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Friday Challenge: Tell A Whopper

1,046 Comments

Today’s challenge is to tell us a story that happened in fundyland and then let us guess whether or not it is true. The one criteria is that if the story is true it must be all true, if it is a lie then every part must be a lie. Be sure to come back at some point and let us know whether or not your tale was true!

Start spinning your yarns!

1,046 thoughts on “Friday Challenge: Tell A Whopper”

  1. There was this ex-fundy dude who created an internet blog about “stuff fundies like”. It’s the best blog on the interwebs.

    3. As of my reply, there are 481 comments and still counting! Many are true stories of the weird and bizzare world of IFBdom. Within the short span of time since this post started, I think it is just touching the tip-of-the-iceberg!

        3. Yeah, george isn’t quite so active these days since our Benevolent Dictator added spell check. 😉

  2. My friend-who-was-a-boy (not to be confused with “boyfriend”) started dating a girl at another, slightly-less-fundy church when they were both 18. She got pregnant. Their parents forced them to get married. During the wedding ceremony, the pastor made both of them apologize to the wedding guests (mostly fundy folks, too) and to God for their sin of fornication.

    2. True. I had a friend who got his girlfriend (or maybe fling, I dunno) pregnant, and her church made her get up in front of the whole congregation and beg their forgiveness.

      She was a Pentecostal, though, not a fundy.

      1. I once heard David Jeremiah (pretty sure it was he) describe how his adopted daughter rebelled and got pregnant, and he had her stand in front of the entire congregation to confess. I remember thinking, “Gee whiz, they give us grief about Confession, but at least it’s private and confidential, not a public humiliation session!”

    3. True. Not surprisingly, the marriage did not last very long. I can’t imagine having my memories of my wedding day–supposed to be one of the most joyous days of your life–tainted by this kind of humiliation. To that, the IFB-ers would say, well, you should have considered the consequences. IOW, it’s YOUR fault we have to treat you so badly 🙄

    4. Has to be true. Same thing happened at a fundy church in a small town we live in long ago.

    5. I can see how that can be true. Its normal for Fundies to demand a public apologies for this level of sin, then become gluttons at the reception in the church basement catered by Betty Bigmouth Crockpot.

  3. I was a student at PCC walking to church on a Sunday morning. Three female students from Africa were walking in front of me wearing beautiful floral dresses with matching head wraps.

    The dean of women stopped the girls and told them they had to go back to their dorms to change into something “more American”.

    I almost barfed.

    2. Geez, you can’t win! I’m sure these dresses were plenty modest enough – some ladies from Africa go to my church and they wear their African dresses, and those dresses are loose fitting, extremely long, and the top part is also very modest.
      Fundy U’s are also not known as the place for fashion. Clothes always have to fit the modesty guidelines. But heaven forbid someone wear clothes from another culture even if it does fit the modesty guidelines!

    3. Dear PCC:

      Remind me again — WHAT nationality is Yahweh?

      Christian Socialist

      PS: African garb blows ours out of the water. Go for it!

      1. Amen, preach it, brother!

        I once read a blog post wherein a Catholic ultra-trad (yes, we definitely have our nutcases) was railing against Women Wearing Pants. (Note: 99.9999999% of Catholic women wear pants. And are blissfully unaware of the existence of Catholic ultra-trads, who seem to exist mainly on the Internet. But I digress.)

        Several people told him he was nuts. Including moi. I mentioned the beautiful Indian outfit (of Muslim origin) — the kurta and salwa — consisting of a long tunic over slightly tapered pants. It is totally modest and incredibly feminine.

        Details, details.

  4. And another: my best friend when I was little collected My Little Ponies. Her father took a razor blade to the unicorn-type ponies and sliced off their horns, so as to avoid the appearance of associating with Magickal Beings. He then covered up the hole where the horn had been with the sticky felt stuff you use on corns on your toes.

    2. My dad hated my sister’s beloved MLP unicorns too. I think my mom must have interceded because we had so few toys and they were given to her. Naturally the unicorns were her/our favorites.

      1. As a girl, I liked unicorns but my parents believed they were too closely associated with evil, so much so that when I got to BJU, I specifically chose NOT to join one certain society because their mascot was the unicorns.

    4. This one was true, too. This dad was heavily into Bill Gothard, so I’m surprised he even allowed her to keep the bizarrely mutilated former unicorns or any of the other MLPs. Maybe he thought it was a lesson on the transforming power of God’s grace or something. However, his grace did not extend to Cabbage Patch dolls or Care Bears. My friend, as I did, lost all of those in the Great Gothard Cleansing.

      1. Condemn me, but I don’t like either Cabbage Patch Dolls, too stupid, or Care Bears, too saccharine. 😐 Problem is, I don’t like the Fundy reasons all that much either. 😉

  5. But wait–there’s more where those came from.

    When I won a scholarship to a local college affiliated with the Lutheran church, my dad went to a campus tour with me. During the tour, the guide (a student) talked about the chapel services on campus, and she mentioned that the female students sometimes led the services. My dad interrupted her and launched into a diatribe about how women are prohibited from speaking in church, much less leading the services, and demanded that she explain how the college could allow such practices since they are forbidden by the Bible. In front of approximately 50 billion other teenagers and their families.

  6. Do you all remember THE WALTONS? You may not remember the church which protested the show at the CBS affiliate in Jefferson City, Missouri. They objected to two features especially: the focus on bootleg whiskey, called “the recipe” on the show, and the casting of the gay activist Will Geer as Grandpa Walton.

        1. I just did a quick web search on Will Geer. He was married at least twice and had four children. However, “Geer was also the lover of gay activist Harry Hay” (Wikipedia says). Will Geer was a radical labor union activist and a one-time member of the Communist Pary. He was blacklisted in the 1950s. He hung around with other prominent radicals like Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, and Pete Seeger. And, of course, he was beloved by millions for his protrayal of Grandpa Walton. Interesting guy. A book-length biography of him would be fascinating.

        2. True. He probably should be identified as bisexual rather than gay, but he was a gay rights activist before the 60s. As I’ve mentioned, I’d heard a sermon against The Walton’s because of him.

      2. While I have indeed heard preaching against THE WALTONS for the reasons mentioned, I fess up: I made up the protest in Missouri.

  7. In high school ( a good 30 years ago) we were told that Alice Cooper was a high priest in the Satanic Church and that fans would vie for a chance to offer their pets to sacrificed to the Devil before his shows.

    2. Five will get you ten that a fair number of AC fans would want that one to be true, 😈 at least back in the day.

    3. Sorry, I made that one up. I DID hear a lot of terrible rumors about KISS and Ozzy Osbourne though.

        1. Alice Cooper is indeed born again. Maybe all those years of playing charity golf with Pat Boone had something to do with it. I believe he also opened a huge Christian recreation center where he lives.

        2. And just to continue the madness, Pat Boone once put out an album, “No More Mister Nice Guy” that can only be considered “light metal”, managing to offend both Christian music lovers and metalheads alike. 😆

        3. I don’t know how many evangelical Christians were offended by that Pat Boone album, but I remember that Heavy Metal fans were outraged.

  8. Back in 1996 there was a movement that made fun of and questioned Fundy U. That prompted the president and his stooges to expel any student associated with the movement.

    A student was caught for being an active participant when he handed a copy of the literature to a girl friend.

    He was nearly expelled and still managed to attend the college.

    1. hunh-hunh, he said Stooges, nyuk-nyuk-nyuk! :mrgreen:
      And so, two generations of wondrous stupidity are joined, praize god! 😛

  9. I knew a guy in my fundy high school who claimed that during a school trip to BJU for a music/academic contest, he got to third base with a girl in the dating parlor. Said it was mid morning, no one else around.

    2. Curtis Hutson always used to say that if you leave the wait staff a Gospel tract, you had better tip close to 18-20%! Being a current pastor, but former waiter myself, we try to do that anyway…

      1. Yes, it is true. I had a copy of the Student Voice and gave it to a friend. She turned me in later. Somehow I managed to stay the whole semester with 149 D’s.

  13. My cousin and I were in church one day in MS. We had captured a squirrel one day and put it in a shoebox. Somehow it got loose in the church.

    You shoulda seen the revival that broke out when the squirrel went down the aisle and ran between the legs! Baptists started shouting!

    2. One that by the grace of God should be true, whether it happened or not. Don’t tell me the Lord has no sense of humor! 😆

  14. One time, a young lady around 20 years of age, enrolled at Bob Jones University. Midway through the semester, she called her parents to ask if she could wear pajama pants in the dorms, since that is what the other girls were doing. I guess she was tired of flannel nightgowns? Anyway, her parents then pulled this conscientious young woman out of college – in the middle of the semester – because they were worried about the worldly influences of the pajama pants wearing females at BJU. The young woman came home, stuck around there for a while, and eventually made her exit. She now wears blue jeans – in public – on a daily basis. The end. P.S. Their friends, my parents, used this story as a warning to my sister and I about why we couldn’t even attend a fundy college. I’ll never forget the look of shock on my dad’s face when he first spotted me in a pair of flannel pajama pants.

    1. Could be true since I know of colleges that DO demand that their female students wear nightgowns not pajamas to bed. I also know that BJU is considered too loose by some ultra-strict fundies. They do Shakespeare! The girls wear makeup! They’re not KJV-only!

      1. Having rules about what nightwear to wear is crazy. Probably their rationale is what if there’s a fire or something?

        Do they also say boys have to wear jammies and not just their undies to bed?

        1. Well, pants are a man’s garment and a woman wouldn’t want to be an abomination to God while she sleeps. At least, that is how it was explained to me. And in my parents’ opinion, any college that allowed pants on females, whether at night or during the day, wasn’t right with God, and was headed for apostasy. So…yeah. The story is 100% true.

      2. BJU was considered pretty wicked in my neck of the woods. I had hoped the no pajama pants thing was restricted to my sect of ultra-conservatives who hated college altogether, but I’m sorry to hear there are colleges who hold that rule. I HATED wearing nightgowns, they always rode up, and shifted around while I slept! Which, in my opinion, negated the modesty thing. The first time I slept in a pair of pajama pants, it was sweet relief. Now I am so bold as to wear shorts in the summer time, without a twinge of guilt. Thank God for freedom!

  15. It’s been fun trying to guess which of these tales are true. However, it’s so disturbing to see how many of them ARE true. IFB is a sick, sick, culture. Period.

    1. I knew as soon as I saw this post that the vast majority of them would be true…because anyone with an IFB past has WAY too many CRAZY stories to tell!! lol

  16. Years ago, during a business meeting at my old church, the subject was modesty. There were always two or three women who were out-and-out temptresses (of…course), and several who were on the edge, and this was back before anyone had heard of bouncing their eyes. One of the young preacher boys raised his hand and in all seriousness said, “Why don’t we just pick out 4 or 5 modest patterns and have all the women make their dresses from those?”

    2. I would say that’s too crazy to be true, but somehow I think that it is possible…

  17. Five hundred forty-ninth!
    Yay!
    I get one-five-hundred-forty-ninth of a butt cushion (a thread, maybe?)!

  18. One influential lady in the church who only used “all natural” products, asked the Pastor to ask the ladies in the church to stop wearing perfume because she didn’t want her children exposed to unGodly chemicals.

    He did.

        1. I hate to say it, but, with the annoyance of strong perfume it is possible to be right for all the wrong reasons; knew a doctor who got ill from the heavy aromas wafting from too many ladies. 😕

    3. Panda Rosa, I wear all natural products because synthetic fragrances give me headaches. I also keep all natural products on my kids. But I would never force my feelings about perfumes on others, unless it was a life threatening issue (with an allergy or something). That being said, with my sensitivity to fragrance, it was always a challenge to hold my baby after picking her up from nursery – the sweet, older ladies would douse themselves in strong perfume, and it would transfer to my baby, and stay on her until I gave her a bath. Ugh!

      1. We had a similar problem. My wife and I were in a choir that traveled a small region, singing wherever they would have us. Our daughter was born about the time we started singing with this group. At one Indy-Fundy church, the nursery worker quite clearly hadn’t washed her hair since the Nixon administration, and her odor could drive ticks off a badger at forty paces. Naturally, she ended up holding our daughter. Imagine our horror as this woman came in from the nursery to hear the second half of the concert, holding our daughter, and stood in the back of the auditorium and gave her fingers to our daughter to suck. Before the last notes of our last song had died out, my wife made a bee-line to get our daughter back from that smelly mess.

        It always seems to be extremes: too much perfume, or too little soap. Crikey heck.

  19. At my fundy college, you were allowed to ‘lead worship’ with a guitar, but you had to get approved by the music chair. I tried to get approved because my R.A. wanted me to lead singing on our hall, but was told that my style of singing was too sensual.

  20. 2 stories here – one is entirely true, one is entirely false. You guess which is which… 🙂

    1. Fundy evangelist got the hint from our pastor that the love offering for the 3-day revival service was not amounting to much at all, so he blasted a nuclear sermon on the final night and ended up hurling an offering plate across the auditorium that shattered a window.

    2. My dad was pastoring an IFB church when the book “88 Reasons the Rapture WILL happen in 1988” came out, and my parents took our entire family to a graveyard to sit and watch for the dead in Christ to rise first so we could be caught up together with them in the air, which was going to be totally awesome.

    Choose carefully. 😉

    3. I’m going to go with 1. True. 2. False. Because? Fundy pastors are OBSESSED with money and offerings. Gotta build their kingdoms, ya know.

    4. These are all excellent reasonings… I’ll give it a little while longer to see if anyone else wants to weigh in and then give up the verdict. Don’t wanna be rude and keep you folks hanging forever, lol.

    5. #2. I used to have a copy of said book and I can totally see that happening.
      I could also see #1 happening too but in this case, I’m calling false.

    6. I’m guessing that No.1 is true, but no.2 is pretty close, I remember being Rapture Ready. Sometimes I still wonder, esp if the world paused last December even if it was those gosh-darn Mayans… 😕

    7. #1 is false. Although I saw some crazy stuff during revival and camp meeting services, I never saw this. Certainly could have happened and not been surprising, though…

      #2 is entirely true, somewhat embarrassing, and gets progressively worse to think about as the years go by. 🙂

      1. #1 sure could be true. When I was in ninth grade, a teacher got so angry, he threw his Bible across the room, where it exploded against the wall. If he had been throwing an offering plate, it definitely would have been able to go through a window.

        A year or two earlier, the same teacher yelled at us for 45 minutes because a 7th-grader asked him if the pronunciation wasn’t supposed to be CoPURnicus rather than CoperNICus.

    8. I was in a service once when the pastor threw his car keys into the congregation. Some people had disagreed with his buying a new car after calling us all “God-robbers” because tithes were down so much he couldn’t pay the staff.

      Do you believe me?

  21. Jack Treiber ripped up some of his students for singing “Little Drummer Boy” because “drums are a sin” but was fine with Bro. Alvin Martinez auditioning for American Idol as he sang “Rock Steady” by the Whispers. Bro. Martinez didn’t make the cut but has made over 8 records through Golden State Baptist College and whenever the GSBC choir, students come to your town, they auction off an autographed Bro. Martinez record and autographed Jack Treiber KJV track.

    1. I can almost see Trieber doing that. Why not, it would bring so much glory to NVBC to have their guy get national recognition. American Idol is just too evil, though. I would be surprised if they auctioned off his music when they visited a church to sing (although, there is very little that would surprise me about that place).

      Martinez can sing, though. My wife and I went to their equivalent of Spiritual Leadership Conference one year, and the first song of the first service was Martinez singing lead in “I Stand Redeemed” with the choir as backup. That was the first time I had ever heard the song. It was the only redeeming feature of that conference; it all went downhill from there. True story.

    2. Martinez stole the show at Pastor’s School 2009 during his singing. People were clapping to the beat, you thought you were at Craig Groeschel’s Emerging Lifechurch.TV. Even Schaap was “moving to the beat.” This would have never happened under Hyles as he just had HAC students perform 1920’s outdated comedy skits since he didn’t want kids to watch television or be in tune with pop culture.

  22. While I was dating a Mexican girl at a Bible college, her dorm supervisor came by one night. She expressed some views about interracial dating. My girlfriend’s friend asked, “But wasn’t your husband [may he rest in peace] a Native American?”

    “Yes, and I never felt right about it.” Or something to that effect.

    At that college, though, we had several professors who were opponents of racism, and our relationship was relatively unopposed.

    1. True. It is easy to believe, from personal experience, that a dorm supervisor could have some wacky ideas that are not necessarily condoned by the administration.

      1. It was true, although to be fair, it couldn’t adequately be considered an IFB college.

  23. Once, while I was on deputation, a fundy pastor proclaimed that, while it was great that we were spreading the Gospel, it would be required that we spread a little bit of American ideals of freedom and liberty in order for the Gospel to change the world for the better.

    1. Surprisingly, this is my only false story. I’m pretty sure this is a common misconception many pastors have about missionaries, though.

  24. Also on deputation, a fundy pastor had a wall of sketches of great fundamentalist heroes of the past in chronological order. Charles Spurgeon was up there, as well as Lester Roloff. In the very last position was…wait for it…the pastor himself.

    2. Sure, he probably had built himself up for so long he actually believed the stuff he was saying.

    3. Very true. I hated to say anything. Nicest Prophet’s Chamber we’d stayed at in a while. So, there’s that.

  25. On the field, my dad met an evangelical Belgian who had a real burden for reaching his people and saw a great hope in my Dad’s knowledge of the Bible, but we had to part ways from him due to his regular consumption of alcohol.

  26. I met a missionary to Belize. His tagline? “Missions is the heart of God. You better BELIZE it!”

    2. No doubt. Some others I have heard are “When you’re hungry, pray for HUNGARY” and “When you tie your shoes, pray for the Hughes!”

      1. We had missionaries visit our church whose prayer card was actually a refrigerator magnet that said, “When you’re eatin’, pray for the Eatons.”

        1. A lady in our choir was starting a floral business. She passed out her new business cards to the choir members. It read (in part) “Weddings: 1 hour free consolation for the bride-to-be”

          I don’t know if I was the only one who noticed the malopropism, but nobody mentioned it. Funny, though, as I read of some “arranged marriages” in fundy land, a 1 hour consolation just seems like a good start…

        2. “1-hour consolation.” That’s great!
          Surely it was an intentional pun?
          Or maybe not …

        1. Oops. That was supposed to be a reply to “When you’re hungry, pray for Hungary.”

        2. Wow, that is hilarious. I have to say, though, my fundy upbringing did teach me quite a bit of geography. As a little kid I could find places like “Kenya” or “The Philippines” on a map.

    4. Very true. The missionary was a bit of a jokester, which was a refreshing change in an otherwise somber mission conference. He confided in us later that he thought his joking around had cost him support from that church. This was passed on as a cautionary tale to us kids that we couldn’t be too lively/funny/rowdy at conferences lest we lose support.

  27. A fundy pastor I worked under tried to church a mission representative for allowing his wife to wear pants on her own time, yet had his wife leave him citing “emotional abuse” and had to resign the pulpit. Three weeks later? They had “worked it out”, and he presented himself as candidate for pastor. Four months of hell after that? The church voted him back in.

    1. Dumb question: What does “to church” mean? Seriously; I have no clue. Is it a form of discipline?

      I think there was some sort of “churching” custom for women who had just given birth, waaaaay back in the day, but I assume you’re not referring to that. (It wasn’t punitive anyway.)

      1. It’s a bit of Southern slang for church discipline. In this church’s case, it was ritual public humiliation. More of a political tool than anything else.

        And yes. The story is true.

  28. Since there are still 4 min left of Good Fri, I remember a Fundy preacher saying Jesus was crucified on Wed.

    1. I’ve heard that argument somewhere.
      The strange thing is that someone thinks what day it happened is the important part of the story.

      1. That is rooted in the “Easter Challenge”, which is an exercise in making every detail of the story literally fit, which can’t totally be done.

    2. I have heard that claim as well, usually having to do with the “three days and three nights” verse, but the math does not add up.

    3. My very fundy cousin posted a very long article this week “proving” that Christ died on Wednesday. She also posted last night that they were celebrating Easter last night (Friday night) because it was the actual day Christ arose counting from the Jewish celebration of the Passover this year. Her reasoning is that Christ rose Saturday evening after sunrise 🙄

      1. That is exactly what the independent, fundamental, Landmark, missionary, bible-believing, sovereign grace Baptist church I previously attended taught. And I believed every word of it. I will admit that it does have a fairly sound logic to it, but I pretty came to the opinion that it doesn’t matter one wit. Of course, it mattered very much to them since they are very anti holidays (being as holidays are just Catholic reinterpretations of Satanic pagan holy days, AMEN?) and proving that Jesus wasn’t crucified on Friday and rose at the beginning of the Jewish day not at dawn was highly instrumental in the debunking of modern Easter celebrations. They also used the “Jesus was definitely not born in December” and “look–every birthday celebration in the Bible always turned out badly” arguments against Christmas. Now it just seems like a whole lot of fluff to show that a) they’re the real bible-believing Christians here and b) they’re the persecuted minority. Then it seemed very important to truly following God. My parents have come a certain way out of that type of thinking, but they still don’t celebrate Easter or Christmas, don’t even go to church on those Sundays. I prefer to view the ancient holy days as being sanctified by use, and just as we remember with no regard to date the crucifixion via communion, why shouldn’t we corporately remember the Birth and Resurrection on the days we’ve corporately chosen and upheld through tradition. The date isn’t the important thing, to say the least.

        1. I totally agree. Over ten years ago my cousin and her husband went to serve under a pastor that did not celebrate any holidays, Christmas being the worst holiday to celebrate. They made a very big deal about not agreeing with it, and talking about it as if it was unbelievable. I don’t think they are working with that pastor anymore, but I think they have been totally sucked in to that whole mentality except for Christmas, but I really wonder how much longer they will celebrate Christmas.

        2. I feel that fundamentalists give the pagans – or Catholics – way too much credit. Ha! Like we can’t just celebrate a day or a season without it being a recognition of some ancient ritual. Phooey on them. I prefer to enjoy the holidays and seasons now, like I was never able to before. Yeah, I was the kid looking longingly at homes with beautiful decorations and presents under the tree, feeling robbed.

  29. I was fired from my first ministry twice in seven months, the second time on the day after Christmas, due to critical spiritual issues such as my wife not smiling as much as the pastor wanted her to when she was concentrating on playing the piano during the service, and the like.

    A year and a half later, I got a call from the pastor asking me to come back. A few weeks later, I heard that his son-in-law had been transferred out of state along with his piano-playing wife, his assistant had left the church taking his piano-playing wife with him, and one of his “preacher boys” went off to Bible college with his piano-playing wife, and he had no one to play the piano or lead the music. Suddenly it was determined that we had been found faithful enough to be worthy of serving in that church again.

    1. My mother would get on to me when I use to play in the church orchestra because I was not smiling when I played my viola. I could never do that! Nothing like trying to concentrate on playing the right notes and having to remember to smile at the same time.

    2. …due to critical spiritual issues such as my wife not smiling as much as the pastor wanted her to when she was concentrating on playing the piano during the service, and the like.

      Oh my gosh. Although I’ve never been fundy, this is triggering. It reminds me of the time my Control Freak Boss hauled me into a loft (tiny enclosed space) to berate me because, she claimed, I wasn’t expressing as much enthusiasm and excitement over my second landing page / video project as I had over my first.

      Apparently I’d forgotten to show up with pom-poms and a megaphone.

      The charge was so surreal that I just sat there with my jaw halfway to the floor.

    3. This one definitely sounds true. At fundy U, one of my supervisors got onto me because my face/expressions were not as open as she liked. It didn’t matter if I was doing my job. I needed to force myself to emote (or just fake it with a BIG PLASTIC SMILE, like so many other people).

      And it sounds just like a fundy to give someone the boot, then suddenly call them back when they need them. No apologies, of course.

    4. True story. Within two months my wife had turned twenty-two, gotten married, left all her family and moved across the country, moved into a new home, got pregnant, and had to adjust to a culture entirely foreign to anything she had been used to before then. But no, she could not get any slack for not going around with a Pollyanna type smile all the time. Nor was it easy to break a fifteen year habit of intensely focusing on her music. Trying to smile meant she was thinking about how she looked and not about what she was doing, with the result that she would get distracted and mess up the music, but apparently the pastor was more concerned that his pianist look right than that she know how to play.

  30. At Fundy U, I had an RA in charge of my dorm say “I believe that if I treat you like children, you will act like children, but if I treat you like adults, you will act like adults.” He proceeded to write maybe three demerit slips for the whole dorm the entire year, was lenient (read: reasonable) on dorm inspections, and basically did not add any pressure to a bunch of guys who were dealing with college classes, relationships, work schedules, sleep deprivation, and malnutrition from eating too many snacks and processed cafeteria food.

    1. I say not true.
      I’ve heard that “Treat them like adults and they’ll act like adults,” but never from a Fundy.

    2. If that one were true, I bet he got written up and dismissed halfway through the term, and replaced with a real martinet. 😕

  31. A girl in my church used to go to the tanning salon even though the pastor always preached against it — it was vain and promoted wearing bikinis. Years later she got skin cancer and her parents were relieved because it proved that she was saved because the Lord chasteneth whom he loveth.

    1. Not true – it sounds too convenient. Now, if had said that a preacher had used the story as an illustration, then that would totally be believable.

  32. When I became a senior at my aforementioned institution of mediocre learning, I too was exalted to to lofty status of residence advisor. At one point in the semester, a couple of freshmen girls accumulated enough demerits to be campused. At our school campusing was supposed to last for one month unless the administration determined that the student’s attitude merited a extension of the punishment.

    A month came and went, and the restrictions were not lifted. Another week went by, and then two, with no change. Now, by all accounts, these girls had been model students during this time. There was no reason for them to be treated the way they were, unless the administration forgot about them, did not care, or wanted to make an example of them.

    One afternoon I walked into the dean of student’s office, explained the situation, and asked him why the girls had not been given their reprieve. He said he did not know, but he would look into it. The next day the punishment was lifted.

    Having the goodwill of a campus full of college girls at Fundy U only gets you so far, especially when you are engaged at the time, but still… 😉

  33. The son of a big-shot fundy pastor I know went to a Bible college and was found to be going to bars and strip clubs. He was allowed to leave after the semester and eventually made his way to another Bible college. The son of another (non-big-shot) fundy pastor got with the “wrong crowd” at the same college and drank a beer. He felt guilty and confessed to the administration, who promptly expelled him.

    2. True.

      I think I might even know him… Joel, right?

      But then again, it is not like this type of preferential treatment is not repeated in many other places and in many other forms.

  34. Once met a man on deputation before a Sunday morning service who had just delivered his 5th child, on the bathroom floor of his home. After the delivery, he had just enough time to clean up and come to church.

    He told me that he usually can’t stand the site of blood. But there are two types of blood that he loves: The blood of the Cross and the blood of a natural birth, ie the blood smeared on his bathroom floor.

    1. That’s true. Because I’m pretty sure I remember you posting that somewhere recently.

    2. The first pastor I worked for used to say he believed that a baby would never be born during church times, because it was not God’s will for the mother to miss a church service. Now, my wife hopes with every child she has that it will be born between 10AM and noon on a Sunday. True story.

      1. My oldest was born on a Sunday at 7:47 am. According to that pastor, was I supposed to get cleaned up, check out of the hospital, and go to church, all the while still paralyzed from my edipural?

        1. I have no idea. He was the kind of person who, once he got an idea in his head, would allow no reason or evidence to change his mind. I cannot begin to guess what he would have told you.

      2. Did the pastor HAVE any kids? New mothers need to be treated with care; I’d be irritated or worried about any new mother who left her home (or the hospital) to go anywhere for the first two-three weeks, especially if she were dragging herself to church because some (male) loudmouth pastor decided that it was that important.
        Disclaimer: my wife haemorrhaged massively 5 weeks after bearing our first child – she had completely ignored the Dr’s instructions on rest, and capped off the foolishness by buying a rocking chair and carrying it up three flights of stairs (!) So I’m touchy about this.

        1. Yeah, he had two kids, but he was the kind of person who would make it a point to praise every new mother who was “in her place” the Sunday after having a baby in order to “start them out right” or something, and so make it known that that was what was expected.

        2. @EK-…. that’s nuts. Not that it’s atypical on that basis, but it makes me wonder what his wife thought.

  35. My sister began to display signs of schizoeffective disorder in high school. We were attending the fundy school at the time. After a few paranoia incidents, the pastor called up my parents to discuss my sister’s behavior. His theory? Demon possession. And when my parents tried to tell him that she had actually been diagnosed with a mental illness, he responded that he used to work at a pharmaceutical dept. and had seen many mentally ill people in his time, and could therefore recognize mental illness when he saw it, and my sister was definitely not mentally ill. Apparently he thought that since he worked at a drugstore that he was every bit as qualified as a psychiatrist. 👿

  36. Many years ago, I worked full-time for the Army & played the piano “every time the doors were open” at my IFB church. Then I got married – so, newlywed + full-time employment + full-time unpaid church pianist.

    Then the church split. And the teacher for the 4-year-old SS class left. Guess who was asked to take the class? Me. Couldn’t say no; after all, if the preacher asks you to do something, it’s God talking. So, newlywed + full-time employment + full-time unpaid church pianist + SS teacher.

    Then summer came and with it, VBS . So, I had to come to church, play the piano for the adult class, race downstairs to my class to teach it, race back upstairs to play the invitation for the adult class, race back downstairs to dismiss my 4-year-olds…all of this after working all day.

    I decided to resign my SS/VBS class. The pastor said that while he was disappointed in me for quitting, he would accept my resignation. He might not know what sin was in my life causing me to backslide from doing God’s work.

    True?

  37. My church had a “weekend of witnessing”, two solid days of preaching, bible study and praying.

    It opened in the morning with our new pastor giving an hour long sermon on how Mary, being totally pure, never “defiled herself”. In fact, she was totally incapable of pleasure, because pleasure was sin.

    Then after lunch another sermon, this time on how Jesus, being incapable of sin, never “touched himself”. His “most private organs” were used only for making water, which was pure and clean because “foulness” could never enter his body.

    Next day, a rant about how True Christians (TM) never have to fight against the temptation to “Self Pollute”, because if you love god enough, he won’t let you be tempted. That’s right, temptation is the result of sin.

    When the time came for the final sermon, we couldn’t find him. So we went looking. We eventually found him hiding under a table.

    Guess what he was doing.

    1. This sounds a little far fetched, the under the table part at least.

      Though fundies do have a weird way of envisaging what Jesus was like. From Jack Schaap imagining a contract between Jesus and God to a pastor I know who said that Jesus’ perfection included having “beautifully manicured nails.”

      3. I say false. The fundies I know never even mention Mary, except at Christmas, when they can’t avoid at least saying her name a time or two. And I’ve never known a fundy who would have gone on and on about Mary’s purity. They’re usually too busy claiming that, when Jesus called her “Woman” at Cana, He was putting her in her place. (So much for that “Honor your mother and father” stuff.) 🙄

        Mary was just the disposable cellophane wrapper Jesus came in. Don’t you know that, boy? 😈

        1. Saying that Jesus was putting Mary in her place strikes me as being blasphemous, because He was without sin.

        2. Ah well, European catholics are *much* more into Mary than American protestants. They view her as god’s switchboard operator – they send their prayers to god through her.

          But yeah, it is a false story. All the sermons did exist, but from different people. As for the under the table part…that was my college football team :-).

  38. There once was a Baptist pastor who was by far the most famous (or infamous) preacher in America. His father was a preacher and helped to get him into fundy-u (where he was kicked out his freshman year). He pastored one church where it was alleged he had to leave due “scandalous charges.” He went on to another very large church but left that one after he was put on trial for adultery (which was national news). He was acquitted to due a hung jury. He then went on to another large church but resigned that one without giving a solid reason. He moved on to another town where he started a church and college (and served as the college’s president). He eventually left there and moved on to a large city where he pastored the largest Baptist church in the country. He became mayor of that city and was almost assassinated. His son later shot and killed the would-be assassin. He even got an honorary doctorate or two along the way. And his name was not Hyles? True or false?

    1. How can somebody be put on trial for adultery? As far as I know, it’s legal. Immoral and hurtful, but legal.

      Now, if he was on trial for pedophilia or rape it would make a little more sense.

      1. There used to be some laws against it. There may still be some on the books, but it is seldom enforced.

        I’m thinking this might be Frank Norris.

    2. His name was Isaac Kalloch (1832-1887) and he was one of the most famous preachers of his day, yet he is relatively unknown these days. It seems he was a Hyles (both father and son), Schaap, J. Frank Norris, and probably a few others all rolled up into one person. If there was SFL back in the 1800s he would be an unending source of posts.

  39. When we started at our IFB church, we told the pastor that my husband had been out of work for a couple months and had no unemployment money coming in. The pastor immediately stopped what he was doing to pray with us. Then he opened his personal checkbook and gave us a check for $300. And the next week, the church treasurer gave us a check for $300 from the benevolent fund, and they filled our freezer.

    1. Absolutely True! 😉

      (Unless this is a story about emotional blackmail, in which case it’s a Lie From Satan)

    3. I would totally believe this. For all of the jerks out there, I have known some incredibly gracious and loving people in fundamentalism.

  40. We were in the market to add a 2nd piano for our services because I was working to build up the instrumental music program (which is apparently unGodly as you apparently should not have more than one person who can play an instrument and partly led to my fall/escape from Fundyism). Anyway we had a guy who was visiting the church regularly who offered to buy us a Roland RD-700NX with amp, and a lower price, but nice, digital piano for children’s church.

    A package worth almost $5k.

    I was ready to jump on that, but got shut down by the MoG who didn’t want a “keyboard”. I tried to explain to him it was more than a “keyboard”, but in our circle of Fundies a keyboard is used by too many CCM churches. He was afraid another pastor would come in and he would be embarrassed.

    1. This has got to be true because I’ve heard the “no keyboard” argument before.

    2. I’m not surprised. To give them credit, I think many IFB pastors would try different things but are so afraid of what their peers would think that they keep to the old traditions. I think there is more peer pressure among IFB pastors than there is among a group of young teenagers.

  41. I went to a youth Conference in Pigeon Forge, TN, and heard one of the speakers say he left his girlfriend (fiance?) because she asked that they have one night a week dedicated to just them and their marriage. He had also just gone on a lengthy spiel about how he was a “leg man.” I felt a little dirty after that. 😳

  42. HAC sent a bus to our town in 1986. Our pastor had attended Pastor’s school and told the leadership of the spiritual deadness in our town. So here came 50 or so men and women to win our town. They spent 3 days going door to door. They kept records of every decision and boasted of over 500 salvation decisions. Our pastor was so excited. He got all off the names and addresses. We started following up. In over half of the cases, we could not find the person. Either they were not real or the address or phone was not-existent. In the rest of the cases, this is what we found. 80 percent of them “said a prayer with someone” and had absolutely no idea what it indicated. Of that 80%, the great majority of them were foreign exchange students fromm China and Korea who didn ‘t even understand what a Bible was. Most of the other 20% were people who did what the visiting students asked to get them off their porch (That was the general consensus of our canvassers)

    In the end, we did not find one, NOT ONE, genuine convert.

    1. I’m going to guess true. I heard about them doing something similar to this in the 90’s.

    2. Must be true; this was standard practice among people attending Hyles-close churches. James Spurgeon’s “Tales from the Temple” has a great section on this subject.

  43. At my Fundy U, a girl told her fiance that she hoped the Lord did not come back before their wedding. He promptly broke up with her, because “if our marriage is more important to you than seeing the Lord face to face, then you are not the type of person who can help me in my ministry.”

    3. I spent my freshman year at your fundy U: No doubt in my mind this is true. But it’s a little shocking she was allowed to remain in the school given her priorities were so badly skewed.

    4. Even if it’s not true, it does show how people learn to become hypocrites in the IFB: in order to be accepted, people learn to hide how they really feel. Everyone puts on a mask that hides the truth of who they are.

      I think wearing that mask too long can deaden the emotions and warp the personality, resulting in behavior we’ve all seen in churches where people talk piously but act cruelly.

      2. @PW, this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest root problem in fundamentalism – by making a set of behaviors the standard by which all men’s hearts are judged, they force everyone into molds of hypocrisy, unable to express themselves for fear of the wrath of the conformists. The result is predictable: the suppressed thoughts, feelings, and behavior cause people to turn away from the Church, sink into despair, or practice the kind of “all or nothing” vices which we hear about in scandals. Meanwhile, those who thrive in this hothouse of masks prosper.
        The saddest part is that the IFB is really only the tip of a huge problem. They are extreme, but the typical American evengelical church has these same problems, driven by the fear and pride which lead to lies and despair.

  44. How about the pastor who was counseling a married couple and decided to tap their home phone? He heard the wife talking to a friend about cooking and describing something as “hot and spicy” so he decided they were lesbians and kicked them out of the church. Plus they both worked in the Christian school so they got fired too.

    1. Far-fetched, but believable. 🙁 I’m guessing the pastor must have already had his doubts about the wife, so was looking for something to confirm them. Wonder if the husband was more upset with the preacher for invading their privacy, or the wife for being so “unchristian” as to arouse suspicions of lesbianism? 😕

      1. Totally true. The pastor tapped the phone with the knowledge and consent of the husband. Since tapping phones is illegal, it led to a major lawsuit . Many members admitted that the pastor had done something wrong, but the overall sentiment was that he was still the pastor and should be supported.

    2. Only lesbians or (worse still) foreigners cook hot and spicy food. It’s a known Fundy fact.

        1. Oh, he knows. He’s just holding out for a threesome. Fingers crossed, huh?

  45. TWO PARTER:
    1. After being repeatedly told at teacher’s meetings that if teachers weren’t going to visit their classes they should just give up the class. The class was post HS-singles class, and with with toddlers and a career being established, regular visits weren’t going to happen.

    When the teacher resigned the class in accordance with the Pastor’s direction, the teacher was accused of quitting God, he’d be out of church in six months, and – here is the doozy – the teacher would be causing some else to sin. The reason, they couldn’t do what God wanted them to do, because they had to do what God wanted the teacher to do instead. This started a daisy chain of sin amongst the brethren, so the teacher should just keep the class and make the stupid visits. He didn’t.

    2. Twenty years later, same independent Baptist church, same teacher, different pastor. That former teacher is now a senior deacon, is writing and teaching a six month curriculum on the church’s philosophy of ministry to help new comers and potential leaders understand our ministerial emphasis and goals and has been allowed to speak into the Pastors’ lives with regard to accountability and motives.

    1. Part 1 must be absolutely true; I’ve been told the same thing at our former church.

  46. These are great stories… I have three pretty good stories to share, but I cannot do so, as they would be too identifying.

    When I was trying to decide whether or not to leave my HAC-clone church, I was asking counsel of a friend. He was amazed by some of the stories, and posted them (anonymously). Apparently, some of the people in our church read the postings, and told the pastor, who assumed I had done it, and “called me out” (anonymously). In private, and behind my back, he told many people that I had done it. To this day, I’m sure that most people still there think I was guilty of telling the world about the sordid events going on.

    Anyway, it’s given me a healthy respect (almost fear) for the Gestapo-like tactics, so my favorite stories I don’t dare repeat (even though our family is gone and my kids are actually growing in Christ, we still have relatives & friends there).

  48. The teachers at my fundie Christian school complained to the pastor about the principal because the school was being mismanaged. The principal was a friend of the pastor’s family. The next semester, a rule was added into the school staff handbook that precisely prohibited staff from “chatting” with each other, defined as communicating about something besides a direct student need. The rule remains in effect to this day.

    1. The pastor at my IFB church told the deacons that their families couldn’t socialize with any of the “regular” people of the church. No dinners, no visits, no shopping trips. Therefore, no gossip?

      What do you think? True?

      1. Could be true, if they also weren’t allowed to socialize with each other! 🙄

      2. My former pastor was against ladies’ fellowships and baby showers, because they were just opportunities for gossip.

  49. More than 700 comments?? In TWO days? Yowzer. Obviously y’all are mighty gifted storytellers.

    And all I have are some Mean Nun Stories from first and second grade. 🙁 Somehow I don’t think that would qualify for this thread. I don’t know how fundy those nuns were. They sure could be mean, though.

  50. Once upon a time a pastor in California (who’s staff book includes instructions about storing printer paper) got into debt. Since he had/has been preaching against debt (because it hindered church members from giving to his building program) he called up a wealthy church member crying and pleading for them to help him. True or false?

    1. I bet that is totally true. And it explains why wealthy members practically “walk on water” at these places. I know of a wealthy family at a similar so cal IFBx church that had their kids in the church school – yet often missed Sunday night services and NEVER went “soul-winning”.

      Tithing BIG really does seem to cover a multitude of Fundy “sins”.

      Not to mention the hypocrisy of the pastor preaching against debt, while accumulating a bunch of it himself. 🙄

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