuntary exorcisms, and abuse", self, 17 Jul 2007 just covers a few of these including the Laura Schubert case, now heading to the US Supreme Court). Other notable examples described include http://www.skepticfiles.org/fw/exorcist.htm Skipp Porteous, "The exorcist", Walk Away Magazine, undated (and this is, sadly, typical of such an "exorcism" in a cell church). Exit counselor Rick Ross in particular has dealt with several cases of persons requiring inpatient hospitalisation due to severe PTSD and mental breakdowns resulting from "exorcisms" of this sort (http://www.rickross.com/reference/about/about2.html Interview w/ Ross, Walk Away Magazine, Summer 1990); not noted in the interview with Ross is the fact that Phoenix First Assembly is the largest Assemblies of God church in the US and operates its own "faith based detox center" chain called Dream Center.}

_{On occasion, "exorcisms" and even imprecatory prayers--prayers designed for the explicit purpose of cursing someone to suffer until conversion or death--are done using the names or belongings of targets (an example noted at http://www.talk2action.org/comments/2006/1/6/103519/9115/11?mode=alone;showrate=1#11 "'Annointing' as territorial marks", self, 6 Jan 2006 and http://www.talk2action.org/comments/2006/1/6/103519/9115/19?mode=alone;showrate=1#19 describes the general theory; I have personally witnessed this type of "praying over" someone numerous times). This has, in Joel's Army circles, included claims that their imprecatory prayers led to the death of Mother Theresa (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/10/20/195730/89).}

_{Cases targeting children are particularly egregrious and include: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/09/tracymcveigh.theobserver Tracy McVeigh, "Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt", originally printed in The Observer, 9 Dec 2007; http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/01/30/kurt_belief_law_feature.shtml (BBC articles summary regarding child abuse cases related to Joel's Army churches targeting West African emigre communities in the UK); http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_exor5.htm (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance report on the Joel's Army related child abuse crisis in the UK and sub-Saharan Africa); http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR750.pdf (British public aid agency document on how to spot religiously motivated child abuse); it is estimated by some resources that upwards of fifteen known cases of "exorcism related death" occur in the United States yearly and probably far more cases go unreported (especially if figures from the UK's working group at Scotland Yard who reported 50 cases of exorcism-related child abuse are anything to go by).}

_{It can also be argued that the majority of cases of "religiously motivated" child abuse, and its general promotion, are intimately linked with the promotion of "deliverance ministry" as a whole (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/13/370953/-Dominionism-and-child-abuse,-part-1 and http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/14/371430/-Dominionism-and-child-abuse,-part-2 note several popular promoters of "Bible-based baby beating" that explicitly promote caning of children as young as six months old using "deliverance ministry" as an explicit reasoning).}

_{The problem of religiously motivated child abuse, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where much abuse is directly linked to NAR "revivals" in these countries, is severe enough that a dedicated NGO (RISE International: http://www.riseinternationalcic.org/) has been formed specifically to assist these children with their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The US is presently the sole UN member with a functional government that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, explicitly due to political pressure by "religious right" and "Christian nationalist" groups who legitimately fear lawsuits under the Convention (specifically over cases of religiously motivated child abuse) and who claim the Convention will "take away the right of parents to discipline their children" (documented http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/15/371898/-Dominionism-and-child-abuse,-part-3:-Why-they-arent-in-jail "Dominionism and Child Abuse, part 3: Why they aren't in jail", self, 15 Aug 2007); even Somalia's provisional government as well as the provisional governments of the unrecognised Somali breakaway countries of Puntland and Somaliland have agreed in principle to ratify the Convention once their governments are recognised or the country is sufficiently stable. NAR-linked "Christian Nationalist" groups are also behind moves in Australia and New Zealand to call for these countries to revoke their ratification of the Convention (in exactly the same way that North Korea "revoked" its ratification of the Convention on Non-Prolifieration of Nuclear Weapons).}

_{14) Porteous' "The exorcist" (ibid.) notes a case of suicide; Rick Ross (ibid.) has noted cases of suicides and inpatient hospitalisation; Laura Schubert (noted in "Deliverance, involuntary exorcism and abuse" ibid.) has longterm PTSD that is disabling; and Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance have noted a very conservative note of 15 reported deaths yearly from exorcisms of children in the US (other NGOs, such as RISE International, estimate the numbers are far higher; possibly thousands in sub-Saharan Africa alone). A particularly sad and infamous case here in the States of what could be worse than suicide is the eventual "mental breakdown with automatic weapons" of Matthew Murray, who was a regular on several walkaway forums, particularly those for survivors of NAR promoter Bill Gothard's coercive groups; Murray had been raised under Gothard's extremely coercive tactics and was involved with Youth With A Mission when he started having psychotic PTSD manifestations (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/14/421737/-Matthew-Murray:-an-American-tragedy and http://tinyurl.com/murray2 "Matthew Murray: An American Tragedy" series, self, 14-17 Dec 2007; in the interest of full disclosure, I was a regular of one of the walkaway boards Murray was a member of and hence saw the full reality of what happened).}

_{This is, of course, completely aside from the near epidemic of LGBT kids who are forced out of their homes (either kicked out or forced to flee for their lives) in the US, largely from homes where "Joel's Army" theology is promoted. It is estimated according to an increasing number of studies that LGBT youth in the US have close to a 30 percent suicide rate (http://www.outproud.org/article_suicide.html and Mays,V.M. & Cochran, S.D. (2001). Mental health correlates of perceived discrimination among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 91(11), 1869-76), and that this may be a conservative estimate due to kids in "Joel's Army" households remaining closeted until the time of their death; the virulently anti-LGBT rhetoric in Joel's Army churches, including involuntary "outings" of gay youth for public "exorcisms", surely has much to do with this. Kids who are LGBT and who grow up in anti-LGBT religious groups (and Joel's Army groups are easily among some of the most virulently anti-LGBT groups ever documented) are known to be at higher risk for suicide even compared to most LGBT youth. Interestingly, Joel's Army groups including frontgroups for Campus Crusade for Christ try to debunk this info (http://www.leaderu.com/jhs/labarbera.html). Upwards of 20-40 percent of homeless youth in the US identify as LGBT (versus the estimated number of people in the US identifying as LGBT as a percentage being around 1 to 2 percent), indicating a lot of LGBT kids are having to flee their homes for safety or are being kicked out (http://www.thetaskforce.org/blog/20070130-jason-cianciotto-lgbt-youth-homelessness and http://www.wcsap.org/pdf/RAD%207-1.pdf) and in some areas the problem is regarded as sufficiently serious that specialised LGBT-friendly youth homeless shelters are in operation (http://www.aliforneycenter.org/resources.html being but one example).}

_{The fear of abuse is legitimate; in addition to religiously motivated child abuse and abusive "exorcisms", there also exists a system of "faith based rehabs" and "degaying centers" which children are often forced into involuntarily (and often subjected to exorcism-related abuse within). Exorcism-related abuse has been documented at all three Assemblies-operated "faith based mental health centre" chains, notably with Mercy Ministries (http://www.mercysurvivors.com as well as http://ruinedbymercy.co.cc/ and http://mmoa2.blogspot.com/ particularly have information) and Teen Challenge (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/27/503961/-Teen-Challenge:-Coercive-groups-disguised-as-rehab and in general http://teenchallengecult.blogspot.com/2008/05/daily-kos-dogemperor-teen-challenge.html) but similar reports also exist re Dream Center indicating a systemic problem. The "Joel's Army mental health system", of note, includes almost an entire "parallel mental health network" designed as an alternative to legitimate psychiatric care (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/27/363063/-Dominionisms-parallel-economy,-part-4:-Dominionist-social-services); this may in fact have been a direct contributing factor to the murder-suicide of Matthew Murray, as his only options for psychiatric care were Joel's Army "theophostic counselors" rather than legitimate psychiatrists) and as a direct result he disregarded the advice of multiple members of walkaway communities to seek professional help for his increasingly violent thoughts.}

_{15) http://dogemperor.newsvine.com/_news/2008/10/06/1960547-thomas-muthees-seven-mountains-and-coded-messages and http://dogemperor.newsvine.com/_news/2008/10/07/1963800-seven-mountains-and-the-joels-army-plan-for-takeover in particular (self, Oct. 6-7 2008). Some of the initial documentation of "Seven Mountains" strategy has been noted by Bruce Wilson (of NARRT) in http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/24/13112/0816 "In Video, Pastor Annoints Palin, Urges 'Infiltration' of Schools, Government, Business" (24 Sep 2008). Joel's Army sites explicitly promoting "Seven Mountains" strategy include the site "Reclaim Seven Mountains", used as source material for "Seven Mountains and the Joel's Army Plan for Takeover" (http://www.reclaim7mountains.com/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=41538&columnid=4347).}

_{16) "Dominionism as a coercive movement, part 3" (link above); http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/21/519046/-Joels-Army-and-omnicide-in-the-name-of-God "Joel's Army and omnicide in the name of God", 21 May 2008; http://web.archive.org/web/20071220065238/http://www.pawcreek.org/articles/endtimes/DominionTheologyandJoelsArmy.htm "Dominion Theology and Joel's Army", Paw Creek Ministries, undated (via Internet Archive); http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain10.htm "Joel's Army", Let Us Reason, undated; http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain11.htm "A New Thing", ibid; http://www.onlinethoughts.com/Prophesies/vision_of_the_harvest.htm "A Vision of the Harvest by Rick Joyner", "Online Thoughts" (a pro-Joel's Army site) and excerpted from Joyner's The Harvest. "Joel's Army and omnicide in the name of God" gives much more detail on how the Phinehas reference is a very nasty coded phrase.}

_{17) Noted in context of hardline Joel's Army groups partnering with far-right orgs linked to domestic terrorism in http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/10/10638/489/534/255752 "Racists and dominionists, part 2: a true gallery of rogues" (self, 10 October 2006); Christian Identity groups known to use "Phinehas Priesthood" imagery for racist domestic terrorism noted by Anti-Defamation League (http://www.adl.org/backgrounders/an_phineas.asp). There is some evidence that both Joyner and Christian Identity promoters may have used the same source for the term, namely Richard Kelly Hoskins' "Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood" ("Dominion Theology and Joel's Army"); Hoskins' book is a manifesto for Christian Identity proponents to commit domestic terrorism, indicating very close links yet exist between racialist "Christian Identity" promoters and Joel's Army despite claims of "interracial reconciliation". Of particularly disturbing note, the book explicitly calls for the killing of LGBT people and interracial couples.}

_{18) Most extensively noted in http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/4/366484/-Dominionisms-parallel-economy,-part-8:-Dominionism-and-the-Scofield-Reference-Bible "Dominionism's 'parallel economy', part 8: Dominionism and the Scofield Reference Bible", self, 3 August 2007.}

_{19) The term "Corporate Christ" had its earliest origin in the writings of Watchmen Nee (and has been continued in the writings of his protege Witness Lee, particularly the book "Life-study of Exodus"); it can be seen as an alternate branding of what has been termed "Manifest Sons of God" theology (http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c137.html). (Joel's Army theology has undergone numerous renamings, including "Manchild Company" and the modern rebrandings of "Elijah's Army" and "Gideon's Army".) In Joel's Army circles, this is termed nowadays the "corporate church" (http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c138.html) and essentially teaches that the church essentially is the Second Coming, or at least triggers it.}

_{C. Peter Wagner explicitly uses the term "corporate church" in his book Freedom from the Religious Spirit (Gospel Light, 2005); this book essentially claims that all "denominational" churches--all those outside the Joel's Army "post-denominational" movement--are literally possessed by the demon of "religion" and must be "exorcised" forcibly. The term also has been used by lesser-known Joel's Army proponents, explicitly in the context of steeplejacking mainstream Christian churches (http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/007/discernment/3-28-networking-church-3.htm discusses its use by Peter Whitehouse among others, and http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/thirdwaveteachings.html notes its promotion in early Latter Rain/Manifest Sons of God writings). Sarah Leslie, a noted expert on Joel's Army and a walkaway herself (who still writes extensively for Christian audiences warning about Joel's Army), has documented that cell churches are an essential part of this model and that the concept of the "corporate church" can be said to be core theology of these groups (http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/cellcurch.html "Notes On Analysis Of The Cell Church Model", Sarah Leslie, Christian Conscience, 1999).}

_{20) Described in "Dominionism and coercive tactics, part 3" in large part, as well as "Seven Mountains and the Joel's Army plan for takeover". The aggressive targeting of government in particular is described at (http://firstplumbline.blogspot.com/2008/04/deceptions-of-matt-willson-and-hope-08.html) and (http://pjmiller.wordpress.com/2008/01/01/2008-the-year-of-the-great-shift/?referer=sphere_related_content/).}

_{21) Joel's Army promoter Shawn Bolz has apparently labeled Singapore specifically as a targeted "spiritual gate", particularly in the field of animation--which is rather bizarre as Singapore is not exactly internationally known for anime (http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/angels-angels-angels-index/ and comment 3). C. Peter Wagner has explicitly set up in Singapore under the belief that it was a "gate" since at least 2000 and documentably far earlier (http://www.cephasministry.com/apostles_c_peter_wagners_endorsements.html); also noted in http://www.intotruth.org/res/latterrain.pdf "Annointing or Apostasy? The Latter Rain Legacy", Charles S. Graves, pp.91) There are indications, particularly a "prophecy" by Rick Joyner on "Elijah List", that indicate that quite possibly all former British colonial holdings in the East Indies are being targeted as "gates", including Sydney (a known Joel's Army hotspot and headquarters of Hillsong Community Church) and Hong Kong (also experiencing its own problems with a "Joel's Army" invasion) per (http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word_pf.html?ID=645).}

_{22) Fred Clark's reviews are at his website (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html); reviews so far include up to the second (in sixteen) books in the series. Other reviews of books in the series exist, a brief list including: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/11/0080291 "The apocalypse will be televised: Armageddon in an age of entertainment", Gene Lyons, Harper's, November 2004 (including excerpts from the final book of the series, "Glorious Appearing", featuring people literally exploding and Jesus riding literally hip-deep in the blood and gore of the dead); http://girardianlectionary.net/res/left_behind_resacralizing_violence.htm "Re-Sacralizing Violence in the Left Behind Books", Girardian Lectionary, 18 May 2004 (also including other excerpts from the same section of "Glorious Appearing"); http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Books/2004/04/Killer-Ending.aspx "Killer Ending", Paul O'Donnell, BeliefNet, April 2004 (again, focusing on the gory-as-all-getout "Glorious Appearing" and including excerpts).}

_{There is also a considerable media empire surrounding the "Left Behind" "Joel's Army endtime fanfic" series including a series of movies, a spinoff series aimed at children, and a highly controversial video game called "Left Behind: Eternal Forces"; this game is referred to in part in "Joel's Arm and omnicide in the name of God", and discussed in far more detail on the "Religious War" section on Talk to Action (http://www.talk2action.org/section/religious_war). Especially controversially, the game (a strategy RPG which included literal "convert or die" options) was designed to be marketed to children as young as six years of age and was to have been marketed in megachurches. The producers have also attempted "SLAPPs"--the lawsuit equivalent of "Shut up and sit down"--against parties who have done negative reviews of the game (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/10/12/161855/92).}

_{23) Most extensively noted in http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/4/366484/-Dominionisms-parallel-economy,-part-8:-Dominionism-and-the-Scofield-Reference-Bible "Dominionism's 'parallel economy', part 8: Dominionism and the Scofield Reference Bible", self, 3 August 2007; also noted specifically by Fred Clark in wonderful fashion (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2009/05/tf-bible-studies.html "TF: Bible Studies", 15 May 2009 in noting the leaps and bounds used to promote the very theology fictionalised in "Tribulation Force").}

_{24) Multiple examples noted already, but those wishing to get an eyeful can visit the site directly at http://www.elijahlist.com (assuming it's not already been blocked); there is also the (saner for one's sanity) option of reading the NARRT report (http://www.talk2action.org.nyud.net/pages/docs/Transformation.pdf). Let Us Reason also has compiled a report on the extensive role played by Elijah List in promotion of Joel's Army theology and "prophecies" (http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain36.htm "The ElijahList: the biggest distributor of false prophecies in hyperspace", Sandy Simpson, Let Us Reason, April 2008).}

_{25) Bruce Wilson (of NARRT) (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/4/13/195435/702/Front_Page/NAR_Show_and_Tell_Bianca_Decries_Joel_s_Army_amp_New_Apostolic_Militancy and http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/1273 and http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/4/5/172139/5062/Front_Page/The_Renewalist_Christian_Explosion_Worldwide) via "World Christian Trends, AD 30-AD 2200" (David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, Christoper R. Guidry, Peter F. Crossing, William Carey Library, 2001) beginning on page 299. Also explicitly noted by René Holvast, http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2008-0710-200706/holvast.pdf "Spiritual Mapping in the United States and Argentina, 1989-2005: A Geography of Fear" (Brill Publishing, 2009 and originally published as dissertation for the University of Utrecht, 2005), excerpts used by NARRT in "Transformations" expose ibid; Alix Spiegel, http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=77 National Public Radio programme "This American Life", 26 Sep 1997 and reaired 12 October 2001 (of disturbing note, Spiegel notes she had to undergo informal exit counseling during the course of researching New Life Church for the programme); Phillip Jenkins, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200210/jenkins "The Next Christianity", The Atlantic, October 2001; Jane Lampman, "Targeting cities with 'spiritual mapping' and prayer", CSM, 23 September 1999, link previously noted; http://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0916/p11s1.html "Operation Prayer", ibid, 16 Sep 1999--among many others (it can be legitimately argued that all of the numerous conservative Christian apologetics sites who have the most information regarding "Joel's Army" groups--largely to keep their own Evangelical churches from steeplejacking by "Joel's Army--definitely count in this regard as well).}

Thanks to a few Singaporean friends (who shall remain anonymous), I had become aware of a disturbing development--an attempted hijack of a major women's NGO. Through those same folks and Fred Clarkson's post on the AWARE EGM vote, I also found that the takeover of AWARE--something I describe as a "steeplejack" because of its similarities to hijacking-from-within of churches--would seem to have been averted for now. (Unfortunately, I've also read via various Singaporean sources that the same folks in question seem to be attempting to challenge AWARE's educational programs in the schools in a remarkably identical manner to how US groups like FotF operate.)

Several of us in the general anti-dominionist community here in the States have founded a bit of a research group on "Joel's Army" groups (also known as "Elijah's Army" or "New Apostolic Reformation" or "Third Wave" groups), and we'd noticed something was odd in Singapore.

The AWARE steeplejacking scandal has brought some new, and distressing, info to the surface--namely, that a Joel's Army insurgency has been festering in Singapore for at least thirty-five years and possibly closer to 45...and it is being aided and abbetted primarily by groups from the US, South Korea, and Australia.

(Note: This article has also been posted in slightly expanded format at the Singaporean independent news site Wayang Party; commentary from experts on political "Christian nationalist" groups in the comments or guest articles are always appreciated.)

Some necessary backgrounder, or a brief Dominionism 101

A little backgrounder is necessary in discussion of these groups to understand the full threat. This is an area that even a lot of "religious right" experts in the US are not all that familiar with; those of us who focus on Joel's Army-related groups are a pretty small community. That said, let us begin.

The term that is increasingly in use regarding the "religious right" in the US is "dominionist"--referring to a specific theology that largely originated in Assemblies of God and Foursquare churches back in the 30s and independently in some "independent fundamentalist Baptist" groups.

Put very succinctly: These groups feel they have a literal mandate from God to take over the world--including governments and all institutions of society--by any means necessary. The reasons do vary--the groups descended from pentecostal and "charismatic" (more properly termed "neopentecostal") denominations and parachurches tend to couch it in terms of countries or nations being at risk of "losing God's blessing". Some groups go further than this--seeing themselves literally as proxies of God's will.

What we know now as "Joel's Army" or the "New Apostolic Reformation" has actually had multiple names (they don't even use the term "Joel's Army" very much anymore, preferring "Elijah's Army") and is part of a movement originally known as "Latter Rain" and "Manifest Sons of God" that originated in revival movements in the 30s and 40s. Some of the claims coming out of these groups were so ludicrous that the Assemblies of God officially disavowed any groups using the terms "Latter Rain" in 1948...after which most went to parachurch organisations and splinter groups, or simply promoted the same things in the Assemblies without using those terms.

As a result, we essentially have three different lineages of "Joel's Army" groups. The first, and the oldest, is a branch connected with the parachurch Campus Crusade for Christ and Youth With A Mission. Campus Crusade originated some of the initial strategies for taking over secular groups and other churches including the use of what I have termed "cuckoo churches" (so named after the breeding habits of cuckoos, who lay their eggs in other birds' nests and cause the young of the "foster parents" to starve and die as the cuckoo chick literally crowds the other chicks out of the nest)--"cell churches" set up in mainstream Christian churches like the Anglicans, meant to convert everyone from within until the church is a de facto neopentecostal church. YWAM also developed a fair amount of the "internal mythology" of these groups--including concepts regarding "spiritual warfare" and particularly a "fifty year plan" for takeover called the "Seven Mountains Strategy".

A second lineage consists of Assemblies of God-linked groups that promote NAR theology. One of the major groups promoting this is the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International; another notable figure is Paul Yonggi Cho aka David Yonggi Cho who has been spreading "Third Wave Madness" since the fifties (and who ran the Assemblies worldwide through most of the 90s, and who is still a major figure in the denomination thanks to the fact he runs the world's largest megachurch). Still another link in the "Assemblies-NAR chain" is the Australian Community Churches (the renaming of the Australian Assemblies of God) and in particular Hillsong Community Church; essentially the entirety of the Assemblies in Australia has gone hardcore "Joel's Army", has its own political party, and (notoriously) has been connected to abuse of women in a "faith based rehab" chain it operates including reports that depression was attempted to be cured by lay "exorcisms". (This is highly irregular in most Christian churches, by the way.)

A third lineage--increasingly associated with Singapore's "religious right"--is that of a "postdenominational" movement linked to C. Peter Wagner and his International Coalition of Apostles. These folks are among the most hardcore of the "Joel's Army" folks; Wagner and fellow NAR promoter Rick Joyner coined the phrase "Joel's Army" (and abandoned it when mainstream and conservative evangelical Christian groups in the US picked up on the phrase and started warning folks about the NAR groups), attempt to convert churches from within even more aggressively than the Assemblies-linked groups and parachurch orgs, and outright see themselves as proxies for the will of God. Possibly the most complete resource that's been written so far for a secular audience is a major dossier composed by the research group I am a part of, the "New Apostolic Reformation Research Team".

And it is essentially this--and in particular the "Wagner branch"--that we're dealing with in regards to Singapore's growing "religious right".

In the case of Singapore, there is a minor complication in that a "Christian nationalist" group more associated with Southern Baptists here in the US also seems to be involved and partnering with Joel's Army groups; however, this does match a pattern seen in other countries, notably Australia.

The gallery of rogues

With this, we can now focus on the actual rogues who seem to be bringing this into Singapore.

Based on a list of megachurches in Singapore that was forwarded via a sympathetic contact, I was able to do some evaluations of these groups--and found (to my horror) that literally every megachurch in Singapore is connected to NAR groups. This is, of course, discounting the "LOVE Singapore" org, which in and of itself is linked to NAR promoter and Wagner "apostle" Ed Silvoso.

Interestingly, we can also discover a wee bit of a timeline with this. No less than three separate and distinct "NAR injections" seem to have occured in the past:

1) An early "invasion" (of which, so far, the earliest record I can find is 1963) involving groups linked to "nondenominational" neopentecostal churches. The "Patient Zero" here would be Church of Singapore; the church seems to have been founded from a number of ex-members of denominations that are not historically part of the pentecostal movement and generally have not had charismatic movements--indicating that there may have been an earlier attempt to target mainstream Christian churches from within. (In particular, Church of Singapore promotes a program called "Growing Kids God's Way" that has been linked to hospitalisations and even deaths of children and is pretty well only promoted in hardline Joel's Army and "independent fundamentalist Baptist" groups.)

2) The "big invasion" proper (and second wave of expansion) started in 1975 with a veritable flood of NAR-linked groups. Notable churches in Singapore and the parties they're linked to include: Covenant Evangelical Free Church (itself spawned from another "evangelical free church" and part of a parachurch/paradenomination group that promotes NAR theology in a wide variety of churches and is connected with the US-based NAR groups Navigators and Promise Keepers as well as LOVE Singapore); Victory Family Centre (founded in 1978 and connected with LOVE Singapore and Youth With A Mission; their head pastor is now head of LOVE Singapore per religious magazine articles); Lighthouse Evangelism (founded by members of a "cuckoo church" that had tried to steeplejack a mainstream Presbyterian church), and the founding of LOVE Singapore itself by Ed Silvoso.

3) Wave 3 started around the mid-80s and is a mix of Wagner-linked "postdenominational" groups and Assemblies-linked NAR groups-and particularly Australian Assemblies of God churches.

It's important to know why the "Aussie Connection" is particularly of interest. The home church of the Australian Community Churches (what used to be known as the Australian Assemblies of God) is Hillsong Community Church; it is the de facto denominational headquarters in that country, and the organisational setup is such that essentially all ACC churches are essentially satellite congregations of Hillsong. (This is quite common in NAR churches.)

Notable figures and churches include COOS itself (possibly steeplejacked during this period or later) and--disturbingly, considering that COOS is apparently a Anglican "in name only" church steeplejacked by an Assemblies-linked "cuckoo church"--Kong Hee of City Harvest Church. Hee himself would appear to have been recruited into Paul Yonggi Cho's network at about this time (Hee was formerly an Anglican but is not only head of a de facto Yoido Full Gospel satellite but is linked to a massive network of Australian A/G-linked churches throughout the East Indies; reportedly he was recruited by Bethany Christian Centre in Singapore out of http://www.charismanews.com/a.php?ArticleID=8559">general a dispute that led him to being an Anglican missionary and eventually an Assemblies youth pastor). This is indicative of something rather disturbing--especially in light of other things going on such as the steeplejack of HTB in England; namely, a concerted effort by NAR groups to specifically target Anglican churches for subversion from within.

Other notable NAR-linked groups that were established in this era,and the parties they're linked to: New Creation Church (founded 1985, and for all intents and purposes is a daughter church of Hillsong and maintains close partnerships with the infamous Australian church); Faith Community Baptist Church (founded in 1986 and not really Baptist in any sense of the word; its actual affiliation is small NAR denomination called G12 that is part of Wagner's network of "postdenominational" churches and whose pastor is listed as a member of Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles); Trinity Christian Center (founded by Naomi Dowdy who is mentored by C. Peter Wagner and whose main pastor is also an ICA member); Jesus Lives Church (founded 1986 and whose pastor is in the ICA directory--and who explicitly invokes NAR theology about Singapore being some sort of "spiritual gate" that must be secured, hence the probable reason for the country's targeting), and likely many, many others. (Reportedly no less than 40 churches in Singapore participated in the "Transformation 2009" conference.)

More damning info re COOS and Joel's Army

As if that weren't enough, the "feminist" solicitor now acknowledged as the "brains behind the attempted hijack" of AWARE may have thrown up the biggest signal yet of their Joel's Army allegiances.

Specifically, it would appear (as has been reported in Wayang Today) that Thio Su Mien has been published on the "Elijah List" website as claiming SARS was divine retribution and that an "intercessory prayer team" saved Singapore from the Boxing Day Tsunami.

This gets considerably more disturbing if you know anything about "Elijah List".

"Elijah List" is, quite possibly, the main conduit and online meeting place for Joel's Army and NAR supporters and promoters. (In fact, we researchers ourselves use it--as a method of intelligence on NAR groups.) The list was founded in the 90s as a mailinglist for NAR promotion by Steve Schultz; the mailinglist and its website serve as the semi-official mouthpiece for C. Peter Wagner's branch of Joel's Army and Wagner's "International Coalition of Apostles"--and certainly as a major advertising point for their conferences. In fact, they outright promote Wagner as well as Rick Joyner and a veritable "who's who" of the Joel's Army movement.

Generally, you don't get promoted or mentioned on Elijah List unless you are, shall we say, a veritable celebrity in Joel's Army circles and have friends among Wagner's buddies. The entire purpose of the list is to promote NAR plans and claimed "prophecies"; much of what scuttled Sarah Palin's political career here in the States was the revelation she was being actively promoted by a "prophetess" on Elijah List.

And it would appear that Mrs. Thio the Elder is quite deep in with Wagner's circle. In the very article noted on Wayang Party, it's noted that Thio Su Mien was speaking before a conference including representatives from the US Strategic Prayer Network--a Wagner/ICA frontgroup that came to attention in research circles due to connections with the "prophetess" who was promoting Palin. Much as other NAR-linked groups are want to do, the USSPN has since changed its name--to the US Global Apostolic Prayer Network--and is blatantly "NAR nationalist". In fact, the org is naught but a front of Global Harvest Ministries--C. Peter Wagner's "main group".

In fact, that Washington-state USSPN rep may be either Burdell Austin or someone closely connected to him; he's also made such lovely statements as bragging about essentially conducting an "exorcism" of the "Queen of Heaven" (which is actually a very anti-Catholic statement; the Queen of Heaven is a term used for the Virgin Mary).

It would also appear that she--and her daughter, an appointed member of the Singaporean Parliament--also have quite the history of this sort of behaviour. A pro-NAR blog (using yet another rebranding of "Joel's Army" common in use--"Joshua Generation") notes that she and her daughter were promoting Joel's Army theology in 2007 in Singapore itself:

Drs. Thio Su Mien and Thio Li-ann (a mother and daughter team that speaks powerfully of Malachi 3:24 in the Jewish Bible and Malachi 4:6 in Gentile Bibles, of the reconciliation and working together of 2 generations) both led the charge at the Prophetic School of Law and Justice at the Marketplace Bible Institute , urging Christians to boldly and wisely speak up in the public square. We must not vacate the scene, but rather pray for God's wisdom, and equip ourselves to speak up for the Kingdom of God. We must not be silent, or retreat into compromise and the cowardice of political correctness, when it is a time to speak up. Did not the Preacher say there is a time to be silent and a time to speak? It is also written that we are to be quick to listen and slow to speak, but we must still speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak, when there is injustice or when there needs to be correction or even rebuke. See how appropriately the movie "Amazing Grace" is showing now! William Wilberforce spoke up for the abolition of slavery and was encouraged by Wesley that if God is for him, who can be against him? We pray, however, for the mature fruit of self-control or temperance, and we are to be slow to anger, because a person's anger does not accomplish God's righteousness,

It would appear that Mrs. Thio the Younger is sufficiently infamous regarding her promotion of Joel's Army theology that this is specifically mentioned in her Wikipedia entry. One wonders how many generations of the family may be involved; it's worrisome to me that she's in the Singaporean parliament at all (and it could be potentially even a national security risk) seeing as to the love for political power by these groups; Joel's Army groups took over a major political party in the US in conjunction with other "Christian nationalists", have been increasingly engaging in paramilitary imagery and paramilitary activity including frank domestic terrorism in the States (and including to the point of promoting literal Holocaust revisionism to justify progroms against LGBT people), and historically have not been above the use of coups-de-etat to gain power if necessary (notably in Guatemala during the 80s and early 90s, and Fiji from around 2000 to 2006).

And Mrs. Thio the Elder's talk at the "Marketplace Bible Institute" gains new importance with AWARE's attempted steeplejacking...and the purpose of the "institute":

*Marketplace Bible Institute Ltd* was founded with a mission to equip ordinary people called by God to become annointed and competent Marketplace Ministers. Our courses offer a balance of biblical and theological study, with a focus on contemporary issues. To cater to the time constraints of the busy marketplace minister, a greater emphasis is placed on self-study, with classroom time devoted to teaching, clarification and impartation.

About that "Marketplace Ministry"...what they're describing, flat out, is setting up front businesses that outwardly appear to be secular, but are in fact recruitment fronts for NAR churches. (The Unification Church also notably does this, and even has a name for it--"heavenly deception".)

Also, a word about those "Reconciliation committees". In NAR-speak, "Reconciliation" typically means cultural appropriation of a particularly disturbing kind--stealing the outer trappings of another faith's worship style but with a "Joel's Army" core. An example is with Youth With A Mission promoting "Messianic Moslems"--keeping Moslem cultural practices but engaging in explicitly neopentecostal worship. (More well-known in the US are groups targeting Jewish people for conversion to "Messianic Jews"; there are also "reconciliation groups" targeting Native Americans that essentially hold Joel's Army powwows in the literal sense. Even martial arts aren't sacred; "Christian tae kwon do" (stripped of all the Korean historical and mythological background and replaced with Joel's Army imagery) is promoted as a form of "reconciliation" as well.)

Yet again, we're dealing with another frontgroup. The two main international advisors are Kevin Conner and Ravi Zacharias; Zacharias is by far the more famous, linked to the pentecostal Christian and Missionary Alliance (the parent denomination of the Assemblies of God) and is connected with Campus Crusade for Christ (Leadership U is a frontgroup of Campus Crusade by its own admission--in fact, it's pretty much a training group for Campus Crusade leaders). Kevin J. Conner is connected with a far-less-known NAR group called World MAP; World MAP is notable for being one of the innovators of the use of "cuckoo" cell-churches to hijack other churches from within, the fact that it has been long a conduit for promotion of Joel's Army theology, (under its "Latter Rain" branding), and that http://www.world-map.com/FWP_Interview.htm">it's a frontgroup of the infamous Joel's Army group Youth With A Mission (yes, the same one trying to "reconcile" Moslems into "Messianic Moslems").

(Yes, if you've been following along--this does, in fact, mean that Thio Su Mien is connected intimately with all three major branches of Joel's Army groups.)

To attend this "Marketplace Bible Institute" (which would appear to be wholly unaccredited and only offers degrees in ministry), you are not only required to sign a statement of faith but must be a member of a "local church" and have a recommendation from a pastor (of note, "local church" is a common euphemism in these circles for a cell-church).

Remarkably, she seems not to mention her connections to the "Prophetic School of Law and Justice" on her profile on her legal site's page, and it appears that her legal offices in fact operate as a subsidiary of the Australian firm Allens Arthur Robinson. (Perhaps she fears it'd be bad for business.)

An additional link to American "Christian Nationalists"

One area that the steeplejackers seem to be linked to which isn't obviously NAR--but which in and of itself has some disturbing implications--is the connection to Focus on the Family.

FotF is a primarily US-based "Christian Nationalist" org--most of their work involves stumping for various political "religious right" initiatives, promoting "degaying" of LGBT youth, and promoting James Dobson's books on religiously motivated child abuse (one of which literally starts out with the beating of a small dog as an example of how to "break the spirit" of a "willful child", and another book in the series has Dobson happily recalling being literally caned with his mother's girdle).

One particular oddity that has been brought up in other sources is the fact that FotF Singapore is apparently registered as a secular nonprofit--which is almost the exact opposite of its legal status in the US.

First, a minor primer on how nonprofits work in the US. It's my understanding that in Singapore there are separate registries for religious and secular nonprofit orgs; in the US it's a little different in that we have a general "nonprofit without lobbying" category (501(c)3) with a mess of subcategories and a "nonprofit with very limited lobbying over broad issues" category (501(c)4). Even 501(c)4 orgs are not supposed to lobby for specific bills or candidates (technically, only political action committees are allowed to do this), and only donations to 501(c)3 organisations are tax exempt; most groups tend to have both orgs.

Among 501(c)3 nonprofits here, the only real difference between churches and other nonprofits (including parachurches and nondenominational religious groups) is that churches are exempt from filing any forms with the Internal Revenue Service; others file a form called a "form 990" in lieu of the regular tax forms.

"Christian nationalist" groups in the US typically organise themselves as 501(c)3 orgs, with some having 501(c)4 divisions if they've been given warnings about electioneering; however, by and large, they incorporate as secular orgs (in part to hide the fact they're explicitly religious. (And yes, almost all of what they actually do politically is illegal under the tax codes and elections laws; sadly, however, these are rarely enforced here.)

Focus on the Family, at least how it operates here, is one of the rare exceptions. Specifically (and likely to take advantage of some very favourable laws in California when it incorporated), Focus on the Family gets its 501(c)3 exemption under sections for "historical" and "nondenominational religious" groups--in fact, in the 2004 form 990 for FotF (from page 31 on) it lists its formal incorporation papers as a "religious corporation" in California. (In the US, many states require you to either be a member of a recognised denomination or--for things like nondenominational ministries or churches not part of an established denomination--to formally incorporate as a religious corporation. California is probably the easiest state in the US to do this in; FotF started out in California then moved to Colorado in the 80s.)

VERY interesting indeed. (Of course, if you look at the rest of the article re FotF's "oddities" you'll notice they have a habit of "playing not quite fair" with tax laws.)

I expect that FotF may have been registered as a secular nonprofit largely to fly under people's radar--they knew from their experiences here in the States that people do actively resist "religious right" orgs, so they were "stealthing" a bit.

All in all, it looks like the NAR and even political dominionist groups are trying the same dirty tricks in Singapore as in the US--the difference is, Singapore seems to have had a major "teachable moment" with the attempted steeplejack of AWARE.

A few days ago, I had reported onhe steeplejacking of AWARE, a women's NGO in Singapore (which effectively operates as *the* major NGO that focuses on women's issues); the rough equivalent of what happened in the US would be if (for instance) the National Organisation for Women had been taken over from within by dominionists.

Even more disturbing, the particular group in question behind the steeplejack is an NAR church that was actively implementing the steeplejacking as early as December 2008 and also had links to the SG affiliate of Focus on the Family. (And as to how deeply they were into NAR stuff--well, in essence, it's a direct "granddaughter" of none other than the infamous Hillsong Community Church in Sydney and its direct "parent" church in Perth manages to be even more outwardly extreme re NAR promotion than Hillsong itself is.)

I do have good news to report on this, fortunately.

Thanks in part to not only international publicity about the steeplejacking but some good-old-fashioned group activism (including, largely, networking via blogs including Livejournal) the dominionists are out and the "old guard" of AWARE has seized its org back:

* Motion to remove new AWARE exco from office and elect new president has been passed. Ms Josie Lau and her exco have stepped down. Former President Dana Lam has been elected President. *

THE RESULTS

3(a) The Exco has lost mandate/confidence of the members of the Society because it has not acted or is acting in the best interest of the society.

Number of Votes IN FAVOUR = 1411 Number of Votes AGAINST = 761

3(b) The Exco has lost mandate/confidence of the members of the Society because they do not appreciate or share the values of the society.

Number of Votes IN FAVOUR = 1412 Number of Votes AGAINST = 762

3(c) The Exco has lost mandate/confidence of the members of the Society because they does not have requisite experience of carrying out the society's work or is otherwise inadequate to further the society's objectives.

Number of Votes IN FAVOUR = 1419 Number of Votes AGAINST = 755

Before a formal ouster could begin, the dominionists stepped down from the leadership--this means that AWARE is, finally, back in control by its members and not by the steeplejackers.

Dominionists tried to derail, and (fortunately) met with FAIL

In addition, more info has come out regarding the integral role of the NAR-linked "Church Of Our Saviour" in the steeplejacking--further pointing to an attempt to essentially turn AWARE into a COOS frontgroup. Per the Straits Times (which is actually a fairly conservative and pro-government paper in Singapore), reportedly COOS's pastor explicitly exhorted the church to support the "new leadership" after AWARE was steeplejacked. Amazingly enough, the sermon in question is still online (and part of a general anti-LGBT rant), and included such statements as "It's not a crusade against the people but there's a line that God has drawn for us, and we don't want our nation crossing that line." (Of note, COOS is known to have planned the steeplejack based on claims that AWARE is somehow "pro-lesbian"; in truth, they are unhappy the group doesn't exclude lesbians, or try to refer them to bogus "degaying therapy" of the sort that COOS explicitly promoted in its sermon.)

This was, of note, in direct response to folks opposed to the steeplejacking of AWARE joining the org and wishing to join the emergency meeting to such an extent that the site of the general meeting had to be moved to a larger venue. Even then, the AWARE steeplejackers tried to have it moved to the same venue as an NAR conference and was reportedly encouraging its membership to try to pack the emergency meeting with "yes" voters.

The Straits Times gives a little more info on that attempt to move the conference:

Meanwhile, The Straits Times learnt of other misgivings expressed over the Expo as a venue. Netizens and supporters of the old guard had pointed out that a two-day Christian conference, Transformation 2009, was also being held there.

They were concerned that people attending the conference would swamp the Aware meeting and outnumber supporters of the old guard hugely.

The Christian conference is being organised by LoveSingapore, an inter-church organisation founded by Pastor Lawrence Khong from the Faith Community Baptist Church.

Its committee members are pastors from different churches, including Pastor Derek Hong from the Church of Our Saviour in Margaret Drive, where several of Aware's leaders worship.

As we'll note below--this would appear to have been no less than an attempt to have the emergency meeting at the same location as an NAR revival/planning meeting (with a speaker notorious for promoting steeplejacks of businesses from within as a form of "taking back the world for Christ").

Fortunately, the Singapore police intervened--refusing to allow the permit to change the venue there, in part because of concerns re conflicts between the "old guard" and the dominionist steeplejackers.

Even after this, the dominionists didn't stop. A particularly damning bit of info showed a series of emails were sent directly tracable to Church Of Our Saviour explicitly encouraging women to join AWARE en masse and attempt to derail the emergency meeting on 17 April--to the same network of email addresses (presumably to cell church leaders) that the previous "organising the steeplejack" emails had gone to..

Of course, after the news came out regarding COOS's integral role in the steeplejacking, the church went into classic "damage control" mode--first trying to deny they were behind the steeplejack, then--when threatened with its outing as an NAR church in Anglican drag when tthe National Council of Churches of Singapore issued a statement condemning the mix of religion and politics (NCCS is the main ecumenical body for mainstream Christian churches in Singapore--including the Anglican church, the denomination NCCS (falsely) claims to be part of)--issued a very-much CYA "apology". In fact, the smackdown wasn't just by the Anglicans--literally every mainstream religious group in Singapore issued statements supporting NCCS's stand, including representatives of the mainstream Buddhist, Taoist, and Moslem faith groups.

(For the record, if anyone has contacts with the National Council of Churches of Singapore, I'd appreciate it if you'd forward them the info re COOS's actual theology, thanks. I think the legit Anglican church might want to know about the steeplejacking.)

An attempted diversion...to an honest-to-dog Joel's Army revival

As it is, AWARE (thanks to the intervention of the Singapore national police) may have dodged a potential cannonball--and the attempted move of the emergency meeting to the same expo center as the "Transformation 2009" conference gives a rare glimpse on just the sort of tactics Joel's Army groups like to use to solidify control once they have it and fear losing it.

Actually, to term the "Transformation 2009" conference (which would have been held, coincidentially, the very next day after the EGM of AWARE--as attendees would have been arriving, or would have already arrived, for the conference) as merely being a conference of evangelicals is not quite accurate.

In fact, it would be extremely inaccurate.

There's actually only one group I've seen that uses that phrase on a regular basis for conferences--namely, NAR-connected groups, and those closely connected to C. Peter Wagner at that. (Among other things, there's a series of videos called the "Transformations" series that is popular in NAR circles; fellow researchers have written some informative material on that series which essentially lays out the long term "game plan" for NAR groups to steeplejack society at large.)

My Spidey-sense on this is, as usual, (unfortunately) quite accurate in this; the main speaker is Ed Silvoso, who is not only a direct C. Peter Wagner (aka "Mr. Joel's Army") acolyte but also one of the major architects of NAR planning for taking over the world--particularly using cell-churches explicitly as "cuckoos" and in remarkably similar ways to Marxist "people's revolutionary cells":

"Silvoso bases his strategy on four fundamental principles: 1. [t]he spiritual unity of the churches of a city, 2. [p]owerful intercessory prayer, 3. [s]trategic-level spiritual warfare, [and] 4. [m]ultiplication of new churches. Peter Wagner says, 'The most sophisticated strategy for evangelizing a city we have at the present time is Edgardo Silvoso's Harvest Evangelism.' To see how spiritual mapping fits into the whole evangelistic design, allow me to summarize Ed Silvoso's six steps for taking a city... [Step] 4. Infiltrate Satan's perimeter. Launch the 'air attack' of specific and strategic intercessory prayer through hundreds of thousands of prayer houses (prayer cells), having the objective of weakening Satan's control over the unsaved, claiming instead a favorable disposition to the gospel. At the same time begin to plant embryonic churches ('lighthouses') in anticipation of an abundant harvest. [Step] 5. Attack and destroy Satan's perimeter. Begin the 'frontal assault.' Launch the spiritual takeover of the city, confronting, binding and casting down the spiritual powers ruling over the region... Disciple new believers through the established lighthouses." (Excerpt is from Victor Lorenzo's "Evangelizing a City Dedicated to Darkness," a chapter in C. Peter Wagner's book, "Breaking Strongholds in Your City" (Regal Books, Ventura, CA, 1993). The parenthetical comments are in the original.)

And, as we'll see, Silvoso is actually one of the nastier NAR promoters.

The group actually holding the conference, LOVE Singapore, is quite possibly the "mother ship" of NAR churches in the Singapore area, or at least its primary "five year planning committee"; along with the (extremely NAR, Latter Rain-derived) usual neopente 40-day marathon fasting (yes, people willingly deprive themselves of food for 40 days and are expected to on multiple occasions a year in these groups as part of their "name it and claim it" theology; even the fast of Ramadan does not cover nights, equivalent Orthodox and Eastern Rite Christian churches usually restrict themselves to vegetarian fasts or *short* fasts of 1-3 days (generally the Dewahedo Orthodox tend to have the strictest fasting outside of NAR churches, but even here they tend to be vegetarian fasts) and doctors note that fasting of over 10 days continuously is very dangerous) we have plenty of indications we're dealing with an NAR group and quite possibly among the most hardcore (the Wagner-lineage NAR promoters).

One of the things Silvoso likes to promote is the concept of essentially setting up front companies for the sole purpose of gaining "marks" for conversion, as well as redirecting funds towards dominionist groups. In fact, the Transformation 2009 brochure helpfully promotes his book on the subject--as well as noting his links to a number of American political dominionist groups with extensive linkages to C. Peter Wagner's network of NAR "apostles" (including Mission America) and his role in promoting NAR theology in Argentina.

In fact, a legitimate argument can be made that in fact LOVE Singapore is nothing but a Silvoso frontgroup--apparently he actually founded the org as essentially a very large "nest" for a whole mess of cell-churches and NAR-linked groups.

And I'm *not* kidding when I state Silvoso is a nasty bit of work. Among other things, he is in part responsible for not one but two major epicentres of NAR activity in the past 20 years in North America--namely, the Toronto Airport Fellowship and Brownsville A/G (in Pensacola, FL) NAR "revivals" which led to popularisation--and spread--of NAR theology outside of neopentecostal circles. It can be, quite literally, stated that Silvoso himself is one of the "generals of Joel's Army".

Notably, his group where he promotes the concept of front companies as "business evangelism" only has a transparency grade of "C" on ministrywatch.com--one of the worse ratings, at that (only a few, known, outright fraudulent televangelists tend to get worse).

And--notably for our discussion of the attempted steeplejack of AWARE--Silvoso does like to actively promote the idea of setting up "cuckoo" cell-churches in businesses if you can't set up a front business yourself:

The quote above comes from a chapter in C. Peter Wagner's book The Church in the Workplace, which is an account of the marketplace transformation movement. This book is an attempt to justify a new role for the church co-mingling with the corporate business world, based on the newly concocted doctrines of C. Peter Wagner, George Otis, Ed Silvoso, Dennis Peacocke, and a host of other Latter Rain and Reconstructionist leaders.

In a chapter entitled "Apostles in the Workplace," Wagner details the "strategy for war" for marketplace transformation, and puts out a plea for leaders to "standardize our terminology" for the "7 spheres" or "7 mountains" or "7 gates" of society that must be transformed. Wagner suggests "using a list that can be traced back to Loren Cunningham, founder of YWAM, and Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade." (p. 112)

(For the record, I've actually written quite extensively on the "Seven Mountains" fifty-year plan of NAR groups here and here.)

In addition, the "Baptist" (and there is a very specific reason I use that phrase in quotes) church in question linked to the conference is, just like Church Of Our Saviour, an NAR rabid dog in a non-NAR church's "sheep's clothing". In fact, it seems to have been set up explicitly as an NAR church from the very beginning and deceptively named a Baptist church; it's certainly not affiliated with any legitimate Baptist denominations. In practice, it's a typical NAR neopentecostal church of the sort that would be branded "nondenominational" here in the States; the *true* denominational affiliation would be with a small NAR paradenomination that recruits members primarily through cell-churches and "encounter weekends" (where people are isolated from outside contact and by their own admission subjected to a hard-sell via essentially a neopentecostal revival in a closed environment).

These are *incredibly* coercive in practice; Matt Taibbi has written about his own experiences at an "encounter weekend" and some evaluations indicate these "weekends" and the groups that hold them may be literally more abusive than Scientology (especially if the use of abusive "cell churches" is also considered--cell-churches and similar "shepherding" tactics being among the most documentably coercive and harmful tactics known to be in wide use in abusive religious groups).

Fortunately, the attempt to derail the emergency meeting by redirecting it to essentially the same location as a Joel's Army revival (ironically featuring a speaker who talks openly of setting up exactly this type of steeplejacking attack against legitimate businesses as a form of "evangelism"!) failed.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance

That said--the folks at We Are Aware will need to remain vigilant. Undoubtedly, the dominionists *will* attempt to fight the result of the vote and/or try to steeplejack again (and in fact the recently booted dominionists have in fact made a veiled threat to do just that). Fortunately the folks at AWARE have learned from this--one of the thing being proposed are changes to the NGO's constitution to try to make the org more steeplejack-resistant including having been an active volunteer for a year before running for high-level positions.

Still, though, the beatback of the steeplejack does prove one thing.

People *can* take back power, and they *can* stop the dominionists in their tracks.

It takes education and motivation to get to that destination--but the folks at We Are AWARE--and thousands of Singaporeans--have proven it's possible.

May we all be inspired by their example, and may they continue to successfully prevent a steeplejacking--and hopefully even us folks in the States can learn by example.

Just in case people thought dominionism was a problem restricted to the US or Australia or Canada:

Dominionism is unfortunately a global problem.

And a favourite tactic of dominionists--steeplejacking of churches and nonprofit orgs--has now come to one of the last places we'd expect:

Singapore.

A necropsy of a steeplejack--right down to the planning stages

Firstly, some backgrounder. Presently, the law in Singapore technically criminalises same-sex relationships (the law is a holdover from the British colonial period); there is an ongoing political debate in the country about revoking that law. In general, there's good public support for decriminalisation, but one major group is fighting it--dominionist groups in Singapore, which are typically linked to NAR/Joel's Army groups like Hillsong. This has included a particular church called Church Of Our Saviour, which has been especially politically active in trying to keep same-sex relationships illegal.

And apparently, dominionists in Singapore have been taking notes from the Americans and Aussies on steeplejacks of not only churches but NGOs and political parties.

So perhaps what occured, starting in December, was inevitable.

The women's group AWARE (which is roughly the equivalent of the National Organisation for Women in Singapore--they do lots of activism on women's issues in general) has been essentially steeplejacked and a major purge done of the former leadership by a group connected largely to an NAR-linked "Anglican" church (in truth, it's neopentecostal and NAR-linked; we'll be going into MUCH more detail on this)

Of note, this "Joel's Army in Anglican clothing" church is very anti-LGBT; not only do they extensively promote anti-LGBT info but have official policy statements condemning LGBT people and promoting de-gaying and promote bogosities about LGBT people being inherently mentally ill.

And in March of 2009, the NAR-linked Church Of Our Saviour effectively steeplejacked the major women's rights NGO in Singapore--a country that effectively is under one-party rule as is and has precious few groups able to lobby successfully.

The speed and level of the steeplejack is actually rather horrifying--from all indications, literally 80 members of the 102-member org joined between January and March of this year. In what may be a rare glimpse at the planning documents for the steeplejack, apparently the pastor himself was exhorting members and leaders of cell-church groups linked to the church to join and there is evidence from email archives that the steeplejack was planned as early as December 2008.

The reason AWARE was targeted? Because they acknowledge that there are specific women's rights issues that affect lesbians and don't deny lesbian women their services.

Even worse--this may be, quite literally, an attempt at a hostile takeover--by groups that are hostile to both LGBT people and women in general. This isn't just on the subject of LGBT rights, either.

An in-depth look at the church behind the steeplejack

The Church Of Our Saviour stands out in that--visiting their website one gets the impression one is not visiting an Anglican church's website (they claim Anglican affiliation)--but rather one of the "hip" websites run by many an Assemblies of God or "nondenominational" NAR-linked neopentecostal congregation.

There is actually a very good reason for this.

For starters, most CoE churches don't have long talks with Hillsong A/G operatives about "prophetic dance" or have extensive NAR/neopente buzzwording and discussions of "Brownsville Revival"-esque "gold dusting" in their church newsletters.

In fact, there's only one place I have EVER heard of that phenomenon--and that is within NAR-linked neopentecostal churches, and even a specific subset of the NAR (namely, Assemblies, Foursquare, and Vineyard-linked NAR churches).

In general, COE churches also do not have indoctrinations lists for the quarter for cell-church leaders or use Hillsong A/G recordings and other "Christian contemporary" artists in their hymnal or specific promotion of "health and wealth" gospel including sections on "maintaining your healing". (The latter is, shall we say, unique--apparently failures of faith-healing can literally be blamed on "thinking negative thoughts" and thus "opening doorways to Satan".)

In fact, this church is literally in the "Hillsong network" of NAR churches--the sole church listed in the "Churches to attend when you're away" section is a Hillsong satellite church in Perth that is one of the most extensively and openly Joel's Army churches I've seen--including the literal condemnation of non-dominionists and critics as "Jezebels" and invoking a party typically only referred to by Christian Identity promoters:

We are a Church that will build ourselves strong in the spirit man. We will not yield to the giants of the land but like Joshua, we will dare move out and possess. Like a David, we will dare take on the Goliaths of our time. Like an Elijah, we will dare confront the Ahabs and the Jezebels of our day. Like the zeal of Phinehas, we will stand for righteousness.

This...quite bluntly...is a LOT of Joel's Army Buzzword Bingo:

a) "David" and "Joshua" and "Elijah" have often been invoked in modern-day rebrandings of "Joel's Army" (particularly in the terms "Joshua Generation"--denoting the NAR concept of an "end-time generation" who will "Take the world back for the godly"--and "Elijah's Army").
b) "Ahab" and "Jezebel" are epithets for non-dominionist men and women respectively.
c) The Phinehas invocation is especially disturbing--as pretty much only NAR groups and Christian Identity "race warriors" use it, and both in a remarkably similar context--stating that it is ideologically acceptable to kill, if necessary, to establish purity. (I've written much more on this particular phrase's use in Joel's Army circles here. Cliff's Notes version: Phinehas was so much of a zealot he not only is infamous for shish-kebabbing a man and his fiance for the act of inflagrante delicto in the temple, but nearly caused the extermination of almost a third of the tribes of of Israel due to a misunderstanding over a temple being constructed outside of the one in Jerusalem.)

Not only does FCC promote cells openly, but they promote within "women's cells" a particularly horrific religiously motivated child abuse program (namely the Ezzo's "Growing Kids God's Way", linked starvation deaths and hospitalisations of children and which is essentially a program of religiously motivated child abuse and neglect). In addition, they are quite explicitly NAR in promoting the "fivefold ministry" concept as well as cells and the very Alpha Course invented by the steeplejacked Holy Temple Bradenton.

I expect that FCC is used as the "parent church" because of a large number of Chinese immigrants--COOS seems to target mostly the Chinese-Singaporean community, and FCC seems to be composed almost entirely of people of Chinese descent as well.

And--by their own blatant admission--they are targeting the East Indies as a whole, including not only Singapore but Timor Leste.

Back to COOS itself, among some of the other oddities that further confirm that it's an "NAR Assemblies church in all but name" include the promotion of essentially a diploma mill calling itself the School of Supernatural Ministry; literally all of the speakers at the conference where these bogus diplomas are to be handed out are linked to Bethel Church of Redding, CA; Bethel is a Joel's Army congregation which links to a veritable New Apostolic Reformation who's who--including, notably, Todd Bentley and many others associated with various neopente "Third Wave" "revivals".

There are other aspects that resemble the American NAR churches strongly (as well as the Aussie ones). Among other things, "Christian" alternatives to Scouting are promoted (unlike in the US, Boy Scouting in the rest of the world is not heavily religiously influenced)

Among other things, COOS targets (just like NAR groups in the US) military members, including cell churches targeted towards persons serving mandatory military service (like many other countries, Singapore has mandatory national guard/civil service periods).

Another of the "seminars" held is actually particularly revealing--a seminar on steeplejacking businesses and using them for "bait and switch" evangelism...something that becomes particularly relevant with AWARE's new head.

American dominionists helping things along too

As it turns out, it's not just the Assemblies that are actively helping out here. One of the partners in crime in regards to the Steeplejacking of AWARE is none other than the largest political group in the US promoting "Christian nationalism"--none other than Focus on the Family itself.

It may surprise people to know that a big part of FotF's activities have involved--as of late--international export of dominionism. But export they do, and it's big business--including schemes similar to the "funnel aid to the Contras under the claims of 'helping missions'" scams in the 80s (only now targeting insurgent groups in Colombia).

These include, notably, affiliates where you would not expect to find FotF affiliates--including Singapore as well as Malaysian, Indonesian, and Chinese affiliates. (Of note, I honestly don't see how the Malaysian or Indonesian affiliates are operating legally; Christian worship is tolerated but prosyletisation is prohibited as both of these countries officially have Islam as the state religion. Moderate Islam, yes--but it's not open season for prosyletisation.)

The fact that FotF has a Singaporean affiliate is bizarre enough, but this grows ever more interesting is the fact that Church Of Our Saviour is apparently the de facto headquarters of FotF in Singapore--and the new leadership has links to both groups.

Firstly, the person now acting as the head of AWARE (Josie Lau) was responsible for quite a controversy--namely, Mrs. Law was behind a campaign conducted at behest of COOS to set up donations to FotF via a "Christmas Credit Card" program by her bank DBS. (DBS is one of the larger bank and trust companies in Singapore.) Yes--pretty much the general "charity affinity" fraud scheme that dominionist groups here in the US are fond of--signing up for charity donation programs (meant more for Little League and Scouting programs) and encouraging their members to buy and use the "discount" numbers to funnel a good amount of money to their group.

Needless to say, DBS was shortly the subject of a boycott, and eventually DBS dropped mention of FotF in their "Christmas Credit Card" programme. Lau, interestingly, seems to have gone on--eventually ending up as COOS's point-woman in AWARE.

This is not the end of the FotF-Church Of Our Saviour partnerships, though. The chairman of FotF's operations in Singapore is also notably a member of COOS.

And the necessary backgrounder

For folks coming in new to the discussion of NAR churches, the best I can suggest on a backgrounder of what I mean regarding the NAR groups being Bad News is an ongoing series of articles by Talk to Action regulars Bruce Wilson and Ruth (full disclosure; I have a professional working relationship with both of these folks as a part of a research team based on essentially "Joel's Army-busting") as well as my own writing on the subject (as an ex-member and researcher) at Talk to Action, NewsVine, and a certain "orange site". (I do plan on mirroring most of the content here on Newsvine as well.)

Even shorter for readers who are in countries where it's been released: The NAR/Joel's Army folks are the subject of the movie "Jesus Camp" (specifically, an NAR group that promotes "child ministry"--in their theology, kids born after the legalisation of abortion are literally promoted as a "chosen generation" to "take the world back for God"). Yes, I pretty much grew up "Jesus Camped" (I got better, fortunately, in part because (thankfully) dominionist "homeschooling" was not yet in vogue and I did have *some* exposure to the outside world--I still live with the scars and probably always will, though).

One thing that hasn't been covered much in the media (well, outside of Australia) is the fact that the NAR does have characteristics of a coercive religious group in pretty much the same way Scientology does. In fact, NAR groups and Scientology have a disturbing number of parallels, up to and including paramilitary equivalents of the Scientologist "Sea Orgs" in the US.

NAR groups, especially those in completely-NAR-dominated neopentecostal groups, have been linked recently to some horrific hate crimes against LGBT people--up to and including assaults--as well as the promotion of literal calls to war against LGBT people and the documented use of literal Holocaust revisionism in justifying targeting LGBT people for harassment and desired extermination.

The use of cell churches (which is known to be in practice at Church Of Our Saviour) is particularly worrisome--not only are these used to infiltrate churches and political groups (and, as we've seen with AWARE, also NGOs), but are a major factor in how dominionist churches grow explosively and organise politically (as we have seen, interestingly, with AWARE's steeplejacking--in fact, this may be some of the best documentation of this tactic ever recorded) and in and of themselves are horribly coercive--to the point that Matt Taibbi (who infiltrated the NAR-linked Cornerstone Church in Texas for a segment of his book "The Great Derangement") literally documented personality changes occuring even though he knew what these groups did to rile people up.

In fact, cell-churches (as used in these groups) are well known among researchers to be one of the most documentedly abusive tactics in use in coercive religious groups in general; short-term and long-term personality changes are documented in members of cells and similar groups that are not documented in mainstream churches and religions that do not use coercive tactics. In combination with several other tactics, in fact, NAR groups can be considered as bad as the Moonies or Scientologists just on levels of sheer mind control and a good argument can be made that the really hardcore NAR groups--and COOS does appear to be one of these--are actually worse than Scientology and rank as among the most coercive groups ever documented outside of a North Korean gulag.

Another thing especially worrisome about COOS in particular is their association with the Australian Community Churches (and in particular Faith Community Church). For those unaware, the Australian Community Churches are what used to be called the Australian Assemblies of God; they had to change their name because of repeated revelations in the Australian press of highly abusive practices at their churches, particularly the "home church" of the denomination in Australia (Hillsong A/G in Sydney). In fact, the antics of the Australian A/G and Hillsong in particular became so infamous that most exit counselors in Australia consider the denomination as a whole as coercive (as well as at least one American exit-counselor who has dealt extensively with ex-NAR walkaways).

Hillsong has been particularly active in exporting NAR theology to countries in the Asian and Oceanic spheres, including Fiji and Singapore; they also have their own political party in Australia known as Family First, and have taken tactics very similar to those used by Scientology to shut up their critics--including trying to sue a walkaway for libel and intimidate their publisher into not printing a book that was particularly damning towards the group.

Hillsong has been noted for graft against its members, a sexual-abuse scandal involving multiple pastors (in fact, the founder of Hillsong is noted for having molested kids in New Zealand), and institutionalised abuse of women through a "faith-based rehab" chain funded through Gloria Jean Coffee. (Yes, Gloria Jean is--unfortunately--a major funder of this stuff.) In addition, just like Scientology and the Moonies, Hillsong runs a *lot* of "front groups"--including quite a number targeting kids.

A hostile takeover bid

This is all bad enough--but a disturbing prospect comes up, even as the AWARE Steeplejackers have admitted their major purpose was to purge people tolerant of helping out lesbians...there is a non-negligible possibility that the purpose may be even deeper than this.

Namely, there is a very real possibility this is, quite literally, a hostile takeover--meant to destroy the org.

Two major data points play up how this could be meant as a targeted attack against women's rights in general (and LGBT people in particular). The first is a letter from an Angela Thiang--now on the board of directors for AWARE post-purge--who sent a letter to the Singapore Times calling for abortion to be banned (and bringing up the "post-abortion syndrome" canard).

The second is potentially even more damning. At Church Of Our Saviour, membership in cell-church groups is mandatory, and their seminar notes for essentially an adult "Jesus Camp" have some very revealing information regarding their concept of a woman's place in the home and in society:

a) The husband is the head, and as such has to act as God's vice-regent, to govern not
according to his, but according to the divine will.
The authority put into his hands is from the Lord, and it is his to exert for Him, and it
cannot therefore be delegated to another.
First, don't allow your family (especially mom) to meddle in your marriage...it's
none of their (her) business.
. . .
b) The wife is in subjection to her husband, even as the Church is subject to Christ,
the husband on his part having to love his wife even as Christ loved the Church, and
gave Himself for it.
. . .
Divine order is an order of authority and responsibility that is spelled out in the Bible
1. Head of every man is Christ
2. Head of every woman is the man
3. Head of the children are the parents
. . .
But God has given her a role that is different than that of the husband and one that requires
submission to the husband for its proper fulfillment.
. . .
Illustration:
One lady stood up and said, "I'm so thankful for these lessons and what they've done for me! I'm so thankful that
God loves me! I'm so thankful for this relationship that I have with God in Jesus Christ!"
She started to sit down and Dr. Parker said, "Just a moment. Tell me, with this new relationship in Jesus Christ, how does that affect you in the home?
• Does this make you a better mother?
• Does it make you a better housewife?
• Are you sweeter to your husband because of your relationship with Christ?
• Has this really made you a better wife and housekeeper?..."
He felt a tug on his coat and the minister behind him said, "Press those points, brother! That's my wife!"
. . .
It's unfortunate that so many mothers are not at home with their children. Many women
have run off with another man at work (was it worth that extra income?). It's often a great
stress on the marriage when the wife is independent of her husband. Regardless of what we
think, God has declared to us that His will for a young woman is to do four things:
1. marry
2. bear children
3. guide the house.
4. not be a reproach to her husband
This scripture alone makes it clear that the Christian couple should plan to have children.
There will have to be a family in order for the young women to "love their children." Titus
2:4.

(Emphasis in original bolded; my emphasis italicised.)

There's much more where this came from--in essence, the entire workshop states that--quite literally--a woman's place is in the home, barefoot, and popping out litters of God Warriors. Not just this, but it also states that women who are outside of these roles are literally invoking the wrath of God Himself.

One section even quite blatantly promotes women as the weaker sex both physically and spiritually:

E. Submission a means of protection
1. Women are subject to being attacked physically and emotionally, therefore they need
man's protection
2. Women are also vulnerable emotionally, psychologically and spiritually
3. Women are subject to emotional attacks of her own children -She should not have to
ask for their respect. Husbands protect her from that
a. Protects her from discourtesies and abuses of children
b. Instills in them a sense of respect for womanhood
4. Subject to spiritual attack- husbands should shield her, women are easily deceived

(As an aside, the use of this material by COOS in and of itself presents further evidence of it being an NAR church; the seminar is originally from SOS Ministries, a Joel's Army church affiliated with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (this is the branding the Assemblies of God uses in the Great White North, just like they use "Australian Community Churches" in the Land Down Under) in Edmonton, Alberta. In fact, it's looking more and more and more like Church Of Our Saviour is just an Assemblies of God church in all but name.)

Do forgive me if I fear the "New AWARE" is NOT exactly going to be friendly towards women's concerns in Singapore.