#Assemblies of God

[chelledoggo]

i know i should move on and forgive, especially as a Christian, but...

i have such a MASSIVE chip on my shoulder for the Assemblies of God churches. especially since that was the church i was taken to as a tween/teen that was the starting point of my religious trauma/scrupulocity.

i can't even drive by the church without experiencing these visceral feelings of disgust.

i know there are much, MUCH worse churches out there. but... this one is my particular trauma.

to anyone who is healing from trauma related to AOG or a similar Pentecostal church background... just know that i love you so much, and i'm proud of you for surviving.

whether you're deconstructing/re-constructing your faith, or you've left faith altogether, you deserve peace. 💖

[mermazeablaze]

Yesterday evening as @in-the-night-kitchen & I waited in line to exit Sam's Club. There was a middle aged woman & elderly man with "Assemblies of God, Kerr, OK" shirts loaded up with stuff, I am assuming for summer camp. The woman kept focusing on my necklace. When it was their turn to leave - they went out the entrance door & the woman kept looking back at me to make sure we weren't following them. Like ma'am, I was raised AOG, you're one step away from being a Universalist in a Spiritualist church.

The offending necklace in question:

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Olivia Little at MMFA:

Last month, pastor Micah Beckwith secured Indiana’s GOP lieutenant governor nomination in an unexpected upset against gubernatorial candidate Mike Braun’s pick for running mate. Beckwith is a right-wing podcaster, promoter of Christian nationalism, and suburban pastor at an Indianapolis-area church affiliated with the Pentecostal network Assemblies of God. The network describes same-sex marriage as “symptomatic of a broader spiritual disorder that threatens the family, the government, and the church" and discourages "divorce by all lawful means and teaching.” Beckwith has spent years blasting his extreme positions to the world on his podcast Jesus, Sex and Politics, as well as in Facebook livestreams. In this content, Beckwith has claimed that God was behind the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s rise to power, dabbled in numerology, and talked at length about his “prophetic calling."

Beckwith has been trying to immerse himself in the right-wing culture war for years

In 2021, Beckwith bragged on Facebook about giving out hundreds of religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine. In May 2022, Beckwith’s church hosted a Turning Point USA Faith event with founder and right-wing troll Charlie Kirk, which was posted on The Charlie Kirk Show. During the show with Beckwith, Kirk spouted conspiracy theories about the World Economic Forum, fearmongered about “globalists trying to squeeze the American way of life,” and told audience members that “college is a scam for most young people.”  Earlier this year, Beckwith resigned from his local public library board of directors. He spent his time on the board championing a controversial book removal policy that author and Indiana resident John Green later criticized after his book The Fault in Our Stars was removed from the young adult section.

Indiana Lt. Gov nominee Micah Beckwith (R) has been a promoter of Christian Nationalism, along with other far-right conspiracy theories.

[gaykarstaagforever]

Only "7 pm on Wednesdays" kids will understand.

[lesbianralzarek]

"life doesnt get better, you just get stronger" does NOT include ages 11-17. life does in fact just get better from there. those years are dogshit. like, you do get stronger but its mostly just a factor of not being 11-17 anymore. positive thinking helps but it doesnt fix whatevers going on at 15, you have to brute force through that one raw

[bet-on-me-13]

The cult of...Danny Fenton?

So! Way back when Danny first moved into his new neighborhood in Gotham, he had some trouble controlling his Powers. The different Types and Levels of Ectoplasm in the air when compared to Amity had thrown off his control.

He was used to being in places where his Ectoplasm meshed well with the Atmosphere, like a Water Balloon in a Pool, but in Gotham that analogy would be closer to a Water Balloon in the sewers. It was too different from what he was used to to fully control his Powers.

So it's understandable that he messed up a few times and his neighbors found out about his Abilities.

They took it well at first, Danny wasn't going to go Rogues or anything, and he never used them maliciously, but eventually they got curious.

They asked what his limits were, how he got them in the first place, and what the hell the Ghost Zone was. The answers "None Really", "I died and was reborn", and "A Collective of every Afterlife at once" did spark some interesting reactions from them.

Most importantly, a few of them joked about him being an Eldritch God that they needed to worship. He was good enough friends with them that at that point they felt comfortable pranking eachother, so they did just that.

Danny woke up one day on his birthday, and saw all of his friends and neighbors surrounding the makeshift Throne they had made and put him on while he was asleep. The entire day they chanted stuff like "The Great One requires Ms. Smiths Apple Pie for his day of birth!" And "The Great One Wishes for us to sing the Ritual Song! Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birth-"

After his birthday, they kept up the joke.

It didn't help that his powers had evolved Again! And now he could bestow abilities onto his friends. The jokes they made about their God granting them Supernatural Powers to rule the world with were insufferable.

Then, one day while he was just resting at home, watching a movie on his TV, he felt a Pull at his Core. The same kind of Pull whenever he was being summoned. But why would they summon hi- Oh Shit! It's Mr Jenkins Party today! He was supposed to meet them at the Warehouse they used for special events an Hour Ago!

He quickly accepted the Summoning, but was met with a suprising sight. His Neighbors all tied up in a pile to his right, a spilled table of party food to his left, and right in front of him, Batman and his Family watching him with wary eyes.

Slowly, he opened his mouth. "...so, did you come for the party or..."

[tom4jc]

God Talk (book review)

God Talk (book review)

Title: God TalkAuthor: Calvin M. DurhamPublisher: Three Skillet PublishingDate: 2022Pages: 130 God Talk: Does God Speak Today? (book review) The author, Calvin M. Durham, has ministry experience that has covered six decades. He has worked as pastor, church planting, administrative, evangelist and missionary. Calvin has served as the head of the General Council of the Assemblies of God Sunday…

[mobius-m-mobius]

OWEN WILSON and TOM HIDDLESTON behind the scenes of LOKI S2

[slayerscake]

Honestly, the more I learn about the other Cerberus Assembly members the more funny it is that Delilah Briarwood got kicked out for fucking Necromancy

[chelledoggo]

Assemblies of God mfs when it's time to speak in tongues

[theladydrgn]

HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN A SINGLE ONE OF YOU TALKING ABOUT BISEXUAL MICHAEL SHEEN

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[pyjamacryptid]

This post by @nextstopparis reminded me of a scene from Avengers Assemble so, you know I had to do a redraw lol

(The scene i referenced from AA is under the cut)

[hedgehog-moss]

Update on May 1st protests and how the french goverment handled them?

^ The May 1st protests were pretty violent esp. in Paris; two cops were set on fire (they're ok, one has 2nd degree burns), lots of destruction in city streets, and hundreds of injured protesters. The French gov is sticking to its M.O. of denying any police violence against protesters, emphasising protesters' violence and portraying it as mindless anti-democratic savagery rather than the result of their own anti-democratic policies.

There were more people protesting in the streets on Monday than at any other May Day protest in the past 20 years (by a large margin—7 to 10x more people than usual.) And the numbers are still impressive in terms of this current social movement—there were about 1.2 million people at the first protest against the pension reform in January, 900K at one of the February protests, around 1.1M on March 7 and I think 1.2M on March 23rd... We're in May and there were 800K people in the streets on Monday (using the police's probably low estimate). The first marches earlier this year were peaceful; people started destroying shit in March after the 49.3 (=the gov not letting elected representatives vote on the reform); in the following weeks we saw a brutal escalation of police violence + suppression of just about any means of non-violent protest, which results in more violence.

The vast majority of protesters are still peaceful, but in terms of providing context for the increased violence, well—people protested peacefully, peaceful protests got banned. People banged pots and pans, pots and pans got banned and confiscated. People started a petition on the National Assembly website which got a record number of signatures, the petition was closed before its deadline and ignored. MPs asked (twice!) for a national referendum on the reform to be held, their requests were denied. Electricity unionists cut power in buildings Macron was visiting, now he travels around with a portable generator. Unions tried to distribute whistles and red cards (penalty cards) to football supporters before the French Cup finale last week, so the ones who wanted could use them if Macron showed up (he ended up hiding and greeting the footballers indoors rather than publicly on the stadium lawn); the police prefecture tried banning union members from gathering outside the stadium to distribute these items (although the ban was struck down by the judiciary as it was illegal, like most bans these days...)

Confiscating saucepans was already so absurd it felt like a gratuitous fuck you, but now they're trying to prevent the distribution of pieces of red paper. Cancelling petitions that would have had no real impact anyway. Prosecuting people for insulting Macron. Arbitrarily arresting hundreds of nonviolent protesters to intimidate them out of protesting (guess who's left then?). The French gov is systematically repressing democratic or nonviolent means of making your opinion heard, and when people get more violent they're like "This is unacceptable, don't these terrorists know there are other means of expressing dissent??" Where? This week a 77-year-old man was summoned to the police station and will be forced to take a "citizenship course" for having a banner outside his house that read "Macron fuck you" (Macron on t'emmerde). Note that he would have been arrested (like the woman who was arrested at her home and spent a night in police custody for calling Macron "garbage" on Facebook) but they decided not to only because of his age.

So that's where we're at; on Monday two cops caught on fire (well, their fireproof suit did) after protesters threw a Molotov cocktail at them. (The street medic who tried to help them with their burns ended up getting shot by a cop's riot gun a few seconds later—with French police no good deed goes unpunished!) The media talked a lot more about this incident than about the fact that the cop who got most severely injured on that day (broken vertebrae) was injured by an explosive grenade that a colleague of his meant to throw at protesters (you can see it at the end of the video below). If police with all their protective gear get so badly injured by their own weapons, no wonder the worst injuries have been on the protesters' side. (nearly 600 injured protesters on May 1st, 120 severely, according to street medics.) I'm not including images of these incidents in the video but on May 1st a protester had his hand mutilated by a police grenade + a 17 year old girl was hit in the eye by a grenade fragment, may end up losing it (during the Yellow Vests protests, Macron's first attempt at repressing a social movement, 38 protesters lost an eye or a hand).

What you see in the video: cops charging the front of a march to tear a banner off people's hands then retreating and drowning the street in tear gas when protesters throw paint bombs at them (protesters have umbrellas because of police drones); at 0:30, a journalist saying "They're not even arresting him, just kicking him when he's down—they kicked him right in the face!" then police spraying with tear gas protesters who try to fend them off; at 0:46 when a protester being arrested asks a journalist if he's filming and starts reading out loud a cop's ID number, another cop shoves the journalist and throws him to the ground; at 0:54, an Irish journalist runs away from the police tear gas grenades that you hear going off, at 01:08, the incident mentioned above when a cop drops a grenade he tried to throw, which explodes in his group, breaking another cop's vertebrae. There's a lot more I'm not including, like how CNN said "there's so much tear gas in Paris, our foreign correspondent can barely breathe", how another journalist was hit by a sting-ball grenade (he was also bludgeoned on the head so hard it broke his helmet—even though cops know the people wearing helmets are journalists...), and yet another journalist who was calling out a cop for aiming at people's heads with his riot gun (which is illegal) ended up having the guy aim the riot gun at his head from 2 metres away (getting shot with this "less lethal weapon" from that distance would be lethal.)

All of these videos are from May 1st (most of them from this account monitoring police violence.)

So yeah, nonviolent protests followed by violent police repression and bans of nonviolent means of protesting result in more violent protests. The French government responds by a) pikachu surpris, b) condemning violent protesters and praising violent police to the skies, c) continuing to ban everything they can think of. Confiscating saucepans didn't work but confiscating pieces of red paper will do the trick! Let's prosecute people for bashing or burning an effigy of Macron, because banning symbolic violence always works to prevent actual violence! And this week after the May 1st protests we learnt that the gov is thinking of making street barricades illegal, because that'll definitely solve everything. It's going to be interesting for history teachers to teach students about the 1789 revolution that allowed us to take down an absolutist regime and become a republic, under a government that banned barricades because they see them as terrorist anti-republican structures.

^ Statue symbolising the French Republic (on Place de la République in Paris) dressed with a 'Macron resign' shirt by protesters on May 1st.

[milkweedman]

Knitting a freehand bag and started wondering how often people even use patterns, anyway. So--how often do you use a pattern when you make things ? This include knitting/crochet/sewing/weaving/nalbinding/bobbin lace/tatting/etc but also things like woodworking, cooking, and baking. If you want to just pick the thing you do most often that's fine.

I personally do not use patterns as I find them far more confusing than just figuring out the construction of an item and simply making it. I do very occasionally browse ravelry for inspiration but have downloaded maybe 2. In the 5 or so years since I joined. And have followed exactly 1, which I modified every single aspect of. In my defense, dyslexia.

[sentientsky]

hm. okay then. interesting,,,