No Longer Quivering
I’ve been avoiding talking of this particular pastor Tony Spell, from Central, Louisiana and Life Tabernacle Church. Why? Couple of reasons. One big reason, I spent a lot of growing up time and college years in that area of the world and have lots of not so fond memories, including harassment by those in fundamentalist religions there. As a result I hold very low expectations by anyone in that area, a place filled with the reddest of Trump supporting, bleach guzzling, fact ignoring folks. I have elderly aunts and a mother living just down the road from Central and it looks like it hasn’t changed much since my arrest in Central in 1976.
Yes, that’s the other reason I cringe away when someone mentions Central. In my teens I made the mistake of being in a car full of cretins who decided to play the dumbest sport of all time “Mailbox Baseball” I was sitting between the two participants trying to get them to stop when we were pulled over. Charges were dropped against me, and I learned a lesson, do not hang out with cretinous people. I did laugh seeing the coverage of Tony Spell’s arrest and seeing that Central law enforcement is still using that same building all those years later.
The bane of my college experience, Bethany Baptist, is just down the road from Spell’s place.
I am sure there are some nice normal folks in the Central area. I’ve just never run into one myself. Just guys like Tony Spell, that think they know better about everything than anyone else while exhibiting a serious lack of real knowledge.
Hemant Mehta, The Friendly Atheist, has been on fire covering all the multitude of Coronavirus denying and lack of all scientific knowledge doings of Tony Spell on his Patheos blog. While I shudder away filled with bad memories going “Ugh!”
Tony Spell, is the pastor of a church in a very backwater burg near Baton Rouge. Baton Rouge is a place which itself isn’t a sophisticated environment, a company town run by Exxon. Spell has not only defied Louisiana rules on social distancing, calling off in person church services and a handful of other things. He’s gleefully martyrbating over it in only the way a powerless little guy in Bugtussel, Nebrahoma could. A month ago none of us that ever heard of this guy. Now he’s in every newspaper and television news station. He is loving it.
These good Christian patriarchs crave public attention, and it does not matter if it is for feeding the poor, threatening to kill gays or gleefully chortling while bathing naked in a vat of worms. It’s all about them, not the people of their church, not about a broken hurting world. That’s my second reason I wasn’t eager to write about this. Like starting to call Lori Alexander “She who may not be mentioned” it’s giving attention to an awful someone who will glory in it.
He’s been arrested for attempting to drive a bus ministry bus over a protestor. How very Jesus of him! Sadly he made bail quickly, only spending a few hours in one of Louisiana’s infected hot spots, the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison. He’s defied every single stay at home order, to the point where they arrested him for the violations, fitted him with an ankle monitor for house arrest.
Which did not stop him on Sunday. He arrived at church to preach, ankle monitor and all.
“Spell still showed up to the church’s Sunday service, where he was greeted with cheers, according to a livestream posted on the Facebook. The pastor showed off his ankle monitor while standing in front of his congregation, claiming, “I’m not hiding anymore.”
“It’s a dirty, rotten, crying shame when you have to hide in America,” he said.”
It’s a dirty, rotten, crying shame that a pastor, someone that professes to love others, puts self promotion above the safety of everyone in the Greater Baton Rouge area. I am disappointed that it sounds like he received no reasonable consequences from law enforcement more than a severe scolding for violation of the order. I was hoping they would do what they would have done had he been a poor man of color who violated his bail conditions. Pick his rear end up from home and let him reflect on his sins from the overcrowded confines of the Parish Prison I mentioned above.
Spell has said a whole pile of awful things during this nervous time of Covid 19 stay at home. He’s bragged that good Christians don’t mind dying from the disease as long as they have church services. He’s brought bus loads of sick, at risk folks to the services. A number of people connected to the church, including his own lawyer, have ended up sick with Coronavirus. There are deaths connected to his stubborn stupidity.
His father, and retired pastor Timothy Spell said this yesterday about the risks at a protest at the Louisiana State Capital.
“Anybody with any sense at all knows that if anybody has been to Walmart, Lowes, Winn Dixie, any grocery store, your job, do you think we are stupid enough to believe that this virus has a brain?”
But most people aren’t stupid enough to keep meeting while people in the congregation are dying around them. He should be charged with reckless endangerment, manslaughter and anything else they can find just for exposing so many to the disease that ended up killing or harming them.
One the plus side it looks like medical researchers are starting to look at Proton Pump Inhibitors like Pepcid as possible help in the fight against this virus. It’s being tested along side biologics, a few anti virals and other drugs. It would be nice if something as simple and over the counter as Pepcid could impact this thing.
Also I wanted to highlight this piece by a lady with the kind of chronic illnesses and comorbidity so many of us here deal with. She makes a point that saying only the sick will die is hurtful and hateful. The sick are not disposable or sacrificial!
It’s been almost five days now since Trump spouted his ideas of injecting lungs with disinfectants like Lysol and bleach. He can claim all day he was being sarcastic but it’s a fact that states nationwide are seeing a jump in poison control calls and ER visits by people drinking those things. Words have meaning.
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