BTW the latimes reports that A&E and Discovery are fighting over who will get a Palin reality show:
BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH
The New Apostolic Movement uncovered … and un-covered.
The mainstream media has plenty of time and space to devote to Sarah Palin’s Hollywood hi-jinks, but apparently has little interest in delving into her fantastic religious connections.
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3064A few weeks back, I interview Rachel Tabachnick about a movement of religious conservatives called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The story, which appeared at Alternet on Monday, March 1, was given the rather tantalizing title, “
Heads Up: Prayer Warriors and Sarah Palin Are Organizing Spiritual Warfare to Take Over America”. The subhead was also a juicy tease, advising that the NAR was likely “the largest religious movement you’ve never heard of.”
snip
But there is another reason that might provide a clue as to why the NAR escapes notice; “they don’t fit the stereotypical picture of religious fundamentalists.” With the “Religious Right constantly reinventing themselves, it appears that it is taking considerable time for this new facade to be recognized.”
That may be because the “NAR welcome women leaders, are truly multi-racial, and are gaining access through extensive involvement in charities and faith-based programming,” Tabachnick pointed out. ”It takes a lot of time to dig into their ideology and find that their so-called openness is not necessarily a matter of altruism, but a well planned assault on religious pluralism and a strategy for taking ‘dominion.’”
Another problem that Tabachnick said she has encountered while trying to publicize information about the NAR is accusations by some that she sounds like a conspiracy theorist. “My primary area of work has been in End Times narratives which are the source of many of the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theories percolating through our society,” Tabachnick pointed out.
While she “share{s} the concern of those who are careful not to be taken in by irrational and paranoid narratives,” she recognizes that “some traditional fundamentalists actually do view the NAR as the apostate church of the end times and a conspiracy of the anti-Christ. “Since the NAR is poaching on a lot of other people’s churches, their animosity is understandable. However, my problem with the NAR is that the movement is a very real and human assault on separation of church and state.”
Tabachnick maintained that “Those of us who do this research and writing are fighting for religious pluralism which allows Baptists to be Baptists, Jews to be Jews, Presbyterians to be Presbyterians, and so forth. There is nothing anti-religious about our work. However, in the progressive world I think we often allow the Religious Right to bully us into thinking this means we can’t speak out without being anti-religious.
“Gary North, one of the leaders of the openly theocratic Reconstructionist movement, has explained how they take advantage of “the dilemma of democratic pluralism” because pluralists must by definition tolerate the agendas of those who would eliminate pluralism. True, but we also have the right and the responsibility to educate the public on threats to religious pluralism, and I believe that one of the great threats at the moment is the dominionist agenda of the New Apostolic Reformation.”
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