The Sounds of Fundamentalism 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 IFB evangelist Larry Brown preaching against television. This sermon was preached years ago at First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana. At the end of this clip, Brown advocates threatening your wife with an axe if she objects to you destroying the TV.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Yes we are all just victims of subterfuge whenever our eyes gaze upon the the wicked boob tube,just seconds away from turning into rapists , thieves,murderers and perpetrators of all kinds of chicanery hell bent on corrupting the world.
I confess that I have a NEED to watch Colbert roast our divinely installed leader! I weaken at the knees and come crawling back for more! Lord, won’t you buy me a big heavy axe…. I am imprisoned, Lord…. Please!
Fortunately the American Taliban doesn’t have the power to do anything except gimmicky sermons. In Afghanistan the Taliban punished television owners, so many resorted to burying them so they could dig up the expensive consumer electronic when the winds of power have shifted.
But but if we don’t have television how will we see the 2nd coming exactly when it happens??
I gather that recording exists because the service was televised?
A lot of churches record their services. — audio and video. Back in my preaching says, my sermons were recorded. Sadly, I’ve been unable to locate any of recorded sermons ?
Why on earth would I play monopoly instead of watching Lucifer? I am pretty sure plenty of people had fellowship with there partners while watching TV. The real fear is that the sheeple will hear something the leaders dont want them to hear. Monopoly and checkers are much safer bets for keeping people confined in a bubble, especially if there is an axe hidden the garage.
If he personally doesn’t want to watch it because he thinks that the stuff on it is damaging to his walk, that’s perfectly fine, and I won’t judge him. This, however, IMO, is going far overboard! (Then again, he is preaching to his choir who holds similar/same beliefs as him, so I probably shouldn’t be worrying about it.)
Someone put it rather well over on a Patheos Non-religious blog,
‘Religiously motivated people have a propensity for assuming they have a role to play in other people’s personal decisions.’ And Captain Cassidy says much the same. Fundies think they are the designated adult in the room for the rest of humanity.’ Given the staggering amounts of lies and hypocrisy these obnoxious enforcers are now caught out in, wonder if he kept to that view for the rest of his life. Or just pretended that he did.
Very eloquently expressed, Matilda. When I was a child, my preacher dad forbid us to play sports on Sunday or to watch them on TV. Over the years he relented under the unbearable weight of Satan on his back (or the realization that most extreme rules of religious whack-jobs are just plain lame and do not reflect any sane human reality.) Whether he felt at all guilty about loosening God’s grip on us and watching Sunday sports or letting us play street hockey when we should have been on our knees begging Jesus to forive us our sins, I do not know… What I do know is that Larry Brown is Hollywood-acting a role in this video and dancing! too. He is playing the crowd for laughs and Amens. He is an insult to decent men and a woman-hating prick. He’s ugly too and not far off plain stupid in his expression. He is leading his flock in the same manner as the president of the United States of America leads, with outrageous lies and a smug entitlement.
What i wish I could have done, or seen, in all my years attending Sunday Stupid School, is some soul stand up in the midst of the complete bullshit madness and call it just what it was, human depravity. I could never get up and say the obvious truth, ask the obvious question: Why is daddy saying those things? What is wrong with him? Instead, I chose to feel sick for half my life and carry that cancer in me. Evangelical tomfoolery is abusive, harmful hatred of self and others. Jesus didn’t die for your sins any more than Donald Trump is making America great again and yet, look at the support he contines to garner. Look at the fool suckers taking their wallets to Sunday Make Me Stupid School.
Wow, life is sooo good after getting free of that gulag.
This was hugely entertaining! Hilarious, yet deeply disturbing, and frightening even. In Brennan Manning’s words, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians”. I reckon it’s probably always been thus (just think of Savanarola, the Spanish Inquisition, the Conquistadors, witch-hunting New World Puritans, hell-fire Spurgeon or the anti-Semitic Martin Luther – the list of dangerous religious nutters is endless). As a young man I was exposed to similar bizarre preaching and can only say if there is a devil he is manifest in the world through this kind of psychotic bigotry. As a still-recovering ex-fundy/evangelical who has made my way through to a kind of bewildered (but healing) agnosticism, I welcome your bold exposé of all the bullshit. Thank you.
funny to watch yet sad at the same time. I grew up listening to this type of preaching. they blamed anything and anyone for their own failure w/their kids. so many kids grew up under this crap and lived terrible lives simply out of rebellion. they were never allowed to make their own decisions or think thru things because the church and preacher told them what to think. the fear and hatred of tv, education, etc was because they knew that young people were starting to see their bullshit and turn away. thanks for keeping the light shining on this.