Khlysty
I am quite fond of them. It's an idea remarkably simple in its brilliance: if atonement is a prerequisite for salvation, then the only possible sensible attitude to take towards sin is that it ought to be indulged in, so as to put God to some use. It's a vastly superior system to the banal asceticism that Christian 'scholars' have incrementally advanced and termed "innovation" for the past twenty-five centuries.
"The central idea of Khlystys' ideology was to practice asceticism."
Huh?
A strange sort of asceticism, they'd routinely engage in ritual orgy before purifying themselves through grueling fasts.
So, you think engaging in orgies and then whipping yourself afterwarsd as punishment is a sound attitude to life? I must disagree...
I'm with Gustaf on this. Just have the orgies and skip the whipping... unless you happen to be into that sort of thing.
Capital idea, I must say. I would be interested to see how the Christian Fundamentalists would react to the establishment of a Khlysty monastery in rural Kansas by a group of people interested in practicing S&M.
