Yesterday, Ken Hutcherson sent to his "Prayer Warriors" this missive:

Please pray for me as I speak at the Watchmen on the Wall Conference this weekend.  There has been misinformation and lies told about the conference.   Pray that there will be a good turnout and there will be a clear presentation about what God is and isn't pleased with.

Indeed. There's probably been a wealth of misinformation -- starting, of course, with the misinformation about their project given to the Lynnwood Convention Center  by the conference sponsors when they booked the center.

Part of the cause of the misinformation appears to stem from the bizarre theology upon which groups like Watchmen on the Walls are based.

A prolific diarist on DailyKos who calls himself "dogemperor" has been diligently exposing some of those underpinnings in a long series of complex essays. (These are, by the way, posts unfiltered by the DailyKos editorial policy.) I find it difficult to wade through the essays, but they do offer some intriguing background.

Yesterday, dogemperor tackled the theological nexus that ties together a church in Riga along with Hutcherson's Redmond church and the national ministry he's trying to develop.

I'll admit to being mightily confused by the multitude of distinct theological sects and sub-sects that are all called "Christian" even though the groups appear to me to hold significantly inconsistent beliefs. My confusion is only deepened when trying to decipher dogemperor's essays.

My guess is that his writing style is inspired his background. He describes himself this way:

Survivor of coercive dominionist group, now doing my best to educate people on dominionism and hopefully inspiring folks on ways to take back our country and faith.

He may have left the church of his boyhood, but dogemperor still writes with the style of exegesis and interpretation that characterizes the churches and preachers he describes.

That term, "dominionist", occurs again and again in dogemperor's essays without explicit definition. But a much-debated entry on "Dominionism" in Wikipedia offers (at the moment) this shorthand definition:

Dominionism is a term used in several distinct ways to describe a tendency among some conservative politically-active Christians to seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action — aiming either at a nation governed by Christians or a nation governed by a Christian understanding of biblical law. The use and application of this terminology is a matter of controversy.

dogemperor explains the movement this way in one of his essays:

Essentially, not only are these dominionists terrified that if they do not change the US to a theocracy that the US will somehow lose God's blessing, they are also terrified that the rest of us will in essence "infect" them and cause demons to "oppress and possess" the US.  Hence, they must "claim dominion" over the country, in their minds--not only to secure "God's blessing on the US" but to pretty much begin a planet-wide exorcism.

It's that aspect of the Christian political movements that dogemperor tries to explain, not only in his DailyKos essays, but also in essays on his LiveJournal account, called "Dark Christianity".

In yesterday's essay on Russian "dominationist" churches and their recent but dangerous influence in the US, dogemperor uses a couple of other terms that I found confusing without definitions. So here are a couple of background definitions:

Steeplejacking is a term for the practice of dominionist sympathizers infiltrating the power structure of a mainstream church, often through small Bible Study groups and youth organizations, and gradually twisting the church's theology around to fit with the dominionist model.

He also frequently mentions "Joel's Army" which he defines in an earlier diary:

"Joel's Army" is a concept that pretty much is restricted to neopentecostal "Third Wave" churches, and is an extension of "spiritual warfare" groups.  In essence, these groups believe that towards the end of days, a literal "God Army" will rise up--and when Christ comes back at the end of the Tribulation, they will slay literally everyone else on the planet and enact a Pax dominionista.  Even scarier, they believe that themselves--and especially the kids being raised in places like the "Kids on Fire" camp depicted in "Jesus Camp"--are in fact that "endtime overcomer army".

So that appears to be the interpretation of "human rights" that organizers of the weekend conference in Lynnwood seek to share with 700 of our fellow citizens.