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Author: James E. Larue Publisher: ISBN: 9780692475355 Category : Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
The Church of Bible Understanding (COBU) had a presence in many cities in the United States during the late seventies and eighties. It was well known in New York City for its Christian Brothers Carpet Cleaning business, which was such a regular part of the fabric of city life that it was parodied (as Sunshine Carpet Cleaners) on an episode of Seinfeld. Its 39.95 Carpet Cleaning Special flyers were slipped under many doors and left in many apartment lobbies. Unlike other religious organizations whose zealous devotees stood on corners selling flowers, the COBU brothers and sisters gave live demos of the cleansing power of their carpet cleaning machines on city street corners. The carpet cleaning business raised money to start orphanages in Haiti. COBU still has a presence in the New York City and several other cities. It left the carpet business for its more successful architectural antique business called Olde Good Things. COBU was recently in the news when Haitian authorities threatened to close the orphanages down because of the poor conditions there. News stories contrasted the high earnings of these stores with the run down condition of the orphanages. This book describes how James LaRue, a young seeker of truth, was approached in a mall by a cult member and how he joined the group and stayed in it for fourteen years. It is not as much a history of The Church of Bible Understanding as it is a story from the viewpoint of the average member of a cult. Though James's descriptions of daily cult life, the reader has a front row view of the kind of manipulation, lies, harassment and abuse practiced by the cult's leadership and particularly by Stewart Traill, COBU's self-appointed pastor who had "the only true method of Bible interpretation," a man who portrayed himself as a right Christian example and the restorer of Christianity to its original purity (which he said had been lost since the time of the Apostles), who, behind closed doors, kept a harem of young women while denying marriage to his followers under the pretext that they were not faithful enough to God to be able to get married. He was a man who preached poverty, chastity and obedience to his followers, while amassing a private fortune, having many female devotees and being accountable to no one. Stewart Traill began his career preaching about being born again and the second coming of Christ, but over the years, his teachings increasingly centered on death, hell and damnation. The man who once told his followers to go out into the highways and byways to compel people to come to God's kingdom was now slamming the gates of heaven in their faces and telling them they were not worthy of entering and that instead, the fires of hell awaited them. Many people left the organization because of this treatment, but what this meant for those who remained was that there was a smaller and more dedicated group of those who believed in this way and who were willing to put up with this treatment. This meant an ever-tightening net of social pressure among members to conform to cult life. Fanaticism and a militant way of life replaced church members' original zeal to proclaim the gospel. It was a live-in situation where church members monitored one another and reported to "Brother Stewart," as he was called. The treadmill of work in the church's businesses and sleep deprivation caused by meetings that lasted until the early hours of the morning made sure members were too tired to think rationally, and combined with a highly loaded language and sloganizing that stifled thought, it created an undertow that swept members off the normal moorings of life and along with the current of cult life. The story documents James's entry into the cult as a true believer, his experiences there and finally, his effort to come to terms with this way of life, to understand the processes he was being subjected to and controlled by and finally, how he was able to break free from its influence.
Author: James E. Larue Publisher: ISBN: 9780692475355 Category : Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
The Church of Bible Understanding (COBU) had a presence in many cities in the United States during the late seventies and eighties. It was well known in New York City for its Christian Brothers Carpet Cleaning business, which was such a regular part of the fabric of city life that it was parodied (as Sunshine Carpet Cleaners) on an episode of Seinfeld. Its 39.95 Carpet Cleaning Special flyers were slipped under many doors and left in many apartment lobbies. Unlike other religious organizations whose zealous devotees stood on corners selling flowers, the COBU brothers and sisters gave live demos of the cleansing power of their carpet cleaning machines on city street corners. The carpet cleaning business raised money to start orphanages in Haiti. COBU still has a presence in the New York City and several other cities. It left the carpet business for its more successful architectural antique business called Olde Good Things. COBU was recently in the news when Haitian authorities threatened to close the orphanages down because of the poor conditions there. News stories contrasted the high earnings of these stores with the run down condition of the orphanages. This book describes how James LaRue, a young seeker of truth, was approached in a mall by a cult member and how he joined the group and stayed in it for fourteen years. It is not as much a history of The Church of Bible Understanding as it is a story from the viewpoint of the average member of a cult. Though James's descriptions of daily cult life, the reader has a front row view of the kind of manipulation, lies, harassment and abuse practiced by the cult's leadership and particularly by Stewart Traill, COBU's self-appointed pastor who had "the only true method of Bible interpretation," a man who portrayed himself as a right Christian example and the restorer of Christianity to its original purity (which he said had been lost since the time of the Apostles), who, behind closed doors, kept a harem of young women while denying marriage to his followers under the pretext that they were not faithful enough to God to be able to get married. He was a man who preached poverty, chastity and obedience to his followers, while amassing a private fortune, having many female devotees and being accountable to no one. Stewart Traill began his career preaching about being born again and the second coming of Christ, but over the years, his teachings increasingly centered on death, hell and damnation. The man who once told his followers to go out into the highways and byways to compel people to come to God's kingdom was now slamming the gates of heaven in their faces and telling them they were not worthy of entering and that instead, the fires of hell awaited them. Many people left the organization because of this treatment, but what this meant for those who remained was that there was a smaller and more dedicated group of those who believed in this way and who were willing to put up with this treatment. This meant an ever-tightening net of social pressure among members to conform to cult life. Fanaticism and a militant way of life replaced church members' original zeal to proclaim the gospel. It was a live-in situation where church members monitored one another and reported to "Brother Stewart," as he was called. The treadmill of work in the church's businesses and sleep deprivation caused by meetings that lasted until the early hours of the morning made sure members were too tired to think rationally, and combined with a highly loaded language and sloganizing that stifled thought, it created an undertow that swept members off the normal moorings of life and along with the current of cult life. The story documents James's entry into the cult as a true believer, his experiences there and finally, his effort to come to terms with this way of life, to understand the processes he was being subjected to and controlled by and finally, how he was able to break free from its influence.
Author: Teresa A. Toulouse Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812203674 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 235
Book Description
Why do narratives of Indian captivity emerge in New England between 1682 and 1707 and why are these texts, so centrally concerned with women's experience, supported and even written by a powerful group of Puritan ministers? In The Captive's Position, Teresa Toulouse argues for a new interpretation of the captivity narrative—one that takes into account the profound shifts in political and social authority and legitimacy that occurred in New England at the end of the seventeenth century. While North American narratives of Indian captivity had been written before this period by French priests and other European adventurers, those stories had focused largely on Catholic conversions and martyrdoms or male strategies for survival among the Indians. In contrast, the New England texts represented a colonial Protestant woman who was separated brutally from her family but who demonstrated qualities of religious acceptance, humility, and obedience until she was eventually returned to her own community. Toulouse explores how the female captive's position came to resonate so powerfully for traditional male elites in the second and third generation of the Massachusetts colony. Threatened by ongoing wars with Indians and French as well as by a range of royal English interventions in New England political and cultural life, figures such as Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, and John Williams perceived themselves to be equally challenged by religious and social conflicts within New England. By responding to and employing popular representations of female captivity, they were enabled to express their ambivalence toward the world of their fathers and toward imperial expansion and thereby to negotiate their own complicated sense of personal and cultural identity. Examining the captivity narratives of Mary Rowlandson, Hannah Dustan, Hannah Swarton, and John Williams (who comes to stand in for the female captive), Toulouse asserts the need to read these gendered texts as cultural products that variably engage, shape, and confound colonial attitudes toward both Europe and the local scene in Massachusetts. In doing so, The Captive's Position offers a new story of the rise and breakdown of orthodox Puritan captivities and a meditation on the relationship between dreams of authority and historical change.
Author: S K Tham Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1514442264 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
In this book, I would like you to come on a journey with me. It is a journey that I have been on, and I want to retrace the route that I have taken. Some parts of the journey may be familiar to you, but other parts may be new and sometimes scary. My journey is by no means at its end yet, but the delight that I have experienced beckons me to tell others and to take others along this journey. Many times along the way, I had to discard the cultural baggage that I had carried along because they became burdensome and prevented me from going further. I then had to adorn a totally new attire and at times change my lenses to see things clearer. I was reluctant to do that at first, but the moment I tried on the new lenses, I saw things that I had never seen before. That was exciting. Things came into much sharper focus. However, the distant view remained hazy, but this only made me more determined to journey on. With each new step I took, I saw a little more. Somehow the haze of the distant hills never lifted. It remained. I was only given a clear view of the immediate surroundings. Over time I became contended with that view knowing that in this journey the delight is limitless. (S K Tham) Those who have struggled with cross-cultural communication of the Word of God will find this book a great assistance. It is not that here at last is a method we can employ that will remove the barriers we face, but there is an explanation and one that is not restricted to any particular Christian cultural group. Siew Kiong Tham has argued that the basic problem is not anthropological or culturalit is theological. Knowing the triune God and having that knowledge effect Christian living and relationships lies at the heart of all we are about as believers and proclaimers. (Rev Dr Ian Pennicook, New Creation Teaching Ministry, NSW) We see our own culture as inviolable. Apart from Christ, it represents our lasting and sacred endeavours. It fits us with the way things are done. Dr Tham shows us that we may not simply overlay our culture with a form of external Christianity. The delivery of grace by the present reigning Lord Jesus can never be drooped over our culture as a better moral system that simply tidies up some minor cultural loose ends. The culture of the Fathers family must break through as the culture of love seen and known only in the Cross. Only there do we discover the Fathers lasting and sacred endeavours to form His culture within humanity. (Brian Arthur, Pastor, Bethel Christian Church)
Author: Martin Luther Publisher: ISBN: 9781520355672 Category : Languages : en Pages : 108
Book Description
Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October 1520) was the second of the three major treatises published by Martin Luther in 1520, coming after the Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (August 1520) and before On the Freedom of a Christian (November 1520). It was a theological treatise, and as such was published in Latin as well as German, the language in which the treatises were written.In this work Luther examines the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church in the light of his interpretation of the Bible. With regard to the Eucharist, he advocates restoring the cup to the laity, dismisses the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation but affirms the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and rejects the teaching that the Mass is a sacrifice offered to God.
Author: Eric A. Stanley Publisher: AK Press ISBN: 1849352348 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 418
Book Description
"Captive Genders is an exciting assemblage of writings—analyses, manifestos, stories, interviews—that traverse the complicated entanglements of surveillance, policing, imprisonment, and the production of gender normativity. Focusing discerningly on the encounter of transpersons with the apparatuses that constitute the prison industrial complex, the contributors to this volume create new frameworks and new vocabularies that surely will have a transformative impact on the theories and practices of twenty-first century abolition." —Angela Y. Davis, professor emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz "The contributors to Captive Genders brilliantly shatter the assumption that the antidote to danger is human sacrifice. In other words, for these thinkers: where life is precious life is precious." —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California "Captive Genders is at once a scathing and necessary analysis of the prison industrial complex and a history of queer resistance to state tyranny. By analyzing the root causes of anti-queer and anti-trans violence, this book exposes the brutality of state control over queer/trans bodies inside and outside prison walls, and proposes an analytical framework for undoing not just the prison system, but its mechanisms of surveillance, dehumanization and containment. —Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Captive Genders was the first book of its kind. It remains the touchstone for studies of trans and gender-queer people in prison. It has been revamped to appeal to recent broadened interest. With a new Foreword by CeCe McDonald and essay by Chelsea Manning.
Author: Samuel C. Heilman Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351487272 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 350
Book Description
Via a participant-observer approach, Synagogue Life analyzes the three essential dimensions of synagogue life: the houses of prayer, study, and assembly. In each Heilman documents the rich detail of the synagogue experience while articulating the social and cultural drama inherent in them. He illustrates how people come to the synagogue not only for spiritual purposes but also to find out where and how they fit into life in the neighborhood in which they share.In his new introduction, Heilman discusses what led him to write this book and the process of personal transformation through which he, as an Orthodox Jew, had to go in order to turn a disciplined eye on the world from which he came. Rather than using the stranger-as-native approach of classic anthropology, he had instead to begin as a native who discoverd how to look at a once-taken-for-granted synagogue life like a stranger. In the afterword, arguing for the efficacy of this approach, Heilman offers guidance on how natives can use their special familiarity and still be trained to distance themselves from their own group, making use of the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. Synagogue Life offers a fascinating portrait that has something to say to social scientists as well as all those curious about what happens in the main arena of Orthodox Jewish community life.
Author: Grant Barlow Publisher: Lulu.com ISBN: 1409209709 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 440
Book Description
This book is here for reproof. I have written this book for the deceived church trapped in doctrines of dead men and beliefs held in the mind of separation. This book will not be welcomed by those determined to say they are sinners against God but will be welcomed by those who want to remember how we are created in truth as innocent powerful offspring of the living God. This book will heal your mind once you give yourself permission to read it and forget what sinners say about you for doing so. This book will set your mind free to hear the One Voice and to make the One choice continuously. Your time is UP and you simply must know your SELF the way you are known of God. You are a Miracle waiting to happen.
Author: Kate Bowler Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691209197 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Although most evangelical traditions bar women from ordained ministry, many women have carved out unofficial positions of power in their husbands' spiritual empires or their own ministries. The biggest stars write bestselling books, grab high ratings on Christian television, and even preach. Bowler offers a sympathetic and revealing portrait of megachurch women celebrities, showing how they must balance the demands of celebrity culture and conservative, male-dominated faiths. And black celebrity preachers' wives carry a special burden of respectability. A compelling account of women's search for spiritual authority in the age of celebrity. -- adapted from jacket
Author: Roger Joslin Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc. ISBN: 0819231940 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
Roger Joslin is the vicar of All Saints Episcopal Church in Bentonville, AR, a mission of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas. He arrived in town in town as a newly ordained deacon in 2006. All Saints now has an ASA of 233, is the fifth largest congregation in the Diocese of Arkansas, and is well on its way to parish status. It is obviously doing well, but its location in Bentonville, the home of Walmart, adds another layer to the narrative. It is a rich narrative, and one of the best books on congregational development I've read in a long time. He makes a powerful case for the role of a progressive Episcopal church in this location and for the appeal of preaching and practicing a gospel of inclusion in a way that reaches out to whatever groups or individuals that have been marginalized by churches.
Author: Anne Gracie Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 9780425203958 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
A phony engagement turns into real passion in this delightful Regency romance from award-winning author Anne Gracie. Fate has lavished beauty on the Merridew sisters—that is, all save the eldest. But plain Prudence bears no grudge; she loves her four beautiful sisters infinitely. So when their abusive grandfather is laid up with an injury, she seizes the opportunity to concoct an ingenious plan that will allow all five of them to escape the clutches of their legal guardian. All it will take is a little matrimonial deception... A renowned rake, Gideon, Lord Carradice, has a way of making ladies swoon. But when Prudence arrives at his doorstep and mistakes him for his cousin, the Duke, it is Gideon who’s infatuated. The delightful spitfire claims she and the Duke are engaged—although a taller tale was never told. In spite of the lies, Gideon is so taken with charming Prudence that he’s eager to join her game, especially if it will award him a stolen kiss or two. Now, Prudence’s plot is about to go terribly, albeit deliciously, awry...
Author: James E. Larue
Author: James E. Larue
Author: Teresa A. Toulouse
Author: S K Tham
Author: Martin Luther
Author: Eric A. Stanley
Author: Samuel C. Heilman
Author: Grant Barlow
Author: Kate Bowler
Author: Roger Joslin
Author: Anne Gracie