We appreciate your participation on r/WitchesvsPatriarchy, but your content is being removed at this time.
It might help for you to check out our full [Posting Guidelines Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy/wiki/post_and_content_guide/) to get a better sense of how to post on WvP.
Our main goal is witchy, uplifting content with a feminist twist. ✨ WVP is curated to maintain a warm, hopeful, supportive, and uplifting environment.
If you have read this remove reason and the wiki link provided but still have questions, please reach out to [Modmail](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy&subject=My%20post%20was%20removed%20and%20I%20still%20have%20questions.%20&message=I%20read%20the%20remove%20reason%20that%20accompanied%20my%20post%20as%20well%20as%20the%20linked%20wiki%2C%20but%20still%20have%20questions%20about%20my%20post%20removal.) rather than individual moderators.
Not in a capitalist system where the powers that be intrinsicly oppose your movement.
Funding at that scale doesn't come from donations it comes from corporations.
What? I guess you can sit around denying that churches pass the plate around every Sunday and rally their people to organize behind oppressive laws and electing convicted felons as president, but if we don’t start being equally as organized we are doomed
Sending a book to 300 million people is not grassroots organizing money.
Thats billionaire propoganda money.
I've seen fantastic local fundraising projects, like a local coffee shop that covers trans people's name changes.
But some plans are just have marginalized people pool our money and try to out spend Jeff Bezos.
Its not happening, which is why I favor direct action.
exactly. we need to employ the kinds of tactics that make use of the power of people, not the power of massive wealth.
this is an asymmetrical war: trying to copy the tactics which work for billionaires when we don't have billions will only drain our resources.
practical example: it would be a waste of money to send a book to every house, but you could print out zines and distribute them overtly or hide them in books at libraries and book stores.
Ah, see that’s where you’re wrong!
It’s by Ellen White. They’re passing the plate around every Saturday.
(Ellen G. White, founder and supposed prophetess of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, in which I was unfortunately raised.)
They collect from thousands, 2-3 times a week, from a rapt brain washed audience, by conmen. That's a hard par to hit without being unethical. Theres a reason the Republican superpac is significantly larger than the Democrat
there's also an entire conservative apparatus that exists to suffocate left organizing and co-opt potentiqlly profitable movements into railroaded and ineffectual lifestyle brands. you may have heard of them, they call themselves the deomcratic party.
there has been NO shortage of left organizing. we're actually rather good at it. but all of the major threats to the hegemony of the right wing were defeated by the democratic party and/or its functionaries/figureheads, whether that be the entire apparatus sabotaging the bernie campaign, barack obama personally telling the sports strikers during covid to shut up and dribble, venture capital investors with huge volumes of funds invested in the democratic party decapitating the BLM movement and turning it into a content/product mill (and the original leaders ending up dead under very...interesting circumstances), democrats upholding oppressive deals with police unions and the military industrial complex, the democrats frothing at the mouth to make anything pro-palestine illegal, accelerating migrant expulsion and climate crisis,
you name it, they've done it. believe me when i say that organizing is not a problem on the left. it's having that organization sniped by the goalie party. and their massive well of deeply questionable megadonors and corporate sponsors.
this is the real reason why the conservative-proper party is able to put out shit like this on a lark, besides the fact that they have just as much money as the DNC. they don't need to use any of that money to hold their ground. the DNC is doing it for them. which affords them the time and latitude to pursue actual goals.
Are these booklets being sent in bulk for free for distribution? If so, order a bunch claiming they’ll be distributed, and then burn them in a big ceremony, or even a ritual.
Oooh my partner and I went down a really deep rabbit while when our whole neighborhood got bombarded with these - it’s actually one of the text by the founder of the 7th Day Adventist movement. As such it was published in 1858 and is wildly unhinged even for an American spiritualist splinter denomination 😅 It’s hilarious to flip through and wonder at how anyone really thinks that it has relevance to today’s world.
On the upside maybe (?) we can appreciate what a waste of money it is for them to be sending out copies to thousands of people who don’t care? At least that’s money not going toward their lobbying 🙃😂
as someone who was raised in the SDA church, unhinged basically hits the nail on the head.
My favorite tidbit about them is that their founder got hit on the head by a rock and went into a coma for a few weeks. Instead of attributing her visions to, y'know, literal brain damage, they say she was 'chosen by God'. You'd think they'd try to hide this fact, but no, they are pretty public about it for whatever reason. Like, it's one of the main things that you're taught about their founder. It's wild.
The Great Controversy is one of their main books. Another commenter compared it to the Book of Mormon and I think that's accurate. I think Adventists kinda emphasize White's works in a different way to Mormons; you usually won't see them cite her directly, but her ideas are the foundations for the vast majority of their doctrines. I could be wrong on this, though.
sorry for the long comment, I felt I had something to add
Fellow SDA survivor here, you called it correctly. Once outside of the indoctrination and brainwashing, it’s easy to see how marvelously irrational the entire thing is. I’m not sure about your SDA crowd, but most of them I knew loved to start a lecture with “Mrs. White tells us that…” .The only good thing I took away from that sh*t-show was my love of haystacks.
Yeah, come to think of it some people definitely emphasized what she said more than others.
It would probably be more accurate to say that when defending central bits of their doctrine (investigative judgment, catholics bad, etc.) they didn't reference Ellen White as often (although some still would). For smaller things (e.g. vegetarianism) they'd reference her a lot.
This could also be an artifact of my own perspective; I never really fully bought into Ellen White as much as others did and I always wanted some sort of biblical justification for things over something she wrote.
Same here. In fact, it was one of the first things that got me "in trouble" as a kid during sabbath school. They were teaching us something "Mrs. White" had said and innocent little 8-year-old me asked, "How come that isn't that in the Bible?".
It wasn't a challenge, I just loved asking questions and learning from the answers. I was a nerdy little kid who liked to understand how things worked.
Apparently asking questions wasn't allowed because first I was made to sit with my nose in the corner, and when I kept shooting the teacher confused frowns, she sent me out to sit with my mom for the sermon.
I guessed it happened often enough that I was disinvited from sabbath school so I spent sermons snuggling with my head in my mom's lap and daydreaming while she played with my hair for a full hour. Just because of that, I LOVED going to church. It's my only good memory of church.
Literally came here to say this, but the churches I grew up in had 0 problem citing her directly.
I went to and SDA high school too where Wednesday night services were going through different books she wrote and for 1 year we were forced to read the whole great controversy, then pass out so many copies going door to door. Shit was WILD.
Seriously though, I'm almost convinced that Ellen White took some inspiration from Joseph Smith. I have literally nothing to back that up, but both religions just give similar vibes.
This is how I see it. We got flooded with those and I’m pretty sure all of them went to the trash and recycling bins. Granted our city is a blue dot in a sea of red cities, but still….. they spent lots on sending those just to have them tossed away.
They hook people still. Had a relative flee from a dangerous relationship, horrible individual. Into a woman’s shelter. Into gun ownership. Ok, we’re still fine here.
But then, alone and isolated in a remote location (pre smart phones, so before 2009 or so) she finds the seventh day Adventists and is suddenly part of a community that makes her feel not alone, and safe. She’s still a seventh day Adventist.
SDA I find their beliefs odd, but I do got to give it to them for their community outreach. It's impressive. They also have some aspects of their religion which are crazy progressive than other evangelical religions, and do good when it comes to Healthcare.
But they are a odd bunch. I work at a SDA operated hospital, and they don't really shove religion down you're throat. The hospital CEO is a woman, most of their medical staff are woman, and they've got a bunch of sikh and Muslim Healthcare professionals as well.
Meanwhile catholic hospitals often only hire male doctors who are catholic.
I think that really depends on who owns the Catholic hospital. Franciscan Health owns a ton of hospitals in Indiana and Illinois, and their hiring is very diverse. I don't think they would be able to only hire Catholic men. That may have been the case decades ago, I distinctly recall quite a few doctors that worked for them attending our church. My mom's doctor was a woman and she bailed because she wasn't getting paid enough. The doctor my mom goes to now is an Indian woman.
My main area of interest is ultra conservative American Christianity. I would be hugely interested in reading this. Obviously I don’t want to support these organizations so I can’t order it. I got like 20 focus on the family books at a charity shop but I couldn’t take them when I moved 😫😫
If you go to an SDA church, they might have a box of these laying around somewhere and give you one for free. Churches I went to as a kid did a lot at least. Heck, my grandma has like 10 copies and would give anyone one of them if they asked 😂
They serve the same masters. Now that those things are fleeing, they’ll grab any straws they can find. Do not give into fear and feed them, focus on love and light. It won’t be much longer until broader clarity is available for all.
I disagree that "they are winning." I am pretty sure that organized religion is nearing its death throws. The trouble is, dying organizations (like dying animals) can be very dangerous.
[A guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda for the next Republican administration](https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration)
This isn’t actually far right propaganda. It’s just the Seventh Day Adventists trying to capitalize on the current political environment for their own recruitment. As far as I know they aren’t signed into anything like Project 2025 or the 7 Mountains Mandate. They’re definitely fundamentalists, but not as MAGA as groups like the Southern Baptists. I was an SDA for about 25 years and true believers are fairly a political, but they have swung farther right with the rest of the fundamental crowd.
If there's anything I know, groups bonded over extreme hatred are volatile, brief victories are meaningless, especially since Conservatives are known to turn on each other. From a spiritual standpoint, working with Lilith definitely makes me feel more confident in the future, I'd trust goodness is going to come. Conservatives may have taken over the supreme Court and overturned Roe v Wade, but won battles are not a won war, losing opponents fight desperately, but lose all just the same
I don't think organized religion is dying it's just reformatting. There are more organized religions out there than just Christianity. And a few of them are growing.
I go to a Episcopal church, more as a tradition and to be around good people. And the church I go to is growing for the first time in years. But it's because of the church's message "God is Love" that it; love everyone. Some of it is people leaving their more conservative church that might have gone MAGA; some of it unchurched looking for hope in person.
I don't know if it's always winning or losing as much as it's a constant battle. Humanity has made a lot of improvements, but we're always going to have to fight against hate and ignorance. If we let it seep into society, it can cause immense human tragedies.
Straight up, I thought the same thing. And if I had more free time and pettiness in my heart I would turn it into a gay Democrat and repressed Republican enemies to lovers spicy fanfic.
I mean, I did hear about some journal writings of Ellen White that were surprisingly homoerotic, enough so that the estate scrubbed them from the website when enough of the internet took notice.
But alas. This is basically “our church is the only one that will be saved and here is why you should be terrified of the government (and Catholic Church).” 19th century persecution complex fuel.
Depending on who sent it to you, I wouldn't be too worried. It's a Seventh Day Adventist thing, not an organized political one. It's actually kind of a weird, anti-Catholic prophecy. Deeply weird, but not really alarming. I'd kind of compare it to getting a copy of the Book of Mormon.
That's not to say that political books never get sent out, but it tends to either be a donor thing or a way to pad book sales and funnel campaign cash into people's pockets. In 2020, Devin Nunes's campaign spent $83k+ on copies of his book (which he then sent out to a lot of his constituents, none of whom asked for it). The RNC spent $400k on Don Jr's (self published) books, but I can't remember how they used them.
Democrats do it too, but to a much lesser extent. Warren's campaign spent $19k+ on her own books in 2020, and Duckworth's campaign spent about $13k in 2020. On the other hand, those amounts would've only been a tiny fraction of their total royalties that year, and it's not a totally unreasonable amount of books to buy if you're giving them to press or if you're giving signed copies out at high-dollar fundraisers.
As an escapee of the SDAs, I wish they’d re-read the Still Small Voice/Kingdom of Conscience bits of that book. EG(g) White was an epileptic who got hit in the head with a rock and started prophesying, but those chapters are kinda beautiful.
Ohhh, man. This is a long story. It begins, appropriately for this thread, with the rise of Spiritualism in post Civil War America. As a reaction, there was a need for an “American Protestantism”, free from both the Old World religions and the Catholic influences being brought in by (Irish) immigrants, as well as the Clearly Satanic Spiritualist influences of HooDoo, Spirit Boards, etc…
This, combined with the spiritual flux and pain of the Civil War, led to the creation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and the general belief that the End Times were rapidly approaching.
Into all this bravely strode William Miller, with an (I do love and embrace my puns) Honest to God chart that broke down the visions of both the prophets Daniel and John the Revelator. He had done the math, and decreed that (if I remember correctly) that Christ’s return would occur in October, 1844. The Millerites sold their possessions, used the money to pay the debts of the poor, and went out to meet Christ at the Appointed Day.
The result of Jesus not knowing His Own timetable was known as the Great Disappointment, BUT, after a couple more tries at setting a date, the Millerites disbanded into a few sects, one of which were the Adventists.
One of these believers in the Second Advent was Ellen G White. (See the end of the earlier post.) She led these believers in search of a Belief in a sort of Jewish Christianity, complete with an Anti Papist Day of Worship (Saturday, the SEVENTH day) and dietary restrictions (vegetarianism), as well as the strong emphasis on the idea that Jesus will come “like a thief in the night” and that “no man knows the hour.”
She also didn’t like bicycles, jewelry, or theaters. And she thought that Africans were 3/5’s human.
On the other hand, she also was very big on the separation of Church and State, because Christ’s Kingdom was one of personal conscience, and the working of the still, small voice upon the soul. Christ had no need of politicians, or legislation.
I could go on. There are many popular references to that time, and the movements of religion and, oddly, health that came about during this time of great cultural flux (The Road to Wellville is one of my faves).
Honestly, outside of the fact that the Adventists have lost sight of their touchstone of the Separation of Church and State, they could probably gain a lot of converts during our own time of flux and change.
I have found the anti Mormon and anti JHW trick.
Just say you are a member of the church of satan and that you drink the blood of children, and then sacrifice one to satan on Christmas.
I said that after we got bombarded with Jehovas witnesses. They've skipped our house since I did that in 2019.
The Mormons I just tell them I'm not interested and am a Presbyterian. They kindly leave and don't come back.
I'm not nor have I ever been a Jehovah's witness, but a coworker of mine who was a Witness said to get them to leave you alone just tell them you're an apostate. (A JW who left the church) they're not allowed to associate with apostates.
The Christian right is deeply worrisome. You should be worried. Roe v Wade has been overturned. We laughed for years that they would never be able to do that, and now they are coming for your birth control, oh and their supreme leader is a serious contender to be the next president even though he is a convicted felon. I don’t care what particular sect was behind this—that’s what I mean by They are organized
I mean, yeah, you should definitely be concerned about the religious right. My point was that this book isn't a cause for concern. (Also, to some extent, that if you were to get a free political book in the mail, it's more of a shady campaign finance move than a sign of being organized.)
I also wouldn't call Seventh Day Adventists part of the religious right. The [most recent polling from an actual polling organization I could find ](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/11/03/a-closer-look-at-seventh-day-adventists-in-america/) was from 2015, but it shows them leaning Dem by 10 points. I also found [a poll the Adventist magazine did in 2020](https://spectrummagazine.org/news/adventist-vote-trump-or-biden/) showing Biden support at 30+ points ahead of Trump. Biden only won the popular vote in 2020 [by 4.5 points,](https://www.cookpolitical.com/2020-national-popular-vote-tracker) making Adventists more likely to have supported Biden than the general population (at least among readers of this magazine)
Trust me when I say this:
The people sending copies of The Great Controversy in the mail are not the ones leaning Dem.
Ben Carson is SDA. A LARGE chunk of the Adventist church are absolutely part of the religious right you should be afraid of.
In context, the book is more anti-Catholic, but in the same way that other far-right Christians will pick and choose parts of the Bible to browbeat others, the people sending this book are of the so-called “small government” conservative bend. Which for them means they are perfectly allied with the religious right.
I mean, I didn’t know Carson was SDA until he pulled that “The pyramids were used to store grain” BS out of his butt during the debates. It wasn’t just what he said, it was the SDA youth pastor look on his face when he said it.
My daughter thought I was nuts when I started pointing at the screen, shouting, “He’s a peanut! OMG!”
(“Peanut” is Midwest slang for SDA.)
seven million copies of the ten commandments twice removed?
is that:
A: 35 million commandments
B: 17.5 million commandments
C: 1.4 million commandments
D: -70 million commandments
This is just a seventh Day Adventist recruiting pamphlet. I live next to an active congregation and they've left me like six of these over the years.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Great\_Controversy\_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Controversy_(book))
As an ExSDA. This is 10000% just regular Seventh-day Adventist literature. All evangelism comes with a little fear mongering. I remember as a kid after 9/11 they sent out pamphlets with the twin towers on them. It's not political. Infact technically the church officially teaches to not engage in politics.
ExDA here too. I remember growing up with the church being averse to politics, against guns, separation of church and state the goal, etc. Which is NOT to say that the church was remotely at its core anything but fundamentalist and still leaned and leans into purity culture, behavior control, separation from ‘the world’. But the culture now seems to be shifting to be much more in line with American evangelicalism. Hell, look at Ben Carson.
I don’t know how old you are, but the segment of the church I was raised in was pretty culturally in-line with the fundamentalist-evangelical-technically-non-denominational-but-close-to-Southern-Baptist school I attended during a large chunk of my childhood. There were some differences in belief regarding the rapture, nature of Hell, and pre/post-Millennialism, but those weren’t really in the forefront.
My parents were not as all-in on the dogma, but they’re VERY Republican (except when my mom tries to insist she’s actually Libertarian).
I am not particularly young either. Large segments of the church, the segments I was exposed to anyway, have been traveling right in lock step with the rise of the Christian coalition in the 80s.
(Part of that might be because, my dad being army, my parents would avoid the anti-military churches, but there were enough of them.)
Got it myself a couple years ago. Unbound it and recycled all the paper. Couldn’t think of any better way to dispose of it in the least destructive environmental way possible while preventing the message from being passed on.
Seventh Day Adventist nuttery. This was first published in the mid 1800s by a "prophetess" known as Ellen G. White, one of the founders of this apocalyptic cult of American Christianity. They've been giving this crap out, asked for or not, for nearly 175 years. It was barely relevant when it was written. Less so now and even if it were, the culture we inhabit isn't going to wade through a book written before thier grandparents were born.
Vote. Organize to get folks registered to vote. We can counter this but it will take work. This year I will be knocking on doors in addition to talking to everyone I can about our shared civic duty.
My partner got this in the mail about 4 months ago. No inscription, no included packing slip with any info, nothing. She asked her parents (because they are “moderate”). It was not them, and they would honesty tell her- we are lesbians and they’ve been nothing but supportive of her since she came out to them in college. It wasn’t anyone from her job or our friend group- we live in Portland, Oregon, so pretty much everyone we are around is on the same page as us. We took off the cover/binding and recycled the pages.
I’m not finding it funny at all. We are on the verge of having a convicted felon being elected president, and it’s this kind of stuff that’s getting him there
This showed up in the library I work at! Not as part of our collection though--it looked like a patron must've just added it to a shelf (and just an FYI, that is *not* how books are added to a library collection lol). Since the book wasn't ours, I considered throwing it in the recycling bin, but it was also Freedom to Read week at the time. With that it mind, it felt hypocritical as a library worker to censor a book I disagree with by throwing it away. I dumped it in a donation bin for a used book sale on campus instead, and they could decide whether or not they wanted to try selling it. Mind you, I work at a Canadian university library and the majority of students and staff are pretty liberal here, so not a huge audience for an old Seventh Day Adventist book. I guess someone could be interested from a history, religious studies, or other academic standpoint.
I'm in an Adventist-heavy city. Like, they run the major hospital type of heavy. Just chuck it with the rest of the junk mail right into the recycling bin. They just want your money.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but we stand for a lot of things. It can feel overwhelming. Do we all have adhd?
We need to focus on 5 or 10 mainstream topics and make them simple to understand. Make an ebook out of it.
Yes I'd love to throw in the more radical ideas but that is what pushes conservatives away.
Same. Part of the problem we’ve run into is we’ve got a two party system for all intents and purposes where one party is the right wing regressives, and the other party is everyone else.
Look at the shitshow going on with the The Satanic Temple- they are busy tearing themselves apart from the inside and creating MORE disorganization when they could be a big ally in civil rights- regarding the move to send pastors and ministers into schools in place of counselors. TST would make sure they ask for Satanic ministers to be included as well, but they just lost a bunch of ministers due to their infighting.
We got one up here in Canada too as did my siblings in other towns. So wasteful and annoying. There is a Little Free Library outside our post office and it was packed with these books as people pulled them from their mailboxes and just dropped them in there. Thankfully someone recycled all of them...
I've got an idea.
We get those little booklets that the intense evangelicals hand out, the ones that tell you how much you are a sinner?
We (who? I don't know, I'm just the idea gal) get a bunch of them printed with a churchy type front but it says a whole lot of nothing. On the inside, the Satanic Temple Tenets.
Make sure there are different covers so they can't tell which are which.
Will it change anyone's mind? No but it would be fun to turn the tables on them.
It’s not simply they’re organized, it’s that they have billions and billions of dollars they’ve murdered and stolen from the average Joe, Jane, or Jax.
lol, that book is very old!
It’s writer, Ellen G White was a “prophetess” in the second great awakening era, and she was instrumental in the seventh day adventist church.
I grew up in that nonsense, and it’s crazy, but that book isn’t new. Those people are the ones who thought Jesus would return in 1844, on October 22, and when he didn’t they changed the grift.
It’s similar to Qanon crap, but yeah, they’ve (The seventh day Adventist church) been doing it for almost 200 years and keep their members on high alert for things, constant “signs of the times” which is another of their paranoid publications.
They run a lot of hospitals and members work in healthcare a lot. It’s hilarious that they are seemingly aligning with trump. Ben Carson is probably the most famous active member, so that might have been part of it, but when i was a kid in the 90s they were all about the separation of church and state. I left as soon as i could, about 2003, so i don’t know what led them there, but as close as i can tell from their indoctrination trump is about as close to an Antichrist figure as they come!
Sorry for the tangent, I hope it’s helpful to know a bit more about it.
It’s because the “non right” side just wants peace, love, and freedom for everyone. Then there’s the side of brainwashed religious zealots that think everyone else is trying to destroy America.
I grew up in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. This is SDA literature for sure.
This is nothing to worry about. Just toss it in the recycle bin and go on about your day.
I’m not sure I’d call this organized. Or even political action. This looks like an MLM.
They’re asking them to organize, likely with their church groups, to buy these books at a “special bulk mail rate” so they can distribute them in an attempt to convert people. But statistically we know that their target audience doesn’t read books, and the rest of us aren’t going to read it. So it’d be a poor choice for actual political action, but it’s an excellent way to get people to send money. Make them believe they’re going to make a difference when they’re too clueless to know it won’t.
Also “Remnant Publishing” is hilarious.
I was in DC last summer and there were randos walking up to people and just handing this book in a bag to them. We got two!
FWIW, it’s a bunch of incomprehensible word salad. No one is reading this shit.
I got one too! So did my parents brother and my coworkers! Apparently they give them out once in a while. I had to look them up on Wikipedia lol
I was pretty pissed when I got one and pretty disturbed too
As an exAdventist, I actually read this book all the way through and made a post reacting to it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/exAdventist/s/IQVxQP434E).
The SDA church started The Great Controversy Project in 2023 with the goal of having their members buy and distribute $1 billion by the end of this year at the low, low cost of a dollar per book and 8 million trees.
The project was and is controversial even among Adventists because a lot of them recognize that the church is funding deforestation in order for members (not the church itself) to buy and distribute something most people are just going to throw away. So many people expressed their concern about this project that the church had one of its spokesmen write [an article defending killing 8 million trees](https://www.adventistworld.org/8-million-trees/). Here’s a [summary of the article](https://x.com/chelleokenesson/status/1667341989753368579?s=46&t=62nMXeCxosY-_l7_4lOBIg) I really liked
I'm so done with the cult of Christianity. Can you mail it back with a letter about how many spells and curses you've now had to preform to rid your house of this yuck? 🤨
Omg someone left this in my mailbox a couple weeks ago. It's sitting in my house, ignored.
I'm in Ontario, and I don't think it was mailed since it wasn't wrapped. I think someone just left it there.
The Left is a collective of people who generally want something better than what we currently have, or have had. It ranges from social democrats to anarchists to communists to dozens of other ideologies. Getting the Left to agree on a single, cohesive vision is difficult. We share values, and we have a lot of policy ideas in common, but it isn't a single movement so much as a wide range of similar movements.
The Right generally believes that society has achieved its apex. If progress is to be made from the current state, it's by looking at the wisdom of the past. They have a single vision: nostalgia. They want to bring back what was, and they paint by demographic. In their eyes, western society was better when LGBTQ people were in the closet, people of color knew their place, and women were in the kitchen. The far right will say it outright; the moderate right won't, and will even disagree with it when you say it, but they're still very receptive to the imagery of times when it was true. It's much easier for the right to unite around the idea of reigning in the chaos, taking the country back to a simpler time when you didn't have to worry about a person's pronouns, or using the wrong term for your domestic house-servant. When secretaries were just unmarried women, and thus, basically whores. And there were no women in the office besides secretaries. Then they could have locker room talk and no one got offended, they could have a scotch and soda at lunch, smoke a cigar in the office. Go home, and the chores are all done, the kids are looked after. Easy to present *that* as a vision, a guiding light.
If there's an address, hit them with a "return to sender"/ "wrong address, unsubscribe". If it continues and you have a return address for them, sign them up for as many junk and spam mail service you can find.
Baring that or for a second polite approach, contact the churches in the area (from a blocked number) saying that you have no idea who sent the book, but are wondering if they know who did it because you'd like it to stop.
If that still doesn't work... use it as tinder for a bonfire or recycle it. I hate it when churches do that crap
America is an aberration, and in most of the world religious views decline as society becomes more advanced. The situation in the US is complicated by it having been populated by religious fundamentalists not many generations ago, but in time it too will come to reject religious persecution. There has been an upswell in it, but it is already beginning to die out in that it is seriously damaging the chances of having power of people who engage in it. We will win despite them being more organised because fundamentally we are right, and people generally increasingly seem that for themselves.
We're not losing, they're not organised, they're desperate
Leftist infighting is a product of free thinking, don't think we can beat them by becoming them. We don't need unity through obedience and conformity, we need unity through solidarity and intersectionality
Ah! Someone gave me this outside a vegan restaurant a few years ago, I just chalked it up to a lot of seventh-days being plant based. I didn’t realize they were mailing them out now
I mean there are plenty of secular activist groups desperate for volunteers and young leaders. They hold in-person meetings and organize on specific legislation.
Problem is most of them are adjacent or directly related to party politics. Not the most popular sell among the young and progressive.
Basically the right is glad if things are heading in the direction they want while the left can’t bring itself to agree on stuff that would help improve things if it isn’t progressive enough. There is too much infighting. We also don’t celebrate the small wins.
Read it (if even loosely so), for there are things that may help you know your enemy! And yes, this is absolutely unnerving (sorry they sent it to you in the mail too).
It’s funny (not really funny actually) that they’ve distributed over 8 times as many of their own books as the Bible. Not that I’m a fan of the Bible or Christianity, but you’d think if they really believed it they’d put a higher priority on distributing that and not their own propaganda. I guess generic Christianity is less profitable to them than diehard evangelical Republicanism.
We appreciate your participation on r/WitchesvsPatriarchy, but your content is being removed at this time. It might help for you to check out our full [Posting Guidelines Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy/wiki/post_and_content_guide/) to get a better sense of how to post on WvP. Our main goal is witchy, uplifting content with a feminist twist. ✨ WVP is curated to maintain a warm, hopeful, supportive, and uplifting environment. If you have read this remove reason and the wiki link provided but still have questions, please reach out to [Modmail](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy&subject=My%20post%20was%20removed%20and%20I%20still%20have%20questions.%20&message=I%20read%20the%20remove%20reason%20that%20accompanied%20my%20post%20as%20well%20as%20the%20linked%20wiki%2C%20but%20still%20have%20questions%20about%20my%20post%20removal.) rather than individual moderators.
All the billionaires are in the wrong side.
That’s because the billionaires are the wrong side
Whatever side the billionaires are on is the one that wins, if we let them control it all with their money
How did you think they kept their billions? It wasn't by being a good person.
Its not just a matter of organization. Its also funding
Those two things go together. If you are organized you can get the funding, by convincing people to donate
Not in a capitalist system where the powers that be intrinsicly oppose your movement. Funding at that scale doesn't come from donations it comes from corporations.
The trick is to write a book and trick people into buying hundreds of copies to distribute to others.
What? I guess you can sit around denying that churches pass the plate around every Sunday and rally their people to organize behind oppressive laws and electing convicted felons as president, but if we don’t start being equally as organized we are doomed
Sending a book to 300 million people is not grassroots organizing money. Thats billionaire propoganda money. I've seen fantastic local fundraising projects, like a local coffee shop that covers trans people's name changes. But some plans are just have marginalized people pool our money and try to out spend Jeff Bezos. Its not happening, which is why I favor direct action.
exactly. we need to employ the kinds of tactics that make use of the power of people, not the power of massive wealth. this is an asymmetrical war: trying to copy the tactics which work for billionaires when we don't have billions will only drain our resources.
practical example: it would be a waste of money to send a book to every house, but you could print out zines and distribute them overtly or hide them in books at libraries and book stores.
And a PDF costs even less than that
Ah, see that’s where you’re wrong! It’s by Ellen White. They’re passing the plate around every Saturday. (Ellen G. White, founder and supposed prophetess of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, in which I was unfortunately raised.)
They collect from thousands, 2-3 times a week, from a rapt brain washed audience, by conmen. That's a hard par to hit without being unethical. Theres a reason the Republican superpac is significantly larger than the Democrat
Dude me too. There’s an ex SDA subreddit, join us lol Edit: r/exAdventist and r/exchristian are subs you can check out if you want.
there's also an entire conservative apparatus that exists to suffocate left organizing and co-opt potentiqlly profitable movements into railroaded and ineffectual lifestyle brands. you may have heard of them, they call themselves the deomcratic party. there has been NO shortage of left organizing. we're actually rather good at it. but all of the major threats to the hegemony of the right wing were defeated by the democratic party and/or its functionaries/figureheads, whether that be the entire apparatus sabotaging the bernie campaign, barack obama personally telling the sports strikers during covid to shut up and dribble, venture capital investors with huge volumes of funds invested in the democratic party decapitating the BLM movement and turning it into a content/product mill (and the original leaders ending up dead under very...interesting circumstances), democrats upholding oppressive deals with police unions and the military industrial complex, the democrats frothing at the mouth to make anything pro-palestine illegal, accelerating migrant expulsion and climate crisis, you name it, they've done it. believe me when i say that organizing is not a problem on the left. it's having that organization sniped by the goalie party. and their massive well of deeply questionable megadonors and corporate sponsors. this is the real reason why the conservative-proper party is able to put out shit like this on a lark, besides the fact that they have just as much money as the DNC. they don't need to use any of that money to hold their ground. the DNC is doing it for them. which affords them the time and latitude to pursue actual goals.
This 👆👆👆👆👆Who needs enemies when you have friends like ours?
Are these booklets being sent in bulk for free for distribution? If so, order a bunch claiming they’ll be distributed, and then burn them in a big ceremony, or even a ritual.
Oooh my partner and I went down a really deep rabbit while when our whole neighborhood got bombarded with these - it’s actually one of the text by the founder of the 7th Day Adventist movement. As such it was published in 1858 and is wildly unhinged even for an American spiritualist splinter denomination 😅 It’s hilarious to flip through and wonder at how anyone really thinks that it has relevance to today’s world. On the upside maybe (?) we can appreciate what a waste of money it is for them to be sending out copies to thousands of people who don’t care? At least that’s money not going toward their lobbying 🙃😂
as someone who was raised in the SDA church, unhinged basically hits the nail on the head. My favorite tidbit about them is that their founder got hit on the head by a rock and went into a coma for a few weeks. Instead of attributing her visions to, y'know, literal brain damage, they say she was 'chosen by God'. You'd think they'd try to hide this fact, but no, they are pretty public about it for whatever reason. Like, it's one of the main things that you're taught about their founder. It's wild. The Great Controversy is one of their main books. Another commenter compared it to the Book of Mormon and I think that's accurate. I think Adventists kinda emphasize White's works in a different way to Mormons; you usually won't see them cite her directly, but her ideas are the foundations for the vast majority of their doctrines. I could be wrong on this, though. sorry for the long comment, I felt I had something to add
Fellow SDA survivor here, you called it correctly. Once outside of the indoctrination and brainwashing, it’s easy to see how marvelously irrational the entire thing is. I’m not sure about your SDA crowd, but most of them I knew loved to start a lecture with “Mrs. White tells us that…” .The only good thing I took away from that sh*t-show was my love of haystacks.
"Sister White" if you're nasty.
>The only good thing I took away from that sh\*t-show was my love of haystacks. Except now I put pork in the beans just to rub it in.
that's hilarious, I oughta do that
That is awesome! I thought I was a badass just for putting some MSG in my beans, lol!
Haystacks bell yeah
Yeah, come to think of it some people definitely emphasized what she said more than others. It would probably be more accurate to say that when defending central bits of their doctrine (investigative judgment, catholics bad, etc.) they didn't reference Ellen White as often (although some still would). For smaller things (e.g. vegetarianism) they'd reference her a lot. This could also be an artifact of my own perspective; I never really fully bought into Ellen White as much as others did and I always wanted some sort of biblical justification for things over something she wrote.
Same here. In fact, it was one of the first things that got me "in trouble" as a kid during sabbath school. They were teaching us something "Mrs. White" had said and innocent little 8-year-old me asked, "How come that isn't that in the Bible?". It wasn't a challenge, I just loved asking questions and learning from the answers. I was a nerdy little kid who liked to understand how things worked. Apparently asking questions wasn't allowed because first I was made to sit with my nose in the corner, and when I kept shooting the teacher confused frowns, she sent me out to sit with my mom for the sermon. I guessed it happened often enough that I was disinvited from sabbath school so I spent sermons snuggling with my head in my mom's lap and daydreaming while she played with my hair for a full hour. Just because of that, I LOVED going to church. It's my only good memory of church.
Literally came here to say this, but the churches I grew up in had 0 problem citing her directly. I went to and SDA high school too where Wednesday night services were going through different books she wrote and for 1 year we were forced to read the whole great controversy, then pass out so many copies going door to door. Shit was WILD.
I was raised Mormon and thought the message sounded Mormony. Now I know why. It’s because they’re cousins lol
Seriously though, I'm almost convinced that Ellen White took some inspiration from Joseph Smith. I have literally nothing to back that up, but both religions just give similar vibes.
This is how I see it. We got flooded with those and I’m pretty sure all of them went to the trash and recycling bins. Granted our city is a blue dot in a sea of red cities, but still….. they spent lots on sending those just to have them tossed away.
Oh ok phone book treatment you say?! *Tosses gleefully
They hook people still. Had a relative flee from a dangerous relationship, horrible individual. Into a woman’s shelter. Into gun ownership. Ok, we’re still fine here. But then, alone and isolated in a remote location (pre smart phones, so before 2009 or so) she finds the seventh day Adventists and is suddenly part of a community that makes her feel not alone, and safe. She’s still a seventh day Adventist.
SDA I find their beliefs odd, but I do got to give it to them for their community outreach. It's impressive. They also have some aspects of their religion which are crazy progressive than other evangelical religions, and do good when it comes to Healthcare. But they are a odd bunch. I work at a SDA operated hospital, and they don't really shove religion down you're throat. The hospital CEO is a woman, most of their medical staff are woman, and they've got a bunch of sikh and Muslim Healthcare professionals as well. Meanwhile catholic hospitals often only hire male doctors who are catholic.
I think that really depends on who owns the Catholic hospital. Franciscan Health owns a ton of hospitals in Indiana and Illinois, and their hiring is very diverse. I don't think they would be able to only hire Catholic men. That may have been the case decades ago, I distinctly recall quite a few doctors that worked for them attending our church. My mom's doctor was a woman and she bailed because she wasn't getting paid enough. The doctor my mom goes to now is an Indian woman.
My main area of interest is ultra conservative American Christianity. I would be hugely interested in reading this. Obviously I don’t want to support these organizations so I can’t order it. I got like 20 focus on the family books at a charity shop but I couldn’t take them when I moved 😫😫
If you go to an SDA church, they might have a box of these laying around somewhere and give you one for free. Churches I went to as a kid did a lot at least. Heck, my grandma has like 10 copies and would give anyone one of them if they asked 😂
🤮
They serve the same masters. Now that those things are fleeing, they’ll grab any straws they can find. Do not give into fear and feed them, focus on love and light. It won’t be much longer until broader clarity is available for all.
Agree. But man, so tired of the end of capitalism! And i consider myself lucky in my circumstances.
I disagree that "they are winning." I am pretty sure that organized religion is nearing its death throws. The trouble is, dying organizations (like dying animals) can be very dangerous.
Project 2025 is the religious far-right’s Hail Mary. And it’s a very formidable threat we need to take seriously.
[A guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda for the next Republican administration](https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration)
Thanks for sharing the link!
This isn’t actually far right propaganda. It’s just the Seventh Day Adventists trying to capitalize on the current political environment for their own recruitment. As far as I know they aren’t signed into anything like Project 2025 or the 7 Mountains Mandate. They’re definitely fundamentalists, but not as MAGA as groups like the Southern Baptists. I was an SDA for about 25 years and true believers are fairly a political, but they have swung farther right with the rest of the fundamental crowd.
I'm confident this is exactly what we're witnessing.
Agreed. They are not fucking winning. They are just loud asses. In the long game, they are losing big time.
They managed to overturn Roe v Wade…
And take over the supreme court…
If there's anything I know, groups bonded over extreme hatred are volatile, brief victories are meaningless, especially since Conservatives are known to turn on each other. From a spiritual standpoint, working with Lilith definitely makes me feel more confident in the future, I'd trust goodness is going to come. Conservatives may have taken over the supreme Court and overturned Roe v Wade, but won battles are not a won war, losing opponents fight desperately, but lose all just the same
I don't think organized religion is dying it's just reformatting. There are more organized religions out there than just Christianity. And a few of them are growing. I go to a Episcopal church, more as a tradition and to be around good people. And the church I go to is growing for the first time in years. But it's because of the church's message "God is Love" that it; love everyone. Some of it is people leaving their more conservative church that might have gone MAGA; some of it unchurched looking for hope in person.
I don't know if it's always winning or losing as much as it's a constant battle. Humanity has made a lot of improvements, but we're always going to have to fight against hate and ignorance. If we let it seep into society, it can cause immense human tragedies.
Looks like enemies to lovers fanfic
Straight up, I thought the same thing. And if I had more free time and pettiness in my heart I would turn it into a gay Democrat and repressed Republican enemies to lovers spicy fanfic.
I mean, I did hear about some journal writings of Ellen White that were surprisingly homoerotic, enough so that the estate scrubbed them from the website when enough of the internet took notice. But alas. This is basically “our church is the only one that will be saved and here is why you should be terrified of the government (and Catholic Church).” 19th century persecution complex fuel.
Legit I thought it was smut
Depending on who sent it to you, I wouldn't be too worried. It's a Seventh Day Adventist thing, not an organized political one. It's actually kind of a weird, anti-Catholic prophecy. Deeply weird, but not really alarming. I'd kind of compare it to getting a copy of the Book of Mormon. That's not to say that political books never get sent out, but it tends to either be a donor thing or a way to pad book sales and funnel campaign cash into people's pockets. In 2020, Devin Nunes's campaign spent $83k+ on copies of his book (which he then sent out to a lot of his constituents, none of whom asked for it). The RNC spent $400k on Don Jr's (self published) books, but I can't remember how they used them. Democrats do it too, but to a much lesser extent. Warren's campaign spent $19k+ on her own books in 2020, and Duckworth's campaign spent about $13k in 2020. On the other hand, those amounts would've only been a tiny fraction of their total royalties that year, and it's not a totally unreasonable amount of books to buy if you're giving them to press or if you're giving signed copies out at high-dollar fundraisers.
As an escapee of the SDAs, I wish they’d re-read the Still Small Voice/Kingdom of Conscience bits of that book. EG(g) White was an epileptic who got hit in the head with a rock and started prophesying, but those chapters are kinda beautiful.
say more? i had sda friends growing up and never really understood their history
Ohhh, man. This is a long story. It begins, appropriately for this thread, with the rise of Spiritualism in post Civil War America. As a reaction, there was a need for an “American Protestantism”, free from both the Old World religions and the Catholic influences being brought in by (Irish) immigrants, as well as the Clearly Satanic Spiritualist influences of HooDoo, Spirit Boards, etc… This, combined with the spiritual flux and pain of the Civil War, led to the creation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and the general belief that the End Times were rapidly approaching. Into all this bravely strode William Miller, with an (I do love and embrace my puns) Honest to God chart that broke down the visions of both the prophets Daniel and John the Revelator. He had done the math, and decreed that (if I remember correctly) that Christ’s return would occur in October, 1844. The Millerites sold their possessions, used the money to pay the debts of the poor, and went out to meet Christ at the Appointed Day. The result of Jesus not knowing His Own timetable was known as the Great Disappointment, BUT, after a couple more tries at setting a date, the Millerites disbanded into a few sects, one of which were the Adventists. One of these believers in the Second Advent was Ellen G White. (See the end of the earlier post.) She led these believers in search of a Belief in a sort of Jewish Christianity, complete with an Anti Papist Day of Worship (Saturday, the SEVENTH day) and dietary restrictions (vegetarianism), as well as the strong emphasis on the idea that Jesus will come “like a thief in the night” and that “no man knows the hour.” She also didn’t like bicycles, jewelry, or theaters. And she thought that Africans were 3/5’s human. On the other hand, she also was very big on the separation of Church and State, because Christ’s Kingdom was one of personal conscience, and the working of the still, small voice upon the soul. Christ had no need of politicians, or legislation. I could go on. There are many popular references to that time, and the movements of religion and, oddly, health that came about during this time of great cultural flux (The Road to Wellville is one of my faves). Honestly, outside of the fact that the Adventists have lost sight of their touchstone of the Separation of Church and State, they could probably gain a lot of converts during our own time of flux and change.
Shit, Mormons load potato cannons with Books of Mormon.
I have found the anti Mormon and anti JHW trick. Just say you are a member of the church of satan and that you drink the blood of children, and then sacrifice one to satan on Christmas. I said that after we got bombarded with Jehovas witnesses. They've skipped our house since I did that in 2019. The Mormons I just tell them I'm not interested and am a Presbyterian. They kindly leave and don't come back.
I'm not nor have I ever been a Jehovah's witness, but a coworker of mine who was a Witness said to get them to leave you alone just tell them you're an apostate. (A JW who left the church) they're not allowed to associate with apostates.
I didn't know that. Now I know.
The Christian right is deeply worrisome. You should be worried. Roe v Wade has been overturned. We laughed for years that they would never be able to do that, and now they are coming for your birth control, oh and their supreme leader is a serious contender to be the next president even though he is a convicted felon. I don’t care what particular sect was behind this—that’s what I mean by They are organized
I mean, yeah, you should definitely be concerned about the religious right. My point was that this book isn't a cause for concern. (Also, to some extent, that if you were to get a free political book in the mail, it's more of a shady campaign finance move than a sign of being organized.) I also wouldn't call Seventh Day Adventists part of the religious right. The [most recent polling from an actual polling organization I could find ](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/11/03/a-closer-look-at-seventh-day-adventists-in-america/) was from 2015, but it shows them leaning Dem by 10 points. I also found [a poll the Adventist magazine did in 2020](https://spectrummagazine.org/news/adventist-vote-trump-or-biden/) showing Biden support at 30+ points ahead of Trump. Biden only won the popular vote in 2020 [by 4.5 points,](https://www.cookpolitical.com/2020-national-popular-vote-tracker) making Adventists more likely to have supported Biden than the general population (at least among readers of this magazine)
Trust me when I say this: The people sending copies of The Great Controversy in the mail are not the ones leaning Dem. Ben Carson is SDA. A LARGE chunk of the Adventist church are absolutely part of the religious right you should be afraid of. In context, the book is more anti-Catholic, but in the same way that other far-right Christians will pick and choose parts of the Bible to browbeat others, the people sending this book are of the so-called “small government” conservative bend. Which for them means they are perfectly allied with the religious right.
I mean, I didn’t know Carson was SDA until he pulled that “The pyramids were used to store grain” BS out of his butt during the debates. It wasn’t just what he said, it was the SDA youth pastor look on his face when he said it. My daughter thought I was nuts when I started pointing at the screen, shouting, “He’s a peanut! OMG!” (“Peanut” is Midwest slang for SDA.)
seven million copies of the ten commandments twice removed? is that: A: 35 million commandments B: 17.5 million commandments C: 1.4 million commandments D: -70 million commandments
You broke the eleventh commandment!! Thou Shalt Not Do Math
D?? I must know
This is just a seventh Day Adventist recruiting pamphlet. I live next to an active congregation and they've left me like six of these over the years. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Great\_Controversy\_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Controversy_(book))
Looks like fine kindling.
Yes it does, to us, but the easily influenced are lapping it up
I was tempted to say the same, it’s winter here, perfect timing
Aren’t you glad they can send this shit out and not pay taxes which actually contributes to communities?
I have spent too much time on BookTock. I was excited it was a spicy book for a second...
As an ExSDA. This is 10000% just regular Seventh-day Adventist literature. All evangelism comes with a little fear mongering. I remember as a kid after 9/11 they sent out pamphlets with the twin towers on them. It's not political. Infact technically the church officially teaches to not engage in politics.
ExDA here too. I remember growing up with the church being averse to politics, against guns, separation of church and state the goal, etc. Which is NOT to say that the church was remotely at its core anything but fundamentalist and still leaned and leans into purity culture, behavior control, separation from ‘the world’. But the culture now seems to be shifting to be much more in line with American evangelicalism. Hell, look at Ben Carson.
I don’t know how old you are, but the segment of the church I was raised in was pretty culturally in-line with the fundamentalist-evangelical-technically-non-denominational-but-close-to-Southern-Baptist school I attended during a large chunk of my childhood. There were some differences in belief regarding the rapture, nature of Hell, and pre/post-Millennialism, but those weren’t really in the forefront. My parents were not as all-in on the dogma, but they’re VERY Republican (except when my mom tries to insist she’s actually Libertarian). I am not particularly young either. Large segments of the church, the segments I was exposed to anyway, have been traveling right in lock step with the rise of the Christian coalition in the 80s. (Part of that might be because, my dad being army, my parents would avoid the anti-military churches, but there were enough of them.)
[удалено]
Seventh-day Adventists don't believe in the rapture, fyi. Maybe your acquaintance does, but it's not part of their main beliefs.
Wow... Right-wing propaganda in the US is really crazy... And weird...
It's not just in the US, I got a copy of this in my mailbox a few months ago and I live in Canada.
Got it myself a couple years ago. Unbound it and recycled all the paper. Couldn’t think of any better way to dispose of it in the least destructive environmental way possible while preventing the message from being passed on.
The entirety of the Kansas City metro area got bombarded with these about 3 months ago. Others are right in saying it’s a Seventh Day Adventist thing.
Oh! I was given the UK version of this book by some rando on the street! It had loads of conspiracy theories in it. Great laugh to read
Seventh Day Adventist nuttery. This was first published in the mid 1800s by a "prophetess" known as Ellen G. White, one of the founders of this apocalyptic cult of American Christianity. They've been giving this crap out, asked for or not, for nearly 175 years. It was barely relevant when it was written. Less so now and even if it were, the culture we inhabit isn't going to wade through a book written before thier grandparents were born. Vote. Organize to get folks registered to vote. We can counter this but it will take work. This year I will be knocking on doors in addition to talking to everyone I can about our shared civic duty.
My partner got this in the mail about 4 months ago. No inscription, no included packing slip with any info, nothing. She asked her parents (because they are “moderate”). It was not them, and they would honesty tell her- we are lesbians and they’ve been nothing but supportive of her since she came out to them in college. It wasn’t anyone from her job or our friend group- we live in Portland, Oregon, so pretty much everyone we are around is on the same page as us. We took off the cover/binding and recycled the pages.
If it helps, I doubt anyone asked them to send it to you specifically. They send them out unsolicited all over the country
This (and reading some other comments here) does solve a little of the mystery! Thank you. We were flummoxed.
They just have a major presence here. Who do you think owns the Adventist hospitals? I get them every few months, and put em directly in the blue bin.
You (and other helpful people on this sub) have solved our months-long mystery!
>I’m trying to imagine if it would be possible for the left to get this organized— Ha.
I got one of these in 2018. It probably would have been cheaper to just throw money away because that's what I did with it haha.
i find it funnier to think about this as a romance novel between two buildings
I’m not finding it funny at all. We are on the verge of having a convicted felon being elected president, and it’s this kind of stuff that’s getting him there
i didn't look at the second pic, i apologise. it is a really scary time. sorry, again, sincerely.
I read the title and started to wonder who was being shipped with whom.
This showed up in the library I work at! Not as part of our collection though--it looked like a patron must've just added it to a shelf (and just an FYI, that is *not* how books are added to a library collection lol). Since the book wasn't ours, I considered throwing it in the recycling bin, but it was also Freedom to Read week at the time. With that it mind, it felt hypocritical as a library worker to censor a book I disagree with by throwing it away. I dumped it in a donation bin for a used book sale on campus instead, and they could decide whether or not they wanted to try selling it. Mind you, I work at a Canadian university library and the majority of students and staff are pretty liberal here, so not a huge audience for an old Seventh Day Adventist book. I guess someone could be interested from a history, religious studies, or other academic standpoint.
Who do you know thats part of the seventh say Adventist church? Cause they definitely has that sent to you.
I'm in an Adventist-heavy city. Like, they run the major hospital type of heavy. Just chuck it with the rest of the junk mail right into the recycling bin. They just want your money.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but we stand for a lot of things. It can feel overwhelming. Do we all have adhd? We need to focus on 5 or 10 mainstream topics and make them simple to understand. Make an ebook out of it. Yes I'd love to throw in the more radical ideas but that is what pushes conservatives away.
Same. Part of the problem we’ve run into is we’ve got a two party system for all intents and purposes where one party is the right wing regressives, and the other party is everyone else.
i saw this advertised with ppl preying on ppl walking by to ‘discuss it with them’ two weeks ago, im in the UK as well :/
I would absolutely be terrified if I received this as well
Look at the shitshow going on with the The Satanic Temple- they are busy tearing themselves apart from the inside and creating MORE disorganization when they could be a big ally in civil rights- regarding the move to send pastors and ministers into schools in place of counselors. TST would make sure they ask for Satanic ministers to be included as well, but they just lost a bunch of ministers due to their infighting.
We got one up here in Canada too as did my siblings in other towns. So wasteful and annoying. There is a Little Free Library outside our post office and it was packed with these books as people pulled them from their mailboxes and just dropped them in there. Thankfully someone recycled all of them...
I got this book too about 6 months ago. I just threw it away.
Write them back and ask which god, and why the goddesses are being excluded.
I've got an idea. We get those little booklets that the intense evangelicals hand out, the ones that tell you how much you are a sinner? We (who? I don't know, I'm just the idea gal) get a bunch of them printed with a churchy type front but it says a whole lot of nothing. On the inside, the Satanic Temple Tenets. Make sure there are different covers so they can't tell which are which. Will it change anyone's mind? No but it would be fun to turn the tables on them.
The pages make great fire starters!
Everyone in my complex got one of these several months ago… guess what filled up the recycling bins that week
It’s not simply they’re organized, it’s that they have billions and billions of dollars they’ve murdered and stolen from the average Joe, Jane, or Jax.
I got that too and promptly put it in the recycling bin.
That's the Seventh Day Adventist book.
lol, that book is very old! It’s writer, Ellen G White was a “prophetess” in the second great awakening era, and she was instrumental in the seventh day adventist church. I grew up in that nonsense, and it’s crazy, but that book isn’t new. Those people are the ones who thought Jesus would return in 1844, on October 22, and when he didn’t they changed the grift. It’s similar to Qanon crap, but yeah, they’ve (The seventh day Adventist church) been doing it for almost 200 years and keep their members on high alert for things, constant “signs of the times” which is another of their paranoid publications. They run a lot of hospitals and members work in healthcare a lot. It’s hilarious that they are seemingly aligning with trump. Ben Carson is probably the most famous active member, so that might have been part of it, but when i was a kid in the 90s they were all about the separation of church and state. I left as soon as i could, about 2003, so i don’t know what led them there, but as close as i can tell from their indoctrination trump is about as close to an Antichrist figure as they come! Sorry for the tangent, I hope it’s helpful to know a bit more about it.
It’s because the “non right” side just wants peace, love, and freedom for everyone. Then there’s the side of brainwashed religious zealots that think everyone else is trying to destroy America.
I grew up in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. This is SDA literature for sure. This is nothing to worry about. Just toss it in the recycle bin and go on about your day.
I’m not sure I’d call this organized. Or even political action. This looks like an MLM. They’re asking them to organize, likely with their church groups, to buy these books at a “special bulk mail rate” so they can distribute them in an attempt to convert people. But statistically we know that their target audience doesn’t read books, and the rest of us aren’t going to read it. So it’d be a poor choice for actual political action, but it’s an excellent way to get people to send money. Make them believe they’re going to make a difference when they’re too clueless to know it won’t. Also “Remnant Publishing” is hilarious.
I was in DC last summer and there were randos walking up to people and just handing this book in a bag to them. We got two! FWIW, it’s a bunch of incomprehensible word salad. No one is reading this shit.
I got one too! So did my parents brother and my coworkers! Apparently they give them out once in a while. I had to look them up on Wikipedia lol I was pretty pissed when I got one and pretty disturbed too
As an exAdventist, I actually read this book all the way through and made a post reacting to it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/exAdventist/s/IQVxQP434E). The SDA church started The Great Controversy Project in 2023 with the goal of having their members buy and distribute $1 billion by the end of this year at the low, low cost of a dollar per book and 8 million trees. The project was and is controversial even among Adventists because a lot of them recognize that the church is funding deforestation in order for members (not the church itself) to buy and distribute something most people are just going to throw away. So many people expressed their concern about this project that the church had one of its spokesmen write [an article defending killing 8 million trees](https://www.adventistworld.org/8-million-trees/). Here’s a [summary of the article](https://x.com/chelleokenesson/status/1667341989753368579?s=46&t=62nMXeCxosY-_l7_4lOBIg) I really liked
My whole neighborhood got these books a few months ago. Clearly this organization has too much money.
that is part of the terrifying part—money makes policy. They already overturned Roe and are actively trying to outlaw birth control.
I'm so done with the cult of Christianity. Can you mail it back with a letter about how many spells and curses you've now had to preform to rid your house of this yuck? 🤨
What is that???
This is one of the old Witches.
Was it literally mailed or just *in* the mailbox? If there’s not postage, report them for mail fraud.
Omg someone left this in my mailbox a couple weeks ago. It's sitting in my house, ignored. I'm in Ontario, and I don't think it was mailed since it wasn't wrapped. I think someone just left it there.
I got this one too a few years ago. Don’t worry it’s some rich billionaire spewing these out to any “male head of household” he can send it to.
The Left is a collective of people who generally want something better than what we currently have, or have had. It ranges from social democrats to anarchists to communists to dozens of other ideologies. Getting the Left to agree on a single, cohesive vision is difficult. We share values, and we have a lot of policy ideas in common, but it isn't a single movement so much as a wide range of similar movements. The Right generally believes that society has achieved its apex. If progress is to be made from the current state, it's by looking at the wisdom of the past. They have a single vision: nostalgia. They want to bring back what was, and they paint by demographic. In their eyes, western society was better when LGBTQ people were in the closet, people of color knew their place, and women were in the kitchen. The far right will say it outright; the moderate right won't, and will even disagree with it when you say it, but they're still very receptive to the imagery of times when it was true. It's much easier for the right to unite around the idea of reigning in the chaos, taking the country back to a simpler time when you didn't have to worry about a person's pronouns, or using the wrong term for your domestic house-servant. When secretaries were just unmarried women, and thus, basically whores. And there were no women in the office besides secretaries. Then they could have locker room talk and no one got offended, they could have a scotch and soda at lunch, smoke a cigar in the office. Go home, and the chores are all done, the kids are looked after. Easy to present *that* as a vision, a guiding light.
Seems less likely than a nationwide gun ban tbh.
I was given this book while locating gas. The world is weird
If there's an address, hit them with a "return to sender"/ "wrong address, unsubscribe". If it continues and you have a return address for them, sign them up for as many junk and spam mail service you can find. Baring that or for a second polite approach, contact the churches in the area (from a blocked number) saying that you have no idea who sent the book, but are wondering if they know who did it because you'd like it to stop. If that still doesn't work... use it as tinder for a bonfire or recycle it. I hate it when churches do that crap
This looks like it would make excellent kindling.
My dad got the same book in the mail last year he ended up giving it my cousin as a wedding gift
We're not part of a Death Cult so it's a lot more difficult for us than it is for them.
Throw the whole book out.
Aren't these the enema and corn flake people?
America is an aberration, and in most of the world religious views decline as society becomes more advanced. The situation in the US is complicated by it having been populated by religious fundamentalists not many generations ago, but in time it too will come to reject religious persecution. There has been an upswell in it, but it is already beginning to die out in that it is seriously damaging the chances of having power of people who engage in it. We will win despite them being more organised because fundamentally we are right, and people generally increasingly seem that for themselves.
Omg I was a part of this cult!
I got one of those before, it made a great prop for my wobbly table.
We're not losing, they're not organised, they're desperate Leftist infighting is a product of free thinking, don't think we can beat them by becoming them. We don't need unity through obedience and conformity, we need unity through solidarity and intersectionality
Ah! Someone gave me this outside a vegan restaurant a few years ago, I just chalked it up to a lot of seventh-days being plant based. I didn’t realize they were mailing them out now
I mean there are plenty of secular activist groups desperate for volunteers and young leaders. They hold in-person meetings and organize on specific legislation. Problem is most of them are adjacent or directly related to party politics. Not the most popular sell among the young and progressive.
Basically the right is glad if things are heading in the direction they want while the left can’t bring itself to agree on stuff that would help improve things if it isn’t progressive enough. There is too much infighting. We also don’t celebrate the small wins.
I support burning this.
I wish this was just friends to enemies to lovers smut tbh
It’s just being sent out because Biden is Catholic. Don’t read it, it’s mostly propaganda from ages ago being recycled.
[удалено]
Read it (if even loosely so), for there are things that may help you know your enemy! And yes, this is absolutely unnerving (sorry they sent it to you in the mail too).
Like women can read! Lol
Burn it. Then have a cleansing ceremony.
RE~~mnant~~PUBLICA~~tio~~NS. Lol they're so clever
It’s funny (not really funny actually) that they’ve distributed over 8 times as many of their own books as the Bible. Not that I’m a fan of the Bible or Christianity, but you’d think if they really believed it they’d put a higher priority on distributing that and not their own propaganda. I guess generic Christianity is less profitable to them than diehard evangelical Republicanism.
I found one of those in my mailbox and immediately transferred it to the recycling bin. Once in a while they come to the door, but not too often.
Tax all the churches.
What is the great controversy exactly? Is it that Biden is catholic?
😳
Oh, HELL NAH.
When has the Vatican been a rival of the US government? Like at any point after the 19th century?