Which Theologian Are You?

Which Theologian are You? from svensven!

Well?

My Review of Schizophrenic Christianity

Schizophrenic Christianity sets out to analyze the increasing incidence of sexually abusive clergy in Christian Fundamentalism, almost exclusively Independent Baptist Christian Fundamentalism. The first problem the books has is that it presents no hard statistics about the incidence of abuse. Of course, I'm sure that none exist. I'm not faulting anybody, but the book makes due with "case studies" drawn from news accounts and victim statements.

If you accept that there is a rising incidence of sexual abuse cases in Fundamentalism, the rest of the book will work very well. The reasoning is clear, and the analysis beyond reproach. At the end of the book, I see exactly how the irresponsible church government policies of what the book calls "radical church autonomy" create a haven for abusive clergy. The book gets a gold star for its clarity.

But we're left wondering about the true number of cases in total. And that's where I perceive the real divide or fault line in the book. Some of it is written for the outsider, and some to the insider. It occasionally slips back and forth, addressing different audiences. If you have been in a church where children were victimized and the matter hushed over, or the victims blamed, then the book is going to grab you and not let go. Several reviewers have said they could not put it down. I think, for them, the case was already established, and the book told them why. The question of why is enormous for victims of clergy abuse, including those victims who are collateral damage: never abused directly by bad clergy but emotionally and spiritually shattered by the abuse of others within a congregation.

But if you come at the book needing facts and figures, you get a good taste of the substance of its claims. You see that Christian Fundamentalism certainly could hide abusive clergy and actually protect them. And at times it has. But you don't get the facts and figures that stitch it up for you as tightly as you'd like. And I'm not faulting anybody. I doubt that any statistician anywhere has singled out this one branch of ultra-conservative religion to get the numbers recorded. And so many cases are hushed up, I doubt anybody could break the wall of silence to do a valid and reliable head count of abusive members of the clergy.

I regard the book as a very good first approach. I forgive its occasional unevenness of tone, and I applaud the passion of the narrative in places. At 220 pages, it's a fairly quick read, and the analysis is both clear and startling at times. Anybody interested in the topic of spiritual abuse or the corruption hidden in America's Religious Right will benefit from reading the book.

Schizophrenic Christianity by Jeri Massi; ISBN: 978-0981471808

The Snit

BASSENCO once remarked to me that a certain atheist film maker who posted about her having attended Hyles-Anderson College could not get the facts straight if you nailed them in a straight row across his forehead. She did apologize for this outburst and assured me that the poor boy meant well.

She even said something like, "He writes screen plays, and that's how he thinks--like it's a screen play." She then showed me the synopsis he had written of "the facts" about her history of speaking up about abusive churches. His intention was to post the following record of her life.

In it, she had been a student at Hyles Anderson and had met Voyle Glover there: both untrue. There were all kinds of inconsistencies like this, but nothing damaging. And she was right: all the facts that he knew were neatly pieced together into a seamless garment.

He'd fit her, Voyle Glover, Dave Hyles, Vic Nischik, and I don't know who else all into a tidy synopsis that was sheer balls, but it made sense. It was like those grand pageant movies from the 1950s where all the characters named in a particular book of the Bible all connect up somehow in the script. When I had finished howling with laughter, she let him know that he'd gotten his facts wrong. And, luckily, he never posted the Cecil B. DeMille version of the foes of Fundamentalism. She may have put a flea in his ear.

Anyway, years later, she showed me another post from him, this one not so nice. He was unhappy with her first Conference of the Lambs and had written several things about her motives that were not only balls once again, but downright unfair. It all just came out of his head. She made some sort of ineffective protest to him, but I think she sensed that his reach was limited, and there was no point in giving credibility where none was due and none existed anyway.

But when her book about spiritual abuse came out, this rather mercurial young man did outright misrepresent her words. Took them out of context and made them mean the opposite of what she was saying, then assaulted her integrity for having said something she never said.

I privately wondered if the Fundamentalists would jump on the wagon on this one, but a few of them saw the deception, and it was pretty blatant. I started ruminating about refiring this blog.

But I am superfluous:

On May 6th he leveled the ridiculous charge(s) that Schizophrenic Christianity blames the victims.
On May 7 some hemming and hawwing were sharply evident on his blog as he reluctantly recommended the book
On May 8, more hemming and hawwing with a distinct foot-in-mouth tone of voice and a sulky suggestion that her previous book was simply better, that's all.
On May 14, his blogs disappeared entirely.

That's called a snit, and he'll probably be back once he recovers from whatever tongue lashings he got from normal people.

I See that More Things Have Returned.....

Oh, and Damon Medeiros, aka PappaBear, had previously vanished from sight, but has now returned to further torment Gray's victims in the Trinity Baptist Forum of the Fundamental Forums (www.fundamentalforums.com).

Yes, those poor Trinity alumni have been greatly wronged. Every time they gather on the forum for an old fashioned chin wag about how much fun it was to attend Trinity, there's one more of those wounded souls asking for justice, compassion, and the restoration of their lost youth.

You know, it's so unfair that somebody forced into a blow job at the age of 9 by his own pastor and then shamed and coerced into silence for 20 years can't just man up and move on. The Trinity alumni are quite indignant. They keep asking the victims of the hard truth to respectfully go away. And yet the victims persist. (NOTE TO DWAYNE WALKER: THIS LAST PARAGRAPH WAS SARCASM. SARCASM IS A FORM OF COMMUNICATION IN WHICH A PERSON DECLARES A POINT BY STATING ITS DIRECT OPPOSITE. SARCASM IS DECODED BY ITS CONTEXT, ITS MORAL CONTENT, AND HAVING A BRAIN IN YOUR HEAD THAT STILL WORKS.)

If you're not a cynical old buzzard as I am, you might pray for those victims. They keep expecting a church full of alleged Christians to act like Christians and do the right thing. It's never been that way yet at Trinity Baptist of Jacksonville---a church that makes the chapel appointments of the deMedicis look tame---but some of the victims keep trying to get justice. Some even try without resorting to lawyers.

Rip Van Winkle Conked on the Head

Well, there I was, snoring away, when some acorn or maybe a salad bowl was dropped on my head, and I woke up.

And what did I find? A new book entitled Schizophrenic Christianity that names and details the loathsome high jinks of those spotted toads known as the men appointed to save America. No, not the Flash and Green Lantern.

I'm talking about Dave Hyles, Jack Hyles, Bob Gray, and those other criminals in worsted wool. Except when I last wrote, Gray was still alive and posing as a frail old man who wouldn't hurt a fly. Now he's dead they tell me: accidental blunt force trauma. As though anything in that buggery old man's life was an accident. I doubt his death was an accident, and 23 claims of child molesting was no accident.

So the fabled book is out, and I am told that after a small firestorm of protest, even now faithfully carried out by some banshee who has named herself after Jack Schaap's vulgar heresy and sacrilege, the second generation of men called upon to save America have vanished from sight. That's no accident either.

But before I return to my nap, there's one or two more things to report on. But first, a cup of tea.

One More Fundy Out in the Light

PappaBear, who has, from time to time, engaged in taunting the alleged victims of Bob Gray, is Damon Medeiros of Ohio, a former Trinity student and former Hyles student.

So Damon Medeiros, aka PappaBear, take your bow.

Another Fundy Out in the Light: Remonstrant=Mark Tevault

In the long revered tradition of abusive churchmen, Remonstrant on the FFF has been saying outrageously untrue things about some people. So let him stand by his words like a true Christian man (for we all know he surely must be) under his real name of Mark Tevault.

The Return of the anti-FFF

Like a great squid rising up from the depths of the internet ocean, breaking the surface to menacingly roll its tentacles around while actually accomplishing very little real harm to anybody (all that lore about giant octupi dragging ships down is mere twaddle.), the anti-FFF has returned. Yes, its URL is www.anti-fundamentalforums.com, but it calls itself the "TRUE" Fundamental Forums, so you can see that in terms of being both imbecilic, incorrect, and confusing (as well as totally subjective and self-aggrandizing), it does resemble Fundamentalism.

I can't tell you what goes on there because they are so paranoid that they don't let anybody see their discussions, and they bounce anybody who presents any type of challenge to them. And while certain people have brazened their way in under alternate screen names, I have either too much dignity or not enough interest (or both) to try that scheme. What I have found is that the type of people who frequent the anti-FFF care a whole lot more about what other people are saying and doing than what other people care about the anti-FFF.

So what has developed is that the A-FFF has become a kind of retreat for its members. The lords of misrule will sally forth from the A-FFF and appear on the mainline Fundamental Forums to shake their fists at everybody, spread a few false rumors around, make outright accusations, or even threats, and then get sucked back to the A-FFF in the way that the tide sucks back that rolling line of scum you sometimes see on the beach.

Marty Braemer has guaranteed that he really does have a "plant" who will be attending the Conference of the Lambs and spying for him there (a strange comment that evoked one pastoral friend of mine, who I have never heard call anybody an idiot, exclaim, "what kind of idiot is this Marty Braemer?") And Guy Beaumont (The Real Baptist) has alleged that Christian Farris (who certainly has got his problems, as he repeatedly demonstrates by his wrathful comments at large and his need to compare himself with everybody else, always in his own favor) has been committing adultery. I must admit, I do not admire Chris Farris, but Beaumont's allegation lacked evidence and even lacked the names of Beaumont's alleged sources. And Mark Tevault (Remonstrant) has suggested that hosting the Conference of the Lambs (which will accommodate fewer than two dozen guests, I am told) has ended the ministry of Dan Burrell, one of the most respected men in what's left of the decent part of Fundamentalism.

I think we can see that the A-FFF, apart from giving some sort of false courage to cowardly men, is a sort of catch-pipe of the religious internet. If everybody else who runs a Christian forum flushes you down their drain, you end up at the A-FFF. And every now and then you can climb up the pipe, utter a few vile things, make nervous people scream, and then get hosed back down to the catch-pipe.

Anyway, I suppose it had to happen. The oft-repeated debates on the FFF were only going one way, away from the superstitions of many Fundamentalists. Sovereign Grace, if not designed precisely as the outright Calvinists say, is still apparent in the Scripture and cannot be effectively denied, not unless you overlook key passages. And there is no evidence at all to favor a divinely inspired translation of the inspired original autographs, and certainly none at all to suggest that the KJV, a translation commissioned by a gay king who fancied himself the Protestant Pope of England, would be such a translation if there were such a thing possible.

And the holy living "challenges" were meeting with more scorn than awe, as wrathful demands that people quit listening to Gospel music, or rock, or wearing slacks, or doing this or that, were countered with the Bible's description of holy living: kindness, mercy, forgiveness, justice, and fear of God.

There had to be a retreat, I suppose. And so there was. But it was a strategic mistake for our boys. For now, the main FFF is under the rule of far more educated and able people. The credibility of the A-FFF'ers, never all that strong, has waned considerably. They always were caricatures, in my opinion. But that has become much more obvious, as it is now clear that they intend to swoop out of the A-FFF like Vultures of Revenge, crash the party at the FFF, spread around rumors and threats, shake the general fist at everybody, and then retreat.

Like so much of what occurs in Christian Fundamentalism, it is part comic opera and part tragedy.

The Anti---excuse me, TRUE, Fundamental Forums

Well, the Fundamentalists have been busy with their little wars and games of one-upsmanship. I have been remiss in writing about their latest wheezes.

First, a band of the spoofers and trolls from the famous FFF developed their own website, the Anti-FFF. The famous Fullcourt, while circling around and looking for carcasses, soon alighted. Only problem was, they are so cantankerous that even when they'd woo'd away several disgruntled and some merely curious members of the FFF, they soon banned all of them for imaginary offenses. I mean, in less than a week everybody but the inner circle was banned or had left in disgust.

The greatest revelation was that the Anti-FFF had actually been created by "Tina" from the FFF, with the help of the partially unhinged Mark Jones. Mark is a Pentecostal preacher, and the miracle in his life is not that he speaks in tongues, but that on occasion he becomes silent: a welcome evidence of grace.

Anyway, while a few clever clogs from the FFF had known all along that Tina has both the Chutzpah and savvy to build her own forum, most of the others had always assumed she was doing pretty well just to get each shoe on the correct foot. And Tina, a true Fundamentalist to the core, had no problem hiding her identity while maintaining a presence on the FFF itself, until she was thoroughly outed.

Fate seemed to take a hand when the Anti-FFF, like a top-heavy USS Poseidon, came crashing down when it was struck by the heavy waves of no longer mattering to anybody any more, and it flipped over. It was lost from sight for a few days. But it rose again, this time calling itself the *True* Fundamentalist forum (sort of confusing when you consider it still has "Anti" in its URL).

It still sits out in the waves of the internet sea, a sort of Flying Dutchman of Fundamental Forums, a ghost ship that pretends to be the real thing. Perhaps I am being too metaphorical. A bag of hot air floats just as well as a ghost ship, and perhaps that is the better descriptor for this empty behemoth.

Lately, the Anti-FFF records about 3 users a day, with a one-time high of 11. Why not give Tina and her pals a thrill (before they ban you for wearing trousers or thinking Dr. Bob is an okay guy) by visiting their site? Just be careful not to get fooled by the apparitions of normal. They will soon evaporate.

The Anti---excuse me, TRUE, Fundamental Forums.