Current Events, Politics

Making History (and Having Nobody Notice)

171 Comments

So apparently a bunch of fundamentalist pastors went to Washington D.C. this week and did this:

One participant was so excited that he wrote this:

history

These fundamentalist pastors did this and this and hung out with this guy.

Then they stood outside the Capitol and did this:

capitalsteps

And while standing there they sang this and this (sideways!).

Unfortunately, because the media is SO BIASED they received absolutely no coverage for all these historic things they did, prompting one participant to write this:

delusions

History was made but the world marches on unchanged. What a tragedy.

171 thoughts on “Making History (and Having Nobody Notice)”

    1. Hubris is a good word for it. I was trying to think of a word to describe it and couldn’t.

  3. From the video: “One of the most amazing events in the history of the United States” ?????

    I’m guessing he didn’t pay attention in history class.

    1. I think he meant; “One of the 521,455,977 most amazing events in the history of the United States”.

      I think it ranked at 521,455,968

    2. Error Executing Database Query. [Fundamentalism] [SQLServer JDBC Driver] [SQLServer] Divide by zero error encountered.

  5. Looks to me like some of these folks need to learn to push away from the dinner table

  6. They drew a crowd when they sung on the capitol steps. No doubt passing tourists saw a group of overweight white guys singing and said “Hey look! Congress is out singing hymns for some reason! Get a picture!……..wait…..they are all Baptist pastors? Never mind. Get the kids, let’s go.”

  8. Media bias! ❗ 😈 😛 😈 😛

    I drank a glass of water this morning, and there was NOTHING about it on any of the network news shows!

    Help, help, I’m being oppressed!

    2. Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power is derived from a mandate from the masses, not from some farsical aquatic ceremony. You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. I mean, if I went around saying I was an emporer just because some moistened bink had lugged a cemetar at me, they’d put me away.

      …or something like that

        1. I think he’s referring to King Arthur being given his sword Excalibur by the Lady of the Lake, but if this excellent take on that story is relevant to a bunch of IFB pastors visiting Washington DC, I’ve missed something.

        2. The reference you are missing is the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which features the line “Help, help, I’m being oppressed!!” said by Big Gary, and the monologue that Pastor Stephen responded with. 🙂

        4. Oh, now it makes sense. I’ve never seen the movie. Not sure what that says about me, if anything. 😀

    4. Their beloved son-in-law of a preacher man Jack Schaap has been getting all the media attention.

  9. History? Well, I have had four cups of coffee so far today and that coffee is history. No media coverage of it at all! Yeah, I call media bias against covering my coffee consumption. I am working on making my fifth cup of coffee history as well and there are still no news trucks outside. *just because I drank my coffee in the living room instead of at the kitchen table does not make it newsworthy.

    My example makes as much sense as those blowhards wanting media coverage for something they do all the time as well – wanting others to praise them and ‘lift them up’ while they pontificate over their own greatness. Same thing, different day. 🙄

  10. April Cottrel asks on the facebook page if there is a link to listen to the message that “Dr.” Gibbs gave.

    I almost linked here to this page..

    1. I don’t have a link, but I can summarize it:
      “Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, and in conclusion: me.”

  11. I think there was one guy who lifted his hand in praise during the singing. I hope one of the other pastors told him that while it’s appropriate to lift your hand to hold up a recording device, it’s compromising to lift up your hand to praise God because nowhere in Scripture does it mention our lifting up our hands to God, right?

  12. I would have appreciated a warning that a picture of David Gibbs was hiding behind one of those links, because now I have the strangest urge to go kick a small furry rodent.

  13. BTW…tickets are available at Ticketmaster…

    Nicki Minaj will close the show 😯

  14. “This is literally history in the making.”

    Well, yes, depending on what your threshold is for calling something “history.”

    It’s a historical fact that I ate enchiladas for dinner yesterday, but even I think it would a waste of paper to print that information in a history book.

    1. “but even I think it would a waste of paper to print that information in a history book”

      You see, this is how so much that is so great gets erased from our cultural memory! It’s people like you, doing things like this, that results in a nation which forgets how great they can be/ once were.

  16. The video announcing the event looked very professional – they were counting on 500 and only had 100-150 – I wonder what went wrong.

    1. “I wonder what went wrong”

      People probably thought, “nah, looks a bit crap”; and did something else instead.

      1. Yeah, my family would have gone but there was a Dukes of Hazard marathon on TV that night. 😉

        2. HAH!! Just a bit down the highway from where I work, a three day Dukes of Hazzard Reunion featuring country music artists and a car show just wrapped up.

          I didn’t go, though.

    2. The others were still at the buffet. The ones who did show up showed great restraint at being able to push away from the table of gluttony. Or. . . . it was stupid. I’m thinking they didn’t go because it was stupid.

      1. But we are talking about IFB pastors here… really, how many of them thought it was stupid? There must be another reason.

        1. You are right. 😳 They were still shoveling through mounds of mac and cheese at the buffet. I should have known better. Sorry. 😉

      2. They had to be out soul winning after buffeting their bodies…saving America one soul at a time 😆

    3. It’s IFB math. Like a church having 1,000 members but only 100 people show up for Sunday morning services.
      Of maybe if one weighs over 300 pounds that counts are two people, just like being on an airplane

    4. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say the rebellious old ladies of their churches didn’t tithe enough to “the Lord” for the pastors to afford to go on vacay.

    2. I was kind of wondering if this was supposed to be diversionary – putting a good face on fundy-ism. Fat chance.

  18. I suppose that they are upset because they all imagine themselves as prophets on par with Elijah, Ezequiel, and Isaiah. They have walked into the courts of Ahab, and they’re so ignored that nobody is even sending an army of chariots after them.

    What is really sad is that these pastors see themselves as the representatives of the only form of true Christianity, so it is an insult to God that people ignore them for “genuine” religious leaders like the Pope. After all, all those pesky Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists and even Lutherans like me don’t count. After all, we’re all counterfeit, false churches of the antichrist, so we don’t count since we’re all going to hell and are part of the problem.

    1. “..they all imagine themselves as prophets…”

      At my old church the pastor often equated pastors with prophets.

    2. and they all got lots of good pictures of themselves on the Capitol steps to use in their publicity and slide shows back home at their church…

      1. It warms my heart that only 100-150 took an interest enough to show up! Seeing in the photo mostly aging Fundie pastors, and the lack of younger Fundie pastors, gives one hope that “they are history”, or, are on they’re way to becoming so.

        What a far-cry from the 1980’s Moral Majority influence and hype! No media? Time for IFBx pastors to wake-up and face reality…Their self-importance, KJVOism/patriotic stand, and bring back the “old fashioned” religion agenda, isn’t making the impact they’ve been pushing towards.

        1. All of us who are in the 18-39 range are asking questions, and not getting answers. So, we are bailing.

          Fundies will continue for a while for the people who have a quiver full of kids, if they can only brain wash them to stay. However for them to do that and not ask questions they are going to have to ban internet, TV, phones. I foresee them buying an island in the Pacific within the next few years.

        2. 1. For the first time in American History, Protestants are now a minority, around 48%
          2. By 2050 whites will be a minority, and the IFB has a hard time recuiting non-whites (because the IFB demends non-whites adopt white culture, my mother’s IFB church would not allow a Latino immigrate to play a guitar at special music, so he left)
          3. The internet. The IFB can’t find the truth from kids anymore. So “Doctor” Ifber where did you earn your doctorate degree? If you won’t tell me, Google will.

        3. The narrow cultural concepts are definitely among the problems the IFBs have in recruiting nonwhite members, but another is that the whole movement has deeply racist roots, and some IFBs even now cling to racist and segregationist doctrines.

        4. “Ethnic” churches– primarily Hispanic and African American– account for all the numerical growth in the Southern Baptist Convention since 1995.

  21. Amateurs. DC is saturated with newsworthy people and events. You have to make the news cameras come to you. They should have staged a protest in front of the Whitehouse where they took off their shoes and symbolically flung them at a picture of John Calvin.
    That would probably only land them in the News of the Weird but it at least would be something.

      2. Considering there’s 150 of them, it would get a trifle messy after a while. 😀 On the other hand, this would definitely get them the lead story on the evening news. :mrgreen:

  22. I was also there this weekend. Good thing I didn’t run into any of those idiots. 🙄

    Chuck Harding was the security manager for Mr. Jim Vineyard’s “College” years ago. He taught our speech class and a few others.

    What I can’t wrap my mind around is that they did all this hooplah just to try to put an old English book in some offices? Fundies themselves don’t even read in KJ English anymore. With all the other pressing political issues they could’ve chosen they went with this one?

    What a waste. If you put a book in my office it doesn’t necessarily mean that I will read it or even look at it. 🙄

      1. True dat. I have had the miserable misfortune to listen to their pathetic attempts to read Elizabethan English aloud from the pulpit. Poor guys. They are trying so hard to pronounce the words correctly, they completely lose the message of the passage.

        And that’s on ANY old passage. Imagine the horror when they confront passages like Matthew 1, with all those old hard-to-pronounce names.

        1. My Dad said that when he was a kid, they used to call that passage “In the begats” in Sunday School. :mrgreen:

  23. We all know that this was nothing but future sermon material. For years to come these guys will talk about their “meeting” with this Senator or that Representative, as if they had received a personal invite to counsel about the direction of the nation. They will conveniently leave out the fact that there we’re 150 other people in the room and that the dignitary was there for all of 30 seconds. These events are just like their conferences. They are designed for political posturing and backslapping.

    David Stokes rightly insinuates, in Apparent Danger, that Baptist fundamentalism began it’s demise and decline into an irrelevant sub-culture in the 1920’s.

    2. I’ll bet you see “advisor to Capitol Hill” or some-such-other-nonsense on some of their profiles/ CVs within he next few weeks….

    3. I’ve actually met several members of Congress face-to-face.
      That makes me … more important than the Pope, right?

  24. There’s 535 IFB preachers? Wow. That’s at least twice as many as I thought.

    Although, looking at that picture, it appears they’re still padding the numbers while they’re padding their waistlines. Good to know some things don’t change. Sigh…

  25. …1611 King James
    …Christian Nation
    … Bibles in every office

    Ok, wait… What??? are they trying to Compete with the Gideons?

    Wait, wait, wait… so having a 1611 KJV Bible in every Legislator’s office will act as a talisman to ward off evil and protect America from Satan. And if you say the magical words you can not only be saved but you a get a get out of hell free card and a pre-trib rapture escape flight. 😉 🙄 http://youtu.be/4iiryJwvDtc

    1. And funny thing Don, I expect my legislators to represent all the constituents. Baptists, Presbyterians, Muslims, atheists, straight, gay, black, white, green, male, female….all of them, even the disenfranchised and the minority, for the betterment of the county, state, nation etc. I do not want him to be just yet another old white guy only representing other old white guys.

      Okay, not the Presbyterians, screw them. (I kid, I kid…)

      1. Stony, all I can say is you have Great Expectations. 😀

        What I see is two power mad entities meeting meeting to size one another up before the great Peter pulling contest at St. Taffy’s.

        1. george, george, george… you only need one “meeting” … and it should have been at St. Peter’s… for a Taffy pulling contest.

        5. @captain_solo That movie was hilarious. And a Fundy friend of mine said there was NOTHING phallic about that comment or that scene. 😉

      2. @Stony: how can you dare say such a thing? I am shocked, Shocked! that you even give such heretics more than a glance. You’d think that God’s Love was unconditional, as if He were but a Labrador Puppy!

        1. I…I…I don’t know what came over me. I think I need to go separate myself from…someone. Anyone. Anyone feel like having a really good old-fashioned separation??

    1. If David Barton is your idea of a historian, then maybe this pastors’ junket does qualify as history in the making.

      Barton is a very reliable source. He never says anything unless he read it or heard it somewhere, half-remembers hearing it somewhere, or made it up.

      1. I was actually surprised to learn that anyone took Barton seriously. I shouldn’t have been surprise, but there is still this weird cognitive gap whenever I see someone defending the hack. I mean, I don’t actually have the cognitive ability to come to terms with one who would give Barton the time of day. It is like trying to talk to someone who insists the earth is a cube. No common ground. At all.

  27. Of course they’re going to blame the Roman Catholic Church, didn’t Jack Chick teach up anything? 😆 If it hadn’t been for those pesky Popes, then this
    Vitally Important Bit O’History featuring 150, count ’em, ONE-HUNDRED AND FIFTY Men-O’-GAWD would have held the front page/opening news on every news outlet in the country. 😛
    Seriously, it probably got a squib or two on a local channel, after the basketball scores and before the woman with the dancing duck. 😀

    2. Comparing their visit to the election of a Pope got me. Dude, when the IFB has 1.1 BILLION members all over the globe, come back and talk to me.

      Actually, I thought it was remarkable that anyone gave them time at all. Aren’t they hunkered down in their offices with the lights off, saving money, in a Mexican standoff with the Administration?

  28. In regards to Brother Randy’s tweet above:

    The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church. There are approximately 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. Anything that impacts 1.2 billion people would be newsworthy.
    How many IFBs are in the world? Even it is was 10 million, that pales in comparison. And figure if there are 10 million IFBs, 70% of them are separated from at least 50% of the others (someone check my math).

      1. Touché. I wonder if any of these Godly Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preachers would ever be caught dead giving a sermon in juvenile detention. And washing the kids’ feet, no less.

        I’ll take Pope Francis over a fundie preacher any day of the week.

      1. That is great! I think we just found the origin of fundy math. That’s how fundy churches will get “hundreds” saved yet somehow run 30 people on Sunday.

  29. Biased media! It is easier to say that than to admit the truth. In my old Mog’s case, spending one’s life yelling at a room full of one’s relatives three times per week in rural TN doesn’t qualify one as newsworthy.

  30. I live near D.C. There are protests and marches and gatherings on the mall all the time and very few of them get press coverage. To the media this is just another special interest group visiting D.C…which translates into not being interesting at all.

  31. Yes, giving bibles to a bunch of rich law makers who could easily afford to buy one themselves; that’s going to change things. Did anyone happen to think that if they were interested in having bibles in their office they would already have one? All it will become is a decoration piece in their office, just like most of our xianity these days.

  32. They met with their representatives (which pretty much anyone can do) and they placed Bibles in offices where there was probably already a copy on the shelves.

    It’s amazing the media didn’t cover such a scintillating game-changer!

  33. This event coincides with the 10-year anniversary of the Iraq War. Did they pose with an oversized “Thank You for the Awesome War, Brother Bush” card?

    1. Most of the IFB supported the war. The war was suppose to make spaceship jesus return.
      Oops they got it wrong, jesus wanted the USA to bomb IraN, not IraQ, They were off by one letter.

  36. So, a group of men who teach severe isolationism from the rest of society suddenly emerge in a public venue and expect the media to be interested in them? In people they have never heard of? Yeah, definitely media bias.

  37. Dear SFL reader:

    I made it as far as 1:22, where I learned that congressionally authorized Bible printing is one of those things that makes us a ‘Christian’ nation.

    I simply can’t connect with this. As I see it, the antics of these independent pastors has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ.

    Christian Socialist

    2. See above. Unsurprisingly, they got the story mixed up. A committee of the Continental Congress (in 1777, pre-Constitution and even pre-Articles of Confederation) discussed printing Bibles or importing them, but never did either one.

    3. I stop listening on any of the following phrases:

      Authorized Version
      1611
      Christian Nation
      Christian Principles
      Standards

  38. Dear Dr. Chuck Harding. You, like most IFB, call it the King James Bible. You stand corrected. It’s called the King James “Version” of the Bible. You also state that it’s time for Christians to come together. But only if they agree to do it the IFB way. Because in your heart you believe the IFB way is the only “correct” way to practice Christianity. God recently called my family away from a very large IFB church that we had been attending for 23 years. I’ve seen it all, heard it all, lived it all, etc…

    1. When I tell other Christians about the shenanigans that happened and the extra-biblical doctrines taught at my former Fundy church in Lancaster, they think it is so very odd.

      Skirts?
      Movies?
      KJVO?
      CCM is evil unless it is stripped of all noticeable beat?
      Cover ups?
      Demerits at the college for black/white dating?

      They get all wide-eyed and think it is so crazy.

      So the odds of getting the rest of Christianity onboard with the IFBx message is slim to none.

      1. No doubt. That is one reason why I like SFL. People here understand. When I try to explain how things were to people who never lived in the compound they think I am exaggerating.

        1. It is so frustrating when people don’t understand and refuse to believe what it was like, especially when any description I give usually falls short of how oppressive the reality could be.

  40. I wonder what the guy on the front row is thinking of the lady in the leopard print skirt over her knee caps… who is obviously headed to work outside home?

  41. There are 535 Congressional districts in the US and they were trying to have one IFB pastor from each district. I know because they tried to get my pastor to go. The kicker is that they were asking for a $250 donation to pay for the special edition bible … one which would most like never get read. Follow the money.

    1. Follow the money, indeed. Who was selling those $250 Bibles?

      By the way, they have the numbers wrong. There are not 535 Congressional districts, there are 435 (not counting the ones with non-voting Representatives, like the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands). 435 voting Representatives + 100 Senators = 535 total voting members of Congress.
      So if you wanted to have constituents from each district visit each member of Congress, you would only need 435, because every resident of a state has one Representative AND two Senators, so you don’t need an extra 100 for the Senate.

      Hmm, I’m overthinking this …

  43. It is a shame the people in the pews are being asked to finance this political trip. I can only imagine what the restaurant receipts alone will cost. DC ain’t cheap.

    What’s more, my former pastor is already acquainted with his Baptist congressman…what good is this doing?

    And he is going to hand Barbara Boxer a KJV and expect her to start voting his way? 🙄

    1. He probably thinks any Bible given to a California Congressional member will get white hot and singe the hands of the godless staff members.

      1. Can’t be Applebee’s. They have a bar and no buffet. More likely a Golden Corral crowd. Quantity over quality, just like their sermons.

  44. These people have isolated themselves so much from the real world that they no longer have any relevance. Then their own leaders get sent to prison and they want the rest of the world to listen to what they have to say.

  45. Two things I’d like to know: 1) the pastor’s story of leaving a Bible at the office of Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota. 2) the truth of what really happened.

    1. One of my Senators is ECLA, the other is Jewish. Can’t find that info on my US Rep. You know what? I DON’T CARE! Are they good legislators? Yup. Are they working for the people of Oregon? Yup. Do I care if they have a KJV in their offices? Nope. I suspect that they do though- good reference if nothing else.

  46. What a bunch of egotistical blowhards.

    I’m not Catholic, but I think the election of a new pope is a little more important than 150 so-called leaders gathering in DC.

  47. Godly.

    They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

    1. Excellent. I was waiting for the Princess Bride reference. Seemed appropriate for a multitude of things they said.

    2. Godly is hardly the word that the media would think of when IFB pastors are all over the news for having abused children.

  48. My former MOG is up there!!!! I see him elevated high and lifted up….. … ok.. put the Fundie away… put the Fundie away…

    Sorry folks, my inner-fundie slipped out and started MOG worship. I promise it won’t happen again.

  49. Here they go and make history and everyone yawns. The Bibles they delivered will remain unread. They will still take a vacation later in the year (after all, this was the Lord’s business!). And legislators will not act godly.

    Besides, these guys go to Washington and listen to Paul Ryan? Paul Ryan is as much of a Christian as Judas was a disciple. They had the same thinking on social issues. Reform giving to make life better for the poor — just put it in the bag under his care!

  50. You know, I remember vividly the big ‘turn the nation back to God’ push in the mid-70s. “I Found It!” and the little ‘TRY GOD’ necklaces. Moral Majority suddenly got really big. And all of it just after Roe v. Wade, the ERA, a flush of women into the work market, no fault divorce, Watergate, and just as the shock of the civil right movement wore off. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

    And I remember this: http://youtu.be/MPY-CrPtdKw If I remember right it was part of a musical. I know our church did a musical dressed in patriotic clothing. (That may have been for the Bicentennial, though that fell on Sunday and we all wore an approximation of Colonial clothing- that was actually kind of fun.)

    This stuff, a bunch of IFB preachers? Can’t hold a candle.

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