This is the sixty-second 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 from a sermon preached by California street preacher Ruben Israel.
Brave man, though not necessarily a bright one
I don’t agree, Steve, unless we can agree that bullies are brave. I tend toward thinking them scared cowards, desperate to control the reality they feel. This big lug has learned that he can abuse and get away with it, probably partly because of his appearance, big and beardy. Coward, is my observation…
Exactly how many people have been converted by having people stand out in the street screaming at them, hurling insults and verbally abusing them? Is this approach ever successful in any other sorts of sales pitches?
All things shall pass away… except for the T-shirt business. That is eternal.
Dont forget death and taxes
I also grew up in the Evangelical Church(Calvary Worship Chapel represent) and it caused me to leave Christianity, but that was at 14. When I went back to college to major in history at 28 I was able to read look at it with a more objective eye and 4 years later I had joined the Catholic Church. Forget the feelings of it, which as someone who was an atheist for 10 years, I know the feeling I get from prayer and especially communion could be attributed to a placebo effect. But I don’t understand how an adult with a sound knowledge of sociology and historical patterns can attribute the first 700 or so years after the death of Christ as anything but divine. Unlike Buddha, Krishna, or Muhammad, Christ was a 2nd class citizen with no political, economic, or martial power. Yet 11 of the 12 apostles chose death over renunciation and over half of the 72 disciples likewise. an 800 year deeply ingrained religious history in Rome was overturned to worship an executed prisoner. the Goths who invaded Rome overturned their entire pagan culture of relegating the gods of defeated foes to the ashbin of history and instead not only included the God of a defeated foe in their culture, but did so while removing their own rich pagan history. the ruthless Picts who couldn’t be pacified by all the legions in Rome were pacified by 12 priests with nothing more than a crucifix and a bible led by Saint Columba. the Danish Vikings. the list goes on and shows that not only was Jesus the Nazarene who he said he was but the Church he created had true spirit power. I pray for this truly misguided pope unto himself out there on the street focusing on a single sin that Christ never mentioned despite living under an empire where bisexuality was rampant, and arrogantly declaring judgment and knowledge of things that only God can know or judge. But I’m also praying Mr. Gerencser and his family that they may turn back to Christ and continue to know him and praise him in this life and the next.
Michael R Rebholz: “[…] Christ was a 2nd class citizen with no political, economic, or martial power.”
Zoe: Seriously. I thought according to your denomination Christ is the son of God. One with the Father, a member of the Trinity. Creator of the universe . . . and you present Him as a second class citizen? No power? Hardly.
Michael, did you ever consider that this “second-class Jesus” in the Gospels is just a “kid from the wrong side of the tracks does good” literary trope?
Oh, and in my opinion the probability of anyone praising Jesus in a future life is a big, fat zero. Just a myth, Michael, just a silly myth to ease the fear of death. Don’t waste your life hoping for something that simply isn’t going to happen no matter how hard you pray.
“ But I don’t understand how an adult with a sound knowledge of sociology and historical patterns can attribute the first 700 or so years after the death of Christ as anything but divine.”
Michael, something doesn’t quite chime for me here. You say that you were an ‘atheist’ for10 years, yet most of that time you were an adult. So were you are a firm atheist or a passive one? I’ll lay odds passive. You’ve moved from a frying pan to…well at least another frying pan. Now look at the objective history of the church. Did the apostles actually exist? Is there any historical evidence of what became of them, let alone that they died for their cause? The answer of course is a resounding ‘no’. You recite nothing more than myth, then cling to it as reasoned evidence of the belief you are determined to maintain.