I was flipping through the channels tonight, and I caught a news special discussing what many believe to be a religious cult that's based here in Canada.
Here is a quick summary:
The Pied Piper of HamiltonUpdated Fri. Nov. 17 2006 10:25 PM ET
Chad Derrick, Associate Producer, W-FIVE
TORONTO -- There's a raging debate in Hamilton, Ontario about just what the Dominion Christian Centre is. But wide agreement on what it's not.
The D.C.C., as it's known, is no ordinary church. No hymns here. Every Sunday service begins with a one-hour rock concert - complete with power vocals, driving guitars and pounding bass.
The man on the drums is the pastor. Peter Rigo came to Hamilton, he says, "on a mission from God."
"When He said to come, He said - drop a plumb line and establish a people that know me and that live for me," Rigo told W-FIVE.
The pastor's voice drips with disdain and sarcasm when he talks about other churches and how they spend most of their time competing for parishioners.
"And then we compete with the world -our God is better than yours. Our girls give better b-jobs, that's right, we get laid twice as quick in Christian school. Our God's better than your God."
Sexual references aside, Rigo's version of Christianity could be seen as an extreme version of evangelical Christianity.
"My desire is to see every man and woman on earth come to know Jesus Christ as their lord and personal savior."
What sets him apart is the extent of Rigo's zeal for his version of the truth. W-FIVE challenged Rigo with the notion that, "some people might like nothing more than to turn the whole world into an Islamic state."
Rigos answer: "Yeah. And it's going to be a war right down to the end."
And that's how it is at the D.C.C. Black and white. For Rigo's followers, it's also pretty much a full time job. Spending every spare hour at the church--living the word of God. Unlike those 'other places.'
In his sermon at the D.C.C., Pastor Rigo says, "For the most part, Church is just a nice outhouse. You simply go once a week, move your conscience bowels, get a little relief and go back out and eat like a pig for another seven days. That's why churches mainly stink."
Rigo went to Bible College but never graduated. He was affiliated with the Open Bible Faith Fellowship, a network of evangelical churches across North America, but they recently kicked him out.
Rigo tells W-FIVE, "I don't accept what we've called Christianity to date. A lot of teaching goes on in the name of God. Very little living. So the standard that I read in a relationship of God and of the Word is - if you love me, you'll obey me. Not, if you love me, you'll learn about me."
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The entire documentary can be found in 4 parts on the right hand side of this page:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061027/wfive_pied_piper_061027/20061117?hub=WFiveScary or what?
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