Undercover with the Christian Right

[CptStern]

very interesting article about a rolling stone writer who inflitrated a christian right group, parsed because some of you are too lazy to read long passages:

I had been attending the Cornerstone Church for weeks, but this was really my first day of school. I had joined Cornerstone ? a megachurch in the Texas Hill Country ? to get a look inside the evangelical mind-set that gave the country eight years of George W. Bush.

The whole idea behind Christian Zionism is to align America with the nation of Israel so as to "hurry God up" in his efforts to bring about Armageddon. As Hagee tells it, only after Israel is involved in a final showdown involving a satanic army (in most interpretations, a force of Arabs led by Russians) will Christ reappear. On that happy day, Hagee and his True Believers will be whisked up to Heaven by God, while the rest of us nonbelievers are left behind on Earth to suck eggs and generally suffer various tortures.

So here I was, standing in the church parking lot, having responded to church advertisements hawking an "Encounter Weekend" ? three solid days of sleep-away Christian fellowship that would teach me the "joy" of "knowing the truth" and "being set free." That had sounded harmless enough, but now that I was here and surrounded by all of these blanket-bearing people, I was nervous.

I slunk in my seat, trying to look inconspicuous. My disguise was modeled on other men I'd seen in church ? pane glasses and the very gayest blue-and-white-striped Gap polo shirt I'd been able to find that afternoon. Buried on a clearance rack next to the underwear section in a nearby mall, the Gap shirt was one of those irritating throwbacks to the Meatballs/Seventies-summer-camp-geek look, but stripped of its sartorial irony, it really just screamed Friendless Loser! ? so I bought it without hesitation and tried to match it with that sheepish, ashamed-to-have-a-penis look I had seen so many other young men wearing in church.

"Let me ask you a question," he said. "Why do alcoholics give birth to alcoholics? Why do the fatherless give birth to the fatherless?" He paused. "There are some people out there who will tell you it's genetics. It's in our genes, they say. Well, I tell you, it's not genetics. It's a generational curse!"

Fortenberry then started in on a rant against science and against scientific explanations for cycles of sin. "Take homosexuals," he said. "Every single homosexual is a sexual-abuse victim. They are not born. They are created ? by pedophiles."

The crowd swallowed that one whole. One thing about this world: Once a preacher says it, it's true. No one is going to look up anything the preacher says, cross-check his facts, raise an eyebrow at something that might sound a little off.

Fortenberry told a story about a nephew of his who called him up one night. "Both of his kids had fallen on the ground in respiratory distress, half-conscious, writhing around, gasping for air," Fortenberry said. "And I said to my nephew, I said, 'It isn't something they've done. It's something you've done.' "

The crowd murmured in assent.

"I told my nephew to look around the house," Fortenberry continued. "I said, 'Do you have a copy of Harry Potter?' And he said yes. And I said, 'That's your problem.' So I told him to go get that copy of that book, tear it in half and throw it out the window. So he does it, and guess what? Both of those kids stood up completely recovered, just like that."

coming from on that side of the room. Some of the husbands glanced nervously over in the direction of their wives.

"In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of cancer!" said Fortenberry.

"Oooh! Unnh! Unnnnnh!" wailed a woman in the front row.

"Bleeech!" puked the bald man behind me.

Within about a minute after that, the whole chapel erupted in pandemonium. About half the men and three-fourths of the women were writhing around and either play-puking or screaming. Not wanting to be a bad sport, I raised my hand for one of the life coaches to see.

"Need . . . a . . . bag," I said as he came over.

He handed me a bag.

"In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of handwriting analysis!" shouted Fortenberry.

Handwriting analysis? I jammed the bag over my mouth and started coughing, then went into a very real convulsion of disbelief as I listened to this astounding list, half-laughing and half-retching.

"In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!" Fortenberry continued. "In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!"

Cough, cough!

The minutes raced by. Wayne Williams was now fully prostrate, held up only by a trio of coaches, each of whom took part of his writhing body and propped it up. Another bald man in the front of the chapel was now freaking out in Linda Blair fashion, roaring and making horrific demon noises.

"Rum-balakasha-oom!" shouted Fortenberry in tongues, waving a hand in front of Linda Blair Man. "Cooom-balakasha-froom! In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of philosophy!"

holy comedic gold batman, they're batshit insane

We were called back to chapel, and this time the drill was speaking in tongues. We were asked to come up to the front of the chapel and let a life coach anoint us with oil, hold our heads and speak to us in tongues. Fortenberry instructed us to "just let it out. Just let it out and it'll come out."

He didn't come right out and say, "Just act like you're speaking in tongues." But it was damned close. Once again, Fortenberry greased the process by telling us a story about how he'd once been at a service where folks were speaking in tongues, and he was skeptical, but it had just flown right out of him ? and now it just shoots right out of him, almost on command.

I went to the front. One of the coaches grabbed me by the shoulder and sploshed a big puddle of oil on my forehead. Then he began to speak in tongues:

"Gam-bakakasha. Hoo-raaa-balalakasha. . . . Come on, Matthew, let it out."

American Christians who speak in tongues basically all try to sound like extras from the underworld set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. If you want to pull it off and sound like a natural, just imagine you're holding a rubber replica of Harrison Ford's heart in your hands: Umm-harakashaka! Loo-pa-wanneee-rakakakasha, Meester Jones!

But I didn't think of this at the time and just went another route.

"Let it out, Matthew," the coach repeated, clutching my forehead. "Just open your mouth."

I shrugged and rattled off the lyrics to the song "What is Autumn?" by the Russian rock band DDT:

What is autumn? It's the sky The crying sky below your feet. Flying about in puddles are the birds and clouds. Autumn I've not been with you for so long!

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this ? once you've gone this far ? you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things.

By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you've gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke/print

 

[Gray Fox]

I had been attending the Cornerstone Church for weeks, but this was really my first day of school. I had joined Cornerstone ? a megachurch in the Texas Hill Country ? to get a look inside the evangelical mind-set that gave the country eight years of George W. Bush.

Does hem mean that GW was part of this church or just that these people voted for him?
Because if he was a part, then he came out pretty sane considering.

 

[CptStern]

he's not sane but he didnt go to that church but yes he is evangelical and yes the author is saying that these are the sort of people who rushed out to vote for bush ..the christian right made a strong prescence in Bush's last presidential run ....didnt hurt that uin some of these key demographics they tagged on a same sex marriage clause which brought out the christian right in droves

 

[No Limit]

I saw an interview with this guy last night on the Daily Show. Sounds like an awesome read. He also went undercover in to some 9/11 conspiracy groups, good times. Their first order of business was coming up with a movie night and second was changing the way the media works in this country (he was serious about this) .

 

[Iliketobenaked]

lol



I bet it went like this a few times.


"Today we are gonna talk about whats the best way to tie a noose to a tree for those queers,Also Billy Bob wins the the award for best drawn picture of Jesus you will receive a gift card to the Bible Shop."

 

[Raziaar]

very interesting article about a rolling stone writer who inflitrated a christian right group, parsed because some of you are too lazy to read long passages:

Actually your multi quoted version is far more distracting than a full article quote would be.

 

[CptStern]

Actually your multi quoted version is far more distracting than a full article quote would be.

I gave the option of reading the entire thing by posting a link ..use your clicking finger and click away ..problem solved

 

[Solaris]

I thought it was easier to read actually.

 

[Raziaar]

I gave the option of reading the entire thing by posting a link ..use your clicking finger and click away ..problem solved

I know. I was just saying.

 

[CptStern]

you're always "just saying"

:E

 

[Raziaar]

you're always "just saying"

:E

That's how I get my post count up, don't you know!

Kidding of course.

 

[CptStern]

also I forgot this little gem from the article:

"Well," Morgan said, "I think what we're going to do to start is this. I'm going to tell you my story about my wound, and then we're going to go around in a circle, and each of us is going to just tell his story. Is that OK?"

Everyone nodded. I noted with displeasure that I was seated first after Morgan in clockwise order. Already I was panicking; what kind of wound could a human cipher like myself possibly confess to?

My heart was pounding. I obviously couldn't use my real past — not only would it threaten my cover, but I was somewhat reluctant to expose anything like my real inner self to this ideologically unsettling process — but neither did I want to be trapped in a story too far from my own experience. What I settled on eventually was something that I thought was metaphorically similar to the truth about myself.

"Hello," I said, taking a deep breath. "My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes."

The group twittered noticeably. Morgan's eyes opened to tea-saucer size.

lol

 

[Mr Stabby]

He's 8 years late.

 

[<RJMC>]

thats more scary that funny


seriously


but lol at the "out demons of intellect!"

 

[mchammer75040]

Matt taibbi is ****in hilarious:

laugh about it now, but once he chased me, drunk, in his Fudgie the Whale costume. He chased me into the bathroom, laid me across the toilet seat and hit me with his fins, which underneath were still a man's hands.
Again no reaction from the group, aside from an affirming nod from Jos? at the last part — his eyes said to me, I know what you mean about those fins.

 

[Techercizer]

Ya man there are some wiieerrdd religious groups out there.

But not everyone in Texas is crazy, I've never met a religious nut in my life (although i have had my share of the stupid and ignorant)

 

[mchammer75040]

Tech, are you from Texas? Cause where in the hell are you? I'm surrounded by crazies..

 

[Techercizer]

Houston mate, trust me there's idiots everywhere but no one bitches about my Atheism...

Although someone did try to punch me for not standing for the pledge of alliegence in my geometry class awhile ago...

 

[CyberPitz]

This shit is hilarious. Spreading the link around the office as we type.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Rofl, that is simultanously funny and terrifying.

 

[Nemesis6]

Houston mate, trust me there's idiots everywhere but no one bitches about my Atheism...

Shut up, Atard. Don't you have some abortions to do and some "evolution" to falsify?

Better? I hope it was, because even pretend-Christianity hurts my brain!

 

[CptStern]

Shut up, Atard. Don't you have some abortions to do and some "evolution" to falsify?

Better? I hope it was, because even pretend-Christianity hurts my brain!

what? that went right over your head Nemesis

 

[Nemesis6]

what? that went right over your head Nemesis

You make no sense.

 

[[Matt]]

Ive read the full article a couple of months ago but the line "In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!" still makes me lose my composure and has me in such a fit of giggles that my sides hurt... I mean just read the ****ing line....