Although there are exceptions, fundamentalists generally believe that celebrating Halloween is tantamount to worshiping the Devil himself. So to avoid celebrating this wicked holiday by dressing up in costumes and going door-to-door looking for candy, some of them instead dress up in costumes (no witches, ghouls, or Obama costumes, please) and go to the church gymnasium looking for candy.
Who says that fundamentalists don’t appreciate nuance?
You can’t be in fundamentalist circles for very long without hearing someone use the phrase “Well, if people like that hate me, then I must be doing something right.” What’s more, they actually say it with a straight face.
Evidently, it never occurs to the fundy who proudly propounds this fallacious phrase that the reason why people hate him may not be that he stand for the truth but rather that he’s simply a crass and unpleasant person to be around and people would hate him no matter what his religious affiliation.
If after cutting someone off in traffic you can convince yourself that the real reason they’re honking and yelling at you is that they dislike your “In Case of Rapture This Car Will Be Unoccupied” bumper sticker…you might be a fundamentalist.
thanks to deedeedub over on the FFF for the idea
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.
One has to wonder if this fundamentalist preacher has ever heard the term “ethnocentric.”
For when the claim of the “appearance of evil” just isn’t enough to create the required amount of fundamentalist guilt, the “weaker brother” technique is the veritable Swiss Army knife of fundamentalist arguments, ready to be whipped out in a moment to get the job of conviction done.
The argument goes something like this: “Now we know that there’s nothing wrong with doing X, but X is something that someone out there somewhere may think is wrong. And if that person by some chance happened to see you doing X, or thinking about doing X, or talking about having done X, or goes through your wallet and finds receipts for costs incurred doing X, then that person may stumble.”
The Weaker Brother claim is great for making rules against all those things that aren’t morally wrong but that fundamentalists are convinced you shouldn’t be doing anyway. He’s a handy guy to have around. The problem is that nobody really ever seems to know who the weaker brother is. Certainly nobody in a fundamentalist church claims the title for themselves. As near as one can tell he’s sort of a shadowy character who spends all of his time hanging around outside places like bowling alleys and gas stations that sell booze, looking to see if anybody else is going in so he can get offended. The weaker brother apparently has a lot of time on his hands.
Be on the lookout for him wherever you go. He may be weak but he’s a fundamentalist force to be reckoned with.