“Stupid Atheist” Meets Truly Stupid Christian

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Acting, Activism, AP American History, AP US History, Arrogance, Atheism, Atheists, Christianity, Contradictions, Doing, Evangelical Christianity, Faith, Giving, Hope, Hypocrisy, Jay Sekulow, Mary Zini, Masturbation, Pat Robertson, Prayer in Schools, Stupidity, Teenage Angst, Teenagers, Televangelism, Televangelists, Trust, World History

Screenshot from HBO show The Leftovers title sequence, September 5, 2014. ( yU+co via http://news.creativecow.net). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws — low resolution and relevance to subject matter.

I’ve written about Mary Zini and our classroom incidents before, here and in Boy @ The Window. It’s been thirty years since she was my tenth-grade World History teacher. Yet most of what I remember from this class has little to do with Plato, NATO, or anything in between. It’s mostly Zini’s condescending personality, my new Christian arrogance, and that people’s personalities and actions are often walking and talking contradictions.

It was the beginning of October ’84 when we had our first incident. It occurred after what was the first of an endless cycle of fill-in-the-bubble Scan-Tron exams.

Honestly, I had no idea at that moment why I said what I said. I supposed that a summer of Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice, all via Pat Robertson and The 700 Club had done the trick in making me a one-time prayer-in-public-schools advocate. I knew that Zini was raised a Catholic, so on some level, didn’t that make me a stupid Christian for calling her a stupid “atheist?”

That incident was also the beginning of seven months of starting to figure out how to be me and be a follower of Christ at the same time. I approached it the same way I approached how to be me in my first few months of seventh grade and Humanities at A.B. Davis Middle School in the fall of ’81. With the naiveté of a child, the hubris of a teenager, and the callousness of a human with alien superpowers.

Jay Sekulow lecturing, Regent University, December 15, 2006. (Juda Engelmayer via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via GFDL.

It was evident in my outward actions. I packed my red-pleather-covered King James Bible every day. For school. For Subway trips down into Midtown Manhattan when me and my older brother Darren worked for our father Jimme. For when we washed clothes every Saturday or Sunday at the laundromat on the Mount Vernon-Pelham border (it’s a yoga studio now). The Bible was my constant companion, my shield protecting me from this mad world of almost bottomless sin.

In the process, I read everything from Genesis to Revelations at least twice. (some books, like the Gospels, as many as four times). I learned a lot from reading all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. That the Israelite God Yahweh was stern and pretty unforgiving. That Jesus was a radical, not just spiritually, but politically as well. And that Paul was not exactly the most enlightened of the apostles when it came to women, children and slaves.

Mostly what I learned was that readings and understanding The Bible wasn’t like living out my beliefs at all. I was still a teenager, a fifteen-year-old living in the midst of welfare poverty, at 616 with an abusive womanizer, a wounded mother and a gaggle of siblings between the ages of eight months and five-and-a-half years. Not to mention my alcoholic cuss-factory of a father that I had to hunt down for money nearly every weekend. What all that meant was feeling lust for a young woman one minute, hate toward my idiot stepfather Maurice the next, and imitating Jimme’s slurred language and mannerisms the minute after that.

This new walk was very confusing, so much so that I often hid my emotions in much the same way I’d already been doing to protect myself from yet another abuse episode with Maurice. My emotions couldn’t stay bottled up, though. I frequently humped my way to sleep once our living room at 616 had become my bedroom during and after the months in which Balkis Makeda had lived with us.

By the spring of ’85, when Zini granted me her full support in getting me into AP US History for eleventh grade (this despite my 84 average in her class at the time), I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t stand being in the same room with Zini much of the time. Yet she did for me what few in my life had done — she opened up a door for me to walk through, albeit a relatively small one.

Hands of God & Adam, fingers about to touch, Sistine Chapel ceiling, Vatican, Michelangelo, 1508-1512 (via Wikipedia). In public domain.

What did it all mean? That devoutness is meaningless without action, without giving and receiving, without trust, without taking risks. That even supposed atheists can act and give in ways that should shame many arrogant Christians. That Christianity isn’t a transactional relationship or process, but a journey with many pitfalls and lots of contradictions along the way. That who I/we say God is, well, at best an infinitesimal guess, because God and this universe is so much more that I as a human male living in the context of Western culture can only begin to understand.

Most of all, I had just begun to learn that spiritual liberation wasn’t supposed to be a yoke, but an opening to see the world and myself stripped bare of narrative and pretense. A strict adherence to the principles of Pat Robertson would bring me no closer to enlightenment and no further out of poverty than wishing on a star or avoiding cracks on Mount Vernon’s blue-slate sidewalks. Work, trust, opportunities, and not just Romans 8:28, was the beginning of the key for me.

The Whore of Babylon (and other wacko comments)

22 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Marriage, New York City, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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Amy Grant, Apocalypse, Book of Revelations, Christian Zeal, Christianity, Evangelical Christianity, Frederick K.C. Price, Gov. Rick Perry, Hebrew-Israelites, Jack Van Impe, Jimmy Swaggert, John Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, Politics of Fear, Rachel Maddow, Rapture, Televangelism, Televangelists, The Response

Televangelist John Hagee sans glasses compares Texas Gov. Rick Perry to Abraham Lincoln, The Response, Reliant Stadium, Houston, August 6, 2011. (Source/http://www.businessinsider.com).

I used to be one of them. One of those evangelized Christians. Coming off of three years as a Hebrew-Israelite, I became a Christian in the spring of ’84, without a church, and without an immediate family member who had any real experience as part of a Christian family or community.

So naturally, when my mother — who still appeared to be a practicing Hebrew-Israelite — would tune our one working stereo radio to the Christian AM stations in the New York City area in the summer that followed my secret conversion, I’d listen. I’d hear everything from Amy Grant’s “Angels Watching Over Me” to folks like Jimmy Swaggert and Kenneth Copeland on those two stations. Plus, there was the 700 Club, Oral Roberts and Frederick K.C. Price on our TV at 10 am Monday-Friday, and Sunday mornings between 8 and 11 am.

With the exception of Price, a good portion of what these televangelists and radio preachers would talk about was the Book of Revelation of St. John. They’d outline in detail everything from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to the gigantic sucking sounds of great death as the Lord opened one seal after another. As a fourteen-year-old and brand-new Christian, it was scary listening to them. So scary that it seemed unlikely that I’d make it to thirty before the entire world was on fire.

The Whore of Babylon, from a 1800s Russian engraving. (Source/Wikipedia). In public domain.

When Swaggert or Roberts or Robertson would get to the part of Revelations that talked about “the whore of Babylon,” they’d lament about how America was the “whore” that John of Patmos had described in his letters to the Christian churches in what is now Turkey — 2,000 years ago. But for Swaggert, Roberts, Robertson, et al., it was because of gay rights, or because of Blacks having kids out-of-wedlock while collecting welfare, or because women were on an assembly line to have abortions, or because of out-of-control government spending that America had become the ultimate harlot.

I put much of what they said aside even then, because my life at 616 and in Mount Vernon was scary enough without thinking about the fate of four or five billion humans. But all of this came up again, especially once my mother revealed herself as an evangelical Christian in ’89, in the last days of her marriage to my idiot (ex-) stepfather. In the years that followed, whenever I visited over the holidays or came home to work for the summer, I’d see more of Kenneth Copeland, Oral and Richard Roberts, Pat Robertson than I’d see of regular television.

In particular, a “new” guy, Jack Van Impe, along with his wife, was on. Every week in the summer of ’90, my

Jack Van Impe, circa 2010, predicting an Apocalypse via Iran. (Source/http://wn.com).

mother would make me sit in front of the TV to hear this guy relate things like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August of that year to the Rapture and the Apocalypse. Somehow, the evil spiritual forces intent on world domination and human corruption were unleashed by Iraq and the US response to Iraq that summer. Van Impe was so worried about the rebuilding of the Roman Empire via the expanding European Union that he looked like he was about to collapse from a brain aneurysm.

My mother once said, “You think they crazy, but when the Rapture comes and you’re stuck here, you won’t.” I didn’t think that they were crazy — I knew they were. But more importantly, what I was really thinking was, why is she watching this, and making me watch this stuff, too? It’s not as if anyone, whether an atheist or a Zen Buddhist, didn’t or doesn’t really know that our world faces a multitude of challenges that could lead to a perfect storm of global crises, causing immense destruction and death. That’s true. Still, I couldn’t see how any of us could make sense of what we face as a planet by using the Book of Revelation as a guide.

So, when Rachel Maddow decided to go after Governor Rick Perry and “The Response” party down in Houston earlier this month on her show, I, unlike most Americans uninvolved in mind-bending forms of Christianity, wasn’t surprised. I didn’t feel shock that there was such a thing as the New Apostolic Reformation, because there isn’t anything new about it. I wasn’t even surprised that the likes of John Hagee would consider Oprah Winfrey the “Whore of Babylon” because of her ability to use verbal voodoo on the millions of people who worship everything she does. And I was unsurprised, unfortunately, that a snake-oil salesman like Perry would fall into their camp.

Oprah Winfrey at her 50th birthday party at Hotel Bel Air 2004. (Source/Alan Light/http://www.flickr.com/photos/alan-light/216012860/). In public domain, cc-by-2.0.

Quite frankly, there are only two things that surprise me. One is that there are millions of people like me who could find more holes in the evangelical apocalyptic paradigm in one nanosecond than Maddow could in one day, yet we’re never called on to refute and inform. The other is that it’s taken this long for mainstream media to really pick up on what has been a four-decade long trend in the meshing of the wackiest of “Christian” ideas with politics that exploit America’s imperial fears. That our days as #1 are at an end.

Bittersweet Symphony

03 Saturday Apr 2010

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Christianity, Eclectic, Religion

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Atheism, Bigotry, Bill Maher, Christianity, Creflo Dollar, Frederick K.C. Price, Gospel of Prosperity, Hebrew-Israelites, Jimmy Swaggert, Kenneth Copeland, Liberation Theology, Pat Robertson, Televangelism

This weekend marks twenty-six years since I became a Christian. Given how torturous my nearly three and a half years of wearing a kufi and walking in the beliefs of the Hebrew-Israelites (at least nominally) were, I dare say that the turning point for all of my life occurred in April ’84. I’m grateful every day — and I mean, every day — for finding my way to God and Jesus. But, as I’m come to understand myself and Christianity over the years, I’ve also come to regret the religious and anti-religious narcissism that is infused in all of our conversations about Christianity, God, Atheism, evolution and so many other things that require more than scientific knowledge and absolute certainty.

For better and for worse, I have to start with the people who helped me get on the Christian path in the first place. If not for televangelists like Frederick K.C. Price and Kenneth Copeland, my understanding of Christianity would’ve been limited to conversations with my best friend in elementary school and my pedestrian attempts at understanding the New Testament. So I have to thank both for opening my eyes to the endless possibilities that all people have through faith and redemption, salvation and grace.

Still, their work, and the work of others like Benny Hinn, Jimmy Swaggert, Robert Tilton, Pat Robertson, Oral and Richard Roberts and others has revolved into a form of narcissism. Their gospel — and the gospel of the megachurches that now populate our nation — should be remembered by historians as the Gospel of Prosperity. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking control over your finances, giving to a church to provide community and social services or even using principles of faith (beyond the religious or spiritual) in order to make one’s life better materially. There is something vitally wrong, though, when this is almost all your ministry is about. I must admit, I was inspired by Price when I was a teenager, listening to his story about how he grew up in Alabama, about the poverty he had to overcome in order to become an ordained minister and establish his church in L.A. It was much later that I learned how enriching a Gospel of Prosperity could be for those with the power of the pulpit and the will to wield that power.

Seeing it firsthand at my church outside Pittsburgh (in Wilkinsburg for those of you familiar with Western Pennsylvania) was what made me realize how incredibly shallow this kind of preaching is for a church and its flock. The leadership began a campaign to raise something in the order of $1 million toward building a new church, as this church now boasted over 3,000 members. That was in December of ’96.

Within a couple of months, we had easily exceeded this amount, which was on top of the amount church member normally gave. Within a week, the pastor announced that God had given him a vision that another $3 million would be needed to help with the costs of building a new church and maintaining the current church building. A vision? Really? I think even God realizes that most of us, with help, can decipher a budget sheet to know what’s needed to build a building the size of a 3,000-seat church. What made this particularly dishonest was that the leadership should’ve let us sheep know what was needed from jump street, not a staggered campaign of visions in order to build the congregation’s confidence in giving. Not to mention the tapping into our American obsession with getting rich or becoming well-off.

Around the same time, Price was doing the same thing via his TV program. A whole series on Jesus as a materially rich Jew living in Galilee, and not as the relatively poor son of a carpenter and fisherman as portrayed in the Gospels. “How could he be poor and feed 5,000 people? Why would a poor man need to hire an accountant?,” Price asked at one point in his series in ’97. Although I think you could argue that Jesus’ ministry was doing well enough to keep him and his disciples in food, olive oil and sandals for three years, I’m not sure what this means for the average Christian or average person. The implication of all of this, of course, is that if you end up in debt, or without significant upward changes in income, or somehow become unemployed, that you somehow didn’t display enough faith. Or give your full tithe to your local pastor or church. Or for that matter, give beyond the tithing to pastors like Price, Copeland, and numerous others.

It couldn’t be about education, the kinds of job individuals have, or the wrecked state of the American economy, right? Or that, no matter how much faith we have, it’s our acting on that faith, having the skills necessary to make our dreams real possibilities, and of course, meeting people who are well positioned in our lives to help us (and oddly enough, vice-versa)? No, our lack of faith in The One is to blame. Need I mention that folks like Price have been saying for at least thirty years that we as Christians shouldn’t worry about the world’s oil reserves running out, as there’s more than enough to carry us all the way to the Rapture?

Before those in Bill Maher’s camp laugh in wild glee, I’ve found in my academic and spiritual walk narcissistic intolerance among many atheists as well. As if all Christians — and all people who believe in a higher power in general — are delusional, are absolutely orgasmic about seeing the world go up in flames and think science is something to be discarded. Theirs may well be the Gospel of Scientific Absolutism, as if science and the scientific method alone holds all of the answers in the Cosmos. I’m not arguing against evolution, the Big Bang, or String Theory. What I am standing up against are overly simplistic answers for the “why” questions — questions that come with weird and somewhat unscientific explanations — that can confound many a biologist or astrophysicist. Or, for the purposes of this post, atheists who refuse the acknowledge the myriad examples of intelligence in the supposedly random universe. While I stand in almost all respects on the side on science, complete randomness isn’t something that I choose to believe in.

So where does this leave me after twenty-six Christian years? In a very lonely place, where I’m both a complicated Christian and a less-than-scientific scientist in a broad sense. I stopped watching Price in ’98, and the other televangelists between ’88 and ’01. Christianity is about so much more than prosperity and pontificating pastors, learning about much more than science. Social justice, wealth redistribution, speaking truth to power, fighting for equality in this life and the next. Both religion and science have this possibility and have provided this for many people over the course of human history.

Unfortunately, folks like Price think that this is about speaking power to truth, and people like Maher already believe they know everything they need to know. Both have missed the point that faith, or belief, is important in every endeavor, and serves as a catalyst for great human achievement and for great human atrocities. So, for me, this Easter truly is a bittersweet one, where my salvation is real, and my doubt almost as much.