This is the thirteenth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a clip taken from a sermon preached by Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Paul Chappell, pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church, Lancaster, California. This is video is another reminder of the fact that in IFB churches women are always blamed for the moral weaknesses of men. If church women will just cover up their legs and cleavage, IFB men will never be inappropriately sexually aroused, or so the thinking goes, anyway.
When I was in high school and afterward, my female church of christ peers and I all dressed modestly. Know what? It made not one whit of difference. Attractive young women are going to get attention no matter where they go or what they wear. Even back then I didn’t buy into the notion that *I* was responsible for what the male of the species thought or how often they thought it. I figured that if alone I was responsible for my behavior, so was everyone else.
After I got married, I wore clothing that was more revealing in no small part because we lived in Florida. I’m not a big fan of warm, sticky weather anyway, so comfort was the name of the game. There’s a standard of dress for women in the court system, and I never wore anything inappropriate to work. But if a suit or skirt and blouse (and vertiginous heels!) happened to look really good on me, then who was I to argue? ;->
The ego, the certainty, the yelling…. It takes me back and not in a good way, sigh. I just watched a minute of it and it really hit me how I’ve listened to these kind of men for far too long and much too often. Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. Yelling guys that startled me half the time because we were usually sitting quite close by.
There were these two preachers who would go from yelling to whispering to yelling which I’m sure is a useful rhetorical technique but it caused me to daydream during the whispering and jump in suprise when they started yelling again. Since I’ve got PTSD not such a fun experience. It’s why I realized at some point that I really preferred any preacher who just spoke in a calm steady voice and didn’t yell, never mind if it was passionately or angrily.
Unfortunately these kind of preachers were not that easily found in Evangelical circles though they are more common in mainline denominations.
Ooh I’m having flashbacks