Susan Hutchison and her dominionist linkage

Much buzz is going on lately regarding Susan Hutchison in the race for King County Executive (and leadership of the Seattle metro area in general)--one thing that has been poorly publicised so far is her extensive and documentable linkage to multiple dominionist groups.

Link the First: Young-earth creationism promotion

The first group Hutchinson turns out to be linked to is the Discovery Institute--the infamous organisation which got quite the legal smackdown in Kitzmiller vs. Dover School District. Discovery Institute was founded in part from funding by infamous Christian Reconstructionist Howard Abramson Jr. (who is on the board of directors) and--aside from running a number of front groups--specialises mostly in trying to sell young-earth creationism as "Teaching The Controversy" (they formerly sold it as intelligent design, but after the legal ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover brought public awareness to the "Wedge Document"--where Discovery Institute pretty much admitted they were just rebranding young-earth creationism--they've backed away from that branding).

Since the news broke, Discovery Institute has scrubbed it pages--but http://www.discovery.org/fellows/">Internet Archive and form 990s don't lie.

Link the Second: A parachurch taken over by NARasites

The second group that Hutchison is intimately linked with is a lesser-known org called Young Life. Young Life promotes itself as a parachurch group that takes kids and adults on religious retreats; reports on anti-coercive-group forums (like Rick Ross Institute) show something rather disturbing--kids being solicited for conversion without permission from parents, as well as reports of classic coercive tactics used by all manner of abusive cults.

In particular, info in their Form 990 is particularly worrisome. Among other things, Young Life (which is probably the second-richest (in a way documentable in tax forms) dominionist group in the US) is co-partners with not only the NARasitised International Foursquare denomination and World Vision Inc. (the American division of the charity World Vision--which, sadly, operates far more as a funding front for dominionist churches and groups than as a charitable org helping kids) in a Bermudan insurance company that is essentially operated as a Foursquare front.

In addition, the group operates a "halfway house" (called Dale House) for at-risk teens that serves as a de facto maternity home and reform school; disturbingly, it serves particularly as a training facility for C. Peter Wagner's very college (Fuller Seminary's School of World Mission--the very school and department where Mr. Joel's Army himself is head professor) for "missionary students".

And Hutchison isn't just a member--just like with Discovery Institute, it turns out she has been a board member since at least 2004.

Links...with Joel's Army hategroups?

The third--and one that in my not-so-humble opinion should disqualify her from office every bit as much as being an admitted member of a neo-Nazi or Christian Identity group--is her recent endorsement by Joseph Fuiten.

This is problematic, seeing as Fuiten is probably one of the most virulent hatemongers--and I do NOT use this term lightly--within the Joel's Army movement.

The first problem here is that Fuiten is such a promoter of the extremist "NAR nationalist" line that has infected the Assemblies of God that he called for the mass denationalisation and exile of all "secularists" on the CNN miniseries "God's Warriors" ("Secularists" is an NAR buzzword for "not dominionist", and "God's Warriors" was--ironically--a series focusing on religious extremism in the three Abrahamic faiths).

This is--amazingly--not the worst Fuiten has done; this is probably on the light side, in fact.

Fuiten is a known member of the virulently anti-LGBT hategroup Watchmen At The Walls--a group known for attacks on LGBT people in the US and full on riots at and attacks of people at Pride Parades in eastern Europe. In fact, "Watchmen At The Walls" is so virulent a hate group it pretty much singlehandedly got NAR groups on Southern Poverty Law Center's radar, and it is one of a very few non-neo-Nazi, non-Klan-linked groups officially listed as hate groups by that organisation.

When called on his links, he proceeded to use anti-Moslem invective to back up the hategroup--and research found he has rather an extensive history of promoting hate within the Assemblies of God itself, up to and including training pastors how to set up front businesses for the purpose of hooking in people to convert (this is a classic coercive-group tactic used by abusive cults like Scientology or the Moonies).

Not only that, but to top it off (Aristocrats-style) he attended and gave speeches at a conference which exemplifies just how far down the Joel's Army rabbit hole the Assemblies of God has gone as a denomination--a conference called "Second Billion" (as in "Second billion convertees"), held by a group controlled in part by "Watchmen At The Walls" founder Alexey Ledyaev, featuring speeches by both Fuiten and Ledyaev...and also featuring similar speeches by the head of the denomination itself at the time at what amounted to a pow-wow of NARasitised Assemblies of God church leaders (at the same time that the Assemblies was officially "condemning" the old branding of Joel's Army as being an "excess").

(And of personal note--the pastor of the very church I am a walkaway from also was a speaker at this conference.)

So in short: Hutchison just *so far* has been shown to be a board member of a group trying to whitewash young-earth creationism, a board member of a borderline "Bible-based cult" that turns out to be engaging in abusive tactics, and she's happily taking endorsement by a leader of a known hategroup and one of the big voices for hate in the largest pentecostal denomination in the world.

...should someone like this REALLY be in charge of the Seattle metro area? I don't think so. :P