This is the forty-ninth 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 video clip of a sermon by Maury Davis, pastor of Cornerstone Church, Nashville, Tennessee. Davis, by the way, served time in prison for murder. A 2009 Nashville Scene news report had this to say about Davis’ murderous past:
It must be hard to watch the man who murdered your mother 30 years ago sermonize about the godly life. Ron Liles watches him gesticulate and stroll across a stage, not from a pew, but on his computer screen in suburban Dallas, some 700 miles away from the church in Madison, Tenn., where the preacher tells this story of profound redemption.
It’s Liles’ story too, though he wishes to God it wasn’t.
He wants to tell Pastor Maury Davis that he’s a liar for bending the greatest truth in his life. To remind the mega-church pastor that the price of his spiritual rebirth, his professed salvation, was the blood of Liles’ 54-year-old mother, Jo Ella. That every good thing Davis has in this life is borne on the back of a grieving son, in whose home her blood was spilled.
Rev. Davis must know that each time he stands at the pulpit, before his flock at Cornerstone Church, there are those who still desire a full accounting for his mortal sin. How could he not?
From the path Davis set out on so many years ago, no one could ever have guessed that he’d end up here in Middle Tennessee. First he was the son of a well-to-do family in Irving, Texas. Then a convicted murderer.
Yet today he’s a high-profile pastor, known for his brash style and conservative theology, with a branded media ministry and a house worth nearly $1 million in a gated Goodlettsville neighborhood.
Contrast this life with Liles’. He was the only child of parents who struggled to stay afloat, losing his mother to a senseless murder remarkable only for its viciousness. Now he’s an unassuming pharmacist working the graveyard shift at a CVS in Texas, left to wear the garments of raw anger and heartbreak, which aren’t easily shed.
Pastor Davis says he’s been forgiven for his sins. Washed in the blood, you might say. After all, who can argue with God?
Yet in the eyes of the few who know the whole story, Davis wears an indelible stain, however faded before the eyes of his own congregation, for the violation of the most sacred law of God and man. And in this world, not even the blood of his Savior has been able to wash it clean.
I don’t know whether to feel sorry for the people who follow this guy or get pissed off at them. If an atheist wrongs someone, the atheist can’t ask some imaginary god for forgiveness and let that count as forgiveness from the person he harmed. Of course, I have no way of knowing if Davis is sincere or just performing an elaborate con.
I feel for Ron Liles, and I wonder if Maury Davis is finding cheap grace, and I have wondered whether Susan Atkins and Tex Watson did the same thing in order to avoid facing the horror of what they had done.
I compel you to understand that God means for you to go to my church to hear me speak and I will beat the shit out of you as God commands! What the fuck is wrong with these people reptiles? Compel means the switch or the belt because that was this man’s youthful experience and there is nobody in the church willing to deal with his harm as a youngster and to help him understand that what happened to him was wrong and his father was a fucking asshole to hurt him like that! There is a difference, a primary difference between strong and forceful persuasion and abuse and beating. Fucking Christianity is so innane and works perfectly for abused children who become preachers. Can you hear me, Maury?
Woww, unreal. No words. Except what a fucking douchebag. And if “God” is real, he can have slime like this and shove them up his ass
Yet another grand story that no one can prove or disprove. I’m not fond of preachers putting themselves into sermon, unless it’s a story about how they messed something up. Certainly no humility in that message.
This guy, Maury Davis, is no better than one of those terroristic “clerics” who run the two Syrian-Plain countries that are Iraq and Syria.
Maury Davis, please, for the love of God (if God is truly good), please deny Christ (just shout out in public the words “Jesus Be Accursed!” three times in a row with a host of more than fifty witnesses who have recording devices, to let all of human society acriss the world know that you are willingly turning your back on God), and then move to either Iraq or Syria and become a fanatical radical-muslim cleric!
That’s right: openly curse Jesus Christ in public and start “compelling” people to serve either Allah or Islamic extremists or both! That would be a step in the direction of honesty on your part, and you will probably have a lot of fun terrorizing innocent people (which you obviously like to do even though you should not do such things) before you are finally killed (by somebody whom you will have grievously harmed) and Hell finally claims you for the rest of eternity!
Or you can repent if your vile depravity masquerading as “Christianity” when actually you are no better that the likes of that Persian/Iranian psychopath known as the Ayetollah Ruholla Khomeini! But chances are that you, Mr. Davis, would never repent of your depravity because you are a totally dyed-in-the-wool ASSHOLE !!!!
This man stole $200 million of my money and company my life’s work! Lookup World Bible Society, New Life!
Call me, I have a plan.
Best Regards
Norvell Olive
I went to cornerstone Church in Madison Tennessee for a very long time and was baptized there read my Bible almost every day I pray everyday and I know for a fact God is real Jesus Christ did walk and heal their miracles even the Muslims believe that so on that note no matter what you’ve done in your life God forgives everything except blasphemy that is the only sin he will not forgive it also says that if your father forgive you then you should forgive others if you cannot forgive others how can your father forgive you I understand why people don’t believe anymore I understand why people can condemn this man because other people have done things wrong and they didn’t get off like that no one knows why God chose him to be the one to get out of jail in less than 10 years to have a life that he thought he’d never have I’ve met pastor Maury Davis and he was a very kind considerate man regardless of where he lives no one knows maybe his wife came from money that isn’t any of her business nothing here is any of our business I feel for the son of the woman he murdered but there is not anything or anybody or any words that could ever bring her back and condemning pastor Maury Davis certainly won’t. So I would suggest that you think back have you ever in your life done anything wrong one thing stealing a cookie out of the cookie jar cursing at your mother yelling at her maybe getting into a fight maybe saying hateful things to your brother or your sister I wish you were dead or go to hell and so on those words and those things are just as bad as what pastor Davis did you two are forgiven if you just ask for it forgiveness and love is the key of what Jesus Christ walked and teached what better to preach this than a man who went to prison then a man who admitted that he did a hanus of crime at 18 years old to say I know pastor Davis and I know the kind of man he is don’t know the kind of man he was but I do know the kind of man he is everybody in this world deserves a second chance I know Mr lyles wishes that his mother had one but she does and he will see her again as long as he forgives he will walk on this new Earth for as this new Earth will be heaven he will see his mother and she will be proud that he forgave him I will probably get backlash on this but that’s okay thank you all for listening and reading may God bless you every single one of you I will pray for the lyles family
Oh and just so I can say this pastor Davis prays for that family every single day of the congregation is there he prays for that family every single Sunday and I’m sure he does it every day too.
Evidently, you never learned how to use punctuation in elementary school.
Davis was convicted of murder. He did his time, but he has no business pastoring a church — regardless of his “testimony.” Have you read what the Bible says about murderers; that they will NOT inherit the Kingdom of God?
Davis prays for the family of the man he killed. So what? Do you think his prayers wipe away his crime and somehow make the woman’s family feel better? Child, please. (Look it up)
That you think stealing a cookie or swearing is the same as murder is astounding. You need to really rethink your morals. I have never committed a “sin” like Davis did. Sorry, I am a good man. Not perfect, but a good man. Your thinking has been corrupted by Bible nonsense. I beg you, leave his church and see things as they are.
I just looked up the guy Maury Davis and that Cornerstone Church, and Davis isn’t on the staff anywhere that I can see. Under the title” leadership.”. Not one blurb about him on their website, though he may have retired by now. If Davis committed this murder in Texas, how come he went free in a state that is so quick to execute those on Death Row ?? Until this morning,I haven’t heard of him, and I must say that his idea of what ‘ compel’ means is all wrong. He was beaten by his father,no surprise there. That’s why he wound up in prison, if it wasn’t Ron Liles’ mother,it would have been someone else. I had a roommate who was once punched in the face by a pastor. The reason he was hit like that,was only because he had long hair. And this ” pastor” was a hothead. I can’t remember how badly this kid was injured,I don’t think he pressed charges for assault though- and I wish he did ! America can sure crank out the idiot religious leaders ! Something about this Liles’ murder case doesn’t add up. Was it manslaughter,like a hit- and- run, or domestic violence as the reason ?
Teresa, Ron Liles is under no obligation whatsoever to forgive the man who murdered his mother. Forgiveness is an intensely personal internal psychological process that may or may not happen, and anyone who says “You must forgive” is an abusive asshole. Same kind of BS as issuing a commandment to love someone – emotions are outside our conscious control and cannot be legislated into being.
As someone who does not believe in your god and who also does not believe in any sort of afterlife, I am strongly of the opinion that Ron’s mom is gone forever, and that she exists only in his living memory. There is literally no way for Davis to make amends for what he has done to the Liles family, and his assertion of having been forgiven is just pompous posturing.
Mmhm. Yeah. I think killing someone is far far worse that me being bad to my parents. I hurt someone’s feelings and their life went on. He killed someone and their life didn’t go on.
Your may believe your god see’s all of this as equal, but it’s not. If your god thinks this is equal,then your god is pathetic. Then again, your god has supposedly let Ted Bundy through the gates. I guess it’s easier for a god to forgive murderers when that god has reportedly killed an entire planet of people and throughout history encouraged various forms of genocide against non believers and heathen groups and people who just don’t do things right. That is a great show of forgiveness. Your god says “repent and follow me and I will forgive, if you don’t I will kill you then torture you forever”. And sometimes he just skips right to the killing.
And yes, it is perfectly fine to tell some people to get lost when they want forgiveness if they have done something egregious. There are a couple people in my life who will never be forgiven.