Krazy Koins for KKKhrist

It's Sunday! Time to take a break from routines, reunite with family and friends and catch up on the latest tactics of the Radical Religious Right. Did you know your tax dollars are being used to promote the supremacy of a blond haired, blue-eyed Jesus? The story below, from talk2action.org details the latest propaganda tactics by the delusional RRRs. These folks should spend a little more time reading history and looking at maps to discover a) Jesus was a Jew, b) Jesus was an immigrant, and c) Jesus and his family were exiles, or illegal immigrants, if you prefer. Try a Google search and, if you don’t give up in disgust from the perverted posts which dominate right up to page 18, eventually you’ll find this post from CNN, with a computer generated Jesus, courtesy of the left-wing (HA!) Popular Mechanics: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/12/25/face.jesus/
Source of "Bible coins" distributed by USMC in Iraq discovered
By dogemperor, Sun Jun 01, 2008 at 05:04:11 PM EST
In what is--sadly--yet another case of the extent of which blatant prosyletisation is tolerated in the modern US military, a recent incident where members of the US Marine Corps were handing out coins to persons in Fallujah with John 3:16 on one side and "where will you spend eternity?" on the other shows that dominionism can even be potentially a risk to national security.
One thing that has not yet been revealed in this incident--which has already led to the suspension of at least one Marine--is the source of the coins, a fundamentalist "Bible church" which increasingly has embraced both war imagery--and America's fighting men.
Tracking down the group behind the Coin Fiasco
The group behind the incident--one of a series of incidents of blatant dominionist prosyletisation of Iraqis--is a disturbing example of both targeting of the military and the increasing military imagery of certain "Christian Nationalist" groups.
[...] As it turns out, one group of folks promoting these "bible coins" specifically to Marines are a group calling themselves Basic Training Bible Ministries and specifically a group calling itself Osborne Coinage:
[...] Osborne Coinage would appear to be primarily a token manufacturer--making the sorts of coins formerly used in the NYC subway system, the tokens at old arcades and present-day casinos, and so on. (One of their more popular lines apparently seems to be custom coins for Mardi Gras krewes.) Hence, we must look more at the group promoting the coins.
The proprietor of these coins, one Gene Cunningham, is linked with at least two fundamentalist "Bible churches" (and maintains links with several others. (As best can be determined, his group would fit more in the vein of "Fundamentalist Baptist" than neopentecostal.)
Their doctrinal statement in and of itself raises a number of red flags. Not only is it the classic "bibolatrous" statement (that places the Bible, and its inerrancy, above that of God and Jesus), not only is it premillenial-dispensationalist (which is not always a danger sign, but in conjunction with a few other things can be a sign of a church that merits careful watching), but whilst (in a rare example) explicitly declaring itself non-pentecostal does espouse the concept of the "fivefold ministry" common in "Joel's Army" neopentecostal churches.
One of the things that the crew at Basic Training seems to be especially fond of is the concept of using disaster aid as "missionary activity"; again, not unlike "Joel's Army" groups, the concept of "prayer warriors" is common in the group. The org also seems to promote its own version of Alcoholics Anonymous, only this time with Jesus explicitly noted as an essential step in addiction recovery.
And of particular note--keeping in mind that this church is surprisingly genteel in its adoption of military imagery--there does seem to be a lot of targeting of Marines and other military personnel. Among other things, apparently an explicit missionary effort aimed at both Marines--and at Moslems in Iraq--is sponsored by Basic Training Ministries...including the very coins linked to the scandal.
As for Burt Camenzind, he would appear to ESPECIALLY be a piece of work.
We focus on the man behind the curtain
Camenzind, the other person behind the "Bible Coins" (and, it would appear, now the primary person behind minting and producing them), would appear to himself be linked to fundamentalist-Baptist "Bible church" televangelists, who happily promote his "Bible coins". It'd appear, based on one of the televangelists happily hawking the coins, that ol' Burt specialised in a particularly nasty form of "bait and switch" evangelism before he cottoned on the coin idea:
Burt first used a small passenger airplane for his evangelistic efforts. He would invite children to look at his plane and offer them a ride, and then he would share the gospel with them. [my bold] When Burt learned of the gospel coins, he saw an even greater opportunity. He says, "God is teaching me through the coins how to share the gospel without them." Each day, Burt mails out between 2,000 and 20,000 coins, so others can share their faith as well.
(Yes, you read that right. Sucker little Johnny in with a plane ride in a Cessna, and then once he's literally a captive audience at 5000 feet, spring the hard-sell evangelism on him. All the better reason to convince your kids NOT to accept plane rides from strange men.) [Would you hand over your child to that guy? Smells like child abuse to me]
The only other bit of info I can find on Camenzind is more than enough. It turns out he operates a nonprofit known as "Operation Grace"; interestingly, it does not use the infamous "form 990 loophole", but does put out a form 990. According to aforementioned form 990, pretty much the entire business of the group is putting out those "Bible coins". If Google Maps is to be believed, "Operation Grace" would appear to be run entirely out of Camenzind's house.
Camenzind's little coins seem to be popular with a number of groups--including, notably, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a pentecostal denomination that can be said to be the most direct ancestor of the Assemblies of God.
And it is here, ultimately, that the latest incident in a history of prosyletisation in Iraq finds its home. We write much more about this tomorrow--including how, ironically, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world has been decimated because of aggressive dominionist "missionary" groups.
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/6/1/17411/47950