This is the sixtieth 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 titled What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church?, produced by Richard Reising. Reising is an Evangelical who supposedly has a passion for “today’s church and reaching the lost for Christ.” In other words, Reising’s “ministry” is the same old Evangelical shtick with a fresh coat of fuchsia paint.
This is the thirtieth installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
Today’s bit is Caller Punks Christian TV Host.
Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.
This is the one hundred and twelfth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Heaven is Satellite by the Hooters.
This is the fifty-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 clip taken from several sermons preached by James Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary Church.
Warning! This is the most vile preacher I have ever heard.
This is the fifty-eighth 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 “Coach” Dave Daubenmire. Daubenmire says he is not a racist, but he spends 3 minutes proving that he doesn’t know himself very well. This sermon would play well at a KKK rally.
This is the one hundred and eleventh installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Heaven is Under the Sun by Beta Play.
Well you’ve got Jesus, I think that’s great for you
you’re allowed to believe in, but don’t tell me what you know
you say that I’ve been burning, since the day I was born
And you’ve got opinions, yeah that’s okay with me
but you make the decision, like I’ve got some disease
the tale you are spinning, it’s such a curious one
So you can preach all you want at the top of your lungs
but I ain’t hurting no one
and it feels like I already won
heaven is under the sun
heaven is under the sun
Invite me to your party, it’s an eternal one
but I’ve been tiny dancing around with Elton John
you say he’s not invited, I wouldn’t go in without him
So you can pray all you want for the devious ones
to me you’re speaking in tongues
and it feels like I already won
heaven is under the sun
and here I’m gonna make it on my own
here I’m gonna make it on my own
So you say someone lives inside me, I wouldn’t know who to be
but I know I’m the driver, behind this soul machine
not looking for revival, no I can handle myself
And if the high water come I will not be undone
my heart ain’t weighing a ton
it feels like I already won
heaven is under the
feels like I already won
heaven is under the
feels like I already won
heaven is under the sun
heaven is under the sun
heaven is under the sun
heaven is under the sun
Jack Hyles, First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana
This is the fifty-seventh 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. Some of Hyles’ followers see this 1970 sermon as a prophecy of the rise of Negro Antichrist Barack Obama. Hyles tries to NOT sound racist, and in doing so…he sounds quite racist.
I regularly correspond with a handful of Evangelical pastors, missionaries, and evangelists who are having doubts about their faith. While some of them have deconverted — albeit secretly — others are caught in no-man’s land — the space between belief and unbelief. As any of these doubters will tell you, I make no effort to convert them to atheism. I am far more concerned with helping them work through their doubts, fears, and questions. Most of all, I want to provide them a safe place to honestly and openly say what’s on their minds. They know that I once was where they are now. They also know that whatever they tell me will be kept in the strictest of confidence.
Earlier today, a man who, up until recently, spent most of his adult life holding revival meetings in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches, sent me a text about God and his love for us. I asked him if I could share his text with you, and he said yes.
I Am God and I Love You So Much
I am God. God is love. I love you so much.
I love you so much that I set you up to fail.
I love you so much that I taught a snake how to talk, tempt and deceive.
I love you so much that I created most of you knowing you’d reject me.
I love you so much that I made infinite torture the price of your finite rejection.
I love you so much that I’ll give all who reject me a special body that will never die and never stop feeling ultimate pain.
I love you so much that I’ve made sexuality one of your most intense desires but one of your most forbidden actions.
I love you so much that I’ll let some of you be rich, powerful and comfortable while most will be poor, miserable and weak.
I love you so much that I’ll make my forgiveness and salvation one of the most obscure, secluded, exclusive, elusive, difficult, ancient, senseless, illogical and bizarre, argued, debated, opinionated, sadistic, divisive, repulsive, reject-able, laughable, unverifiable, irrational, emotional, and psychological things ever conceived.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you doubt me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you trust me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you stray from me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you are closer to me than to anyone.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you don’t serve me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you serve me faithfully.
I love you so much that I’ll make your suffering for ignoring me very real in this life.
I love you so much that I’ll make your rewards for walking with me only real in the next life.
I love you so much that I’ll kill your loved ones, destroy your life, ravage your body and make your best friends think it’s your fault, just to teach the devil a lesson.
I love you so much that I’ll make everything you need to know about me and my love available to you in an ancient, translated, revised, edited, copied, argued, debated, contradictory, violent, terrifying, depressing, ambiguous, bizarre, embarrassing book written by dozens of disagreeing men, spanning thousands of years.
According to the Above Rubies website, Nancy Campbell is an “internationally known author, speaker, and authority on Biblical Motherhood and Family.” Campbell preaches the old-time Fundamentalist gospel of patriarchy — a world in which women marry, obey their husbands, bear lots of children, and keep the home. Recently, in a post titled A Higher Vision, Campbell detailed her vision for her children and grandchildren. Here’s what Campbell had to say:
I want children who love God above all else.
I want children who are growing into the likeness of Christ.
I want children who love righteousness and abhor evil.
I want children who have a biblical mindset and stand for God’s truth.
I want children who will not compromise godly standards.
I want children who will not be tainted by the spirit of this world.
I want children who will not give in to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, but who will pursue the will of God.
I want children who love God’s Word and love to pray.
I want children who will blaze across this world with the gospel and message of truth.
Amen.
As you can see, Campbell’s vision for her progeny focuses on the Evangelical God and the Bible. Like many Evangelicals, her vision is singular and blinkered, making Campbell blind to the wonders of the world outside the narrow confines of the Christian box. All that matters to Campbell is that her children and grandchildren turn out to be good little Christians who follow the approved way of life.
I too have children and grandchildren, and like Campbell I have a vision for them. However, my vision is far different from that of Campbell’s:
I want children who think for themselves.
I want children who enjoy life.
I want children who treat others with respect.
I want children who love their families.
I want children who value hard work and enjoy the fruits of their labors.
I want children who aren’t afraid to stand against bigotry and racism.
I want children who will live every moment to its fullest, realizing that life is short.
I want children who value fun, pleasure, and relaxation.
I want children who will travel far and wide, enjoying the wonders of earth.
And most of all, I want children who are happy.
Amen.
Campbell’s vision is one of exclusion, whereas my vision is one of inclusion. Campbell’s vision focuses on right beliefs and obedience, whereas my vision focuses on embracing and enjoying life. Campbell’s vision sees the goal as a room in God’s celestial kingdom, where my vision sees the goal as a life well lived. Campbell envisions life as that of Pilgrim in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Trudge on dear Pilgrim, remembering that Heaven awaits you IF you make it to the end. What a sad way to live life, squandering the too-short time we have on earth.
I have more of a Dixie Chicks way of looking at life. In 1998, the Chicks released the single Wide Open Places. I think the song aptly describes how those of us who are rooted in there here and now view life:
Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone
Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed
[Chorus]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes
She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won’t be coming back with the rest
If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test
[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the high stakes
As her folks drive away, her dad yells, “Check the oil!”
Mom stares out the window and says, “I’m leaving my girl”
She said, “It didn’t seem like that long ago”
When she stood there and let her own folks know
[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
Wide open spaces, that’s what I hope my children and grandchildren find as the meander their ways through this life. Who knows what might lie ahead. Campbell wants to keep her children and grandchildren safe within the confines of the Evangelical box. (Please see The Danger of Being in a Box and Why it Makes Sense When You are in it and What I Found When I Left the Box) While there is great comfort and security that comes from knowing everyone is safely in the box, this is no way to live and enjoy life. That’s what Evangelicalism does. It confines people for life in Bible Prison, safe from the evil, sinful world. Humanism, however, opens wide the gate and says, You are FREE! Enjoy life. Embrace all that it has to offer, knowing that we don’t know what tomorrow might bring. Life is like the steam rising from a radiator on a cold winter’s day. It quickly dissipates into the air and then it is gone (James 4:14). Solomon was surely right when he said:
There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour
….
All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?
….
Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.
….
For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
Let me conclude this post with the advice I give on the ABOUTpage of this blog:
You have one life. There is no heaven or hell. There is no afterlife. You have one life, it’s yours, and what you do with it is what matters most. Love and forgive those who matter to you and ignore those who add nothing to your life. Life is too short to spend time trying to make nice with those who will never make nice with you. Determine who are the people in your life that matter and give your time and devotion to them. Live each and every day to its fullest. You never know when death might come calling. Don’t waste time trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Find one or two things you like to do and do them well. Too many people spend way too much time doing things they will never be good at.
Here’s the conclusion of the matter. It’s your life and you best get to living it. Some day, sooner than you think, it will be over. Don’t let your dying days be ones of regret over what might have been.
Jack Hyles, First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana
This is the fifty-sixth 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.
