The "Bible boot camp" and "kiddie gulag" industry have been frequent subjects of writing here in this diary--from reports of abuses in "Bible boot camps" to an expose series on the Assemblies-run "Teen Challenge" chain.

One thing I've been big on is efforts to shut down the "kiddie gulag" industry by requiring federal standards for facilities of this type (many of these facilities are entirely unregulated due to operating as "faith-based" dominionist "parallel economy" alternatives to legit social work and mental health services.  And it turns out that just such a model law--originally entered this Congressional session as HR 5876 (with a new bill number, HR 6358)--has passed its first big hurdle in that the House version is approved.

In yesterday's post, I noted how the Assemblies of God are rallying around Kenneth Copeland's latest attempt to derail Sen. Chuck Grassley's investigation of nonprofit groups.

There's a very valid reason why the Assemblies may be quite concerned, should Congressional attention focus on them.

Namely...not only is illegal electioneering rife within the denomination, but there is some troubling evidence to suggest that violations may be crossing over into direct contributions to Assemblies-favoured candidates--possibly the most blatant 501(c)3 violations ever documented.

People who've followed the hijinks of the Assemblies of God in regards to televangelist scandals--and the history of televangelism, for that matter--know that the denomination has a long association with televangelism--and as the Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard scandals have shown, often a quite unsavoury one at that.

So today's news that the Assemblies are hip-deep in the latest televangelist scandal is no shocker--the thing is, they may have tangled themselves rather deep, as the latest association is with an explicit defense of Kenneth Copeland--one of six televangelists targeted in a Congressional investigation.

Even worse, the Assemblies are now trying to use the very scandal as a wrecking-ball to knock down the separation of church and state and scuttle all attempts to require accountability.

In yesterday's post on a case of an ambulance driver's "moral refusal" of taking a woman in severe pain to a women's clinic, a frequent criticism came up: "But wouldn't the EMT get in trouble if she died?  Surely they could revoke his license?"

This, sadly, can no longer be assumed.  In at least one state--Mississippi--the scenario of an EMT conducting a "moral refusal", the woman dying as a result, and the EMT getting off scot free is an unfortunate possibility.

Even worse, Mississippi's law is now considered a model "moral refusal" statute--as we'll see below.

In Part 2 of the miniseries which we began yesterday, we discuss how "moral refusal" clauses are increasingly going far beyond just doctors and pharmacists, and are now extending to the most basic thing we associate with healthcare--the trip in the ambulance to have emergency surgery.

Yes, you're reading this right--dominionist ambulance drivers are now refusing to take people to women's clinics just because the woman needs a medically necessary abortion.

And at the end of the post--because I never like to just bring bad news without discussing ways to fix what's broken--I present some possible solutions to the problem of "moral refusal".

I have written rather extensively on Talk to Action regarding dominionists and reproductive health--one of the larger issues being the spread of so-called "moral refusal" clauses that do not just ban medical abortion but go towards banning the pill and even go so far as refusing reproductive health services to LGBT people and refusing prescriptions outright--including for antibiotics and prenatal vitamins--because they came from a women's clinic.

Now, in an end-run against "must dispense or refer" laws in several states, dominionists are now expanding the large "parallel economy" to a new area--namely, the dominionist-run pharmacy not providing contraceptives at all...and there are disturbing indications that a prediction I made re broad "moral refusal" clauses may have come to pass.

Barack Obama has recently announced a new initiative to reach out to non-dominionist evangelicals.  It is a wonderful idea in practice.

Unfortunately--partly due to neopente dominionists--Barack's initiative may have a wee bit of a naming problem.

Whilst the term "Joshua Generation" has been used in African-American churches to denote the generation of people to bring social justice (much as "Moses Generation" was used for the Freedom Riders), "Joshua Generation" unfortunately has a very different connotation outside of the African-American church community...and one which Barack Obama will likely not want to be associated with.

Over the past few days, we've gone over a history of dominionist prosyletisation efforts during the Gulf War and how they are endangering not only Christians but our own military to boot.

Today, we get into the real heart of why some of us are so worried about the "God Warrior" tendencies in neopentecostal dominionist groups.

Everyone who hasn't been completely isolated from the outside world knows by now about the revelations of torture and human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other facilities used for "extraordinary rendition" (or, more properly, gulags).

Not so well publicised is the fact that the very denomination responsible for the "Teen Challenge" chain of "kiddie gulags" is in fact at the very core of the torture scandals--and that the Assemblies' own chaplains were in fact ringleaders of torture.

As amazing as it sounds, dominionists may in fact be fomenting terrorism--not just the domestic terrorism like bombings of women's clinics we normally associate, but the very "Islamist terror bombings" that the GOP loves to use to frighten America into voting a red ticket.

We detailed yesterday on how Christians in Iraq (including communities literally founded by the apostle Thomas) have been targeted due to aggressive prosyletisation by dominionist "missionary" groups; today, we focus on how our soldiers are targeted and becoming targets due to the actions of dominionists...and how some of the very folks targeting both our nation's fighting folks and Iraqis are essentially dominionist rogue agents in the US military's chaplaincy.

The recent incident where a Marine was recently found distributing "Bible coins" promoted by a fundamentalist "Bible church" is, sad to say, far from the first incident of overt prosyletisation in Iraq.

The truth is, this sort of thing has been going on literally since Gulf War I, and ramped up in Gulf War II--and, ironically, has directly threatened the future existence of two of the oldest Christian churches in the world--churches that can literally trace their founding to one of the Twelve Apostles.  Even more disturbingly, most of the worst prosyletisation has been with civilian dominionist groups that target both Iraqi citizens and US military personnel.

We detail the history of dominionist "missionary" efforts in Iraq, and the "dry run" in Lebanon, below.

In what is--sadly--yet another case of the extent of which blatant prosyletisation is tolerated in the modern US military, a recent incident where members of the US Marine Corps were handing out coins to persons in Fallujah with John 3:16 on one side and "where will you spend eternity?" on the other shows that dominionism can even be potentially a risk to national security.

One thing that has not yet been revealed in this incident--which has already led to the suspension of at least one Marine--is  the source of the coins, a fundamentalist "Bible church" which increasingly has embraced both war imagery--and America's fighting men.

The past few days have seen a remarkable level of spin--actually, downright waffling--from John McCain regarding his relationship with two neopentecostal dominionist pastors and actually soliciting his dominionist "bona fides" from them.

Not two weeks ago, John McCain was heralding both John Hagee and Rod Parsley as "spiritual advisors"; this is quite the change from today, where he has rejected John Hagee's endorsement as well as Rod Parsley's (in what is a beautiful example of 20 Mule Team DKos (and Talk to Action) action).

Parsley, whilst less publicised than Hagee, wasn't exactly an improvement--and today we go into just why McCain likely dropped Parsley like a hot potato.

Yesterday, we revealed that John Hagee's church is confirmedly within the "Joel's Army" movement--a group of the "most extreme of the extreme" of neopentecostal dominionists, who believe they are part of a "third pentecost" designed to raise a group of divine ubermenschen to "name and claim" the world for their theology.

One of the parts of their theology that is very rarely discussed--save by a few of us researchers--is that they are one of the very few groups on the planet to literally have a theological mandate for not only genocide but near omnicide--both pre- and post-Tribulation.  Combined with the known use of coercive tactics and the decidedly unique interpretations of Biblical verses that claim they're part of an end-time army of "God Warriors"...it's not exaggeration to state this is a potential threat to humanity.

Over the past week or two, a major focus on this diary has been on John Hagee--who has close associations with John McCain, runs a church that pretty much wants to nuke everyone and may well be one of the most abusive neopente dominionist groups ever formally documented in commonly available assays of coercive groups, and also fawns over the Jewish people--and in particular Israel--to the point of idolatry whilst condemning them to Hell in the same breath.

Now, recent revelations--inspired by an excellent series on Hagee by our very own Troutfishing--show that in fact Hagee's church is in fact part of the extremely militarised (and extremely worrying) Joel's Army movement...right down to the hymnal.

There is being quite a lot of shock posted on a recent statement that Mike Huckabee made here in Louisville a few hours ago at the NRA conference--namely, Huck made a comment on how a supposed sound was Barack Obama ducking in an attempt to keep from being shot at.

For some of us--especially those of us who have followed Huckabee's extensive links with the highly militaristic "Joel's Army"/"Joshua Generation" neopente dominionist movement--this is but the latest and one of the more blatant of his statements of this type, and probably not even the most extreme of them.

In today's special edition post, we give a bit of history on this.

One question that was frequently asked in my series involving Matt Taibbi's infiltration of John Hagee's church (and the chunderfest resulting)--how could Matt Taibbi start developing what is known in exit-counseling as a cultic personality in just three days?  

Well, one particular tool used in the "toolkit of coercion" of neopente dominionist groups in particular is the use of cell churches--and today, we go into depth into a study that shows the actual process of development of a "cultic personality".

Folks who are regular readers of this column know that I'm particularly focused on political links to dominionists in this column.  Today will not be an exception.

It's rather rare that I refer to dominionist preachers as literally being chunder-inducing; it's even rarer when this is literally accurate.

In the case of John McCain's present "spiritual advisor", John Hagee, the comparison is both literal and figural--right down to the "deliverance ministry" practice of upchucking the Devil (no, we aren't making this up).  Thanks in part to a successful expose by Matt Taibbi that finally blows the cover off the "private face" of neopente dominionism, we learn the vomit-induciveness isn't just figurative.

In yesterday's post, we described some of the more...ah...unusual and disturbing public statements by John McCain's supporter and advisor John "Turn Iran Into A Glass Parking Lot For Jesus" Hagee.

Today's post is a little different.  Instead of focusing on Hagee directly, we're going to focus on the sorts of stuff that are not in the public eye--namely, that Hagee runs a weekend "Jesus Camp" for grownups that was successfully infiltrated--and escaped from--by Matt Taibbi, reporter for Rolling Stone.

What Taibbi reports on is illuminating--and horrifying, if old news to us survivors.  I also will give commentary on just how these tactics are used as a form of thought reform.  Hopefully it gives you a better perspective on why this sort of stuff must be actively resisted politically by anyone.