Culture Wars
“Jesus Made Me Puke”
by Tim Lien
That’s the title of an article by Matt Taibbi, appearing in Rolling Stone recently. (RS, May 1, 2008). It is an adaptation of his forthcoming book, The Great Derangement, (Random House).
The premise is this: Matt “infiltrates” (Degree of difficulty, judges? 1.5 out of 100) John Hagee’s mega-church in Texas, finally culminating in a membership retreat weekend. His stated purpose was to find out what kind of religion was driving George Bush’s foreign policy (read: Israel) and domestic policies, as well. Along the way he makes some scathing observations— some of which are very true, and some of which he misses.
It’s a longish article, but it is fascinating to hear a completely unchurched person describe a branch of evangelicalism. As with many people who have done the same, he confuses all evangelicals with John Hagee’s brand of theology, and that is where you will become most frustrated. (Warning: it also has some rougher language.)
I would insert some great quotes, but I know some of you have read it, and you may actually want to post them.
Posted by Tim Lien at May 4, 2008 05:13 PM
I had to share a few of my favorite quotes:
The more you shout out praising the Lord, singing along to those awful acoustic tunes, telling people how blessed you feel and so on, the more a sort of mechanical Christian skin starts to grow all over your real self.
…it would be easy enough to bury your “sinful” self far under the skin of your outer Christian and to just travel through life this way. So long as you go through all the motions, no one will care who you really are underneath.
When most Americans think of the Christian right, they think of scenes from television - great halls full of perfectly groomed people in pale suits and light-colored dresses, smiling and happy and full of the Holy Spirit, robotically singing hymns at the behest of some squeaky-clean pastor with a baritone voice and impossible hair.
One of the implicit promises of the church is that following its program will restore to you your vigor, confidence and assertiveness, effecting, among other things, a marked and obvious physical transformation from crippled lost soul to hearty vessel of God. That’s one of the reasons that it’s so important for the pastors to look healthy, lusty and lustrous - they’re appearing as the “after” photo in the ongoing advertisement for the church wellness cure.
“Tighten your saddle, he’s fixin’ ta buck” (Talking about the Holy Spirit)
Observation: And now I know why I can’t get my hair to look like Tim’s.
Maybe one of the reasons the writer began to “fear for his normal” is that we are designed to be worshipping creatures, to render worship, so even an assumed posture of worship connects to that part of ourselves, our soul, and our hunger for God…I don’t know. It seems, though, in these circumstances, the worshipers are worshipping worship.
I wish I had the time to do more with this. From where I sit, it’s hard to judge who’s more absurd, the author or his subjects. The author (who very obviously has an ax he’s intent on grinding against Christians and Republicans) picks a strawman pentecostal church to “infiltrate” and, lo and behold, they have a speaking-in-tongues baptism-by-fire rolling-around-on-the-floor pentecostal service. Shock and dismay! Then, through convenience or ignorance, the writer attributes their irrational behavior to every Christian on the planet, no matter how strenuously they may disagree with pentecostalism. Nice.
That’s not to leave the church out of my criticism. I think their problem can be summed up with one quote that speaks VOLUMES:
“In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!”
Yeesh.
Tim, why don’t you write this guy and see if he’d be willing to “infiltrate” Riverwood? Heck, let’s just give him posting privileges to this blog, and invite his readers.
Matt, One word: Product. You, too, can have good hair. Just use plenty of gel.
Great quotes: “mechanical Christian skin”… that might describe my high school/college days.
Peggy, I love it: “worshipping worship.” That is right on. The gradual trend towards any manifestation of this literally “sensational”…in that, it has to evoke some/any feeling for it to be valid. Now stoic Presbyterians might have scurried too far the other way in masking our emotions, but seeking for feeling is another thing entirely.
Clay, Not a bad idea. But measured dialog does not sell magazines nor books.