Reading this I was very much reminded of the Hare Krishna’s, except for the selling of flowers on pipe cleaners in airports and street corners. I knew a couple in the 70's. A central temple and a community of houses. Tended to draw from the disenfranchised and disillusioned drug/rock crowd.

Other than the aggressive flower selling, I really didn't have a problem with them then, and I really don't have problems with people living in communal settings now. As long as they don't preach to my kids, live and let live. If they preach to my kids, I will feel very free to preach to theirs that their moms perceives themselves as walking incubators and have traded their brains for security.

That is certainly nothing new.

That is their business, none of mine. Anyone is free to believe in the rapture and whatever they think it takes to be included in it. Anyone is free to find what makes them feel secure in an insecure world.

"Jesus" cults like this one have been around at least since the early 70's when corporate and government figures were looking for ways to stem the tide of progressive social politics which marked that era. What better way to do that than to seed a conservative political movement disguised as a religious revival? How better to make that movement palatable to prospective recruits than to permit certain trappings of modern culture, whether it's rock music back then or hip-hop now?

The "Jesus Freaks" of that era and their leaders are now working for today's televangelical ministries and radical-right-wing theocratic think tanks.

'Twas ever thus...

...find themselves searching for spirituality or religion that "speaks" to them. My mother, who came of age during WWII, was born into an liberal Orthodox Jewish home, became a Catholic at 18 and now, at age 80, goes door-to-dooring with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Members of the so-called Disciple Generation are seeking what a number of us have and, as humans, will continue to reach for: faith in something greater than ourselves, something to believe in, something to guide us.

While the tools and trappings may be different, there is nothing new about it all. It's their grandparents' or great-grandparents' religion on caffiene and sporting some tribal tattoos. Their children may turn out to be pagans or atheists. And so it goes...

Open your ears to religion, close your eyes to critical thinking.

Let's all be followers.

This is just an extremely conservative church dressed in the trappings of the local culture. I don't think that being "punk rock" in Seattle is unusual, any more than being "country" in rural America is. The church is just reflecting the local culture. This is what evengelicalisim does, wherever it goes.

Now I am a old punk rock grrrl who goes to a Lutheran Church. My mom was a spiritual seeker. I have been to so many different churches that I refuse to teach sunday school. Who knows what I'll say if I go off script? My pastor often calls Christianity an Alternative Lifestyle. But he stretches my elderly congregation to be more loving, more giving, more inclusive. The emphasis in the ELCA isn't on a lighting moment of conversion. Spirituality is seen as a developmental process.

Actually last weeks sermon was about how people think they have it right and then start exculding other people. The statement that he made about community at the fence makes me think he forgot how often Jesus pointed out that some of the people who "got it" were outsiders. But then again, most punks and radical Christians see themselves as excluded from wider society. So it is a continuation of their feelings of being beleagured.

I love traditional church. I like the old and sometimes ancient music. It is often beautiful. Pastor is a quiet contemplative ex-hippie school teacher. Noone expects public delcarations of faith, which honestly scare me. (We are Lutherans. Keep it to yourself. We know why you're here. Quit showing off.) Noone is swaying like they are at a rock concert. We are at church. Not a rock concert. If you want to go to a show, GO to a show.The older women (and men! A Group called The Grumpy Old Men makes a lot of the food at big dinners) make good old fashioned nothern european stodge.

I love my music more than most. But I feel like there is a time and a place for everything. My secular life and church life are quite separate. My Church trusts me to make good choices for myself. I can eat curry and tacos and listen to whatever FIRST RATE music I want to on my own time. Church time is for feeding my spirit.

Wow! What a rant!

how sad that no one was asked to talk about their views on homosexuality. it would've been good to know if christianity's archaic take on it has been updated with these new radical believers.

Oh yeah.

-- Strong, charismatic leader who sets the tone for the entire group.

-- Members (especially women) isolated from rest of society.

Cult. But, hey... I don't care. So are the Amish. As long as they treat their children and animals right and don't bother anyone else, they're okay with me. People believe all sorts of goofy-ass things.

BTW, at the very beginning of the piece, Lauren Sandler refers to "...where biblical orthodoxy rules as strictly as in Hasidism or Opus Dei." Opus Dei, like the rest of Roman Catholicism, is NOT biblically orthodox. Not by a long shot.

The only difference between these "aggressive" Christian evangelicals and the Taliban are superficial: clothes, tattoos, music. Otherwise, it's the same old extremist, patriarchal, xenophobic garbage that has plagued humanity ever since the first priest condemned the first infidel to everlasting torment.

Our Preznit could add "ChristoFascist" to his list of enemies in the never-ending war he has planned for us; alas, that will not happen, as he is their leader.

This reminds me very much of the "Jesus People" movement of the late 60s and 70s. Then we had large numbers of young people who had essentially dropped out of mainstream culture. Many Christian groups were formed, typically under the leadership of a charismatic and authoritarian male. The typical form of community was the commune, in which the females cooked and cleaned house, and the males went out and made money on individual jobs or on group work projects managed by the commune. All of these Jesus People groups were fundamentalist, by which I mean that they saw the Bible as the actual and inerrant Word of God.

People on the outside of these group typically perceived those on the inside as "wonderful young people," and everyone always seemed happy. The problem is that these little Christian communities are like greenhouses, in which most of the information and examples come from within the group, and outside influences are greatly diminished. In other words, the group basically circles the wagons, but people really don't realize that is happening.

For example, for these Mars Hill women who have been turned into baby factories and domestic staff, "community" largely consists of OTHER baby factories and domestic staff. So you end up with people all thinking the same way, because all of the people they are friends with all think the same way. And then that in itself feels "wonderful" because everyone you know and value agrees with you! Any dissenting voices are always from outside the group, and thus suspect. So you end up with "groupthink" with a vengance, enforced by the "loving community" and a huge pressure to conform. Thus what really is oppression appears to the followers to be liberation.

The interesting question with the Mars Hill group is what happens when someone starts to emerge from the groupthink. In other words, what would happen if one of the wives decided that she didn't want to be a baby factory? What if one of the men decided that maybe the Bible isn't inerrant? In the real world, these things happen. And sometimes it happens after 20 or 30 years, and the person realizes that his or her life has basically been organized around a religious fantasy.

So there's nothing new here. It's just Jesus People with tattoos and iPods. Americans love religious revivals, and we have them all the time. So there's always the new and exciting preacher, the terrible sinner who is now saved, the counter-culture that erupts with fundamentalist zeal, the dynamic new Christian musician, the exciting new version of religion replacing the old and stale. We Americans love this stuff. Why do we love revivals? Because personal freedom is scary -- so scary that we'd rather have someone else tell us what to do, and give us all the answers. And having tattoos and an iPod makes it seem like a cool thing to do.