Today, I am starting a new series, The Sounds of Fundamentalism. 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 the Flight F-I-N-A-L record, a popular evangelistic tool from the 1970s. Produced by Church of the Nazarene evangelist Forrest McCullough.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This is the ninety-ninth 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 What Would Scooby Do? by Eddie Scott.
These are pretty swell times
Or it seems so to me
For science in books on the web and TV
Yes the lover of reason just has to say “WOW”!
There’s a whole lot of really good stuff out there now
You’ve got Hawking and Dawkins
Bill Nye’s a big deal
We’ve had Cosmos with Carl
And Cosmos with Neil
But there’s one voice of reason
Who always comes through
I am speaking of course
Of the great Scooby Doo
When life presents a mystery
And you can’t make sense of the clues
Before you proclaim that something spooky’s to blame
Just try asking “What would Scooby do?”
Remember that cool caper when a wicked evil ape
Or maybe some demented crazed orangutan
Was haunting all the actors on a movie set
The fact was he scared everyone away
That seemed to be his evil plan
Scooby and his friends
Did they give in to the hysteria?
Of course not
They just calmly started searching the whole area
They carried out their task
They ripped away the monkey’s mask
There was no ape at all
Just stunt man Carl was their man
When everyone seems baffled
By a strange occurrence or two
You’ll soon understand
An explanation’s at hand
If you try asking “What would Scooby do?”
Another time this ghoul was making everyone feel foolish
With his blood red cape and piercing yellow eyes
Scaring workers on a scaffold, the authorities were baffled
Why was a monster hanging out up there on their high-rise?
Everyone was scared and seemed to want to disappear
Scooby and his friends said “Something fishy’s happening here”
They set out undercover
Sure enough, they soon discovered
What others called a ghoul
Was just a robber in disguise
When people seem bewildered
By a ghost, a wraith or a ghoul
It could be a fluke
It doesn’t have to be spooks
Just try asking “What would Scooby do?”
When life presents a mystery
And you can’t make sense of the clues
Before you proclaim that something spooky’s to blame
Just try asking “What would Scooby?”
“What would good old Scooby?”
“Tell me what would Scooby do?”
So when things seem bizarre
And you’re at your wits’ ends
Be like old Scooby Doo
And his Skeptical friends
For they know it is clear
What Occam ’s razor commands
Don’t accept goofy claims
If something simpler’s at hand
When life presents a mystery
And you can’t make sense of the clues
Before you proclaim that something spooky’s to blame
Just try asking “What would Scooby?”
“Tell me what would Scooby?”
“What would good old Scooby do?”
This is the ninety-eighth 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 Why I Don’t Believe in God by Everclear.
I heard the truth about you
And it really doesn’t read at all
Like the whipping stick you raised me with
A scared woman in a private hell
Hushed voice like electric bell
Strange talk about Edgar Cayce and the long lame walk of the dark 70’s
I heard the truth about you
Yeah you
Mama they woke me up
I was deep in an idiot sleep
I was just eight years old
Heard big words with a horrible sound
Why’d they have to call my school
Tell me my mother had a nervous breakdown
I wish I believed like you do
Yeah you
In the myth of a merciful god
In the myth of a heaven and hell
I hear the voices you hear sometimes
Sometimes it gets so much I feel like letting go
Sometimes it gets so goddamn hard I feel like letting it all go
Letting it all go
I ran away, went looking for you
Back to Culver City and the old neighborhood
Need to know if you were really gone
Need to know if you were gone for good
I ran through the projects at night
Hide in the dark from my friends in the light
Hide from my brother-in-law
Hide from the things he’d say
Said you weren’t losing your mind
He said you just needed a rest
He said you’d be coming home soon
He said the doctors there would know what’s best
Said that maybe I could go live with them for a while
I know the truth about you
I know the truth
Mama they woke me up
I was just eight years old
Sometimes it gets so hard I feel like letting it go
Letting it all go
This is the ninety-seventh 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 What if No One’s Watching by Ani DiFranco.
If my life were a movie
there would be a sunset
and the camera would pan away
but the sky is just a little sister
tagging along behind the buildings
trying to imitate their grey
the little boys are breaking bottles
along the sidewalk
the big boys, too
the girls are hanging out at the candy store
pumping quarters into the phone
’cause they don’t want to go home
and I think,
what if no one’s watching
what it when we’re dead, we’re just dead
what if it’s just us down here
what if god ain’t looking down
what if he’s looking up instead
if my life were a movie
I would light a cigarette
and the smoke would curl around my face
everything I do would be interesting
I’d play the good guy
in every scene
but I always feel I have to
take a stand
and there’s always someone on hand
to hate me for standing there
I always feel I have to open my mouth
and every time I do
I offend someone
somewhere
but what
what if no one’s watching
what if when we’re dead, we’re just dead
what if there’s no time to lose
what if there’s things we gotta do
things that need to be said
you know I can’t apologize
for everything I know
I mean you don’t have to agree with me
but once you get me going
you better just let me go
we have to be able to criticize
what we love
say what we have to say
’cause if you’re not trying to make something better
as far as I can tell
you’re just in the way
I mean what
what if no one’s watching
what if when we’re dead
we’re just dead
what if it’s just us down here
what if god is just an idea
someone put in your head
I mean what
what if no one’s watching
what if no one’s watching…
Lauren Drain spent her teenage years as a member of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. The Drain family moved to Topeka to join the church in 2001 and they remain members to this day. In 2007, Lauren was kicked out of the church. For a time she continued to live in Topeka. She is a nurse and now lives in Connecticut with her fiancé.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. Anyone who can escape the clutches of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church is to be commended. Throughout the book, it is evident that Lauren was mistreated and abused, and it is a wonder that she escaped with any sense of self-worth. The church and her family did their best to destroy her mentally and emotionally, yet she came through it, and she deserves a lot of praise for what she has done with her life post-Westboro.
Banished reads like a teenage girl’s diary. Page after page detail Drain’s angst over boys, make-up, dating, marriage, and the fear of going to hell. Drain spends significant time repeatedly detailing how she craved the approval of the Phelpses and how she went about trying to gain their approval. Sadly, the book became quite redundant and I found myself speed reading.
Banished does offer a first-person account of how the Phelps clan lives. However, Drain has very little negative to say about the Phelpses or the church. As one reviewer on Amazon noted, it seemed that Drain, if she could, would go back to Westboro. I doubt this is actually the case, but Drain spends little time critiquing the vile behavior and beliefs of the Westboro church family. I don’t want to be harsh in my judgment because I have not walked in her shoes, and since her family is still members of Westboro, I can easily understand her hesitation to be severely critical of the Westboro church family.
Drain was not kicked out of Westboro because of her beliefs. She still believes in the Christian God, albeit a different version of the Christian God — a kinder, gentler, loving God – than that of the Westboro Church. She still reads and studies the Bible and has come to see that there are many different ways to interpret the Bible.
In telling her story, whether intentionally or not, Drain shows that the Phelps family and the Westboro Baptist Church is made up of vile, nasty, vindictive people, who, due to their doctrinal beliefs, have lost the capacity to love anyone other than their own (and even then, their love is conditioned on obedience to what the church beliefs and the edicts of the pastor).
Drain reveals that the Phelps family has a few secrets of its own, such as the fact that two of Fred Phelps’ daughters became pregnant outside of wedlock. I am sure this was especially galling to Drain, since the reason she was banished is because she desired to have a relationship with a boy who was not a member of the church. That’s right — her big sin was being a normal, heterosexual teenage girl.
And this is the crux of the story. It is the story of an American teenage girl who wanted to be like other teenage girls. She wanted to have a boyfriend. She wanted to feel loved. She had wistful thoughts about getting married some day. (The only available boys in the church to marry were grandsons of Fred Phelps.) Her parents, the Phelpses, and the Westboro Baptist Church robbed her of her youth. They used and abused her and then threw her away like a piece of trash. (To this day she has no contact with her parents.)
I wish Lauren Drain well. She deserves a good life, a life with those who will love her for who she is. I hope that someday her family will be delivered from Phelps’ cult and that her relationship with them can be restored. I can only imagine the pain she must suffer from being completely cut off from her parents and siblings.
Drain gives the impression that the Westboro Baptist Church in an aberration and that most Christian churches and people are not like the Phelpses and Westboro. Unfortunately, my extensive involvement in Evangelicalism tells me this is not the case.
Westboro uses the threat of church discipline to control its members. I know of many Calvinistic Baptist churches that do the same. When I was co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas, I saw church discipline routinely used to keep people in line. People who refused to obey were excommunicated. When I decided to leave the church and return to Ohio, I was excommunicated because I did not ask the church’s permission to leave. To this day, the church considers me a publican and heathen.
Drain reveals that Fred Phelps is the domineering, controlling man everyone thinks he is (as is his daughter Shirley, who rules the church with her father). As the pastor of the church, he rules the church with a rod of iron. His word is the law. Is such behavior by a pastor an aberration? Maybe in some sects, but in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church and in many other Evangelical sects, extreme pastoral authority and control is the norm.
Westboro Baptist Church is a cult. Drain refuses to say this in the book, but any cursory reading of Banished will clearly show that the Westboro Baptist Church is a cult and Fred Phelps is a cult leader. The same cult markers found in the Westboro Baptist Church can be found in countless Evangelical churches. If anything, Banished should be read by every church member in the IFB church movement. If they are able to set their cognitive dissonance aside, IFB church members should have no trouble seeing themselves in the book. As I have often said, there is little difference between many Evangelical churches and pastors on the one hand and Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps on the other. The difference is one of appearance rather than substance. There is nothing in the beliefs of Fred Phelps and Westboro that can’t be found in Calvinistic churches in the IFB church movement, in the Reformed Baptist movement, the Founder’s Group in the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Sovereign Grace Baptist movement. Theologically, there is little difference between Fred Phelps and Al Martin or Al Mohler.
While I cannot give Banished a 4 star rating for the reasons mentioned above, I do think people investigating the Westboro Baptist Church or Evangelical cultism in general will find the book helpful.
Letter submitted to the editor of the Defiance Crescent-News on April 11, 2016
Dear Editor,
Recently, Cal Thomas pontificated about the need for an objective standard of morality. Of course, Thomas, an Evangelical, believes the moral code found in the Bible is the true standard of morality. Thomas believes America is mired in a moral quagmire. Blaming liberals, secularists, and atheists, Thomas believes America’s only hope is for Americans to once again prostrate themselves before the Bible and promise resolute fealty to its author — God.
What exactly is the Bible’s objective moral standard? The Ten Commandments? Or is it the Nine, since most Christians no longer “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy?” Or, as dispensational Evangelicals suggest, is just the New Testament the standard for morality? If it is just the New Testament, then why do Evangelicals continue to condemn homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and abortion — none of which is mentioned in the New Covenant? And why do Evangelical pastors continue to collect tithes and offering each Sunday, a practice not found anywhere in the New Testament?
While Evangelicals will point their peculiar interpretation of the Bible to justify the notion that they are the holders of God’s standard of morality, any careful examination of their churches shows that Evangelical moral beliefs are every bit as subjective as their atheist/agnostic/secularist neighbors. There are over one hundred churches in Defiance County, and not one of them agrees with another about what is considered moral behavior.
On matters of greater importance: salvation, baptism, and communion, local churches fight among themselves, each believing that it has the keys to the kingdom. One church has been running weekly ads in the Crescent-News to remind locals that their church — a Campbellite congregation — preaches the true gospel. Down the street Baptists preachers remind congregants that the heretical followers of Alexander and Thomas Campbell were thrown out the Baptist church mid-19th century. It is the Baptists who have the true gospel. And so the internecine wars continue unabated since the day Jesus was buried in a pauper’s grave.
Atheists such as myself laugh when Evangelicals suggest that the Bible is the standard for morality. Seeing the utter confusion and contradictory beliefs among the various Christian sects, how can anyone know for sure who is right? My money is on none of them being right. As a humanist, I believe it is up to people — not religions — to determine the standards by which we want to govern our lives.
This is the ninety-six 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 Heretic Heart by Catherine Madsen.
I am a bold and a Pagan soul
A-ramblin’ through this land
I judge the world by my own lights
And I come by my own hand
And if you ask me where I learned
To live so recklessly
My skin, my bones, my Heretic heart
Are my authority
My mother was a singer of tales
My father a dreaming man
And I have swung from the dragon’s tongue
And danced on Holy Land
I’ve sung the seed up out of the ground
And the bird down from the tree
My skin, my bones, my Heretic heart
Are my authority
I once was found but now I’m gone
Away from the “Faithful Fold”
Of those who preach that holiness
Is to do as you are told
Though law and scripture, priest and prayer
Have all instructed me
My skin, my bones, my Heretic heart
Are my authority
Now they tell me Jesus loves me
But I think that he loves in vain
He must go unrequited
On me he has no claim
For the man who would command me must
(Alt: My Goddess is our Lady Moon)
Wear the horn and let me be
(Alt: Whose tides run deep in me)
My skin, my bones, my Heretic heart
Are my authority
And while I breathe this glorious air
An outlaw I’ll remain
My body will not be subdued
And I will not be “saved”
And if I cannot shout it loud
I’ll sing it secretly
My skin, my bones, my Heretic heart
Are my authority
This is the ninety-fifth 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 Fires of Hell by Harmony James (homeschooled, raised in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist home).
A couple of days ago, several of us were sitting around at work discussing religion. It was 4 am and all of our work was completed. In the group were Eric – an atheist , Nazzy – a nominal Christian (Church of the Nazarene) Chris – a Catholic of some sort, Ren – Filipino Catholic, and me – a deist.
We are all pretty close, so no subject is sacred. Any fault or mistake is picked apart and put on display for the entire world to see. Religious discussions aren’t given special treatment, so they can get pretty brutal. Usually they end up with Eric and me being told we are going to hell. No big threat for either of us.
That night, Chris was experiencing his first religious discussion. He is new, so none of us had any idea about his beliefs. Nazzy, the aforementioned nominal Christian, and Eric were trading jabs back and forth about souls, or the lack thereof, and how to tell if there is a god. Since I believe there is a god, just not the Christian one, I was sitting this discussion out. All of a sudden, Chris says, “I can prove there is a god! Why is water blue?” It got very quiet, since this was a new line of reasoning. Eric gave a scientific answer. Chris asked why then was water clear when you scooped up a handful. Again, much interest and another scientific answer. Finally, Nazzy asked what these questions had to do with why there is a god. Chris said he didn’t know, he just wanted to know if we knew why water was blue. WHAT?? Much derision and laughing was heaped on Nazzy and Chris.
A few minutes later, during a discussion where he was trying to prove that Jesus was the son of God, Chris said, “Did you know there are some who thought Mary Magdalene had a tryst?” Again, I was curious. This time, I asked Chris to explain, since I was genuinely curious. I told him I wasn’t being an ass, I truly wanted to know. Chris then told me that some people think Mary Magdalene had sex before she married Joseph and the immaculate conception story is a lie. I asked him where he heard this. He told me his dad was a Catholic preacher (not sure what type of preacher). I told him he needed to listen better. Mother Mary is a different person from Mary Magdalene.
About this time, Nazzy was telling Chris to shut up unless he knew what he was talking about. Then the conversation turned to the Holy Ghost. Eric and I both reiterated that there is no such thing as the Holy Ghost, Ren speaks up and says there is. He knows there is a Holy Ghost because there are real ghosts. Nazzy tells him to shut up. Ren keeps on talking, so Eric asks him how he knows ghosts are real. Ren says, “because I saw it on TV, Ghost Hunters.”
I looked at Nazzy and said, “These guys are on your side, buddy.”
I guess the moral of the story is not to debate people unless you have facts. Know what you are talking about and don’t assume everything on TV is real.
This is the ninety-fourth 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 Sleep on the Floor by The Lumineers.
Pack yourself a toothbrush dear
Pack yourself a favorite blouse
Take a withdrawal slip, take all of your savings out
‘Cause if we don’t leave this town
We might never make it out
I was not born to drown, baby come on
Forget what Father Brennan said
We were not born in sin
Leave a note on your bed
Let your mother know you’re safe
And by the time she wakes
We’ll have driven through the state
We’ll have driven through the night, baby come on
If the sun don’t shine on me today
And if the subways flood and bridges break
Will you lay yourself down and dig your grave
Or will you rail against your dying day
And when we looked outside, couldn’t even see the sky
How do you pay the rent, is it your parents
Or is hard work dear, holding the atmosphere
I don’t wanna live like that
If the sun don’t shine on me today
If the subways flood and bridges break
Jesus Christ can’t save me tonight
Put on your dress, yes wear something nice
Decide on me, yea decide on us
Oh, oh, oh, Illinois, Illinois
Pack yourself a toothbrush dear
Pack yourself a favorite blouse
Take a withdrawal slip, take all of your savings out
Cause if we don’t leave this town
We might never make it out
