All posts by Darrell

Movies

Feature Films For Families

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rigolettoIf you put six fundamentalist Baptists and six fundamentalist Mormons side by side, you might be hard pressed to determine which were which. Likewise, if you looked at the movies that each owned you’d also find much the same collection.

Although Feature Films for Families is not officially a Mormon company, they produce low-budget quasi-Christian movie fare that is very popular with fundamentalists of both Baptist and Mormon stripes. From the squeaky-clean shenanigans of the Butter Cream Gang to the deformed tenor’s dulcet tones in Rigoletto, these films have long been a staple of fundamentalist film collections.

Perhaps as some have suggested fundamentalists of different religions really do resemble each other more than they resemble the more moderate members of their own groups. At least they would seem to share a taste for the same type of saccharine cinema.

king james version

Claiming that the King James Version Is Easier to Read than Modern Versions

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1611

If you’ve ever heard the Fleach – Kincaid Grade Level test used to “prove” that English from the 1600’s is easier to understand that English from today, then you might be a fundamentalist. Claiming that the King James Version is written on a 7th grade level is a common defense of that particular version of Scripture. Of course, fundies don’t exactly explain how many 7th graders know the meaning of the word “wot” or could tell you what a “scrip” is used for. It’s doubtful that even a majority of adults know that the word “let” can actually mean “to prevent.” Think ye, amongst the congregations of these stripling youths that such words would be taken as acceptable for the nonce?

Perhaps fundamentalists believe that when a person is truly saved the Holy Spirit gives them an immediate education in 1611 vocabulary. As a test, can you, without looking it up, tell me what the word “carriage” means in the following sentence? “And David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the carriage,and ran into the army, and came and saluted his brethren.” If the Holy Spirit did not reveal to you the correct answer, then you may very well be in need of repentance.

It seems strange that a version which started out as a way to put the Bible into the hands of common people now has the opposite effect. The resistance to a new translation done from the Majority Text with ‘literal’ translation techniques shows that the version has become more than a translation of the originals. It has, in short, become a way to separate “we” from “thee.”

Books, Music, People, Preachers, Sermons

Famous Fundies: Phil Kidd

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kiddAmong the ranks of shock-jock evangelists perhaps none have aspired to the verbal exploits of “Dr.” Phil Kid. Popular with many fundamentalist churches of more militant type, Phil is the master of Hair-Raising Sermon Illustration. It’s a rare event when he manages to make it through a sermon without some apocryphal tale of tragedy and gore.

And then there are his screaming rants against all manner of other ungodly things like Nintendo video games and interracial marriage…

Here he is in fine form:

[audio:http://www.stufffundieslike.com/audio/PhilKidd.mp3]
Public Life

The Founding Fathers

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founding-fathers

To many fundamentalists, the Founding Fathers rank right up there with the Twelve Apostles as men to be admired and followed. Their crowning achievement was to plant this country, the Baptist States of America. This name was later changed to the “United States” by the evil left-wing Department of Education who, according to WorldNetDaily, also recently mandated that all public school children must take an oath of allegiance to Satan.

There is no doubt that the founding fathers were a pretty amazing bunch of guys. They were smart and driven, and they loved freedom. And while most of them were religious men, strangely enough not one of them was a Baptist. In fact, the plurality of them were Anglicans with a good number of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Quakers mixed in. One would suppose that good fundamental Baptists would be a bit perturbed by their denomination being underrepresented in the founding of the nation but somehow it never actually comes up in the sermons on God and Country Sunday.

Back when the country was founded, it was a great place. The Founding Fathers outlawed Democrats, rock music, and votes for women. The pregnancy rate for fourteen-year-old was high, but since they’d already been married for two or three years by that point it was to be expected. Everybody went to church on Sunday and most folks worked hard from sun-up to sundown doing things like selling slaves, planting tobacco, and killing Indians. It’s easy to see why these times would evoke nostalgia in many fundamentalists.

If fundamentalists had a process for canonizing saints, one can rest assured that the Founding Fathers would find their place enshrined in their lists, right down to the last beer-swilling, slave-owning philanderer among them.