Jesus Made Me Puke: Matt Taibbi Undercover with the Christian Right

[phantom power]

My bold.

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 church's pastor, John Hagee, is one of the most influential evangelical preachers in the country — not because his ministry is so very large (although he claims up to 4.5 million viewers a week for his Sunday sermons) but because of his near-absolute conquest of a very trendy niche in the market: Christian Zionism.

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.

(... tells the story of his weekend: worth reading ...)

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. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

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. There is no "anything else." All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this "our thing," a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that's all.

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

[enlightenment]

1. Kudos to the author for doing what I could never do -

voluntarily submerse myself in utter and complete insanity.

yikes.

Casting out demons? The demon of hand-writing analysis? Philosophy?

I agree with him absolutely and take it a step further; any politician who admits to going through this sort of 'conversion' should be automatically and permanently disqualified from running for any political office - and ANY professional whose job requires that they hold some authority or responsibility for another person should be automatically and permanently disqualified from that profession.

[frogmarch]

2. Wow, that was fascinating!

How funny about his coming up with the ridiculous story that his dad was a clown and used to hit him with his big oversized clown shoes... and that the group just took it in stride.

Thanks for posting the snip and the link. :thumbsup:

[John Gauger]

6. That part likely didn't happen.

Taibbi works in the field of what they call "Gonzo journalism," in which the reporter tells a story about himself that is partially true and partially fabricated. The fabricated bits are supposed to be "metaphorical," used to make some observation without actually reporting fact. I've read that the idea is that since the journalist is already telling the story in first person, it is already largely inaccurate and thus you can insert whatever you like into the narrative.

This to me is akin people who say the bible's false claims are acceptable because "they are metaphors/allegories/parables." It's okay to present lies as facts because "you're making a point."

That said, Taibbi is an excellent writer, and while you can never tell what to what extent his reports are true, he does make some excellent points.

[phantom power]

9. That would be a shame, since it's a real credibility-killer.

That sort of thing makes it awfully easy for opponents to challenge an author's credibility. And with good reason.

[uberllama42]

11. Yeah, I wondered through the entire article what was true and what was fabricated

And the clown-shoe incident really stuck out. I also wondered about some the details about Fortenberry, though Taibbi might be liable for defamation if he falsified too much of that stuff.

I wouldn't believe that over half the people in this country don't believe in evolution if I hadn't read it in numerous polls for years and years. You never know with these Jesus types.

[onager]

3. "...a force of Arabs led by Russians???"

Some of my usual babbling. Since it's my day off here in Egypt and I don't go to mosques on the Holy Day (Friday), I have some free time to bore people on the Internets...

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.

:rofl:

Most Arabs are Muslim, and absolutely hate the Russians. How did Brother Hagee miss that newsflash? Did he ever hear of Afghanistan, home to a number of "independent Arab armies" who were FIGHTING the Russians for 10 years?

Of course, things got a lot better after the fall of Gawdless Communism. The New Russia gave a very warm democratic welcome to its Muslim citizens in Chechnya.

The "Arab hosts led by Russians" originally came, I think, from Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth. That POS was written in the 1970's and to my knowledge, every prediction in it has turned out to be wrong. Yet Lindsey is still selling books to the Fundies and making millions from his prophecies.

I'm living in a country that still uses MIG-21 jets, T-55 tanks, and where every soldier carries an AK-47 or its derivatives. And even these guys hate the Russians!

Egyptians still laugh about the 1956 Suez Crisis. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden was hell-bent on "regime change" in Egypt, and accused President Gamel Abdel Nasser of just about everything except barbecuing Xian babies. Naturally Eden claimed Nasser was a "communist," that being a useful bit of mud-slinging during the Cold War. But at the time, Nasser had jailed every Communist he could find in Egypt.

One of the few times Muslims and Communists have worked together was in 1991, when Bush The First urged the Iraqis to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein. In southern Iraq, especially Basra, fundamentalist Shi'ites and Iraqi Communists did exactly that, fighting side by side. And were slaughtered side by side, along with the Kurds in the north, when Bush decided the devil he knew was better than etc.

Yet today in Iraq, we're still asking why these people don't trust us...

[YankeyMCC]

4. Victimhood

I haven't finished the whole piece just to the part where his group leader "Morgan" tells of his wound. There seems to be a trend here of these people turning small or perceived slights into persecution as individuals and as a group.

And from the program's description that they must write letters to their 'offenders' it is assumed all wounds are caused by someone else. They seem to share the belief that all wounds are caused by someone else not their responsibility at all. :eyes:

Certainly in the cases of abuse that is true and in other cases too I'm sure but it seems a built in assumption to leads to this idea of Victimhood and persecution.

[Warpy]

5. I have no idea how he managed a whole weekend

of this stuff without breaking out into laughter. That's the part I could never do. I always betray myself by cracking up at the silliest parts.

I spent hours kneeling on marble for laughing at the idea of transubstantiation in Catholic school. That was my last year there, probably because my parents realized they'd never be able to set foot in church again if everybody realized where I was really at.

[onager]

8. Muslims in Catholic school...

A woman here in Alexandria told me some stories about her experiences in a local Catholic school, which was run by French nuns.

There were only 3 Egyptian girls in her class. Naturally the three of them usually ate lunch together, and they ate it the traditional Middle Eastern way--with their fingers.

One of the nuns developed an obsession with "curing" the girls of this habit, and would whack their fingers with a metal ruler whenever she saw them doing it. Along with delivering a sermon on how eating with the fingers was "uncivilized."

The girls got a great kick out of this--except for the finger-whacking--and had a lot of laughs about it when the nun wasn't around. "Uncivilized? Sister, we're Egyptians! We had a civilization when the French were still living in caves and eating raw meat!"

And how did the etiquette lessons work out? She told me this story as we were having lunch in a pretty upscale restaurant here in Alexandria--mostly with our fingers. Tearing apart hot bread and dipping it in the hummus, etc.

Sideline Snark: Some of our resident 'woos will have seizures if they come to Alexandria. They will see school buses emblazoned with the name of a local French school named for the Priory Of Sion. Just like in The Da Vinci Code!!! Woo-o-o-o-o...

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. "Tearing apart hot bread and dipping it in the hummus" -- Day-UMMM!

Now I gots me serious cravings.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

14. BURRRRRP

Ahhh, that was good. Luckily there's no shortage of Arab restaurants in downtown Rio.

Pita bread, hummus, rice with lentils & fried onions, and kafta. Oh yeah.

[PassingFair]

7. His description of the "speaking in tongues" episode is priceless....

so they all KNOW that they are bullshitting!

That explains a lot.

[LynzM]

10. Wow. Scary!

As a "recovering Christian" or whatever you want to call it, I can definitely understand the draw of getting caught up in the bullshit, the singing, the sharing your story, etc., etc. I think for many people, it's a change to really feel a part of a group and experience what feels like real joy (hell, maybe it *is* real joy, who knows)....

But wow, this is way beyond anything I ever experienced, and I'm glad for that.

[Synnical]

12. Thanks - bookmarked the RS article n/t