Trapped by Fidelity

Pastoral trysts with twinks are blamed on everything from queer demons, to weak flesh, to tests of faith. The most obvious reason- “I’m gay”- seems unthinkable.

In the case of  Rev. Ted Haggard of New Life Church, also then-president of the National Association of Evangelicals, another preacher went so far as to insinuate the blame for such dalliances rests on the wife.

A woman just might push her husband to liaison with men and get high on meth in a sleazy motel. In Kathryn Joyce’s brilliant book, Quiverfull, she quotes pastor Mark Driscoll on his blog: “It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go,” Driscoll wrote.  Since a woman may feel her husband is “trapped into fidelity” she may not bother being “sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about…”

But Haggard himself was at least noble enough in his resignation letter to point out that she had nothing to do with it.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’Roll

Haggard was born in Indiana, saved in Texas, and “educated” at Oral Roberts U. In Colorado, his brand of candid apostleship grew a church from a basement to a strip mall to the New Life megachurch of 14 000. But in 2005, it all fell apart. Prostitute Mike Jones found out his client of three years was a hugely influential Christian pastor and adviser to the White House. Jones told ABC he had to “expose the hypocrisy.” Later, another man claimed Pastor Ted sent him dirty text and jerked off in front of him.

What followed is familiar by now:  Ted denied allegations of cheap sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Church brothers blamed the defamation on the evil gay agenda. Ted even passed a series of volunteer polygraphs. Then his story shifted: he’d had a massage but not sex from his hired hand. Later still, Ted admitted that he was a hypocrite and liar.

I don’t often empathize with disgraced pillars of faith. But there was, to me, always something affable under Ted’s creepy countenance.  When he said a part of him “is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life,” my heart went out to him.  It is no small horror to grow up believing your sexuality is “repulsive and dark.” Later, he told Oprah, “I was so ashamed…that dark area of my life that I’d worked so hard to keep secret and fight against was coming to the surface…”.

Back Into the Closet

But to my dismay, Ted didn’t use his influence to bring truth to light. He drove it further back into the closet. Seeing as the world already knew, this would have been a great chance to proclaim that hypocrisy was the sin- not being gay. He could have helped countless suffering. He could have demonstrated to gay church kids a role model of a happy, healthy gay man who made it through the trial by fire, who turned his deepest shame into triumph.

Instead, Ted went into “restoration” and conversion therapy and is now “heterosexual” again. “I don’t think I’m gay,” Ted told Oprah.

It was a missed opportunity to point out that if we all view our sexuality as empowering and natural, there will be a lot less slimy slinking around and lying. This message can liberate gay and straight people alike: perhaps if men aren’t brought up in shame, they won’t have to beat or violate women who provoke their desire. Maybe women who aren’t taught that their entire value rests on their “purity” will start feeling valuable instead of soiled.

I hope the next time Ted’s caught with his pants around his ankles, he’ll find a real therapist. Maybe he’ll read a copy of Troy Perry’s The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay. But for now, Ted has merely placated the homo-loathing hordes who helped create his internal hell, spread disinformation, and justify discrimination. He has chosen to rejoin their ranks. And he’s still deceiving the one who needs his love and honesty the most: himself.

Some may decry the choice of title, arguing that it belittles the sacred lost. But it’s a perfect fit. You probably know that the words “lunatic” and “lunacy” have something to do with “lunar”- the moon. Lunatics are literally followers of the moon- of Luna, the moon goddess. This marvelous treasure trove spans history and cultures, giving tantalizing sketches of religious lunatics of every stripe. By bringing so many stories into one collection, it’s easy to see how madness pervades religion. Far from being the exception to the rule, religion is densely populated with bizarre ideas and fixations. In these vivid illustrations, Largo dismantles our sacred cows.

Help yourself to some capezzoli di St. Agatha- Sicilian breast-shaped pastries in honor of Agatha, who endured the torture and excision of her breasts rather than sully them through marriage’s sexual demands. Find out how Buddha got his belly. Meet the patron saint of hemorrhoids. Revisit one of the first megachurches, Sister Aimee’s Angelus Temple. Learn how the Virgin Mary herself handed the first rosary to St. Dominic in 1214. Choose from among a wide sampling of alien or UFO religions. Meet ascetics of every flavor, including Simeon, who crawled atop a flagpole in the sixth century and stayed there for 37 years. Incidentally, his mother had had a vision, where the severed head of John the Baptist floated before her and announced that her son would become a saint.

Since the author has a sweetly sarcastic sensibility, his cheerful storytelling seldom veers into mean-spirited terrain. And while the collection collates endless sources to extract the nutty bits, the brief snippets can’t possibly provide the whole story. This book is not meant to be an academic treatise, so verifying and expanding any given information remains the responsibility of the reader. It’s meant as a tantalizing smorgasbord for the curious, with an invitation for follow up in a library of over 400 suggested titles. Ironically, it is the sheer variety of madness, hucksterism, conviction, and oddity through all of religious history that shows us how it’s all the same.

Thou Shalt Not Lie

David Barton is reclaiming America for the Lord. He is tirelessly educating Americans about their historical roots and beloved constitution. He talks about the secular invasion in America, and he’s taking it back and giving it to God.

We’ve heard about one nation under god so often that we believe it. We know that in the beginning, God wrested America from the pagan hands of the devil’s children and gave it to his righteous servants.

But this is wishful thinking. Barton and his kind are Christian Revisionists, revising and denying history and spreading lies to suit an ideological agenda.

“The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element…of the Christian Right…The idea that America’s supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement,” writes Frederick Clarkson in The Public Eye.

The End Justifies the Means

Pullquote: “What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church… a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie. Such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.”
Martin Luther

Christian Reconstructionists don’t just re-construct a nation for God- they reconstruct facts. And history revisionism is a huge part of the movement. Forget that the Old Testament law that they aspire to return to forbids false witness. Lying is a standard modus operandi for so many “Christian Nationalists.” The end justifies the means.

We don’t have room for all details- suffice it to say that the word “God” was not in the Constitution, and the founding fathers, Christian or not, were adamant about separation of church and state. “We’ve seen how religious beliefs (and other ideologies) inspire people to view others as subhuman, deviant, and deserving of whatever happens to them, including death. It is the stuff of persecution, pogroms, and warfare. The framers of the U.S. Constitution struggled with how to inoculate the new nation against these ills…” wrote Clarkson.

And “In God we Trust” did not become the official motto until 1956.

Enter Christian Nationalist David Barton, a major player in the Texas Republican Party, and founder of WallBuilders, a Dominionist group hell bent on “restoring” theocracy. Time (2005) named him among the 25 most influential evangelists. He is on the advisory committee for National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, and for Providence Foundation, “training and networking leaders to transform nations.” Reconstuctionist groups like Providence ultimately aim to “reinstate” Old Testament law, including the stoning of homosexuals, witches, and disobedient children.

Barton lectures and ministers all over the Christian and mainstream media, given a voice by bigwig networks of all faith stripes, spreading his fiction gospel about the roots of the nation. He insists in The Myth of Separation that only Christians should hold office!

His flock won’t balk at his extremist views- or his falsehoods. Goaded by “authority” figures like James Dobson, the late D. James Kennedy, and Glenn Beck, they praise Barton for holding up the Constitution. His teachings inform politicians, too. Never mind that Barton has lectured alongside holocaust deniers for white power “Christian Identity” groups like Scriptures for America. Barton claims he didn’t know, a weak protest for someone so politically astute.

Revising History

Barton’s research in his speeches and books is convincing- how can all those facts be wrong? With so many quotes and references to so many documents, he makes a strong case even if we don’t like that case, no?

No. History scholars refute Barton’s teachings. He misquotes past presidents, and twists their ideas. He deliberately leaves out quotes and distorts contexts.

He also makes it up as he goes along.

Barton has been thoroughly debunked. Rob Boston writes frequently on this, showing us that scholars have questioned quotes pumped by Barton and attributed to the founders. Not only did they find no sources for many facts and quotes, but Barton himself admitted some were bogus!

He’s an admitted liar. His education is from Oral Roberts University, ahem. But now he reviews material for curriculum textbooks. And his words are as good as God to homeschoolers. Say what?

AFTER all of his lies became common knowledge, Barton’s influence and popularity increased. Go figure.

Guilty as Spongebob

Jim’s writings were revered like Apostle Paul’s in my childhood home. His Focus on the Family propaganda is so wholeheartedly American that it became brand. After three decades of homo-terror warnings, not even his ridiculous boycott of Spongebob made him lose credibility among disciples. Spongebob is guilty of “homosexual advocacy,” Dobson says.

He was born in Louisiana in 1936 and born again at three. He received his doctorate in child development in 1967, and later founded both Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

Both oppose women, gays, and science. Dobson describes gays as “Nazis” and “THE greatest threat to your children. It is of particular danger to your wide-eyed boys, who have no idea what demoralization is planned for them.”

They want more funding for abstinence ed, a proven failure since the U.S. has 70 times the rate of gonorrhea among youth than European countries with sex ed, and among the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world.

The Same Song and Dance

His evidence is often based on the work of Paul Cameron, disbarred from the APA for making up research. Other sources have made it clear that Dobson has twisted their work or not even read it.

Dobson quoted in Time, Drs Carol Gilligan, of Harvard: Kyle Pruett, of Yale, and Angela Phillips, of Goldsmiths College. All 3 were irate that he lied about data, among a barrage of letters from experts he’d used in various works. Some asked him to post their letters on his Focus website with a public apology. He didn’t.

Dr. Robert Spitzer was among the outraged. He helped remove the disorder status from homosexuality in 1973. And so his 2001 research showing that “gays could change” was praised by Dobson for the “courage” to overturn the “myth.”

But Dr. Spitzer said Focus “once again reported findings of my study out of context to support their fight against gay rights.”

Calling Dobson on his lies doesn’t faze him. “Communities do not let prostitutes, pedophiles, voyeurs, adulterers, and those who sexually prefer animals to publicly celebrate their lifestyles, so why should homosexuals get such privileges?”

Poor Little Wiener Dog

Unruly wiener dogs are another thorn. Jim brags in one book about beating his dog for not heading to bed on time. “That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other,” he writes.

His other pet issue is against “population control.” Dobson supports fringe extremist prolifers like Randall Terry. He thinks taking the Pill or the morning after pill is abortion, too.

Tubal ligation? “For obvious reasons, the Bible is absolutely silent on these recent technological procedures.” Umm, yes. Obvious reasons.

But for a man who concerns himself with “helping families thrive,” he sure hates children. “… pain is a marvelous purifier,” he has famously written. In one of many parenting guides, he calls kids: bratty, pugnacious, anarchists, horrid, negative, sour, sullen, selfish, insane, obnoxious, spoiled brat, groaning lump, and so forth.

Dobson also demanded the resignation of a minister who asked Christians to care about creation! The climate controversy is shifting the “emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence…”

Let it Rain

But does any of Dobson’s nonsense really matter?

Time Magazine called him “the nation’s most influential evangelical leader.” His media empire spans 150 countries and 7,000 TV stations, reaching 220 million daily. Chris Hedges called him “perhaps the most powerful figure in the Dominionist movement.” He is widely accredited with rallying the Lord’s troops to vote for and land the win of George Bush.

Obama of course is “lowest common denominator of morality” with a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution, who edits “God’s word to fit his liberal worldview.” So Dobson’s servants released a video commanding Christians to pray for “rain of Biblical proportions” on the day of Obama’s historic nomination speech.

It was sunny all day. But rain it did — at the Republican convention. Hurricane Gustav hurled itself at the southern Bible belts, causing the largest U.S. evacuation exodus in history with 2 million people headed north.

The Lord has spoken.

Blame it on the Boogie

Pastor Doyle Davidson doesn’t believe in mental illness. “I do not believe that any mental illness exists other than demons, and no medication can straighten it out, other than the power of God,” the Texas preacher said.

The founder of Water of Life Ministries in Plano, Texas, was “called” to plant a church after God told him Plano was possessed by the demonic spirit of Jezebel, whose evil seductions “forced” 850 godly men into fornication. A staple of his ministry has been the “loosing” of Jezebel demonesses from women parishioners.

Stranger still is the circle of dancers, singing and jangling tambourines, prancing around the septuagenarian like trained foals. His sermons are peppered with the f-word, and include calling members of his flock “bitch,” “stupid,” and “mindless twits.” The Dallas Observer reported that he once barked at a crying child: “Shut that brat up.” Glenna Whitley quotes him as saying, “I guess if I took my gun and shot every third person in this front row I bet I’d get your attention.”

But what he loves most is preaching against women, offering from his pulpit such devotional inspirations as “my wife is a slut” and, “Who told me she was a slut? God did.”

Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live

Said wife was never Doyle’s wife at all, but his secretary. He stayed married to Patti, but she had become infected with that darned Jezebel spirit. “God put a sword between us, and that was it.” Lisa Staton was an emotionally unstable young woman who sought refuge in her pastor.

Their 17 year long relationship ended with Doyle’s arrest. He’d gone to Lisa’s house to exorcise a devil. Her husband came home and found Doyle drunk, pinning Lisa down while choking her.

But Doyle simply posted the “facts” online — quoting from the book of Acts. The Lord sent an earthquake to deal with the false arrest of Paul and Silas, who had merely been exorcising demons. “This is the way God deals with false arrests for casting a devil out of a woman.”

Doyle says Lisa and the police were lying sorcerers. (Lisa and her husband have gone into hiding.)

But Doyle’s obsession with possession has contributed to more than broken homes. There are multiple tales of coercion, manipulation, lying, and threatening from former members who claim they were brainwashed by fasting, controlled socializing, and terror of hell. His family members are too scared to talk about him.

But one woman’s harrowing story stands out over them all.

Isaac Revisited

Dena Schlosser was prone to depression and odd spells. One day after her daughter was born, she slit her wrists. She was diagnosed as psychotic, with postpartum depression, and hospitalized. Dena didn’t want to leave the hospital, but her husband, encouraged by Pastor Doyle, took charge after “praying.” Dena was to throw away all of her meds and refuse further treatment. Prayer and exorcism would heal her.

Dena became obsessed with evil spirits, after Doyle continually fed her garbage about Satanic women. She was taken to hospital again in 2004 after a psychotic break, but her husband feared that the shrinks would “misinterpret” her demon talk for insanity and give her pills, which their church forbade. When Dena’s mother tried to intervene with Doyle, she says he told her, “People who oppose me have been known to disappear.”

In Nov. 2004, 911 took a call from a “euphoric” Dena. They heard hymns playing. She announced that God ordered her to kill her baby. She’d been reading her Bible around the clock and was moved by a verse saying that if your arm offends you, cut it off. And so she chopped the arms off of her infant daughter with a kitchen knife.

The reverend, who counseled the couple multiple times in the week before the murder, told authorities he “barely” knew them. He said he never told anyone to stop taking medication.

Dena was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity. Later, an inoperable tumour was found in her brain.

Doyle says he doesn’t interpret the Bible; he only preaches it. “That’s why the world hates me,” he says.

This Great Apostle of Murder

John Knox was a pivotal leader of the Reformation. The vastly important changes he made in liturgy and worship included abandoning the idolatrous tradition of kneeling during the Eucharist. He was also concerned with such substantial issues as what type of garments the clergy should wear. Knox was a priest who became a Protestant around 1545. He is praised for standing tall for religious freedom. But as today, “religious liberty” was a thinly veiled privilege extended only to the advocate’s religion, not to any other faiths. Knox rallied for the punishment and execution for those who wished to continue with Catholic styles of worship.

Knox endorsed death for all who differed from his personal interpretation of The Word, for which historian W.E.H. Lecky called him “this great apostle of murder.” “His law most streatly commandeth idolaters and fals prophetes to be punished with death,” Knox wrote. (Thanks to positiveatheism.org for this reference.) He openly proclaimed that any Protestant man had the right to slaughter any Catholic. He rejoiced publicly at the murder of Cardinal Beaton, who had burned one of Knox’s mentors at the stake, gleefully endorsing the brutality with which the cardinal was dragged from his bed, mutilated, and stabbed. For his role in the murder conspiracy, Knox was captured and imprisoned for two years to work in a ship galley.

Famous for two-to-three hour sermons, Knox wrote continually, including The History of the Reformation. He spoke bits of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French and more. For his scholarship and for preaching against “the synagogue of Satan,” Knox is revered today alongside John Calvin and John Wesley.

The Monstrous Regiment

The presence of Mary may be what Knox detested most, even above inappropriate vestments. Knox burned with something much stronger than the love of the Lord — his whole life was fuelled by hatred of women. When forced to kiss an image of the Virgin Mary, Knox flung her into the ocean. “Let our Lady learn to swim!” he allegedly declared. Of course, had the male God been flung out, he would have walked to shore upon the waves.

Knox’s countless writings against the queens of his time are heralded as bravery, for said queens were adulteresses not fit to rule over men. The book The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women was written to defy the corrupt Mary Tudor, Mary of Guise, and Mary Queen of Scots. It was filled with reprehensible venom towards women shocking even in the 1500s.

The 1558 treatise made it clear that “woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man.” Speaking for God, Knox wrote that He would say, “Your free will has brought yourself and mankind into the bondage of Satan, I therefore will bring you in bondage to man…because you have deceived your man, you shall therefore be no longer mistress over your own appetites, over your own will or desires. For in you there is neither reason nor discretion… [Man] shall be lord and governor, not only over your body, but even over your appetites and will.”

The idea of women’s equality or rule is “detestable,” “repugnant to nature,” and “treason and conspiracy committed against God.” Women are “weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish; and experience has declared them to be inconstant, variable, cruel, lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment.”

And what of those learned men who disagreed with Knox and saw women as equals? Why, off with their heads, of course! “If any presume to defend that impiety… the sentence of death.”

Doomed to Repeat

There are no easy answers to the bloodbath of religious history at the end of the Medieval Age. The Mother Church was steeped in just as much hatred and superstitious nonsense as the new church. Warring faiths and interfaith tyranny had been going on since kingdom come.

Indeed, we have still not achieved a separation of church and state. While it is impossible to revise history with the fuzzy peacenik sentiments I espouse, it is reprehensible to erase history and present figures like Calvin and Knox as “godly men.” If we don’t tell it like it is, how will we learn from our mistakes?

To the Back of the Bus, Please

Great men of God like Jerry Falwell notoriously blame floods and fires on the Lord’s wrath over women who want to work. It seems God doesn’t have time to punish big sins like slavery, pollution, greed, genocide, war, racism, violence, or child brothels when homos are brainwashing our kids with cartoons like Spongebob and the Teletubbies.

Falwell, cofounder of the Moral Majority, says the call for Christian conservatism was ignited when abortion was legalized. That’s when fags and feminism took over our Christian heritage. These groups couldn’t be called minorities, like God-ordained groups of real humans like blacks and Hispanics, Falwell said, because these were fake lifestyles of sin that rejected Biblical patriarchy.

The Nation’s Max Blumenthal writes that Falwell’s recollection is revisionist, for his mission was built long before gay rights were born. Falwell’s early church, built in a “backwater bottling plant,” was built on “rabid” segregationalism.

Falwell was born in 1933 to a bootlegger, and after college, he started a church in Virginia. The big issue facing Christians in 1956 was that Christian schools were weeding out separatism. White-only schools were losing tax-exempt status, and Falwell didn’t like this one bit.

“The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line,” he said in one sermon. In another: “The true Negro does not want integration. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race.”

Falwell claimed integration would “destroy our race eventually.” He complained about a couple “of opposite race live next door…as man and wife.”

The Birth of the Immoral Majority

In 1979, the Moral Majority was born, spurring Christians into political action. “The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country,” he bellowed in a ’76 sermon. (There was no mention of America’s original animist faiths.)

By 1983, the U.S. News and World Report named Falwell one of the 25 most influential Americans. Not great, since the rev was outspoken in support of apartheid. He called for Christians to reinvest in South Africa, opposing economic sanctions. He called the African National Congress a “communist front” and Bishop Desmond Tutu a “phony.” He opposed Nelson Mandela’s release from prison because he was a “communist.”

But as the ‘90s dawned, racism was becoming unpopular, so Falwell changed his focus to gays. “Gay folks would just as soon kill you as look at you,” he said. He called a new wave of Christian gays, the Metropolitan Community Church “brute beasts” and a “vile and Satanic system.” He called a lesbian talk show host “Ellen Degenerate.” He also said the preschool program for kids, The Teletubbies, was “role modeling the gay lifestyle,” which was hurting “the moral lives of children.” The stuffed alien Tinky Winky was “purple — the gay pride color.” His antenna was — gasp — a triangle, and he carried a red bag.

You didn’t have to be gay to provoke Jer Bear’s wrath. Billy Graham was “the chief servant of Satan.” The National Organization of Women was actually the “National Organization of Witches.”

And the evil American Civil Liberties Union was “to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.” Jerry wasn’t fond of Jews, though. “Jews can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose,” he grumbled, not content with his considerable fortune. The antichrist? “Of course he’ll be Jewish.”

Geography Lessons

His Bible said so, and the “Bible is the inerrant … word of the living God … infallible, without error in all matters … such as geography, science, history.” Somewhere in that Bible, there was something for labor unions, too. “Labor unions should study and read the Bible instead of asking for more money. When people get right with God, they are better workers.”

Most famously, Jerry Falwell said that hurricanes and disasters and the 9/11 attacks were divine retribution for homos.

In the Bible it also says gluttony is sin, and maybe 9/11 attacks happened because the rev was breaking the scales. In any event, a series of artery blockages and infections did him in, 2007, at 73.

Falwell was inducted last fall into the Christian Hall of Fame. In the company of Calvin, Apostle Paul, and Luther, Falwell is one of 124 inductees. “Falwell is honored for having been one of the great heroes of the faith in the last century,” said Rev. Mike Frazier at the ceremony. “…Perhaps he has done more for God than any other man in our generation.”

Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, and the Freemasons have provided fodder for countless blockbusters.

“Christian” writer Texe Marrs is sleazy showbiz. Does he believe his own hype? In his world, a demon lurks around every corner, a dangerous throwback to the kind of medieval thinking that fueled the Burning Times and Puritan society. The kind of thinking that fuels the ruthless domination of women in the fundamentalist Islamic world, where execution exists routinely for adulteresses, queers, and apostates.

Power of Prophecy is Marrs’ “end-times ministry, called by God to exalt Jesus Christ and to expose darkness in these last days.” Exalting Christ means rabid anti-Semitism. Exposing darkness warning us of demonic hand signals that prove everyone from Oprah to Kramer to Janet Jackson are devil worshippers. By their hands ye shall know them.

Beelzebub’s brethren have a special sign language. Satanic signals include making fists, interlaced fingers, hands cupped, hands flat, and the ubiquitous El Diablo, a fave in rock’n’roll. El Diablo’s gesture is the same as the deaf sign for “I love you.” And that’s all the proof Texe needs to say Hellen Keller was demon possessed.

It Came From Outer Space

Texe was an aerospace studies and psych prof before he hit the big time with Dark Secrets of the New Age. But the Jews were more of a concern than crystals: “How Jewish Avengers Took Over Hitler’s Concentration Camps and Used Them to Brutally Torture and Mass Murder Thousands of Helpless Germans.”

Texe also endorses and sells a book by A. Hitchcock: Synagogue of Satan: the Secret History of Jewish World Domination.

He’s not fond of queers either, and called one churchgoer “a big homosexual faggot.”

Who could Texe hate more than Jews or fags? Jewish fags of course! He says the Columbine shootings were part of the gay Jew agenda.

Texe says he loves Jews. “If we hated the Jews, we wouldn’t want to see them in Heaven with us, would we? We’d want to see them go to Hell,” he said in Thunder Over Zion. He also said, “No Christian can be an anti-Semite. I cry tears for the Jewish … sacrificed on the altar of Mammon.”

The Great Barbie Conspiracy

Texe warns us that Hilary Clinton has — gasp — strong feminist ties… and that the NIV translation of the Bible is a tool of New Age feminism. But brother evangels are evil, too: “Billy Graham’s sad, downward spiral into the mire and slime of biblical apostasy continues unabated,” he says. I’m no fan of John Hagee myself, but Texe thinks, “He may be possessed by Satan.”

My personal favourite is the Mattel conspiracy. Not because I just can’t get my boobs to go up so high without plastic surgery, but because Barbie is the actual whore of Babylon. “Even our children are being stealthily indoctrinated into the new faith… The Mattel Toy Co. has introduced its new ‘Goddess of the Sun’ Barbie doll. Is this the Whore of Babylon spirit, alive and with us today?”

It may be a stretch to consider Texe a pillar of faith, since his extremism is too extreme even for extremists. But I argue that it’s important to see how far radical fundamentalism can take us. There are many who believe Texe is a lone warrior standing up for the truth. And history is full of absurd fairy tales that justified war, slaughter, racism, and the complete subjugation of women. It’s human nature to want someone to blame, and blaming it on the devil is nothing new.

It was, in fact, insane zealots like Marrs who stoked the fires and wrote the Malleus Maleficarum. In Uganda today, the hysterical right has won their push for family values, and laws to execute queers are swinging into motion. Millions have been executed for working for the devil. It’s not far fetched to think it can happen again.

The Devil in You

In American Fascists, Chris Hedges refers to the Puritan roots of modern American theocracy. He points out that they came to abolish the devil, sanctioned by God to slaughter the native inhabitants.

Chris is not an atheist, so I hoped Dad would warm to his book about the dark side of Christianity. Sigh. Instead of acknowledging the superstitious mindset of Puritan life, he scrawled angrily in the margin, “NO DOCUMENTATION. JONATHAN EDWARDS WAS A MISSIONARY TO THE NATIVES.”

Yes, Dad, yes he was.

We are told the Puritans came from Europe to escape religious persecution, braving the seas to live godly lives. Few are told the Puritans had blood on their hands. Indeed, the root of the Irish hell between Catholics and Protestants is the Puritan desecration and slaughter of Catholic and Anglican churches, castles, monasteries, and their inhabitants.

Europe was saturated in witch hysteria: Catholics and Protestants were equal partners in this barbaric era. The Puritans brought the superstitions that fueled this blot in history with them to America. They were obsessed with devils. Demon possession was responsible for moles, birth defects, mental illness, stillborn children, bad crops, stormy seas. Satan was everywhere — he was seen in the flesh as a cloven-hoofed Negro, a deer, black cats, and of course, women.

His home was America, which God ordered the Puritans to purify. America, home of the savage pagan Indians, who had to be converted or killed.

Some Loathsome Insect

New England’s Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758, is considered by many the greatest preacher and theologian in America, ever. He was a brilliant man who studied at Yale at the age of 13, graduating by 17. He questioned age-old religious ideas of women’s subservience, celebrating a romantic relationship with his wife, and writing about Eve as the mother of all that is holy, the seed of Christ.

He supported science, refusing the popular stance that it was heretical, believing it revealed God’s glory rather. And yes, Dad, he did move a few inches away from the superstitious obsessions of his preaching predecessors such as Cotton Mather, who rallied up more salacious terror than the horror movies that were sin to watch when I was a kid.

But Edwards was indeed obsessed with hell and the devil, who lived inside the natives he ministered to. And he put the fire into “fire and brimstone” preaching. Indeed, he put the brimstone in, too. King of this genre, Edwards loved elaborate descriptions of torture, detailing grimly how God would dole out punishment.

God “abhors” you; like “a spider or some loathsome insect” he holds you “over the fire.” God’s “fiery floods” and “inconceivable fury” bind you to that “world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone.” Unless you convert, “the dreadful pit of the glowing flames” and “hell’s wide gaping mouth” await you. Only the elect could convert — the rest were doomed regardless.

The Bell Curve

Clearly, the vile sins of theatre, poetry, courting, fashion, and more were more heinous in God’s eyes than slavery. Edwards was among the first to offer blacks church membership, but as an educated man, he deserved slaves, who were put into bondage by the Lord himself. (Ironically, his son of the same name was known for abolitionist work.) The reverend came under fire from his parish, according to Dr. Ken Minkema, for his family’s lavish taste in “jewelry, chocolate, Boston-made clothing, children’s toys—and slaves.”

Blacks were low, but the hottest pit of hell belonged to the natives. Edwards had an axe to grind with the Indians, who had massacred some relatives while defending their territory. Maybe that’s why he described them as the “devil’s children,” whose religion was “devil worship.” He said, “The devil sucks their blood.” Indians, he believed, were descended from Noah’s cursed son, Ham. He preached that Satan lured these vile people from the gospel, across Asia into the devil’s wilderness of North America. Now God wanted the land back, and had given it to the godly to take by any means necessary.

Lest my critics leap on me and begin hurling apologetics my way, I am fully aware that Puritan history and Edwards’ relationship with natives was more complex than a few paragraphs can express. Edwards truly believed he was sent to save Indian souls from torment. Yet today the godly sneer at pagan African tribes that believe certain other cultures, like the albinos or the pygmies, are of the devil. But we are no different.

It’s time to stop excusing historical blunders or justifying current prejudices. Our moral compass cannot come from such woefully misguided pillars of faith. Instead, we must learn from their mistakes.

The Demons are at it Again

Ohio’s Rod Parsley is another megachurch megaphone living the lifestyle of the rich and shameless. With a private jet and millionaire’s estate, he’s clearly not starving. But Rod’s never been shy about saying, literally, “show me the money,” and he’s not shy now about asking for more. Recently Rod announced a Satanic attack on his ministry — the poor haven’t been giving as much as he wants. In addition, he already gave away $3 million of the World Harvest Church’s dollars — “our” dollars — to settle damages in a lawsuit for child abuse. Rather than apologize for a baby leaving the church’s Cuddle Care room with welts, scratches, and cuts, having been beaten with a ruler, Rod blames a “demonically inspired assault against us.”

Prior to this episode, another toddler had a fractured skull. His parents were told he had collided with another kid. Church admin were forbidden to discuss the incidents with anyone. (There were also incidents where Rod’s dad was charged with sexually harassing a church member, and a civic suit where a member charged Rod and Dad of beating him to a pulp. The charges were dropped against Rod, but his dad pleased no contest. The defendant also claimed that his $7,000 tithe was used for “the enrichment of Rodney Parsley, his parents and others so as to achieve an opulent lifestyle for themselves.”)

Orwellian Gays

Of course, like all other dominionist preachers, abortion is at the top of Rod’s anti-Satan agenda, despite that he doesn’t like the little ones enough to hire staff who don’t beat them. “Infanticide” is followed closely by the gay threat, and then by Islam. Where other evangels may use diplomacy when discussing other faiths, Rod says straight up that God wants America to “destroy” the Muslim world, and that Muhammad was possessed by demons.

As for queers, Rod opposes hate crime legislation, which would infringe on his right to gay bash. He has likened these laws to Orwell’s 1984, stating the “sole intent is to limit traditional biblical thinking and biblical speaking.” He warns: “You see, the legislation that’s before our United States senators right now extends to speech and can punish people—hear me now—not for their actions, but for their culturally incorrect thoughts.” So much for Thou Shalt Not Lie — the proposed legislation seeks only to outlaw violent actions, and specifies it does NOT extend to speech or religious expression.

Many dominionists lay low about being God’s chosen, but Rod says you’d better vote Republican or face the fiery furnace, that we are called to be “Christocrats.” America — and the world — must subscribe to the Christian Reich’s interpretation of Biblical values, and there is no room for Satanic liberal theology, biology, or civil rights. Following God “is not a democracy; that is a theocracy,” he says.

God as Gold

To be fair, the reverend’s Bridges of Hope ministry has delivered food, water, and medical care to developing nations and at home. There are strings attached, of course: the heathens — obviously afflicted because of their rejection of God, witchcraft and sodomy — must hear how their predicament is caused by God’s wrath. Rod preaches clearly that God is gold — poverty is spiritual bondage. His saviour didn’t have a pot to piss in — and preached that he himself was the poor, the stranger, the prisoner. He said that anyone who denied the poor would not enter the kingdom of heaven.

But Rod, who has said, “I am superior to the forces of darkness,” preaches that “for you to live from paycheck to paycheck is to deny the power of the gospel.” What the “good news” means for “a poor man is that he doesn’t have to be poor anymore.” Those living in “financial bondage” have refused the flow of the gospel. “You have denied the perpetual propulsion of power that could deliver you from not only sin and sickness but from the horrible stench of poverty.”

Of course, poverty isn’t caused by underemployment, colonization, overpopulation, hurricanes and other inhospitable climates, disease, mental illness, corrupt governments, or greed — it’s because we didn’t buy one of Pastor Rod’s “miracle prayer cloths.”

Just in case we weren’t completely sure what he means by all this prosperity talk, Rod spells it out for us: “I just love to talk about your money. Let me be very clear — I want your money. I deserve it. This church deserves it.”

Lorette C. Luzajic writes about all kinds of interesting people at Fascinating People. Her latest book is the anthology, Goodbye Billie Jean: the Meaning of Michael Jackson.