Just don't go there

So I write.  A lot of what I write is fan fiction because Spencer Reid is my muse for some reason.  If I can see a story through his eyes it tends to come together.

Over the years I've used a particular religious subgroup as my bad guys on more than one occasion.  They are Christian, but follow a mixture of Calvinist and Prosperity Doctrine based in Proverbs 13:21:

Affliction followeth sinners: but unto the righteous, God will recompense good.

  To them that says that some are elect by God and some are not and you can tell the difference by the way the elect are rewarded on Earth.  They also believe that children are the punishment women bear for having sex, that women should neither vote nor work outside the home, that girls can be sold into marriage by their fathers as soon as possible after beginning menstruation so in their teens, that members of the LGBT community, especially gay men and MTF transsexuals, should be stoned to death, that certain kinds of slavery are perfectly fine, and that all of the above should be enshrined in the US legal system because that's what it means to be a Christian Nation.  And above all, everyone needs to be not only Christian but their kind of Christian and if you're not then there's the door.

These bad guys made up the Brethren who took over part of the US in The First Run.  They started their own terrorist movement in The Letter.  And they were tormenting an orphan for being a non-believer in The Ones Who Stormed The Gates Of Omelas.  I even implied that they had a hand in creating the nation of Panem in my Hunger Games crossover series because it fits so damn well.

Speaking of Omelas, one of the pivotal scenes in that story had the BAU breaking in to a conference the bad guys were having where one member had transported something Really Bad over state lines to show his friends.  I based the idea of that conference on a now defunct gathering called the Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy, where young men who believe in their version of Christianity met to discuss "comprehensive biblical foundation for our common law and constitutional government".  * They even published a best-of home study guide:

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Witherspoon-School-Public-Policy/dp/1929241518

You'll notice that one of the instructors mentioned is Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.  This would be the Roy Moore who prefers teen aged girls and has claimed it was acceptable because he received permission from their mothers.  The Roy Moore who believes that homosexuality should at the very least be illegal.  The Roy Moore who believes that we were better off when we had slavery because families were stronger, at least the ones not torn apart by slavery.  The Roy Moore who believes women are too weak to hold public office.  **

The Roy Moore who just lost the Alabama senate seat by 1.5 points.  Think about that, 650,436 voted for this man.  He ran with the support of the Republican party, who surely did a hell of a lot better research into all of this than I ever did.

So anyone who says that my religious characters are too extreme, or too unrealistic are just not paying attention.  I didn't take my characters all the way out there into unreality.  I took them one or two steps beyond where they already are.

______

*  To the best of my knowledge no one at the conference ever carried anything illegal across state lines while attending said conference.  I made that part up.  That's why it's called fiction.   I also made up the part about terrorists cells (although they do offer paramilitary training) and about an organized effort to secede from the United States.  Although we can already see their involvement in politics, and how well it's working.

**  The whole women shouldn't vote thing, stoning homosexuals, girls sold into marriage and so on were all promoted by his co-author and apparent good friend Doug Philips.  Phillips' writings have been purged from the web since he was defrocked and excommunicated after it came out that he was having an affair with his 15 year old nanny so I am having trouble finding links.  Sorry, all my notes on all of this are on paper, collected for the writing of my various stories.

______

Edit:  The Autodidact says it much better than I can.

http://fiddlrts.blogspot.com/2017/12/of-course-roy-moore-defends-slavery-and.html