What God Wants (Part 2) - Roger Waters
| "And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea"
Mark 9:42 |
No doubt about it - Jesus Camp is ritual child abuse
Source
A copy of the film Jesus Camp came into my hands this week. I watched it last evening and I'm glad, because now that I've seen it I'll never have to look at it again.
In spite of my own background, I tried to approach it from the point of view of one who has not seen the inside of Pentecostalism, and although much of it is typical of what has been going on for a long time behind closed church doors, I can certainly understand why people would find the political implications frightening - and why they have sympathy for Becky Fischer's kids.
Fischer makes no bones about literally creating an army of replicas of the automated Stepford child - "surprisingly precocious and a little creepy" - who will impact future governments and society in favour of Christian extremism.
The aim is much less about the love of Jesus and far more about political clout than any truly Christian teaching ought to be, given that Jesus himself separated faith from state in his famous line about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.
Not once did Jesus say, "Go ye therefore and take over the government" or "Go ye into the ends of the earth and enforce the gospel". He said if people don't want to hear you, shake the dust of their town off your boots and move on. Matthew 10:14
He recommended simply letting one's light shine so that converts would be attracted by goodness and love, not compelled by threats of hellfire and eternal damnation. I don't know who threw the segments about wailing and gnashing of teeth into the New Testament and attributed it to Jesus, but it couldn't have been Jesus who ranted thus - unless he was a hopelessly schizoid personality, which somehow I doubt.
More likely it was the squabbling 4th Century Roman Catholic Bishops who messed with the old writings as they fought over what to believe, what to toss that didn't match the beliefs they finally voted to adopt, and what to include that would give them control over the poor flock who financed their lavish lifestyles. All of which has left today's Christian (Pauline) literalists stuck with a hopelessly incomplete and doctored Bible, and a dread of reading any other scriptures lest they be from Satan.
They are also stuck with a pagan name and date for the celebration of Jesus' resurrection, and with the birthdate of Sol Invictus on which to celebrate Jesus' birth. Not only that, but they have to quote Paul and the Old Testament in order to justify their political leanings, all the while that they loudly proclaim Jesus as their King, their Saviour, their lover, their redeemer.
If the "apostle" Paul lived today, he'd be an American TV evangelist. He'd have 33% of the population believing that Christ came to him in a vision and told him what to say. He'd rant on and on about hellfire and damnation, about how women need to know their place, and about sexual temptation and perversion, and he'd rake in lots of dough.
But Jesus didn't dwell on any of those things. And he certainly didn't sell fire insurance. He offered love and liberation from guilt; he described a means of personal empowerment through the mental process of "knowing" by which one could seek and find a path out of one's own slavery to the opinions of others, and to false ideas and false views of self and God. He placed God's Kingdom squarely in the present, within all of us and spread out upon the earth. He counselled living fully in the current eternal moment, leaving the future and the past to God.
And something else - something that Christians unaccountably don't seem able to get through their heads - Jesus counselled praying in private, not in public in the manner of show-off hypocrites!
Sadly, Jesus is only a buzz word for Becky Fischer. Beyond that, she's into enforce mode, big time. She's into public prayer - as raucous and showy as possible - over everybody else's sins. Rotund Becky tells the kids that most Christians are "fat and lazy" and aren't getting their act together about abortion, gays, and "dirty talk". The only answer lies with training children to sacrifice their very lives for the ruthless extermination of everything Becky hates. "This is war" she hollers. "This is war."
She trots out a lifesize cardboard cutout of President Bush and encourages the kids to bless him. Technically, they don't actually worship Bush, as some people are saying. The kids' arms are raised toward God. But the message of loyalty to the state as well as to Becky's fanatical goals are brought home in the oaths she orders them all to swear loudly on the Bible.
Yes, the same Bible wherein Jesus said, "Swear not at all". Matthew 5:34.
The fact that Bush lied to the American people is not an issue for Becky; his professed born-again status is paramount. She never stops to wonder if he might be a wolf in sheep's clothing, the evil one who only pretends to receive instructions from God. In full confidence, Becky makes it clear to her kids that if they don't support presidents like Bush, they will fall victim to Satan who has unimaginably horrific plans for them.
Becky talks about how Bush appoints judges that will save the country from gays, abortionists, and other evil beings. In no time, she has the kids screaming over and over, with upraised fists and tears running down their faces, "Righteous judges! Righteous judges!"
As a special treat, Becky introduces a man who cheerily opens a box of tiny, pink baby dolls, each one smaller than the other, and he places them in the hands of Becky's key kids while the other kids look on in awe, to illustrate all of the potential playmates they have lost through abortion. How crafty to make abortion into a personal loss for these children. How diabolical.
Then he places red tape over the kids' mouths, with the word "Life" written on each piece, to demonstrate the silent screams of the fetus.
Obviously, in these times of professed sensitivity to child abuse, hitting kids is not allowed, nor is sexually exploiting them, but psychologically abusing the hell out of them in Jesus' name is sanctioned and/or ignored by both church and state.
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At a time in their lives when they ought to be carefree and having fun, Becky's kids are constantly on the alert, having been told that children are Satan's prime targets, and that he will trick them into sinning. You should see the looks on the faces of the kids when they heard that. They were not having a fun time at camp; they were horrified. They were not learning anything; they were shocked into obedience, and set up for for Becky's antidote to their inherently evil natures.
The only difference from Jim Jonesville is that Jesus Camp is "funner", according to one of the glassy-eyed little Jesus Camp stars. Becky gets away with deliberate child exploitation by wrapping it in religious shake-and-bake, while cookie cutting a generation of mindless robots that she hopes will one day rule America and the world.
One of Becky's key prodigies says on screen that he has accepted the idea of literally "dying for Jesus". One wonders how many of these kids will eventually commit suicide, or murder an abortionist, or beat a gay person to death.
In a scene where the kids are horsing around in the camp dorm, like normal kids do at camp - shining flashlights and telling ghost stories - a counsellor walks in and puts the kibosh on it. Does he sense a defence mechanism in action against the fear instilled by Becky? Or does he simply want them afraid of only one thing - Satan's power.
Becky doesn't believe in democracy, by the way, because it allows too much freedom for people to sin and follow religions that don't preach "the truth". If Becky has her way, we will all become fanatical messianics - or else!
Perhaps her solid approval of Bush is based on one of the premises that the Skull and Bones Society reportedly adapted from a popularized, rightist version of Hegelian philosophy imported from Germany, wherein "the citizen can only become free by worship and obedience to the state". This requires, of course, the taking over of the children by the state, as we saw with Hitler's Jungvolk and Jugend.
To rationalize what she is doing, Becky draws a bizarre parallel to Muslim extremist training camps. Her only concern about them seems to be that American kids have to catch up with what the Muslims are doing, or else Islam will win the religion competition.
Canadians will not remain exempt. Already we have a Prime Minister attempting to rejoin religion and state, and prayer meetings are being held on Parliament Hill to ask God to rid Canada of gays and abortion. The Cry 2 organizers had hoped to accomplish a youth revival last July on the Hill - but the "fat and lazy" Christians pretty much stayed home in droves.
Not to worry, though. Great things are expected. A National House of Prayer has been purchased in Ottawa, supported by tax free donations, from which the US-influenced Cry personnel hope to continue working on us benighted Canuks. Click the House of Prayer link above and you will see that the Supreme Court is one of its prime targets. If photos and goals such as these appeared on an Islamic website, it would instantly be branded a terrorist organization and shut down toot sweet.
It's hard to predict how much real impact this movement will eventually have on North American society. Movements come and go. Religious extremism peaks and ebbs, and has done so for centuries. This is not the first mobilization of children in history designed to stamp out the world's evil. The young boy featured most prominently in Jesus Camp might well be emulating the boy called Stephen who sparked the Children's Crusades in 1212, during one of a long line of turn-of-century messianic frenzy periods.
Turns of century, and especially turns of millennia, seem to stir the juices of the rabidly messianic. If you'd like to learn more about this strange phenomenon, I can highly recommend this book: "The Pursuit of the Millennium" by Norman Cohn. The "signs of the times" have risen and faded numerously, and still no Christ has returned, and still the sinners sin.
As indicated above, Jesus Camp focused on several key kids; the rest were mere movie extras. Two or three families obviously worked closely with Becky Fischer to put on a good show for the cameras. Their kids, already heavily indoctrinated and rehearsed at home, were Becky's star pupils and had lead roles in the movie. Becky pretended not to have met them before, as did Ted Haggard to whose church the kids were taken on a field trip. He was ironically held up to these kids as a heroic preacher and God-fearing opponent of homosexuality.
Haggard has since made a contritional written confession, a la Jimmy Swaggart, and so has his wife - who had to have known his secret but allowed everyone to believe she had a perfect marriage - so Haggard's hypocrisy is not just a rumour.
In case you're interested, here is Swaggart's written confession and apology, designed to get back in good graces and continue, more discreetly, his customary activities. Here also is a much more indepth discussion of his church's reaction and Swaggart's response to it. Not five months after the humble apology he thought would reinstate him, he reverted back to not so humble, and said: "Any Believer who has supported this Ministry in the past, and has stopped, at least because of these adversaries, they have not stopped because the Lord has told them to do so, but because Satan has told them to do so ..."
Makes me wonder what religious leadership is if not the height of hypocrisy. And I'm not only talking about Christianity. The lies so many of them tell, and the acts they commit, are unconscionable in view of what they demand of the flock, and of the rest of society.
Here's an example of the kind of lie that religious leaders get away with. In a Jesus Camp scene where one of the key kids is being coached by his mother about "Intelligent Design", the boy says, "I'm glad Galileo gave up science for Christ." Good freeking greef!!
So, not only do these Jesus Camp jokers lie to the cameras, they also lie to the kids. Up until I heard the boy say that, I hadn't cared a whole lot about whether Creationism was taught alongside Darwinism in schools, or not. Teaching honest errors is one thing but telling baldfaced and insidious lies, paid for by tax dollars, is quite another.
Becky at one point orders the kids to "speak in tongues". Tongues is another lie. I've been there and I know that it's fake, fake, fake. Pentecostals are expected to do it, so they comply.
When I was a kid there was a simple farm woman in our church who liked to sit near the front, and if the minister got on a good roll and worked up the congregation enough, she would give a shout and stand up and begin babbling incomprehensible syllables. Then the pastor would pretend to translate what she said - usually dire warnings from God about the wages of sin. He was a prolific tongues speaker himself, saying over and over the same set of syllables which I recall to this day included (phonetically) the "word", "Sha-goon-dria". Anyone out there know what language that is? If so, I'd love to get a translation.
By the way, the farm woman eventually lost all of her marbles, as do many religious fanatics when they begin to age.
One of Becky's little stars says in the film that shouting and babbling in tongues is what God wants. Churches where people just sit there and worship with straight faces are "dead" churches, she says.
In my day, the grownups smugly called them "dry" churches. If a preacher failed to whip up the congregation into a good tension relieving frenzy, he was branded "dry". Familiarity breeds boredom, so when things dry up, the pastor calls in a travelling fire and brimstone preacher to kick-start the flock.
With any luck, the visiting evangelist will not feel up some sweet Christian girl during his stay.
As I've said many times before, the people who are the most rabidly obsessed with and militant against society's sexual mores are too often the ones with the most to hide. That would include two of the loudest and crudest - Jerry Falwell and John Hagee. The latter can be seen and heard on the CTS Network which provides re-runs of "wholesome" sit-coms and advice from "perfect marriage" partners to throw newcomers off the scent.
Hagee calls the hate words belching from his bloated lips "diamonds", but the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council recently found him in violation of broadcast regulations, saying in part:
"He stands resolutely against homosexuality. That is clearly his right but he does not stop there. As in the above-cited CKRD-AM Focus on the Family decision, he pins on gays and lesbians a “gay agenda” and the “brain-washing” of children in the schools. He accuses the “homosexual lobby [... of] pushing this curriculum.” In other words, he has attributed to gays and lesbians “a malevolent, insidious and conspiratorial purpose, a so-called ‘agenda’”, to use the terminology of the Prairie Panel in the CKRD-AM decision. In this case, as in that, the Panel finds that such an attribution constitutes a breach of the Human Rights and Religious Broadcasting Clauses of the CAB Code of Ethics.
Hagee advocates and looks forward joyfully to a war on Iran, as does Michael Coren, another so-called Christian broadcaster on CTS.
Hagee believes that Christ will Rapture the "saved" before they can be harmed by nuclear fallout. He has even reinterpreted scripture to say that Jews no longer have to convert to Christianity in order to be saved from the chaos to come.
Like so many other fanatics, Hagee worries about the "brain-washing" of children in public schools, but doesn't bat a wattle when it comes to depriving them of a childhood in order to carry out the political goals of religious extremism. Completely unconsidered in all of this is Jesus' stern counsel against harming little ones.
Are Falwell and Hagee projecting their own personal demons onto the world, as did Swaggart, Bakker, Haggard and others whose immorality was exposed? Is it any wonder that somebody is making money doing background checks on church employees and volunteers?
Does Becky Fischer, an equally rabid finger pointer have something to hide as well? Only time will tell, and we would be well advised to stay tuned.
Fear And Loathing At Philadelphia's BattleCry
BattleCry: Ron Luce’s Holy War
America’s Holy Warriors
Soldiers Of Christ
My Half-Year Of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists
Poll: One-Third Of American Voters Believe In Christian Zionism
The Rise Of Christian Fascism And Its Threat To American Democracy
The British Children Who Train To Fight In Israel
(Documentary begins at 2:15)
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