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IamLEAM1983
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To Jubal

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

If Chambers felt like futzing with the New Age crowd, is there any Loyalist that figured they'd dip a toe in the Prosperity Gospel business?
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IamLEAM1983
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Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
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Post by IamLEAM1983 »

"Son, there's been false preachers hidin' their tentacles behind collars or gaudy suits for as long as America's stood. Most of 'em are vain enough to run operations directly against the Chamberlain's own grift, and few among 'em even manage so much as the much-desired megachurches and media deals. I've put down fake Catholics, Baptists, Mormons - gunned down false rabbis and at least two usurpin' imams preyin' on Seattle's Muslim community and sendin' a few thralls out for Elysium's Iraqi and Afghani cells. Small ops for the most part, to the point where my cleanup crew doesn't so much as have to direct spiritually-confused sorts to other sources. The would-be thralls just graft 'emselves to some other parish and keep on believin', like nobody so much as mocked their personal faith for years on end...

Then, there's the big fish - greedy fellas who hook up with Phineas Sharpe not out of shared loyalties, but 'cause they see his own insane ploys as means to an end. Sharpe doesn't even know his inner circle's tainted, as things are. The one we keep an eye on the most is Matthew Prince, the founder of Albuquerque's own Threshold Ministries. His fortune don't carry a torch's to Renewal's, but twenty-five million is still twenty-five million.

He doesn't do much out of the ordinary for a false prophet, in this day and age: he 'saves' people, keeps 'em 'saved', and waggles the fear o' damnation in his faithful's faces. As expected, you stay saved, as per Prince's definition of the term, by sendin' big, fat checks his way. He doesn't keep much to himself - helps to keep the melodramatic poverty vows runnin' - but every single expense of his counts as business-oriented. That means corporate tax cuts and the kind o' mansion no decent soldier of God or the Architect would ever erect. If anyone complains, all he has to do is show his own tax reports, all calculated for someone who doesn't so much as make twenty Ks a year...

Now, he'd be like just any other asshole if all he did was shit out his poison on the airwaves - but we know his most devoted followers get touched, and really carefully, at that. They get programmed, told to act normally unless a kill command's spoken by Prince. Then, whatever's tryin' to bother or maybe assault their dear ol' pastor gets torn apart. I've seen cam footage of it - saw an eightysomethin' Betty White lookalike lunge across a room in two steps, where she gouged out some poor debt collection agent's eyes an' ate 'em. Prince curbstomped the fella while he agonized. By the next week, the debt-collection agency was gone and Fed agents got told to bury the case. The survivors the Gentlemen found had all been touched. We tried broachin' the topic - they tried killin' themselves.

My biggest worry is Prince buildin' up an army of faithful over years: imagine a stadium packed with hundreds of innocents for an average Sunday round of liturgical Hail Marys, only their CCR reject doesn't walk up onstage and stare strummin' out their take on Nearer my God to Thee... The Black Speech roars out of them speakers for three hours straight, all the doors been locked...

Three hours later, all you've got left is meat wearin' nice smiles an' itching to send their public lives down the drain - to drag as many people down with 'em as they can.

There's parts of the country where you can feel that kind of vacant glow in people's eyes: they'll tell you they found God and you can feel how they've framed their future killing spree, their mountin' abuse of friends and relatives, as a kind of crusade. They'll scream that they're filled with light even as they bare down on you, kitchen knives or pencils raised to kill - and all you'll see in them eyes is darkness. Darkness where their minds oughta be. Worst of all, you gotta kill 'em.

You gotta survive - live to fight another day. Survive you do, and it's a tiny bit harder for each and every life you take."
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