All posts by Darrell

Books, Church Services, Music, Preachers, Sermons

Pulpits

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pulpit

Many modern preachers have discontinued the use of a pulpit, preferring instead to roam the stage freely sporting headset mics and using slide presentations. Fundamentalists, however, remain big fans of the old-fashioned pulpit and continue to put flowers in front of it and bestow upon it the title of the “sacred desk.”

The pulpit itself is no mere common piece of furniture for it has countless uses to the fundamentalist preacher. Among these are…

  • Holder for the microphone for those churches where holding the mic in one’s hands is forbidden as a Freudian no-no.
  • Resting spot for the ubiquitous cup of water that sits on it in testament to the fact that the preacher is no lightweight who will only be preaching for twenty minutes. He plans to preach until he is dry then preach some more.
  • Place for the speaker to set his wide margin preaching Bible (KJV), his watch (a completely pointless gesture), his ream of sermon notes (if he is of the note-using school), and all of his source material (consisting of a single volume of Sword of the Lord illustrations and a book of Great Poems For Sermons.)
  • Solid surface on which to pound while making dubious points. The rule is the thinner the argument the louder the preacher must yell and pound.
  • Line of demarcation between an official speaker and someone just giving a talk. Women or divorced men, for example may be asked to speak from the floor instead of from the place of authority lest they profane that hallowed spot.

So synonymous is this wooden box with the pastor himself that the search for a new pastor is carried out by a “pulpit committee.” Beware to those who would handle it carelessly lest they be struck down.

Books, Public Life, Standards

The “Weaker” Brother

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weakerbrotherFor 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.

Standards

The Appearance of Evil

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rootbeer A basic misunderstanding of six words in I Thessalonians has possibly created more strangeness in fundamentalism than perhaps any other (with the obvious exception of the “weaker brother” principle — more on that later). “Abstain from every appearance of evil” has become a guiding principle to fundamentalists that is applied to everything everywhere.

In the Greek the words are apo pantos eidous ponèrou apechesthe which literally translates to something like:

“Do not wear pants with punk rock patches. Also beware the bottles of sparkling grape juice with the foil tops, they might appear to be alcohol and stay away from video rental stores, someone might think you’re there renting a movie rated PG-13. Finally do not drive around town with a lollipop sticking out of your mouth or someone might think you are smoking.”

Which all just goes to show how important it is to learn Greek in order to get the deeper meanings out the Scriptures.

Also added to the list of things that might appear evil would be drinking root beer from dark bottles, wire-rimmed glasses, facial hair, clothing designed by gay guys, any hair style ever worn by any rock group anywhere, and anything that looks like it might be enjoyed by Billy Graham, his followers, or their household pets.

Trying to guess what innocent thing might possibly appear evil to any person on the planet makes the weirdness get pretty thick in a hurry. The Pharisees would have loved it.