The Rev. Reginald Barjesus has recently become aware of serious disciplinary problems within the
Society Against Theological and Anti-humanistic Nastiness. Last week, some low-level scribe at
CBS's Crimesider posted a perfectly crap "news" story about conservative Christians: "Is Conservative Christian Group, No Greater Joy Ministries, Pushing Parents to Beat Kids to Death?" This "news" story begins with a question. Which it doesn't answer. And then it asks: "What do you think?" It's as if we're supposed to do the work of the idiot scribe ourselves. He should hang his head in shame; he should be drummed out the organization altogether and compelled to listen to the collected works of
Stryper [definitely worth a look] while being molested by a gaggle of Irish Catholic priests (frocked, defrocked, or prufrocked -- doesn't matter).
Side note: This use of music as an instrument of torture has the virtue of being both exceptionally painful and permissible under US law. Indeed, one suspects that a major reason for the remarkable success of artists like Stryper, Amy Grant, and MercyMe may be that since the first Gulf war the CIA and the Pentagon have been licensing the libraries of Christian record labels for use in the ongoing crusade against Muslims, something which has been kept secret for fear of irritating the ACLU and violating the disestablishment clause of the constitution. What do you think?
Of course, there is no doubt that conservative Christian "family values" are indeed pernicious and in many instances have caused life-long psychological trauma, maybe even death. We are more certain of that than we are about the reality of global warming. And that is precisely the point. In much the same way that the shoddy methods and discriminatory practices of a handful of overly zealous environmentalists/ climate scientists have lent credence to those who insist that global warming is a satanic conspiracy (once again, let me make it perfectly clear that the
Society Against Theological and Anti-humanistic Nastiness has nothing to do with global warming), stories like the one discussed here undermine our well-intentioned efforts to save the world (and even Christians themselves) from the absurdities and harmful consequences of their ridiculous dogmas (for as they themselves might say: one loves the sinner yet hates the sin).
Consider, for instance, when our lowly CBS scribe writes:
...the ministry's website boasts that the Pearls' first book on how to properly beat children, "To Train Up a Child," has over 450,000 copies in print.
The key words here --"properly beat children"-- don't come from the book; they are the words of the scribe himself. Now, had he actually read the book, he would no doubt have been able to find some sentences that support his claims -- instructions, perhaps, on how to properly bless rubber hoses for use in a holy beating. But as it stands, his allegations are wholly unsubstantiated, the kind of thing one might expect from Christians when they talk about the Jews ritually murdering children and desecrating the Host. As for the low-level scribe himself, so great is the damage that he and his ilk might cause the good work of S.A.T.A.N. that one suspects him of acting as a double-agent -- perhaps he's a mole planted by the Discovery Institute or a journalist trained at
Liberty University.
Stories like these allow Christians to stand up and shout:
Look at this!! We're being unfairly persecuted in the mainstream media!! And they would be right. The
Society Against Theological and Anti-humanistic Nastiness doesn't want that; we want Christianity to be persecuted fairly (again, let's differentiate between the sinner and the sin). The absurdity of the Christian faith, the atrocities of its history, the bankruptcy of its ethics -- all of this is well-documented stuff. There's no need to make anything up, no need to be duplicitous.
Having said all this, it is perfectly fair to point our fingers at their rock & roll icons and laugh at their fancy clothes and hair.
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