Nightline ran a program on a weird group in Washington, DC—you can watch it at One Good Move. Be prepared to be creeped out.

The program was called "Faith Matters", and it's not clear whether Nightline was going for high irony or was sincere. It's about the Justice House of Prayer, an anti-abortion group whose strategy was to rent an apartment with windows facing roughly in the direction of the Supreme Court, where "interns" jump up and down and rant and pray towards the Court, apparently under the impression that they will have some psychic influence on the justices, or that their all-powerful god requires constant nudging and needs to be aimed in the right physical direction to have an effect. I get the idea they imagine their god as a vast, logy blimp without much consciousness, and if only they tug on his supernatural guidewires enough, they can position him over the court building…at which time he'll reach down with fat, bloated fingers and diddle about in the brains of the people below him. It's a strange, primitive theology, cult-like and absurd.

What's sad, though, is that the organizer behind this, Lou Engle, almost certainly believes fervently in this nonsense, and he is getting lots of money. He mentions that this apartment costs $7000/month, and he's getting a salary. They have 70 interns, each of whom pays $1500 for the privilege of spending 3 months in the program—that's over $400,000/year flowing into Engle's coffers.

What do the interns do?

The main goal of the JHOP internship is to expose interested persons to the unique worship and intercession model of JHOP. During this time, we fully expect that each intern will experience personal growth in areas of devotion to the Lord as well as discovering and using their gifts in the context of community and the house of prayer. The interns will also be intricately involved in the operation and experience of the prayer room as they receive continuous teaching and guidance from Lou Engle and other national and local leaders.

They dance. They chant. They pray. They scream. They bob back and forth, they jump up and down. They're like a mob of dervishes, hysterical, freakish, ineffectual, deluded.

They pay $1500 for 3 months of brain-damaging validation of insanity.

People ask why I despise religion. Try watching this video through my eyes, and maybe you'll understand. This religion is an excuse to strip young people of their minds and their dignity, indoctrinate them in brainless mob behavior, and rationalize craziness—so that they are willing to overlook the foolishness of their mentors. That video documents a disease.

Pedophile Catholic priests get a lot of outraged attention, but they violate the body; it's the destruction of thinking minds that is even worse, and that's the part of religion almost everyone glosses over. What a shame that in a country blind to the evils of religion, a corrupter like Lou Engle gets money tossed to him.