136 thoughts on “SFH Episode 1: Playing Cards”

      1. Yep, proof is right there, “Some of the most common places you will find a deck of cards (besides our homes) will be with prostitutes, gamblers, thieves, murderers, in taverns, brothels, prisons, insane asylums, gambling dens, etc., but never at a prayer meeting”

      2. Boy and that’s not even the best quote.

        “Dr. Talmadge, as great a minister as ever served the Presbyterian denomination, said he would rather have his children play with a nest of rattlesnakes than with a deck of cards.”

        OK kids gather round, because we can’t play cards we will play “shake the rattle on the snakes tale. Johnny you go first.

        3. Would this be the origin of the Snakes & Ladders game?
          Bonus points if you’re already a snake-handler. 😎 πŸ˜€

      3. hummm …. 13 paragraphs of wacked out opinion (this article was influenced by …. ummmm …Satan. Notice the 13 paragraphs), then 2 bible verses.

        “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Colossians 3:17)

        “Touch not the unclean thing” (II Corinthians 6:17)

        How these verses possibly deal with playing cards (except in the fundy twist-the-Word-to-fit-my argument) is beyond me.

        Quote:
        “Remember that nine-tenths of all gambling is done with cards. Also, remember that nine-tenths of those who gamble today learned to play cards at home.”

        There are many more slot machines at a casino that card games. His 90% statistic is a bit off.

        Quote:
        “No Christian should play cards. Surely no Sunday School teacher should play cards.”

        Pretty funny. ESPECIALLY no s.s. teacher. i mean the deacons, the pastor, assistant pastor … all OK. But God forbid a Sunday school teacher play. C’mon IFB’s, a WOMAN can be a Sunday School teacher. That position in the church REALLY doesn’t matter.

        2. I accept your challenge, Rob. I began to truly look at the playing cards, their numbers, their names and how wicked they really are.

          I began by adding up the numbers 2-10, the numbers on the face of each card. This added up to 54 per suit. 54 * (4 suits) = 216.

          Next I looked at the face cards. Here is where the tricks of Satan really become evident. I assigned a number to each letter. A = 1; B = 2; C = 3; ect. The word Ò€œKINGÒ€ has a numerically equivalent of 41. The word Ò€œQUEENÒ€ equals 62. The word Ò€œJACKÒ€ equals 24. The words king, queen and jack added together equals 127. Since there are four suits, 127 * (4) = 508.

          If we add what we have together at this point, we have 216 + 508= 724. BUT WAIT! We have forgotten 5 cards: the aces, each valued at 1, and the wicked joker valued at 1 as well. By adding 5 to 724 we are left with 729.

          Now if we take the number 1611, we can combine the 1Ò€ℒs resulting in the number 3. That leaves us with a 6 and a 3; which when properly arranged equals 63. If we take the KJV out of a deck of card Ò€¦ well you do the math.

          729 Γ’β‚¬β€œ 63 = 666

        4. Excellent work! I knew Satan was tricky, I’m so glad someone is smart enough to catch him at his sneaky sneaky tricks!

        6. I do love the fundies that love numerology like that, but if you ask them about numerology they’ll denounce it as a tool of Satan, and I’ve never tried, but I assume pointing out that they are using numerology doesn’t go very well.

        7. @ Shoe – you have waaaaaaay too much time on your hands. I will never play cards again πŸ˜‰

        8. Shoe – Your mathmatics gymnastics remind me very much of Gail Riplinger’s “Acrostic Algebra”

        11. @ ex fundy: thank God i do NOT know Harold Camping. i suspect that he is just like one of the loony toones i grew up listening to. once influenced, it takes a while to shake the ickyness off. thankfully, i can joke about it now

        1. the explaination for the cards equalling 666 came from my mind (and my masterful manipulations of mathmatics).
          i want full credit for that. yes i’m that petty and selfish. πŸ˜€

        2. ding- dong. i’m a fool. you were refering to our benevolent dictator’s post.

          I apologize

        4. Followed the link to the article, thence a link to the homepage. These people are post-trib, definitely heretics.

    2. Love it!

      And the FLASH shirt

      If I play my cards right, maybe I’ll get a “first” some day

    3. I think fundy churches/organizations/schools should just save everyone the trouble and post that as their motto.

  3. You poked the confederate flag again (last in the list of decks of cards that Christians legitimately should *not* own.

    I love it!

  5. Absolutely brilliant! I love the production, commentary, and everything about it, Darrell.

    We were allowed to have Crazy 8 and Old Maid cards that were specifically printed for those purposes. My next door neighbor showed me how to play Crazy 8s with standard cards, and I made the mistake of telling my mother about this neat thing I learned. She forbade me to visit them again.

    Of course, I tried to argue that it was the exact same game, but with a different set of cards, but that didn’t matter.

    It wasn’t until 30 years later, when I was living in Arizona, that my parents came to visit. One evening we sat playing round after round of poker for pennies – far away from where anyone in their congregation could see them playing with cards.

  6. Good stuff. I heard all of that growing up, and like so much else, thought it made no sense even when I was 8.

  7. Wait, you forgot dice! We aren’t supposed to touch dice either. We have to use those horrible spinners or these pop-up dice throwers – you know the ones with the dice under the clear dome and you pushd down on it to make them roll. Yeh, those are okay.

    1. The dice thing isn’t nearly as wide spread in my experience. Every fundy I knew growing up played Yahtzee.

    2. Dice were frowned upon but not banned. I don’t know of a Baptist church in the 80s & 90s that didn’t have playing cards that were outright banned. If you wanted to be the cool kid you brought the playing cards, not dice. πŸ™‚

    4. Our pastor would not let us say “roll the dice”. We had to say “flick the dice”. Didn’t want to sound too wordly :mrgreen:

    7. I was told dice were a sin because the Roman soldiers had Ò€œcast lotsÒ€ at the crucifixion. The wonders of fundie logic.

      1. Dice for boardgames are acceptable but Bicycle playing cards are never acceptable. Rook cards are, however, the acceptable substitute. I found that Rook cards are excellent for Texas Hold ‘Em.

        1. At Fundy U, no face cards are allowed. Not sure about the non-face ones. But everybody only plays Dutch Blitz or Uno… with non-poker-sized cards btw. Something about palm-sized cards is just… evil.

  8. Ok, how many here taught themselves to play poker or blackjack out of the encyclopedia?

    Yes, I see those hands. Hands are going up all over the room.

    1. I still don’t know how to play any games but Uno, Old Maid, and Collect Four.

      A new family is coming to our church. The wife hadn’t been in church for a long time; the husband just began following Christ. They’ve invited us over to play cards with them. It’s embarrassing admitting that I have NO IDEA how to play!

      1. I feel a little embarrassed that I stink at cards. At least partially due to the total inability to read signs & tells, which I attribute more to being a guy than I do to having to overcome the stigma fundies try to associate with cards.

      3. I used to know how to play all kinds of different card games, but years of not playing them (couldn’t find anyone to play them with) made me forget how to

      4. SO glad I’m not alone. My roommate loves card games and is appalled that I have no clue as to what’s going on when shown a deck of cards. My parents didn’t necessarily think they were evil, but I guess my grandmother did, and apparently I spent more time at her house. Playing cards and soap operas were two things she would not allow. We watched “PTL Club” instead (guess we know how that all ended up…)!

    3. I tried unsuccessfully to learn from wikipedia. Instead, my [Christian] friends had to teach me how to play poker; I played once with them, and have since forgotten again…

    4. I’m sorry to say I’ve never been any good at either game, although I am pretty good at cribbage (my MiL, rest her soul, was a shark and taught me most of her tricks).

      1. I love cribbage. Have played it my whole life. Thanks to normal (ie non-fundy) parents πŸ˜†

  11. Hey wait! How can you have Stuff Fundies Hate when the site is called Stuff Fundies Like!? πŸ™‚
    Wouldn’t you have to call it Stuff Fundies Like to Hate SFLH?

    1. How can I? What, is there a committee now? Did I accidentally hire a deacon board again when I was high on cough syrup this weekend? Good grief.

    2. We here at the First Baptist Church of SFL would like to call a Quarterly Business Meeting for all members and regular posters. We will discuss the nomenclature and highly addictive content. Orange drink and cookies to follow or should it be pot luck? πŸ˜€

      1. I can’t believe you didn’t mention Rook in the video, Darrell. All my fundy friends and family would swoon away at the sight of a deck of cards, but every one of them played Rook at the “hard and bloodthirsty” level.

        My tee-totalling mom played brilliant bridge, but kept it quiet because she mentioned it once and was accused of being a secret gin drinker.

  13. Playing cards were frowned upon in our church when I was growing up, with the result that I’m almost 60 now and the only card games I know are rummy and cribbage (and I don’t play that very well).

    It’s only recently that I’ve almost, but not quite, gotten over a sense of guilt about buying a lottery ticket now and then.

  15. I was scared of playing cards when I was a child because I thought there were demons in them.

    Now I’m just mortified that I can’t play poker with anyone.

    2. Your concern puts me in mind of Stephen Wright, who said he used to play poker with 😯 Tarot cards: “I got a full house and four people died.” :mrgreen:

  16. I always thought there was some hidden secret about a deck of cards that I didn’t know – like it held some demonic magical properties or something. When going to the Wilds, this was explicitly written on the “Do Not Bring” list … haha, along with story books. Actually, that’s not true that story books were not allowed, but there were equally stupid things listed not to bring

    Of course, I always felt like there was something about it that I didn’t know. Fur fundies to so vehemently speak out about Catholisism, there’s an eerily similarity – the pastor always knows the answer and you do not have a direct line to God. How could you when every decision you make could potentially throw you completely out of the will of God? How could you know anything yourself about these devilish playing cards?

    If at one time in history playing cards were used in brothels, bars, or the like – so what? They’re not now. I use them to play canasta. If it’s acceptable to play phase 10, old maid, or what have you.

    Here’s what all this is: WEIRD.

    1. The only time I went to the Wild’s I brought several things that were on that list

      Playing cards (oh, chips also since we were playing texas hold em on the bus) A gun (never travel without it), and my mp3 player.

      It was an adult retreat, but they still sent us that list, so I made sure to bring as many things on it as possible.

      If I were ever to go back (not happening, even if I hadn’t moved several thousand miles further away) I would bring more tools, I couldn’t take the damn speaker apart in my room with my leatherman and swiss army knife. Crankin’ the Wilds CD’s over the PA inside the cabins at a couple’s retreat? Really? I mean we are adults, And hey, Barry White it aint!

      1. And no one tries to tell us we don’t have a “direct line” to God. We get to have a lot of fun! :mrgreen:

      3. I went to my first Parish festival, got a beer and played poker while the older folks danced to the oldies. That sealed the deal for Catholicism for me.

        Oh, and did I mention that the beer was only a $1 :mrgreen:

  17. My dad gambled a lot before he was a Christian, but he never got or at least paid attention to the memo that he was supposed to stop playing cards after he got saved. I mean he stopped gambling, but I am not sure that I can have a conversation with a family member to this day if we are not playing some kind of card game. (Yes, I might be exaggerating a little bit).

    We played gin in a big way when I was younger with rummy, black jack, war, skip bo, and a few others mixed in. Now we play golf with phase 10 cards. My family is mostly fundy but we still have our secret vices. 😈

  18. ahhh, the ban on playing cards…one of many things that freaked my (non-christian) family out when i became a fundy at age 17! it’s amazing how easy it is to swallow all this stuff when you hear it from people you trust. πŸ™‚

  19. My parents played with cards. I think they just didn’t care, but we did hear about this whole satanic thing quite a bit and there were people at my church who believed it. Somehow my parents avoided the crazy on this issue. They wouldn’t let me play poker, but we did have cards and we did play cards. And sometimes, when we were at Grandmas house we’d even bet over cards. Oh did I love grandmas house. In fact, all sorts of sin and debauchery were allowed when I was at Grandmas house. My aunts and uncles could take me to the movies, roller skating rinks, and haunted houses. Never were we freer then when we were with family. It was a beautiful thing.

    1. I know the cool kids on the sports teams when I was there were the ones who snuck a deck of cards onto the bus for trips (especially state tournament, or spring meet). I don’t recall FBC preaching much against cards, but I’m almost positive they were banned.

      1. Yea I don’t remember it being preached, but I do think you are right they were banned, which is probably where I heard the crazy arguments. Oh well. Glad that chapter of my life is behind me.

      1. I can say that after 25 years on the outside, things are better. There are still knots to unravel; but my mind isn’t at war with itself anymore.

  22. This is something that used to be typical in certain parts of the Bible belt for ANY Baptists, independent or not (years ago- like in the 30’s and 40’s). My grandpa grew up in a church (Southern Baptist) where playing cards were strictly prohibited, and movies were also forbidden. He was an adult before he ever entered a movie theater. For many Baptists, though, these crazy ideas died out decades ago. The Fundies just apparently keep clinging to them! “We shall not be moved!”

    1. There was this local pastor that is friends with my family at my parent’s house one time, and I asked him if he wanted to play some cards..gin or something, and he told me that he stopped playing cards after he became a Christian. In my area, I think this is the rationale behind it. Christians just don’t do it, not that it is satanic or something.

  23. I learned how to play poker from some friends at HAC. My dad really bought into the whole deck of cards is evil thing. We would play Rook all the time. I went to a friend’s house and played spades. It is basically the same thing as Rook. At that moment the craziness I suspected was proven real for me.

    1. I’m guessing with all the lying & BS’ing that goes on there, you have no fewer than 10 World Series of Poker champion caliber players on campus at any given time! πŸ™‚

  25. I’ve never heard playing cards preached against. Gambling, yes, but never the cards themselves.

    I should find me a good fundy church sometime and take along my collection of playing cards, which feature such personalities as Sonic the Hedgehog, WCW wrestlers, Scooby-Doo, Peanuts, and round playing cards with a picture of the moon on them.

    1. In 3rd grade, I brought a pack of playing cards to my Christian school. It was like Collect Four but the sets you collected were different Biblical women: Mary, Rachel, Sarah, etc. I was told I couldn’t play that game because it would look like I was playing with real cards which was evil.

  26. Great video!

    True Story: I owned a Risk board in college and some friends borrowed it. During room inspections on Professor confiscated the Red (not the White) dice.

    I went to meet with him and I was told Red dice are EVIL 😈 . I asked if I could have them back, but he had thrown them away. He then offered to buy me new ones.

      2. There was no reasoning. He did buy me new dice. Didn’t realize they were mine. We were/are good friends.

      2. My son just bought me a “bazinga” shirt with Sheldon’s face on it. πŸ˜› Sheldon’s mom is a hoot. I suspect that actress had a fundie somewhere in her past.

      3. “In Papa New Guinea, there’s a tribe when a hunter flaunts his success to the rest of the village, they kill him and drive away evil spirits with a drum made of his skin. Superstitious nonsense, of course, but one can see their point.”

    1. Yes, Bobby! Dutch blitz was Fundy approved for us too! Although when I was young I figured you could use these for betting also….just so much Fundy goodness. When I was 12 we have PCC propagandists visiting the Church…besides their awful music, we got to chat with their recruiters. One was a former “real sinner” (which gives extra credibility in Fundy circles) and I asked him incredulously if it was true that there were no playing cards, newspapers, or Reader’s Digests allowed on campus. He said that the rumor was correct…and that if my heart was right I wouldn’t have trouble giving it up!

      2. WHOA! Reader’s Digest? I had that delivered to my HAC mailbox. That’s one of the most reasonable magazines out there.

  29. Too funny! and too true! We just never even had cards growing up and it was never mentioned but when I learned to play gin rummy (one summer when home from BJU)it was met with disapproval that I was using “face cards.”

  30. One reason my home church gave for separating from the SBC was the fact that college boys were playing cards in the dorms at Wake Forest College. Not kidding. Wish I were.

  31. Playing solitaire on the computer was not allowed at BJU. That still makes me chuckle.

    1. HAVING computers at BJU is what makes me chuckle. πŸ™‚ None of my roommates had one the whole six years I was there. No cell phones either. Yes, I’m a dinosaur.

      1. Ha! The computers were mostly the gigantic desktops when I was at BJU. My biggest fear was wondering what I would do if more than two of us brought a computer. There were only 2 desks per room!

  33. My husband thinks I am making things up when I tell him things that were considered bad at my fundy school. This is one of those. Thank you for proof that I am telling the truth :mrgreen:

    1. Someone recently scoffed when I mentioned this one. Until his wife, also a fundy PK, confirmed it independently. Then he just was speechless.

      1. That’s why this site is so cathartic. Other people just don’t get the bondage some of us were raised under.

  34. People are STILL talking about how playing cards will infect you with Evilitis? That’s not a Fundie thing–Catholic friars were preaching against it at least 600 years ago. It was silly then and it’s silly now.

    My husband is teaching our children how to play Dungeons & Dragons. 20-sided dice and all. Mooohahahahahahaaaaaa!

  35. I’ve never had a IFB preacher tell me this. Where are you getting your info from? πŸ™„ IF they want to “obstain from all appearance of evil”, let them, what is it to you. Is there anything that you “don’t” do because you feel that it is wrong? Do you ever get “convicted” over anything? Is this all you’ve got? Not much!

    2. “I’ve never…” So, that means all of us who heard face cards are evil/demonic didn’t really hear that from our Fundy pastors?

      Huh. Wonder why we never had face cards growing up. Or how I don’t know how to play cards?

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