Civil Commotion

Americans wrongly assume that churches are safe for their children to attend. They are not.

Bruce Gerencser, ex-pastor

Proportionally, there are far more screwed-up men standing behind the pulpit than sitting in front of it, and that’s not merely a coincidence. Troubled men are preferentially attracted to careers in the clergy; they believe it will help them overcome their proscribed attraction or, at least, put them in an environment where their interest can’t be acted upon. Christianity’s unwholesome attitude toward sex attracts the unhealthy.

And the marketing lie that the devout are somehow ‘better people’ protects them.

Overwhelmingly, when a congregation learns that Pastor Bubba is w-a-a-a-y too friendly with the children’s choir, it responds by blaming the victim and rallying around the pastor; exceptions to that rule are all but unknown.

Now, consider all that happens between an instance of abuse and me, or Gerencser, or some other blogger, linking to the story.

• The abuse.

• A decision by the victim to notify parents or some other responsible adult.

• That adult believes the victim.

• That adult notifies the police.

• The police decide to investigate.

• The police believe there has been abuse.

• The prosecutor believes there has been abuse, and that he can prove it in court.

• A judge believes there has been abuse and signs an arrest warrant.

• An arrest.

• The newspaper learns of it and decides to publish a story.

• A search engine picks-up the story.

Unless every single one of those things happens, you’re never going to find a link to the story on this, or any other, Web site — and there are lots of places where justice can get waylaid. The victim might be afraid to tell the story, or tell it to a church member who doesn’t believe it. The detective (or the prosecutor, or the judge, or the newspaper editor) who hears the story might be a member of the concerned church and unable/unwilling to believe it.

The bottom line is this: However many stories we link to, there are lots more that nobody ever hears about. And it is needful that people do hear about them, because the only thing that will defeat the sickness is that decent people say “Enough!” and do something healthy on Sunday morning.

A Jehovah’s Witness mother breaks-up with her daughters because their church attendance isn’t so regular as she thinks it should be.

First of all, I want you to know that I love you very much! Always have + always will. However, my greatest love and loyalty belong to Jehovah. Even above your dad.

Well.

That is what Albert Mohler demands, what Ronnie Floyd demands, what Dave Miller demands … what every Southern Baptist Holy Man in Christendom demands. That is how Pastors Joe McKeever and Bruce Gerencser regret living.

Once again, then: If you think that pleasing an Invisible Friend is more important than your wedding vows and your family, you are an idiot and you are not married at all.

Poor Albert … he will never understand that same-sex marriage is moral progress. Never. His head does not have the capacity to hold that thought.

Excluding “God is Donald Trump,” does anybody have any idea what this is supposed to mean?

This is fun. The Satanic Temple is taking-on the odious Good News Club — which improbably persuaded the Supreme Court that it has the right to use public facilities to peddle the most degrading fundamentalism to grade school children — by relying on that same Supreme Court decision to demand that they, too, be allowed to operate after-school clubs.

They point out that Christian evangelical groups already have infiltrated the lives of America’s children through after-school religious programming in public schools, and they appear determined to give young students a choice: Jesus or Satan.

“It’s critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they have a choice in how they think,” said Doug Mesner, the Satanic Temple’s co-founder.

Watch the promotional video.

Is that great, or what?

In this area, they’d probably have to be protected by police snipers to even set foot on school property; even so, I love the in-your-face attitude. As for the Good News Clubs, they are unspeakable.

But the snacks, games, prizes, songs, and fun activities mask a dark message of shame and fear indoctrination. The Good News Club curriculum is filled with over 5000 references to sin and thousands more to obedience, punishment, and Hell. It stresses Old Testament narratives of a retributive God who must punish sin, warns children that they will suffer an eternity in Hell if they refuse to believe, and stresses complete obedience as the supreme value. Meanwhile, salutary themes such as the “Golden Rule” are almost entirely absent from the curriculum.

As documented in this site’s sections on “Shame” and “Hell” and individual lesson reviews, Good News Club tells children as young as preschoolers that they have “dark” and “sinful” hearts, were born that way, and “deserve to die” and “go to Hell.”

The local Good News Club sponsor teaches that the world is less than 10,000-years old, that the Bible is literally true, that it is sinful to prioritize your family and wedding vows ahead of Our Invisible Friend, that secularists are evil and the Bible is the only book anybody really needs to read … well, in short, that church is the exemplar for everything that decent, educated people find repellent in Christian thought. I wish the Satanists success at drawing attention to the indecencies being promoted in public schools.