Posted on 08/03/2005 7:30:06 AM PDT by SmithL
I have never been to a big creepy megachurch. This is my first confession.
I have never been to, say, Lakewood Church in Houston, the biggest glossiest megachurch of all, which just dumped a staggering $75 million to renovate the former stadium for the Houston Rockets and turn it into a massive pulsing swaying arm-raisin' eye-glazed weirdly repressed House o' Jesus.
I have never been to World Changers in Georgia or New Birth Missionary Baptist in Texas or Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa or the Potter's House in Dallas or the Phoenix First Assembly of God, et al., all of which claim well over 15,000 regional followers (some 20,000 or even 30,000) and most of which operate much more like careening multitentacled corporations than humble homes of spiritual connection and love. But, you know, quibbling.
I mention all this because megachurches are the latest phenomenon, the hottest trend in the Christian godfearin' biz, arena-scaled piety polished up and bloated out and aimed like a giant homophobic cannon straight at the gloomy face of a new and improved God, one who apparently truly loves the fact that these tacky sanitized enormo-domes are raking in an average of $5 million a year each, depending on size and girth and magnetism of their glossy preprogrammed pastors and depending on how many CDs and syrupy self-help books and movie production companies and proselytizing Web sites and recording studios and hateful radio brainwashin' programs and malicious teenage abstinence seminars they have to go along with the nearly naked virgin car-wash fund-raisers they offer up to Jesus on warm summer Sundays.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
You have been warned!
Start out by saying, "I haven't actually visited any of the places I'm going to be writing about . . ."
Yet I wonder, has he ever been to a San Francisco gay bathhouse?
After scanning Morford's ejaculations, I can only surmise that he would cheerfully, nay, ecstatically support the mega-churches, if only their architecture was not stadium like, but more .. well .. anus-themed.
Marky is one fixated lad. Sheesh!
He prefers to call them bathhouses of worship.
For some reason, I think he may have:
"...hence we have been blessedly devoid of the taint of guys like Greg Laurie, one of the new breed of sleek preening pastors, a strange new mutant species of pastor-CEO-huckster-salesman, who leads the big Harvest chant-alongs and who writes milky best-selling self-help books, books that claim to know something of God but that somehow never mention single-malt scotch or anal sex or Tom Waits or grinning Buddha icons or chocolate ice cream drizzled on a lover's tailbone, slowly, tantalizingly. Greg. Sweetheart. You so don't know God. I'm just sayin'."
I have a feeling the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah were probably this mocking and cavalier.
I was zotted with an ark full of dazzling adjectives and nouns, my headache knows no bounds.
Yea though I walk through this volley of deathless prose, I shall fear no evil, and may this nimrod and his staff dwell in the house of a slumlord forever.
Leni
Yet he/she feels qualified to judge them.
Frankly I'm astonished that he/she wrote a scathing article on megachurches and didn't ONCE mention Rick Warren. No even a veiled slap.
Rick must be losing his touch.
I love the way he writes in a mocking style,
EG. arm-raisin' godfearin' brainwashin'
So as to say that all Christians are ignorant rednecks.
You know, if I IMITATE an ethnic accent at work I could be disciplined or fired for discrimination,
but this guy can PRINT outright slander against a religious group and be praised for his forward thinking.
"I have never been to World Changers in Georgia or New Birth Missionary Baptist in Texas or Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa or the Potter's House in Dallas or the Phoenix First Assembly of God, et al., all of which claim well over 15,000 regional followers (some 20,000 or even 30,000) and most of which operate much more like careening multitentacled corporations than humble homes of spiritual connection and love."
And I've never been to a GLAAD or PFLAG orgy or Fag Festival (aka Gay Pride Parade). Are they more like multi-tentacled (add the hyphen there, idiot) corporations than environments of spiritual connection and love?
That is absolutely profane and by default, disrespectful. Not just to "mega-churches" - but to all of the religious Christians.
He should be smacked. Big time. But he mite like it.
In a very high-profile major-city newspaper, no less.
that passage was outright blasphemous. Not that I would expect anything else from Miss Morford.
And how is this different from major league sports franchises? Does Mr. Morford find those similarly creepy? If not, he needs to explain the difference, because I sure don't see any. Lots of people seem inclined to habitually whip themselves into a euphoric frenzy by gathering with a mindlessly hollering mob. I don't understand the attraction, but I do understand that it's the same phenomenon, regardless of the ostensible purpose of the gathering.
Just like their Fag Fests.
trussell- fyi ping
I happen to enjoy Joel Osteen. His father brought that church up from nothing.
Somehow it's a bad thing that THAT many people want to go hear the word of God? I don't get it.
LOL! OK, Morford's a jerk, but that line did make me laugh...sounds like the title of the latest Jack Chick tract. ;)
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