This is the fifty-fifth 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 Jack Hyles, pastor of First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana.
That was a new one & I heard him preach many times; a madman, but one of the greatest orators ever
Belief is based in feelings, not any intellectual prowess and Hyles was a ‘rapper’ long before rap came along, using his walk and his breathing, his rhythmic injection of emotion as he spouts utter nonsense and completely foolish ideas.
In actual fact, could it be that The Beatles taught us more about love than American Christianity ever did? Could it be that Hyles gave us regular lessons in hatred? Call anything and anybody a sin and then feel free to hurl pure hatred as Blank commands from the holy blank.
John Lennon’s Imagine will live on like a bright star that shone in the dark cave of modern America at war. Hyles will be forgotten, as he should be, very soon.
Young believers who think that the blank has called them to spiritual war, watch all Hyles’ sermons and study the way he breathes and speaks, the emotional manipulation in his rhythmic working of the pew-bound hoardes. Listen to the way he goes along and takes control of the hall. Nevermind what complete bullshit is coming out of his mouth because that does not matter one whit. Learn the Hyles’ way and you will be used by the Blank to fill the offering plate again and again.
Hyles- what a moron! The Beatle’s were freaking HUMAN and embraced that humanity. While Hyles and his ilk damaged people with their toxic dogma. Hyles, just another reason I hate their religion.
Isn’t this the guy who was shagging his secretary? The hypocrisy is making me sick….
Plus why does he think that God wanted America to win the Vietnam war?
The last few words of this clip are stuck in my head; “… and re-capture America for God.” These are the type of words that make me very afraid of the current TP ticket. As a woman of faith, I find them both abhorrent and telling. Abhorrent because I have no desire to impose my faith on anyone else and our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, which includes the freedom to tell God to fuck right off, stage left. And the word recapture is telling in more ways than Mr. Hyles ever dreamed. I want my country and especially my government under thrall to no one, not even God, unless He wants to show up personally, which I’m pretty sure ain’t gonna happen. I am not “captured” by faith, nor should anyone be, in my opinion. Hyles, et al, laid the groundwork for the current crop of political Dominionists like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman and Mike Pence, who firmly believe that the USA has been “chosen” by God and seek a theocracy.
Mike Pence is a social regressive of the highest order. As a female resident of the State of Indiana, I can attest to that as fact, not opinion. Most remember the RFRA flack from last year and this year he signed a bill prohibiting a woman from aborting because of genetic abnormalities and requiring the burial/cremation of “fetal remains”. Google “Periods for Pence” for the reaction of Hoosier women. The entire law is under a temporary injunction while a challenge to the law moves forward. Those who wish Trump would quit and allow Pence to become the Republican nominee are jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. At least the world can see Trump’s kind of crazy. Pence’s crazy hides behind his church’s doors and is far more dangerous to our liberty.