The Influence and the legacy of the Latter Rain Movement on the Neo-Charismatic Movement

The focus of this paper is to point out some doctrines of Branham , the morning star of the Latter Rain Movement that left some impact on the current Neo-Charismatic Movement. Through the solid literature review which was undertaken, an investigation in the historical development of this movement, and its impact on the current Neo-Charismatic churches is interrogated to obtain the facts. The NeoCharismatic Movement is a general term for independent charismatic formations that evolved after Pentecostalism that is these days dubbed Classical Pentecostalism. Since William Branham is noted for different teachings and practices pertaining to Pentecostalism, he is closely associated with the Latter Rain Movement of the forties and the fifties. There is no intention to lay out or elaborate on all Branham’s dogmatic dictums and practices, but only six are selected to complete the research question of this paper. These doctrines are the restorationist theology, deliverance, fivefold ministry, anti-cultural establishment, extra-biblical prophecies, and personality cult. It is discovered through this research that all these doctrines or practices are familiar within the Neo-Charismatic churches, especially those known as New Prophetic Churches.

Xi's personality cult creates hostages to fortune

Significance It signals to the Party and the country at large that Xi, his ideas and his leadership approach have the support, or at least the compliance, of the political elite. Impacts The Resolution's omission of previous criticism of 'personality cults' will make intra-Party criticism of Xi's more difficult. Circumspect language on national security suggests a cautious approach to issues involving the potential for military conflict. The Resolution will add impetus to the policies advanced under the 'common prosperity' slogan.

“President-Protector”: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of a News Report Promoting the Personality Cult of the President of Turkmenistan G. Berdymukhamedov

The cult of personality started by the first President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov has acquired new dimensions with the present leader of the country. The cult of personality of Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is actively constructed via mass media. This paper examines two short clips of a news report dedicated to the President’s birthday celebration that was broadcasted on the Turkmen national TV on 26 June 2020. The paper analyzes a set of specific mechanisms of flattery inflation used in the report and demonstrates special linguistic choices and visual patterns applied to force a specific ideology on the audience. Due to the multimodal nature of the analyzed discourse, multimodal critical discourse analysis has been implemented, additionally informed by the systemic functional linguistics and the visual semiotic analysis.

Fiction vs. Evidence: A Critical Review of Ataa Ayi Kwei Armah’s Wat Nt Shemsw and the Eurasian Rhetorical Ethic

At the 2018 Outstanding African Thinkers Conference on Nna Chinweizu, attendees – the first author included – took a pledge that “In all branches of our lives, we must be capable of criticizing and of accepting criticism. But criticism, proof of the willingness of others to help us or of our willingness to help others, must be complemented by self-criticism – proof of our own willingness to help ourselves to improve our thoughts and our actions. This is a sacred principle and it is my sacred duty to apply and defend it at all costs” (Chinweizu 2018). In response to that call to action, this article represents an effort to restore MꜢꜤt ‘Maat.’ Ataa Ayi Kwei Armah’s Wat Nt Shemsw: The Way of Companions epitomizes undeclared fiction masquerading as an accurate reflection of the mythology of classical Kmt ‘Land of Black People.’ By cross-checking Ataa Armah’s undeclared fiction with actual historical, iconographical, and archaeological data, we are able to debunk his numerous misrepresentations. We find that the best way to approach Kmt ‘Land of Black People’ is through direct engagement with actual evidence rather than through the distortions of fiction writers turned Egyptologists. Further, we will address the personality cult, or what we term “Ataa Armah’s Manor Shemsw model,” which embodies the rhetorical ethic whereby all egalitarians are equal, but some egalitarians are more equal than others (Orwell, Baker, and Woodhouse 1996).

The Decline and Resurgence of Turkish Islamism

For decades, Turkish Islamists have failed to attract the votes of large sections of society and remained marginal. As a result of this failure to come to power, and due to domestic and international constraints and windows of opportunities, they have declared that they have jettisoned Islamism. Many Turkish Muslims whose religious disposition was shaped by the pluralistic urban Ottoman experience and small-town Anatolian traditionalism, and by the contesting currents of cosmopolitan pluralism and rural social conservatism, voted in favour of these former Islamists who have become “Muslim Democrats”. This paper elaborates on the genealogy of Turkish Islamists and their political trajectories and argues that when the forces and constraints of domestic and external social, political and economic conditions disappeared and the opportunities derived from being Muslim Democrats no longer existed, the former Islamists easily returned to their original ideology, showing that despite assertions to the contrary their respect for democracy and pluralism had not truly been internalised. This paper also aims to demonstrate that similar to other authoritarian populists, Erdoganists perceive the state and its leader as more important than anything else and as being above everything else, which has culminated in a personality cult and sanctification of the state. As long as Turkey’s economy continued to boom, almost everyone was happy that Turkey could readily market the “Muslim Democrats” story to the whole world for a long period as a major success story, or as an “exemplary Muslim country” or “model”. Yet, Middle Eastern elites and Western forces got carried away and learnt the hard way just how naive their view was in perhaps the first great transformation movement of the twenty-first century – the Arab Spring. Likewise, the Turkish Spring turned all too quickly towards autumn and then winter.

Atypical titles and ranks of heads of state as part of the personality cult

The anti-democratic forms of the state and political regime are characterised by a lack of real participation of the population in the exercise of state power and a violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens and their associations. One of the characteristic features of anti-democratic regimes is that real power is concentrated in the hands of a group of people or one person who are not under the control of the people. The main types of anti-democratic regimes are authoritarian and totalitarian forms. History has shown that the formation of the personality cult of the head of state or the ruling totalitarian party is possible provided that there is a successful symbiosis between these anti-international varieties. At the same time, the formation of the personality cult of the head of state or the political leader of the ruling party is impossible without certain attributes, an integral part of which is the presence of their atypical titles, official and unofficial titles, which, in turn, are a clear indicator of the undemocratic set of methods, techniques and methods of exercising state power. The above issues are essential to understanding all the nuances of the supreme power of autocrats, which makes our research relevant. The aim of the study will be to analyze atypical official and unofficial titles, ranks, laudatory epithets of heads of state, as an integral part of the cult of personality, a sign of undemocratic political regime and leadership. The fact of the deification of the ruler's supreme power as a weighty argument in favor of the centralization of his supreme power is interpreted differently by researchers, depending on the characteristics of this or that civilizational component. In the period of modern history, the existence of atypical titles, official and unofficial titles for heads of state in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is associated primarily with the policy of chiefdom. The formation of the personality cult of the Head of State or the political leader of the ruling party is impossible without certain attributes, an integral part of which is the presence of atypical titles, official and unofficial titles, which in turn are a clear indicator of the undemocratic set of methods, techniques and methods of exercising public power. The personality cult of the state leader is linked to the approval of the appropriate form of government and the form of state political regime. The process of establishing the personality cult is characteristic of some historical as well as some modern monarchical forms of state government, such as the Eastern Despoty, theocratic monarchy and the absolute monarchy. States with the above form of government had a special legal status as heads of state, which was envisaged: - the religious specificity of legitimising monarchical power; - a combination of secular and spiritual (religious) power, which, in turn, gave rise to the development of sacralisation of the personality of the supreme ruler. Such embodiment of despotic rulers of the East was practiced by authoritative anthropotheism in two ways: soft: monarch is the son of a god, and tough: monarch is a living deity. In the period of modern history, the emergence of atypical titles, official and unofficial titles of heads of state in the twentieth century is primarily connected with the policy of leadership. Leadership is the policy of an authoritarian or totalitarian party in a state that aims to concentrate power in a charismatic undisputed leader. The ideas and actions of such a leader are not subject to criticism and are perceived without appeal. The atypical title or title of leader can be enshrined in legislation. The atypical title or title of its leader may be officially disseminated through state ideology and propaganda through the media when the head of state retains one official traditional title, but unofficial honorary titles and epithets are allowed.

Influence of a Psycho-Cult on Personality: Theoretical Aspect (the Case of Psycho-Cult “Vedic Feminity”)

The article considers a number of aspects concerned with the influence of psychocults on the personality of its adherers basing on the literature theoretical analysis on the case of the psycho-cult “Vedic feminity”. The authors have identified certain sect attributes peculiar to the psycho-cult “Vedic feminist”: focus on personal contact in the recruitment process; the commitment to turn the member into a successful person; a mentor personality cult; deprivation of conviction in one’s own beliefs and reassessment of the passed life; creating dependence on the organization and turning the member into an obedient doer. The authors examined the process of taking control over a personality and consciousness on the BITE Model, which includes the control over behavior, information, thinking, and emotions. The findings have revealed that affiliation with a psycho-cult changes self-esteem and self-acceptance of female members, leads to domination of the external motivation system over the internal one, violates the ability to asses one’s own competence.

The Image of the White Army Agent General Nosovich in the Novella Bread by Alexey N. Tolstoy

The article analyzes the image of a historical figure of the White Army agent Nosovich in A.N. Tolstoy’s novella Bread. Former General A.L. Nosovich in Soviet Russia in the spring and summer of 1918 held the post of chief of staff of the North Caucasus Military District, but at the same time was an agent of the White Army and carried out clandestine subversive work. His image in the novel was introduced as an antihero, who was opposed to the shrewd commissar Joseph Stalin. The attitude to Nosovich in the novel is negative. He is shown as a pragmatic and cruel cynic, for whom the aim justifies any means. Tolstoy did not fail to emphasize the connection between Nosovich and the leader of the Red Army Lev D. Trotsky ostracized in the USSR. When creating the character of Nosovich A.N. Tolstoy relied on genuine documents, including the report of Nosovich to the White Army command about his underground work. Tolstoy’s novel contributed to the strengthening of the personality cult of Stalin and the mythology of the history of the Russian Civil War in line with party attitudes. The image of the White Army agent General Nosovich served the same task.

The New Populist Nationalism

This chapter discusses the political shift in Saudi Arabia from religious nationalism and pan-Islamism—which played a central role in the consolidation of the Saudi state—to populist nationalism under the new crown prince. The shift is explained as part of the rise of the personality cult of Muhammad ibn Salman.