Preachers

Conspiracy!

174 Comments

Charles Lawson is a man with a lot of theories. Whether it’s the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve, the origins of the NAACP or the REAL reason for the American Civil War he manages to stand in the pulpit and talk about just about anything but Jesus.

174 thoughts on “Conspiracy!”

    1. And now that that’s out of the way can someone please convince this poor man to start taking his meds properly?

      1. Seriously. I was so confused watching that. How are all those random statements supposed to relate to each other?

        Please, man, save your conspiracy theories for the internets. When you’re behind the pulpit, preach Christ or sit down.

  5. Nothing says “Happy Holidays” (Yep my brain is gone)like a sermon like that. What the Hell does that have to do with Advent or Christmas?

    Going to church that follows the liturgical calendar – I find it interesting that the first 2 Sundays of Advent focus on the second coming of Christ.

    1. Our priest this morning talked about Jesus smashing the old ideas and expectations- the religious and political leadership in Israel was expecting a revolutionary to throw off the Romans. He fulfilled the prophecies, but not in the manner they were expecting!

      Doing things in a way that explodes our expectations seems to be his MO…

      1. “Doing things in a way that explodes our expectations seems to be his MO…”

        I hope you don’t mind but I just made that my status on Facebook.

        1. Here is another example of Fundy duplicity…fundies make a point of saying that they interpret Bible prophecies “literally” and those of us who find symbolic and/or spiritual interpretations are wrong (FYI, I am a Historicist) – yet the Jews of Jesus’ day were the ones who looked for a literal fulfillment of the Messiah prophecies while Christ was a spiritual fulfillment.

    2. Dear Strangly Warmed:

      Nothing like it to prepare for the celebration of Christmas.

      It kills me that so many churches ignore Advent and then find that Christmas is devoid of meaning.

      Hmmmmm.

      Blessings!

      Christian Socialist

      1. I would like to see that idea fleshed out more. One of the differences between my Lutheran church and former baptist churches is that Christmas is seen as a “holy day”. Everything around the holiday is purely religious, from advent to the Christmas Eve service. It is not that they stridently proclaim that the holiday should be religious, or condemn the “secularization” of Christmas; rather, they just proceed with life as if the holiday is – and always has been – a Christian holy day. Completely different paradigm and fruits. There is a lot to think about here, and I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.

        1. Dear Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist:

          You wrote: ‘they just proceed with life as if the holiday is – and always has been – a Christian holy day.’

          Precisely!

          A lectionary does more than produce Biblically literate congregations through a varied scriptural diet [or break preacher hegemony that avoids some texts while making hobbies of others].

          The church year marks an alternative vision of time based on God’s lordship over and inbreaking in history in Jesus Christ. That premise stands behind each Lord’s Day. As the liturgical year unfolds, the texts for each Lord’s Day define and address the meaning of time, life and all the powers of the age from God’s perspective in Glory.

          Christmastide, Ephipany, the Baptism of our Lord, Transfiguration Sunday, Lent, Holy Week, Easter Sunday, Eastertide, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Christ the King – these and every other Sunday of the liturgical year shape a view of life in which God’s claims cut across every competing claim [social, economic political] to our allegiance.

          Dominiontide [Christ the King] and the Sundays of Advent are among my favorite. I love that the year begins with Jesus’ Second Coming! What better way to celebrate Christmastide than by remembering his promise to come again?

          This also leads us into good spiritual practices. As subsequent readings from the OT and the Gospel lections lead us to prepare our hearts to receive him, we find ourselves standing beside Israel’s faithful, who waited patiently for the promises to be fulfilled.

          The liturgical year has so much more meaning for me than our ‘New Year’ celebrations. For what conceivable reason would I give a rip that the Roman calendar flips over a year? I’m a Christian!

          What I find odd that baptistic and broadly evangelical churches don’t share such a view of time. The church year is a way of confessing his Lordship over all time. The Sundays of the year are the rhythum that drive life. Then again, perhaps that is the problem. This view of time and life gives little room to negotiate treaties with earthly powers.

          It has been suggested that Rick Warren’s ’40 days of whatever’ went over well not because he created anything new, but because he uncovered something old and powerful. Can we recall any 40 days in the liturgical year emphasizing contrition, devotion and sacrifice? That sounds suspiciously like Lent. But [apologies to Mr. Warren] the church year is far more ‘intentional’ and theologically developed, to say nothing of it embracing a whole year!

          My question to Mr. Warren would be, ‘why try to reinvent the wheel.’

          The church many has wonderful resources at her disposal. Needed is a vision to use them creatively and incarnationally in our time [God’s time] and place.

          Blessings!

          Christian Socialist

        3. CS, I quite agree. I like the marking of the passage of time in the liturgical year. The individual days and celebrations have a remarkable effect in focusing one’s attention not only on the gifts we have been given, and of the sacrifice made, but of the expectations of us, and for me, a direct consciousness of the individual participation in the corporate worship.

          Lent in particular is very meaningful for me. I’m a bit oddball in that I follow the old form of dietary rule- very old, in my case, as I follow the rules that were present c 800. No meat, no dairy, no eggs. Small meals, and only two of them, with a light snack in the evening (called a ‘collation’- the residents of a monastery would hear readings from the ‘Collations’ of Abbot Cassian). I find that observing the Lenten fast serves to remind me daily of the sacrifice, which can be needful in a world that tends to whiz by without thinking.

          If anyone is curious, I have a fairly extensive article about medieval Lenten practice, up at slugcrossings.blogspot.com/2012/02/basics-of-medieval-lenten-dietary.html

        4. Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist:

          Coffee on me is fine! That way, you get to retaliate when we hit the pub 😉

          Liutgard:

          Isn’t it intriguing that when in some quarters spirituality seems at low ebb, in others there is a revival of interest in ancient practices … 😉

          Blessings!

          Christian Socialist

  6. Made it 2 1/2 minutes. I did not believe this post that all of that BS could be shoveled in a 4 minute video. He got everything but the Civil War in in those 2 1/2 minutes including a 5 second or so “bad preachers intro”.

    1. It’s sort of astonishing how he manages to strike such a reasonable and scholarly tone when every sentence he says is utterly preposterous.

      The tragic part is (at the 2:35 marker) where he says “How many of you believe [insert total BS here]?” and most of the sheep in the pews raise their hands. “Good, all of you know that. Good,” He says.
      😥 😥 😥 😥

    2. Dear Liutgard:

      As the village idiot, I feel like a total failure.

      This is the only guy I know who can keep on preaching when his brain has has gone on vacation.

      Christian Socialist

  8. Only a heathen posts on a Sunday!(Says that preacher while eating at Ryan’s buffet after church)

  9. Ugh. He actually said, out loud, “you have to stop thinking when you become politically correct. You really do, because it affects the brain.” Right at minute 3:00 if you can stand it.
    Seriously?!?!? 😮

  10. Apparently “Whites are people” & “Blacks are folks” – or am I just an over sensitive “politically correct” South African. 😯

      1. “Its coz us White People gotta take care of dem Black Folks coz dey dont know how to care for demselves” – its what got my country into Apartheid! Its just plain racist!

    2. Yes, I played it again, and you’re right. He does say “black folks and white folks” once, but for the most part he uses different collective terms for white vs. black humans.

      I use the word “folks” myself, but I use it to refer to anybody, of any race (including my own family).

    3. JbtheBaptist, accept my condolences to you and your country on the passing away of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. He has been one of my heroes and role models for more than 30 years now. Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika.

      1. Now just waiting for the first “Mandela is burning in hell” video to get posted on some IFB church website. Oh, and I guess they were wrong: he wasn’t the antichrist, even if he was prisoner 46664. 🙄

  11. I’m not sure how long the video is. I was watching on break at work and my phone stopped the insanity three minutes in. Somehow I don’t feel I missed anything.

  12. Ah ha! Now I get it. Slavery, and centuries of brutal of oppression didn’t cause racial tension. European Jews did. Why, Uncle Rhemus was happily singing away on the plantation eating his fill of spare ribs and watermelon till the Jews got him all stirred up. Why, all we did was enslave them, trade them like cattle, beat them, kill them, rape them, and sell their children from their arms. Slavery is the natural condition of the nigra.

    Jim Crow? Why, that’s the way things is supposed to be? There’s lots of good nigras around here that know their place. And they’re happy. Why they sing and they dance, and they pick cotton, and they eat what we throw out. They’re happy. The good ones know they shouldn’t vote, be educated, serve on juries, eat in our restaurants, drink from our fountains, sleep in our hotels, or be members of any profession. Everything was just fine till them rich Jews showed up.

    Gotcha.

    I love how that worldview totally absolve white American Christians from any wrong doing and places the blame on “outside agitators.” It’s neither the perpetrators nor the beneficiaries of slavery and oppression that caused the problem. It’s when those Jews taught the black folks and the liberal whites to complain about it now THERE’S the problem!

    Perpetrate atrocity? No problem. Complain about atrocity? Problem.

    Shalom,

    1. “Perpetrate atrocity? No problem.
      Complain about atrocity? Problem.”

      This is the same kind of attitude behind the way too many churches approach abuse: they wink at the abuser while excoriating the victim. All I can think is, “Woe unto them that call good evil and evil good.”

    2. Has anyone heard of a notorious document called “The Protocols of The Elders of Zion” that was doing the rounds in Europe a cetury or so ago? When I listen to this jerk I wonder why I get Deja Vu all over again?”

      1. “Protocols” still makes its rounds. I think every generation has its loonies that “discover” a new conspiracy record and it starts over again. The sad thing is it isn’t just Europe, but also in the U. S., and has been translated into many languages.

      2. Ecclesiastes 1:9
        King James Version (KJV)

        9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

    3. My dear granmother died believing that the civil rights movement was caused by “outside agitators,” not by people’s inherent desire for freedom and equal rights. She was a classic example of a person’s ability to create her own reality by believing whatever she wanted to believe.

  14. Ah, yes — proof by innuendo; my favorite.

    Some have said that Charles Lawson is in the pay of Satan to distract Christians from following Christ by bringing up these conspiracy theories…

  15. I haven’t had my coffee yet today. In my horrid, decaffeinated state I can tell that this man is a stark, staring loon. He thinks that everything is the fault of the Jews.

    That suit he is wearing looks pretty good. You can’t even tell that it is made out of tin foil.

  16. If you go to his website he claims to teach and preach the KJB. I have read the KJB many times but must have skipped the book with deh jooz and the Federal Reserve.

    Reminds me of an Emo Philips greeting card:
    Happy Birthday! You are another year older today. I can’t wait to hear how you blame that on the Jews.”

    1. True story: Once when I was sick, a Jewish doctor prescribed some medicine that cured me. So I guess, in a way, I can blame getting older on Jews. But I’m not complaining.

      1. Ooh! I had to turn my head quick or I would have sprayed my keyboard!

        Took me 5 minutes to calm down.

    2. The whole Bible is due to Jews, if you think about it. But “conspiracy” is an odd way to put it.

      1. Indeed, Christianity was once thought to be a Jewish conspiracy to topple the Roman Empire.

  18. Clearly no place for such talk in the pulpit. (Maybe it was a special conference on Conspiracies or something?)

    But of course he is right about the Federal Reserve having its problems.

    1. Even more scary if he was holding a “special conference on conspiracy theories.” 🙂

      I hope he moves on to aliens next. Or are those usually the “demon” sermons. I forget.

    2. The fractional reserve system is the problem, whether perpetrated by the FRB or any other entity. Actually, any monetary economic system, especially based on fiat currency, will have systemic and distributive injustice.

      1. Actually, it doesn’t matter what kind of currency you will have. The Gold Standard? You had systematic and distributive injustice. Silver? The same thing.

        At least with paper currency with a proper controlling factor, you could make enough “money” to keep up with the population size. And yes, the Fed *has* contracted the money supply at times.

        ANY currency standard is arbitrary. If we found a golden asteroid, gold would be as cheap as dirt.

        It isn’t the currency. It is the laws which always favor the rich taking advantage of the poor, the bent laws, crooked judges and deviant system that will not apply the same standards to the rich as to the poor. Steal some money to buy medicine and food, and you will go to prison. Steal billions of dollars as a banker and you get a raise and a hearty pat on the back.

        That money, the trillions of dollars the rich have, is not theirs except by what they cheated the poor out of in thousands of different ways. The curse of James is theirs. May it fall on them speedily.

        1. “It isn’t the currency. It is the laws which always favor the rich taking advantage of the poor, the bent laws, crooked judges and deviant system that will not apply the same standards to the rich as to the poor. Steal some money to buy medicine and food, and you will go to prison. Steal billions of dollars as a banker and you get a raise and a hearty pat on the back.”

          Wow. Well said. And we disproportionately punish petty drug offenders. Twenty-something years ago, when I was a police officer for a major TX city, I arrested a man who had one rock of crack in a vial in his sock. He was a repeat offender–and he was sentenced to 25 years. I didn’t sentence him–I arrested him, though, and this still bothers me. He was poor, and African-American. I know that this is not a discourse on drug sentencing, but your eloquent words struck an old painful note with me.
          BJg

        2. True, but I used the word “especially” for a reason. And as you pointed out, a gold-based currency can also be fiat currency. I do not believe any commodities-backed currency has historically demonstrable superiority to paper currency. The achilles heel of fiat currency is that it is maintained and distributed by a single entity, which makes its success binary, and leads to greater variance in any kind of measurement. Open currencies and bartering allow negative betas to smooth out the curve.

        3. “It isn’t the currency. It is the laws which always favor the rich taking advantage of the poor, the bent laws, crooked judges and deviant system that will not apply the same standards to the rich as to the poor. Steal some money to buy medicine and food, and you will go to prison. Steal billions of dollars as a banker and you get a raise and a hearty pat on the back.”

          Along the same lines, why has Congress voted to cut housing assistance and food assistance from the poor, while steadily increasing their own entitlements? Good points.

  19. Does anyone know any of Charlie Lawson’s background? I see his church is in Tennessee but does anyone know any more of biography? The reason I’m asking is I might be distantly related to him. I did a search but didn’t find much.

    1. My interest in his biography is different: I want to know how old he was when that mule kicked him in the head.

  20. “He manages to stand in the pulpit and talk about just about anything but Jesus” – alas. Brethren, these things ought not so to be.

    1. My biggest thought too. Nothing at all that actually pertains to Christ and the church. To me, it’s almost a form of distraction to keep the people’s minds away from religious thought. For example:
      Q. Why can’t I listen to Indie music?
      A. Well we know Gid only likes hymns because [Bible verse], but the real issue here is who are you giving in to? You can clearly see that all Indie artists are funded for by large corporations with the goal of…….. And that is how we know the Illuminati planned Watergate as a precursor to Bill Clinton becoming president.

  22. See, if you do that finger hand motion, you can say whatever crackpot thing you want.

    It’s all in that.

    1. I’m gonna start practicing that motion, maybe I can gain some credibility for the first time in my life! 🙂

  24. I am pretty sure the Lord will take care of me and my family no matter who is conspiring to do what. This guy is in sore need of a second job to occupy his time. By the way AoW, the tin foil is in the lining.

  26. This guy has more conspiracy theories than Oliver Stone and Jessie Venture put together. There is an old (but very true) saying in South Philly that “three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead”…which is why I cannot give credence to any of these secret conspiracies (this guy’s or any others). If they are so wide-spread, what are the odds that no one has come out and admitted to be part of them? ZERO. As Gerald Posner named his book showing (at least to my satisfaction) that Oswald acted alone, CASE CLOSED.

  27. I’m afraid that a lot of that rubbish is straight out of that hoary old anitsemitic fraud “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and it says a lot about the congregation that no one seems to have objected to it.

  28. I didn’t watch it. I might later, but it would turn my stomach.

    I was brought up on conspiracy theories. Essentially, they were to emphasize the great power and organization of the Dark Forces of Satan as we approached the Last Days.

    Satan had the power, and Democrats, Liberals, and the Council on Foreign Relations were all in league to eliminate Freedom in the United States. Along with the big bankers, we were moving to become a Communist state in 1976, er, 1984, er, (a few more timely dates), er, 2000, etc.

    All those nice people out there that were not part of your sect were actually actively and willingly evil agents out to try to damn your soul. Of course, God had provided you with Eternal Security (stars, fireworks, etc) and Satan could not own you. But He could destroy you. He could rob you of your crown, your rewards, and you might have to live on the streets of gold instead of in a Mansion in Heaven.

    The work of God was to preach the gospel and join the political fight against equal rights for blacks and minorities, the communists in the White House, and to get ready for the time the government came after your guns.

    One friend rigged his front porch light by filling the bulb with gasoline. He taped down the switch, but when the feds came he intended to burn them while he executed his escape plan. He introduced me to the White Militia groups in Idaho and Montana.

    Oh, and the King James Bible was God’s Bible for the world. All other versions were PERversions.

    I know it all sounds ludicrous, but it is all true. I lived it. And from that environment I went to BJU.

    And people can’t understand why I tell them my parents thought BJU was a liberal school!

      1. Well, I thought he was, at the time. I was a young man and he was almost like a dad at times. Later, when I had a chance to think things through, I shuddered in horror at the thought of what he had in mind.

        He might well have burned down his house, but he was thinking about burning up the people at his doorstep.

        That I can look back on it understanding it and knowing how approving of it all I was makes me realize how far I have come.

    2. Dear Dr. Math,
      It sounds like we are twin sons of different mothers. I was raised not in Idaho but in Alabama. Dad took me to John Birch Society meetings as a boy. Then I too went to BJU and it seemed pretty laid back, by comparison.

      1. Twin sons of different mothers . . . I like that!

        You often express very well the same thoughts and feelings I have. Nice!

        1. Well, you express the ideas more eloquently than I. And for that, I am grateful. Sometimes I just want to say, “Yeah. What he said!”

    3. Ir doesn’t sound ludicrous to me. I have known some people who were only one step away, or were quiet about it. 😥

    4. I was raised on conspiracy theories. Anyone else get Texe Marrs newsletters in the mail? 🙄 My family didn’t take much of it seriously, but boy, we had friends who sure did.

      BJU, PCC, HAC and the like were also considered very liberal schools by my family. PCC in particular, because it offered women degree options other than “Marriage and Motherhood”. And no, secular colleges weren’t an option. It was study at home, or nothing.

  29. Lots of crazy here, but one pearl “you have to stop thinking when you become politically correct” Which I would modify to “people stop thinking critically when they become politically correct”

    And there are many examples of “political correctness” on SFL!

    1. Eh, most people never start thinking critically, so they don’t have to stop.

      I don’t think “political correctness” exists except as something people accuse their adversaries of, but I know you disagree, Greg.

    2. I think it’s impossible to be 100% politically correct these days. Mainly, because there are SO many rules in it, and people always change them.

      But, being that I’m not a preacher/person/etc. who has interest in truly offending people, I do try. Just simply because I like to live peacefully.

      If I see a crime, I call the police. If justice needs to be served somewhere, there’s ways to pursue that. I have even written Congressmen that I disagreed with, and did so without being ugly.

      I think cruelty has no place in our society. It serves no purpose, and most of it is centered around pride and ego, anyway.

      1. Agreed! Cruelty has no place in any society. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

        One of the biggest things that drove me away from fundamentalism.

  30. Back in the day, when I was still brain washed, I was in contact with this man abd even drove my family five hundred miles to visit his church. This is the way he talks on a constant basis. Many Sunday mornings are used to deliver these conspiracies. This is musty another reason I am so thankful to be broken free from the IFB. I heard more about Jesus yesterday at my Episcopal Church than I ever did at my Baptist church.

  33. You know, barcodes were supposed to be the Mark of the Beast. Scanner technology would be used, and everyone would have to get their barcode tattooed on their hand or their forehead.

    People would stop shopping in stores implementing the scanners and barcodes in protest and in fear — almost as if they feared being scanned themselves by accident! After all, if you received the Mark of the Beast, you were damned to hell. This furor was going on in the late 1970s.

    There was supposed to be a supercomputer called the Beast in Brussels, Belgium, the capitol of the European Union. It was called “the Beast,” occupied all 3 stories of a building, required lots of power, and could supposedly store the name of every person on earth.

    Yes, your iPad likely has more power than “the Beast.” It certainly runs more quickly.

    What do you want to bet that the preacher has a smartphone? Why the authorities could “turn it on” and listen to him at any time they wanted! But somehow, despite his “preaching the truth” nobody has bothered to shut him up.

    1. My desktop computer could definitely store the name, date of birth, and shoe size of every person on earth, if I had access to that data and wanted to store it for some reason I can’t think of at the moment. So what?

      1. I think just that what they feared so much in the 1970s has now become commonplace, a part of everyday life, so perhaps some of these other things we fear today will not actually usher in the Antichrist either.

    2. That’s the thing I love about conspiracy fundies that I can use to stop a conversation with them about that no matter what–has anyone from any part of the government/Illuminati/Masons forcefully tried to stop you from practicing Christianity? No? So how are you being persecuted at all?

      “Persecution” is so easy to come by these days…

      1. PS. the things smart people can do with smartphones is incredible, and almost scary, I will say. Don’t throw me on the cuckoo bus, but if a smartphone (with vibration detection) is laying by a keyboard certain programs if installed can detect with about 99% accuracy what is being typed. Today you don’t even need to speak for them to overhear what is being said.

        1. Possible. With a lot of “if”s thrown in.

          Okay, how is that any different from Christ telling us that what we do or say in secret will be shouted from the rooftops, and that there is nothing hiddent hat shall not be revealed?

          The Scripture admonishes to live our lives as open books, without having to be ashamed of what we say or do.

          I do believe in a right to privacy. But like any right, it can be lost. The question is how much our lives would have to change if we lost it.

    1. Right. You haven’t noticed how Jewish banker run the whole world?
      That just shows how good they are at hiding it! 😉

    2. What’s fun is when you’re part of something or closely know people who are in something that is being theorized on. Then, someone goes on about their theories, and you get to poo-poo on their parade.

      My favorite? Freemasons. The men in my family have been Freemasons for as far back as, as far as we know, the early 1800’s, possibly earlier. It’s such a disappointment to people to find out that the men in my family are not underworld pagans who are trying to take over the world.

      Of course, I still get the…. “Well, as much as you know…”

      Um, okay.

      1. My grandfather was a Freemason.
        I can’t imagine him trying to take over the world, but if he ever did so, he certainly didn’t succeed.

        1. And, why didn’t our Grandfather’s tell us about the secret stash of loot under that church?

          Huh? HUH?!?!?!?

          😉 :mrgreen:

  35. And his rambling nonsense has what exactly to do with Jesus or scripture or anything relevant? ugh…

  37. This video clip reminds me of the race-baiting conspiracies that I was raised around. I came to associate christianity with this sort of crap.

    So the civil war was started by the Rothschilds for the purpose of dividing the United States because they feared a superpower. Wow. As if history were not clear that the nation was divided by slavery, and had been for a long, long time before the civil war.

    And I learned that the NAACP was started not by black folks but by white people. Interestingly, the founding of the NAACP was a multi-racial effort to bring equal opportunity to the African Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois, the main founder, was not what we’d call white.

    This preacher lies. He’s a mendacious prevaricator, and seems to be a staunch racist.

    1. Exactly! I just took a class on this, and you’re right; it was more of a multi-racial effort. Because who in the early 1900s is going to listen to a group made up of just African Americans? No one. They (sadly) needed the white voice to be heard at all (at least before Marcus Garvey started to turn the nation around with his radical ideas).

  38. “You have to stop thinking when you become politically correct”?
    I have found trying to be politically correct I have actually had to think more. I have had to think how my words sound to someone from a different background. I have had to think how my words would be received. I have had to think what my words reveal about my own attitude and theology.

    1. You have summed up my exact sentiment when I heard that statement. It is really just the realization that not everyone is like me, and so I must respect that.

    2. I am damn sick of people complaining about having to be ‘politically correct.’ They’re complaining about our basic need to treat others–who are different from us–with dignity and respect.

      My guess is that this ‘preacher’ is angry because society doesn’t accept the N-word and other racial epithets like in the ‘good old days’.

      1. Thank you. You said perfectly what has been in my heart about this whole “politically correct” thing for a long, long time.

        It boils down to respect, honor, and acknowledging the worth of others. Those who exult in not being politically correct are defending their right to degrade others, to mock those who are also made in the image of God.

        I make it a point to be polite, respectful, and cheerful to all. No one with whom I work or teach accuses me of malice, because they know I appreciate them, like to be with them, and want the best for them.

        Those who degrade others are very much in the image of the Devil, the Adversary, who wishes to degrade everyone.

        Now as to my dealings with fundamentalists. I will be as polite as I possibly can be to them. I would work for their good. But I will no more ingest the poison they exude, nor advocate their causes to harm others.

        Think about it. If you *want* to tell that racist joke, call people the “N” word, defame them, shame them inappropriately especially for something they cannot help or change, then something is wrong with you.

      2. Respecting other people has never been a virtue of most fundamentalist pastors or even fundamentalists I have known. Its all about their own rights and “speaking the truth.” Political correctness and selfishness cannot go together.

        Oddly, Jesus has taught that Christ followers and selfishness cannot go together.

        1. Oddly enough, Pastors also frequently preach that Christians have no rights. We are God’s slaves..When we got saved we gave up all our rights to God.

          Dies that mean that fundamentalist preachers then think of themselves as having all the rights? Must be something of an Evil Overlord mentality.

    3. The idea that critical thinking skills are necessarily mutually exclusive to “political correctness” (whatever that is) is borderline insane. There is no logical causality whatsoever. But that is how this kind of rhetoric works – pretend that the speaker and audience possess cogent cranial capacity, while simultaneously denying it. Orwell is smiling somewhere.

  39. This video reminds me of two comments that were made by two politics professors under whom I studied.

    The first, professor Erik Root (incidentally a Lincoln scholar) was once teaching a class on Machiavelli at Patrick Henry College. This one student got on a kick about how the whole point of Machiavelli’s philosophy was “to get power.” I raised the question of “power for what purpose or power to do what?” My fellow student looked at me like I was crazy and said “just power for its own sake.” The professor agreed. This point of view lies at the root of most crazy conspiracy theories: the idea that there is this shadowy group of people that seeks “power” just for the sake of power. No one does that. Individuals and groups seek power for some end or another, usually determined to be economic in the final analysis. For example, the big bad banks of the 1800s found it convenient to encourage warfare primarily because they made a lot of money off of it.

    [And for what it’s worth, I emphatically disagree with the “All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” truism. Again, power doesn’t mean much to me unless it is turned to some end. What matters is whether that end is good or evil.]

    The second, professor Thomas West(a revisionist scholar of the founding fathers at the University of Dallas, but otherwise a pretty good egg) made this statement in a class on Marxism: never attribute to a conspiracy what you can attribute to incompetence. In other words, when you’ve exhausted all the other potential motives (i.e., all the economic and personal ones) and it still doesn’t make sense, always consider the possibility of human error or laziness before you assume someone actively engaged in a conspiracy. The history of race in America has a lot more to do with people lacking moral courage and fortitude to confront problems like slavery, discrimination, crime, etc., than it does with some coordinated plan to stoke racial tension.

    Oh, and my final thought: if he thinks it’s so crucial for blacks and whites to get along and “create a community” (or however he put it), then did he vote for Barack Obama??

    1. Akin to your point about power, saying you want a community doesn’t mean much unless you say what kind of community is your aim.
      A plantation is one kind of community. A prison is another.

  40. Anybody else make it to the end to hear the best line of all? “Now I don’t know if that’s so or not, but I don’t know that it’s not”. Well isn’t that convenient. Folks, did you know Charles Lawson is a tool of the House of Morgan put there to purposely oversell everything containing a grain of truth into an absurd caricature so that listeners will discount the entire story? You better believe it too, because I can’t prove that it isn’t right.

    1. The beauty of that formulation is that it can be applied to nearly anything:
      I don’t know that Miley Cyrus is really six different people, but I don’t know that she isn’t.
      I don’t know that cold fusion is taking place in my bathtub, but I don’t know that it isn’t.
      I don’t know that Charles Lawson ate a big bowl of peyote for breakfast, but I don’t know that he didn’t …

      1. To the contrary, I think we have pretty clear evidence that mind-altering compounds play a chief role in his diet.

      2. Cold Fusion in the bathtub?

        Oh.

        Is that what causes the bubbling under me when I sit in it? 😈

    2. Absolutely. For someone who claims to follow the Bible, he really doesn’t follow the commandment about not bearing false witness against your neighbor. If you cannot fully produce evidence thats ok as long as its about someone you disagree with.

  41. 😐 Sigh. 90% of this is what I heard over 30 years ago. Just when I thought I got away from it.

  42. Dear Charles Lawson:

    Have you ever met a conspiracy you didn’t like?

    Christian Socialist

  43. @ Bald Jones grad

    Other than the presence of a pulpit, how did this, ahem, church service differ from a JBS meeting?

    1. I think that the JBS meetings were very much like this man’s speech. I remember attending one JBS meeting where they showed a film that alleged that Lyndon Johnson had been seen driving in his pickup truck in Texas, throwing a beer can in the bed of the truck. The film’s intent was to show that the US was in danger of electing a drunk if they didn’t elect Goldwater in 1964 (“In your heart you know he’s right.”)

      The JBS meetings revolved around unearthing various conspiracies that involved (often) how the communists were stirring up the blacks to riot in the streets. The rhetoric was very similar to that heard in this “preacher’s” message.

    1. I suppose it would depend on which side of the line you started from. If you were a southerner, you would be seen as supporting slavery if you supported the war. If you were a northerner, you would be seen as supporting slavery if you were against the war.

      1. Being raised as a southerner, we were taught that the civil war was:

        1. “The Great War of Northern Aggression”
        2. NOT fought over slavery. Slavery was not the issue. STATES RIGHTS was the issue that sparked the war.

        Of course, now I see that slavery was, in fact, the issue. Ending slavery would have a huge economic impact on the slaveholders. So yes, Dr. Math, you are correct. Southerners traditionally eschew such blunt language. Particularly when it comes to slavery and race relations.

        1. Right, right. My bad. It was all about States’s Rights. As in, it is the right of a State to declare you to be subhuman and condemn you to be a slave for your master’s fun and profit. It’s never about the rights of the people. Well, except for those officially recognized as real people!

          There are some of these folk around even yet.. Some even declare that slavery is benevolent.

        2. And, tacitly, from this “sermon”, it seems that the slaves were all fine and happy and singing songs around the plantation until stirred up by the Jews.

          Honest. You can’t make this shit up. Some people believe anything, especially if it is hateful and conspiratorial.

        3. Then you disagree with someone I think would know Lincoln’s motivations quite well; namely, Mr Lincoln himself who in his inaugural address said he would never try to interfere with any peculiar institutions of the Southern states, but would enforce the duties and imposts. Whatever the states reasons for resigning their membership in the union (preservation of slavery being among them I am sure), that was his for attacking them.

        4. States’ Rights, yes.
          Of course, the right of states that was in contention was the right to regard human beings as the property of other human beings.

  47. So it was a huge shocker to find out that white people helped start the NAACP. I imagine he’ll mess his drawers when he finds out that whites also marched arm in arm with blacks, escorted them to and from voting booths, took their cases before all-white juries,and even loved and made babies with them 😯 GASP 😯

    And his conspiracy theory is lame. My belief is that aliens from the planet Numbnutus have abducted a small but vigorous selection of human beings, inserted a powerful probe up their anuses, and sucked out their brains. The brains have been replaced with Fundy Generators, resulting in a group of people that pull ideas straight from their asses. At least my theory explains the Lincoln quote: “My greatest foe is the one in my rear.”

      1. Ok, Jane, let me clarify–My theory at least explains Bro. Lawson’s use of the Lincoln quote, which Bro. Lawson seems to use as a justification for Bro. Lawson’s unlikely and unsupported ideas.

    3. Dear nico:

      I once told someone that their cranial/anal shunt was functioning in overdrive. Is that the same theory?

      Christian Socialist

  50. Very Interesting. I can’t watch this right now, since I’m at work, but I’ll have to take a gander.

    This looks intriguing because I just recently finished Jesse Walker’s book “The United States of Paranoia,” about the history of conspiracy theories in the U.S. In Walker’s view, conspiracies can be seen as a sort of folklore that say quite a bit about the people who hold them, and typically fall into five types, often in combination:

    Enemy Above
    Enemy Below
    Enemy Within
    Enemy Outside
    Benevolent Conspiracy

    I think this guy has at least a few covered.

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