Billmon:
I have to admit: the old boy’s subtle, ironic sense of humor never fails to impress. But then, he is a man of wealth and taste . . .
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September 24, 2006
WB: Jesus Camp
Comments
Will Durant was fond of oberving that the greatest conflicts arise between those who have the least difference of opinion.
Would be fair to say this holds for Christian and Muslim fundementalists?
Posted by: Lexington | Sep 24 2006 19:30 utc | 1
Tbogg posted on this the other day, and as a commenter noted:
“Why would anyone send their precious child to a camp called Kids on Fire? Was Camp Stepping on Rusty Nails full?”
I can’t top that…. Well, maybe I can. Here’s a video from some folks, down here in deepest darkest Red State, that wanted to do business with our company. Beware: strong stomach required; keep precious breakables out of reach during viewing; do not mix with psychedelics.
I watched until the dude blew the shofar, then called them back, made up some lame excuse, and pawned them off to someone else.
“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.”
~Robert Anton Wilson
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 24 2006 19:55 utc | 3
link for #2
video proves once again that white people can’t dance ;>)
Posted by: dan of steele | Sep 24 2006 20:49 utc | 5
This the web address that Montysano meant:
http://www.karenwheaton.com/assets/streaming/ramp164.wmv
Who are these people? “I was made for war” – wha’?
Posted by: DC | Sep 24 2006 20:55 utc | 6
Yikes. I swear I heard a few Rage Against The Machine riffs in there.
Posted by: misc. | Sep 24 2006 23:18 utc | 7
Onward Christian Zionist Soldiers. John Hagee and the CUFI. George Bush leading the 3rd Great Awakening (recent WaPo).
In the 1830’s Historical Premillennialism (Jesus returns when all souls are saved) was replaced with Dispensational Premillennialism (Jesus will return when the Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple). This movement began in England and the principal actor was John Nelson Darby. It arose simultaneously with Jewish Zionism and was imported to America during the 2nd Great Awakening (1830’s+).
This theology was popularized by Hal Lindsay in the 70’s in his book “The Late Great Planet Earth”. John Hagee, who states he will make the CUFI into the christian AIPAC, recently took the theology a step further by stating “you will be judged by God by your support of Israel”.
It is promoted widely in Israel by the Likud where you can read about it in the Jerusalem Post.
They are demanding that Bush attack Iran. It’s a real movement and it is goose stepping your way.
Posted by: Jesus Reyes | Sep 25 2006 0:40 utc | 9
First of all, thanks for the help with the link; I don’t know what went wrong.
Who are these people?
It’s interesting: I’m in north Alabama and have worked for 15 years in the theatrical lighting business. Southwest of here is a town called Double Springs, in Winston County. Winston County was an area wholy unsuited for plantation agriculture, and so the residents felt that they “had no dog in the hunt” in the Civil War. They refused to sign the Letters of Secession, and tried to form an independent republic, the Free State of Winson. While the Free State was never formed, the Confederacy never gained control over a several state area.
That insularity survives to this day, and the church in the video is from that area. There’s no doubt in my mind that the local public schools essentially teach and practice Christianity. The area is 98% white, with the remainder being mostly Hispanic and Asian; there are virtually no blacks.
It’s a stunningly beautiful area of falling water and old growth forest that seems, when you’re in it, to be more like the Pacific Northwest.
To be fair, these nuts are by far more extreme than anyone else I’ve seen, and are easily balanced out by some of the African-American churchs that I deal with in Birmingham, who are really models of what Jesus had in mind (except for the gay thing, which they struggle with to a degree that to me is puzzling).
the Confederacy never gained control over a several state area.
sigh…… make that a “several county area.”
I’m not so sure those people are talking about physical war. I think their talking about spiritual war, war in the heart, mind, and soul and so on. They’re refering to the culture war and their message is not so far fetched. I think this is a dead culture. A culture more and more unable to feel anything but pain, hatred, and longing.
I heard one of their representative interviewed on KCRW. She was critical of greedy corporatism and layed it’s foundations at the feet of ‘secularists’. This will be their tactic. Since the religious right is the tool of corporatism and vice versa, they will attempt to obsecure that relationship by blaming the ravages of corporate america on the godless market all the while reeping big profits from the same.
Posted by: Iron Butterfly | Sep 25 2006 0:50 utc | 12
@Iron Butterly, that will be promoted by the Lootocracy to provide cover for their bankrupting of the middle class. Just decadent consumers destroying the planet…we can’t afford you anymore…turn to MaleGod to replenish yourselves in a healthier more fulfilling way…Shall I go on??? …in short, kleptos need to hide behind them to provide moral cover for the predations…
Posted by: jj | Sep 25 2006 0:57 utc | 13
L.A. Times not surprisingly has more on the history of the film.
At one point in the film, Fischer shouts to the children, “This is war! Are you part of it or not?” She proudly compares her work to the indoctrination of young boys by extremist Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere. The film intersperses footage of Fischer and the children with clips of radio talk-show host Mike Papantonio, a liberal Methodist, excoriating conservative Christians like Fischer.
Fischer is disappointed by the way she appears in the film. “I do understand they’re out to tell a story and they felt they found it with some of the political things,” she said by phone from her home in Bismarck, N.D. “And they’re out to show the most dramatic, exotic, extreme things they found in my ministry, and I’m not ashamed of those things, but without context, it’s really difficult to defend what you’re seeing on the screen.”
More controversy over the film erupted last week when the Rev. Ted Haggard — whose constituency at the National Assn. of Evangelicals is 30 million strong — took a public stance against it, claiming that the film makes evangelicals look “scary.” His condemnation apparently chilled the film’s opening in 13 theaters in Colorado, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri on Sept. 15.
But after Sandra Day O’Connor resigned from the Supreme Court during their filming, leaving a spot open for a more conservative judge, the evangelical community galvanized around the selection of a replacement, and Fischer’s children chanted, “Righteous judges!” Ultimately, though, Fischer said, “no one was more shocked or horrified when they told me that was the turn the film was making.” That’s because, like many evangelical Christians, Fischer doesn’t see what she does as political.
The Bible, she said, instructs people to “pray for those in authority over us and in government positions so we can live a peaceful life.” And Fischer said she’s “dumbfounded” that people would find her anti-abortion lessons disturbing when she sees them as a way to teach children to value human life.Jesus Camp or Boot Camp?
After all, who better teaches the value of human life than Pakistani madrassas!
Posted by: jj | Sep 25 2006 2:15 utc | 14
I heard one of their representative interviewed on KCRW. She was critical of greedy corporatism and layed it’s foundations at the feet of ‘secularists’. This will be their tactic.
Jeez, can’t these people think up anything original? In their early rabble rousing days, the Nazis used to rant about “Jewish capitalism.” It’s the oldest fascist dodge there is: If not for [insert name of demonic racial and/or religious enemy here] everything would be great!
The Bible, she said, instructs people to “pray for those in authority over us and in government positions so we can live a peaceful life.”
Yes, just like I’m sure they prayed every day for President Clinton and her husband Bill.
Posted by: billmon | Sep 25 2006 2:45 utc | 15
some of the African-American churchs that I deal with in Birmingham, who are really models of what Jesus had in mind
And what exactly was it that you had conceived of Jesus as having had in mind? And what authority would you cite for that?
Do remember that Jesus himself is specifically quoted in the Gospels as saying that He “came not to bring peace, but a sword”. And that He came, again in His own relayed words, fully prepared to tear families apart in the name of His larger cause. And that, again in His own words, on the Day of Judgement, the majority of the human race (including many insufficiently pure of the faithful) were going to be stuffed into eternal agonizing hellfire, a prospect at which He is not described as displaying any distress.
As I always like to point out, the Holy Bible reserves pride of place for Jesus at the absolute dead center of the bloodsoaked hallucinatory revenge fantasy of the Book of Revelation. You know, the stuff that readers of the Left Behind books find themselves becoming strangely excited over.
So is all of that what you’re finding in those black Birmingham churches? Or is what you’re finding there the “good” Jesus, instead? And how do you tell the two apart?
—
Posted by: marquer | Sep 25 2006 3:17 utc | 16
I am sorry. I am ill. The church I was involved in during my youth was at the forefront of the Jesus Rock Pop movement. I’ve went to countless jams like that in the 70’s and 80’s when they were so far outside the mainstream even Pentecostals looked at them askew. I played bass in a band like this back them, generating the same kind of blind excitement, tongues, writhing people, demons screaming during exorcisms and healings. And of course the mind fucking you see here, though we were apolitical in those days and trusted no political party. I told you in another post how that church turned so quickly to the right in the early 80’s. So did their music and I left a lost soul shortly after. But I am seriously ill. I forced myself to watch the whole thing to see my mind vomit up every memory that I normally refuse to admit is mine. Its like it was 1976 when this crap started and not 2006 when it was in the service of a system far more wicked than the devils we imagined. Maybe someday I’ll write about it. Now I need to close my eyes and rest my mind. Kahlua…that’s how I’ll end my night. I’ll think about where those folks from 30 years ago are and what stage of disillusionment they are in. As an old man wrote:
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
Posted by: Diogenes | Sep 25 2006 3:37 utc | 17
I’ll pray fer ye…
the Natural Prayer Project (NPP) recommends that schools follow a suggestion made by Colin Powell… nuff said.
There is no comfort in faith, the heavens still will fall.
~Bruderschaft
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2006 3:58 utc | 18
@marquer, #16:
It’s easy to tell “good Jesus” and “bad Jesus” apart. Just give the believers two quotes from the New Testament and ask them to expound. Pick one where Jesus is nice and benevolent and forgiving, and one where Jesus is sending people off to burn for eternity. Every Christian church in the world basically believes in only one or the other and somehow ignores, rationalizes, or declares symbolic the remainder, almost always in some contradictory fashion.
Once again: this is not unique to Christianity. Muslims do it and Jews do it, too. Dunno about other religions, because I don’t know the texts well enough, but I’ve seen enough examples in the west to know it’s true over here, and I’d bet it is so everywhere else, too.
Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Sep 25 2006 4:34 utc | 21
okay, i’ve read of quite a few of the many schemes that the u.s. govt & its agents devised to get rid of fidel – the toxic cigars, the virulent wet suit, the poisoned drinks/meals, exploding clams, etc… – but i’d never heard of what undoubtedly has to be the wackiest of them all, until i came across this in jim hougan’s spooks: the haunting of america – the private use of secret agents
…General Edward Lansdale’s scheme to foment a messianic counterrevolution that would have had a (presumably pro-capitalist) Christ arrive in Cuban waters aboard an American submarine with star-shell flares exploding across the skies; having earlier identified Castro as the Anti-Christ, Lansdale’s proposal would have had the Cubans overthrow their leader in the interests of the Second Coming.
in instruments of statecraft, michael mcclintock quotes a more clear description of lansdale’s vision:
Cuba was to be flooded with rumors that the Second Coming was imminent, that Christ had picked Cuba for His arrival, and that He wanted the Cubans to act rid of Castro first. Then, on the night foretold, a U. S. submarine would surface off the coast of Cuba and litter the sky with star shells, which would convince the Cubans that The Hour was at hand.
sure, it’s wacky as all hell, but i’m a-wondering if there’s a way to play on the superstitions of our most nutty fundamentalists right here at home. brings to mind a time when some of us kids hid in a church steeple and commanded bypassers (in as booming a voice as a prepubescent lad could muster) to build a large boat & start gathering animals cuz a flood was comin’. we weren’t too successful – actually, we got in a peck a’ trouble – but perhaps w/ the right audience & a bit more planning…
Posted by: b real | Sep 25 2006 4:53 utc | 22
Here are a couple of samples from my favorite ecstatic band, World Entertainment War, with Rob Brezsny on lead vocals.
Kick Your Own Ass
Prayer Wars
Excitement, tongues, writhing people–without the blindness.
Posted by: catlady | Sep 25 2006 6:02 utc | 23
thanks catlady…
I’m a fan of Assemblage 23, thought I’d return the favor…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2006 11:00 utc | 24
aDDDENdum:
Perhaps, this may be more to your liking as, A 23 isn’t for everyone…I can’t always listen to emo/industrial etc… but when I’m in a dark space, it resonates, and Tom Sheer, aka A 23 is an excellent artist.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2006 11:12 utc | 25
Last one, in my more nihilistic moments,
Some say the end is near.
Some say well see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this
Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of
Freaks
Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call la
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. any fucking day.
Learn to swim, Ill see you down in arizona bay.
Fret for your figure and
Fret for your latte and
Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your prozac and
Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your cable and
Fret for your car.
Its a
Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of
Freaks
Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call la
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. any fucking day.
Learn to swim, Ill see you down in arizona bay.
Some say a comet will fall from the sky.
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.
Some say the end is near.
Some say well see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will cuz
I sure could use a vacation from this
Silly shit, stupid shit…
One great big festering neon distraction,
Ive a suggestion to keep you all occupied.
Learn to swim.
Moms gonna fix it all soon.
Moms comin round to put it back the way it ought to be.
Learn to swim.
Fuck l ron hubbard and
Fuck all his clones.
Fuck all those gun-toting
Hip gangster wannabes.
Learn to swim.
Fuck retro anything.
Fuck your tattoos.
Fuck all you junkies and
Fuck your short memory.
Learn to swim.
Fuck smiley glad-hands
With hidden agendas.
Fuck these dysfunctional,
Insecure actresses.
Learn to swim.
Cuz Im praying for rain
And Im praying for tidal waves
I wanna see the ground give way.
I wanna watch it all go down.
Mom please flush it all away.
I wanna watch it go right in and down.
I wanna watch it go right in.
Watch you flush it all away.
Time to bring it down again.
Dont just call me pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.
I cant imagine why you wouldnt
Welcome any change, my friend.
I wanna see it all come down.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2006 11:31 utc | 26
@ marquer
So is all of that what you’re finding in those black Birmingham churches? Or is what you’re finding there the “good” Jesus, instead? And how do you tell the two apart?
First, let’s be clear: I’m not a Christian. The fact that churches are a large segment of our business has always been a downside for me, especially given the fact that the more fundamental the church, the more they dig the technology we sell.
As far as “good” Jesus, I guess it’s the contrast between churches who are focussed on social service, justice, etc. (Beatitudes Jesus) and those who are building $20M facilities with food courts and shopping (ummm… Starbucks Jesus?). Because the latter is so egregious, I probably romanticize the former.
Live webcast Torture hearings…
Arlen Specter, habeas corpus, History in the making…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2006 15:21 utc | 29
War in the heart, war in the mind, soon translates to killing infidels and vermin.
The US needs soldiers. Soldiers for God or Jesus will do just fine, thank you.
pray for those in authority over us and in government positions so we can live a peaceful life
is to be read as: submit to authority and get ready to fight and give your life for the ultimate noble cause
Meanwhile, gathering the fighters and indoctrinating in this way can bring consequent financial rewards, position, even fame.
Posted by: Noirette | Sep 25 2006 17:23 utc | 30
That wasn’t me. That was Stanley Kunitz, bless him, who died on May 14 of this year.
Posted by: Diogenes | Sep 25 2006 18:51 utc | 31
Praise Jeebus! Morford has the answer.
Attention liberals: Please breed.
It is, as you can imagine, a looming catastrophe. But I am here to help. I am here to inspire the resistance, to propose solutions to this disastrous fertility gap and to help get liberals into the sack sans protection so they may go forth and multiply the number of people who adore “The Daily Show” and read actual books and think Aaron Sorkin is some sort of god.
…
Pending the necessary venture capital, I shall open the Mark Morford Summer Camp for Luminous Toddlers. Here is where kids will learn the fine arts of archery, yoga, organic farming, naughty Spanish slang, frat-boy incapacitation techniques, sake classifications, Fox News Neocon Bull– Detection, how to properly tune a Fender Strat, and how to look at breeding Christian conservatives and laugh and shrug and offer them a drink and a vibrator and a copy of “Jitterbug Perfume” and a polyamorous weekend in Sonoma.
…
Meantime, preliminary sign-ups for the MMSCLT begin now. Oh, and if you need to become pregnant, I might be able to help with that, too. I have the experience. I know some people. It is, after all, your choice. You know what you have to do. What are you waiting for?
Posted by: beq | Sep 29 2006 16:19 utc | 32
@beq
At Church, an ‘ATM for Jesus’
Pastor Marty Baker’s ‘Giving Kiosks’ are catching on. Members say they use credit cards for everything else — why not tithing?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 29 2006 16:22 utc | 33
“A recent men’s fellowship breakfast was devoted to discussing the spiritual wages of lunching at Hooters.”
Thanks, Uncle. I’d just gotten over the giggling fit I had over Morford.
🙂
Posted by: beq | Sep 29 2006 16:37 utc | 34