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Post by jwr on Jul 17, 2010 0:34:31 GMT -5
That's hilarious that one of the speakers has the name "Doug Phillips!"
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Post by jwr on Jul 15, 2010 1:20:00 GMT -5
Coleslaw, you're probably 100% right. She very well might have thought it to be creepy. That's one of the reasons I said I wished at that moment I was a woman. I've lost friends before, but they were either old, and so I expected it; or they died after long, drawn-out drug addictions. So even though it was really sad, it wasn't a shock or surprise. But getting that news yesterday was the emotional equivalent of being hit square in the face with a baseball bat. I was in that state of shock and dismay when I wrote the post, and am still shook up today. In other words, what I wrote was an irrational rant; and yes it probably was me who needed the hug. grandmalou: Thanks for the cyberhugs!
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Post by jwr on Jul 14, 2010 12:06:19 GMT -5
Hi Grandmalou,
Thanks for that note and the song. Yes, it's not gender, race or anything else, but who we are inside that counts. But as you know, religion & culture has a way of wreaking havoc with people based on their gender. If that were not the case, NLQ wouldn't even exist. That Galatians verse you quoted is the best, most liberating gender statement I've ever read. If all the world's preachers would focus on this verse instead of the others they do, what a better place this world would be!
But in real life, gender always messes things up. Just seven hours ago (about 4 PM India time) I actually wished for a moment that I was a woman. "What?" you might ask. Well, there's a good reason for that.
After being gone from India several months, I visited my friend's motorcycle customizing/repair shop in Calcutta. He's a Punjabi Hindu. He wasn't there, but his 17 year old daughter was, and she looked really disheveled and unwell. I asked where her dad was. She looked down and quietly replied, "He passed away."
"WHAT?"
"Yes, he had a heart attack."
"But he was so strong and healthy, how could it be?!"
"I know he was. But I guess that just wasn't his day," she replied.
I was totally stunned. He was my friend. AND HE WAS ONLY 40! I kept saying to her how sorry I was; what a good chap her dad was. But this just made her all the more sad, and it was really awkward. I wished I could hug her right there because I was in tears too.
But I'm a 47 year old male, and she's a 17 year old female, and such a thing is just downright unacceptable in public in India. This stupid gender thing didn't even allow me to deal with my sudden shock, and how my shock was exacerbating his daughter's grief. And that's why I wished for a moment that I was a woman. Then I could have hugged her and we could both could have cried, and it would be good and socially acceptable.
But instead of anything cathartic like that, I felt worse and worse, and then got on my motorcycle. As I drove down Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Street I got angry at death and started cursing loudly.
See how whacked out this gender thing is; people can't even go into shock and grieve right because of it. How messed up is that?
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Post by jwr on Jul 14, 2010 0:22:13 GMT -5
Hi KR, I agree with all you're saying here. But in my comments I was specifically riffing off of Vyckie's review of Hedges' take on the matter. I was developing one of the many aspects of emasculation that Hedges was speaking of, because that's the one I'm familiar with--since the charismatic movement has taken the long tradition of personal bridal mysticism (first recorded in detail by the Church Father Jerome) and grossly overblown it. To clarify a few things that always get misconstrued when anyone discusses this: 1. I have nothing against the imagery of the Church as the Bride of Christ (which is not the same thing as bridal mysticism). 2. Nor do I have a problem with bridal mysticism ("personal brideship") per se. It works well for many women and for many men. I'm only against churches making bridal mysticism the normative practice that we're all supposed to follow. Like I said, hetero males who can't spiritually transgender themselves, are left in the lurch here. In settings like this, we're strangers at the gate; outsiders, rejects from our own religious tradition. Another problem with making bridal mysticism the norm is that hetero men who, due to group pressure enter into it, do feel emasculated. And to compensate, they go into a hypermasculinity overdrive. Thus the paradoxical construction they've created of "the warrior-bride." I cannot mention names on this forum, but please trust me when I say that two of the most radical dominionist prayer leaders (one of whom is now world-famous; you and most other members know his name) are extreme closet bridal mystics. And the more they play the bride role, the more they overcompensate by playing the warrior role; warriors who want a theocractic America. To summarize: when it comes to bridal mysticism, I'm all for letting everybody "find their own bliss." But when they try to force it upon the church at large, my response is, "Not only no, but Hell No!" All the gender issues you brought up in your reply are totally legitimate. I'm painfully aware of all the gender problems that organized religion engenders, and I'm even more painfully aware that I know of no good solution for them. My approach, which has come about gradually, is to have a much more abstract idea of God; un-reifying the divine. Holding onto all gender and other metaphors so loosely that I often drop them and can't seem to find them anymore. Moses' tradition was "No graven image." My personal tradition has become even more extreme: "No mental image." After all, the idols of every god/goddess began as racially and culturally formed mental images. The Bengali idol maker crafts images of Durga or Kali out of straw, clay and paint. The end result, in both the mythology and iconography, is an idol that looks like an exagerated Bengali woman. In many cases, if you take away the extra arms, the image is not even exaggerated. An idol of Durga with only two arms would look just like the craftsman's own mother. Likewise, Krishna is an overblown image of a north Indian cow herder, Rama is an overblown image of a north Indian prince, Allah is an over-magnfified version of an Arabian merchant-cum-warlord, and the Jesus of the Christian Right is an overblown image of an ancient near-eastern king. Well, that's enough ranting and raving for now. I'll end this with the lyrics of another song. The worship song I listed earlier in this thread is 15 years old or more. The following is presently a top-ten favorite in charismatic churches across the West today. You'll recognize direct quotes from Song of Solomon here ("over the hills and upon the mountains," etc.). How many men, if given a choice between singing this song in a mauve-hued church, or hanging out in a sports bar, would chose the church? How many the sports bar? The Barna polls answer that question. DANCE WITH ME by Paul Wilbur (Seeing the YouTube video will really get the point across! www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GGZKDQn48Q ) Behold you have come over the hills, and upon the mountains To me you have run my beloved, you've captured my heart (2x) (Chorus): Dance with me O Lover of my soul to the song of all songs Romance me O Lover of my soul to the song of all songs With you I will go You are my love You are my fair one Winter has passed and the spring time has come (Repeat chorus repeatedly; so much so that worshippers often go into a semi-hypnotic state)
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Post by jwr on Jul 11, 2010 20:46:04 GMT -5
WOW, jwr! I was not aware of the Saint John of the Cross stuff. However, it immediately put me in mind of Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre Dame des Fleurs) by Jean Genet. It's one of those weird reads that makes you almost simultaneously weep over the beauty of the language and gag over the depravity of the lives it's describing. ambrosia, I was aware of who Genet was, because of Sartre's famous essay on him. But I've never read his stuff. After reading your post, I looked up Our Lady of the Flowers on Wiki and got the main idea of it. I doesn't at all surprise me that it reminded you of St. John of the Cross. Saint John and Saint Genet: mirror-image brothers. Perhaps I'll read Genet's " Our Lady..." someday.
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Post by jwr on Jul 11, 2010 12:43:57 GMT -5
Hey Jemand
No problems here with the rant. Gender is always a sticky problem with most religions.
With the men, there does seem to be some sort of pecking order pattern emerging.
1. In Vyckie's review of Hedges' book, the men are emasculated, and then vent their rage about it by oppressing women.
2. In the church I alluded to in one of the posts in this thread, the pastor was emasculated by becoming a bride, and to compensate became an even more belligerent religious right warrior.
3. And the same Saint Bernard, the most womanly of all male saints, also wrote a long and convincing letter to the Pope, which lead the Pope to initiate the first Crusade. It looks like the same pattern: trying to overcome emasculation by swinging to the other end of the pendulum of hyper and abusive masculinity.
And of course you're right; women always got shafted one way or another. The specific manner in which women have been oppressed differ than that which men have suffered, but patriarchy is destructive to both genders, and to those stuck somewhere in the middle of the genders.
Very complicated, twisted stuff this is...
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Post by jwr on Jul 11, 2010 1:05:49 GMT -5
I wonder if some of the mystics were actually gay and found a Church-approved way of dealing with their feelings for other men by directing them towards Jesus. Jeane, You hit the nail right on the head. I'm going to copy a link to an article here. About six months ago I referred someone else on this forum to the same link. This forum member is extremely sharp and nuanced in all her posts, but when she read the article she said, "I just don't get it." Perhaps the reason she didn't get it, was that Vyckie hadn't yet posted her "emasculation" thread, and thus there was no real context or background to interact with. But now that the cat's out of the bag, it might make more sense. There are many varieties of mystical experience in the world, but here we're only speaking of "bridal mysticism." The world's great bridal mystics have been hetero females who had little or no romantic and sexual release; and homosexually oriented males, who forbidden by the church to act out physically and socially, discovered an acceptable outlet: sublimation. By channelling the homoerotic energies upward they actually became saints. I've already mentioned some of the male bridal mystics in my above post; here are a few from the female hall of fame: Teresa of Avilla, Catherine of Sienna and Madame Guyon (unlike the others, Guyon never became a saint. Instead she was imprisoned for heretical ideas). Having said so much on the issue in these threads, I feel the need to clarify two things: 1. I don't believe mysticism, bridal or otherwise, is wrong or merely psychosis. Neither do I condemn sublimation. These things can be beautiful and transformative for some people. I only object to churches making it the normative paradigm that all Christians are supposed to follow. That's what caused people like me to get alienated. And, as someone else wrote above, it should be done in secret, not made into cheap exhibitionism. 2. And I totally agree with Nikita when she wrote, "Real mysticism is much harder, a lifetime of work, not an easy sexy singalong." Anyway, here's the link to the article: www.crosscurrents.org/Kripal0304.htm
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Post by jwr on Jul 8, 2010 2:51:13 GMT -5
@zoegirl and Nakita,
Thanks for your posts. I've been around this a long time and it's really, really pervasive in the charismatic world. Here's some background info you might be find interesting.
Song of Solomon (SOS) is probably of Egyptian origin, was later adapted and edited by the Hebrews, who ascribed it to Solomon. It was originally a human-human love poem, about a man and his favorite wife. For centuries, Hebrew minstrels sang large sections of it during wedding receptions. Most everyone was drunk, and the songs were very bawdy (but we don't recognize them as so, because the Ancient Near Eastern metaphors don't sound nearly as sexed-up to us as they did to the early hearers). In the first century A.D. Rabbi Aquiba, scandalized by the drunken wedding songs, declared that SOS was not really about human love, but rather was allegorical of Yahweh's love for Israel. Many Christian interpreters tweaked this slightly, saying it was about Christ's love for the Church.
But Origen claimed SOS was about Christ's love for the individual believer (not just the corporate Bride of Christ). Centuries later, St. Bernard took this notion really far, and wrote endless sermons on SOS. Since they were male monks, envisioning themselves as female brides, the conceptual framework was homoerotic. The most homoerotic of them all was St. John of the Cross, whose love poems to Jesus are full of desperate passion.
This practice is commonly known as "bridal mysticism," or, as Anne Astell of Cornell University calls it, "personal brideship."
Starting in the 1990s, the leaders of Kansas City Fellowship, a charismatic group, brought St. Bernard's bridal mysticism to a new generation. But whereas Bernard and the others had the decency to practice their brideship in the private of the monasteries, today's charismatics lie on floors in public venues, gesticulating and moaning, saying things like, "Oh, Jesus my lover, my husband, take me now, ravish me with your love...Oooh..." The men who do this are obviously being emasculated.
The following are excerpts from some of my past research on mysticism: ----------------
Leon J. Podles, himself a practicing Catholic, makes the following observations about Bernard:
"Bernard claimed that 'if a love relationship is the special and outstanding characteristic of a bride and groom it is not unfitting to call the soul that God loves a bride'… Having established the principle for the use of such language, Bernard then elaborated. He referred to himself as a 'woman' and advised his monks to become 'mothers'—to 'let your breasts expand with milk, not swell with passion'—to emphasize their paradoxical status and worldly weakness" (Leon J. Podles, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. (Dallas: Spence Publishing Co., 1999), pp. 103-104).
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[Bernard and his contemporaries constantly spoke of being kissed and penetrated by Christ]. Was the divine kissing and penetration only thought to be allegorical or figurative? For some, no doubt, it was only figurative. Yet for others it was a passionate experience that we contemporary people would call “sublimation.” In these powerful visionary states, spiritual ecstasies often induced physiological reactions. This is illustrated in the life of one of Bernard’s contemporaries, Rupert of Deutz: "Consider, for example, Rupert’s description of his vision of his divine lover, Jesus: ‘When I quickly entered [the altar] I took hold of him whom my soul loved. I held him, I embraced him, I kissed him for a long time. I felt how deeply he appreciated this sign of love when, in the midst of the kiss, he opened his mouth so that I could kiss him more deeply.’ " (Quoted in Jeffrey J. Kripal, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 71.) Carolyn W. Bynum (University of Washington), discussing Rupert’s passion, also notes that he, “felt Christ’s tongue in his mouth” (Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg.” Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 3. (Autumn, 1986), pp. 406-407).
And then there is the issue of the carnals fluxus liquore. Again, in Kripal’s words:
"Finally, in order to complicate things even further and call for a truly embodied reading of mystical texts, recall that Bonaventure, one of the tradition’s great mystical theologians, was quite clear that the ecstasies of male mystics often produce real sexual fluids: 'In the spiritualibus affectionibus carnals fluxus liquore maculantur' he wrote ('Within the spiritual affections, they are stained with the liquid of the carnal flow') (Kripal, Roads... , pp. 71,72).
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Saint John of the Cross wrote poems in which he cast himself in the role of a woman who has secret rendezvous with a male lover who ravishes "her" to ecstasy. We assume the lover to be Christ, but since the words "Christ" and "Jesus" are absent we can't know for sure. At any rate, the great saint assumes the role of a woman sneaking out at night for a secret encounter.
John wrote most of his poems while imprisoned by a rival band of monks in their monastery. For some reason, they kept him locked away in the latrine. Why the latrine? I wonder. Someone who felt sorry for him gave him writing utensils. Below is one of his latrine poems. When his abusers had gone to sleep, leaving him in relative peace, he could spiritually travel (mystically dissociate) to a rendezvous with his heavenly lover. In that imaginal place, John, the beaten, abused and degraded "woman," became a beautiful lady, of “flowery breast”; most tenderly loved.
STANZAS OF THE SOUL by Saint John of the Cross
On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings-oh, happy chance! – I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.
In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, dis- guised – oh, happy chance! – In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.
In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me, Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.
This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me – A place where none appeared.
Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!
Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone, There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.
The breeze blew from the turret As I parted his locks; With his gentle hand he wounded my neck And caused all my sense to be suspended.
I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved. All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.
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Post by jwr on Jul 7, 2010 6:28:30 GMT -5
Here's a guy's perspective on this matter. Last Nov, when I first joined this forum, I mentioned this book:
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God's Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism. (http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Phallus-Howard-Eilberg-Schwartz/dp/0807012254/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1278498747&sr=1-1)
I discovered this book in 2006 and was amazed and relieved that someone else was addressing something that for years had bothered me as an evangelical/charismatic christian.
We heard endless sermons based on Song of Solomon, in which Jesus was portrayed as the ultra-virile warrior-king, and we, individual Christians, were supposed to be his passionate brides. The sermons and songs we sang were rife with romantic, erotic and even sexual (although somewhat veiled) language.
In order to enter into worship and intimacy, the men in the churches had to imagine themselves as female brides, being ravished by an Alpha-Male king. One of the songs, for example, was addressed to Jesus, and the melody was slow and syrupy, with major 7th and 9th chords. The chorus goes:
Let me know the kisses of Your mouth Let me feel Your warm embrace Let me smell the fragrance of Your touch Let me see Your lovely face Take me away with You Even so, Lord, come
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLO8OkgX424)
That song, however, was very toned down and light, compared to many of the other "Please ravish me in your bed chamber, Jesus!" songs.
This emphasis seemed to work quite well for hetero females and gay men. Some men perhaps weren't gay, but somehow learned the art of spiritual transgenderment. They could do a psychical version of the Lou Reed lyric, "He shaved his legs and he was a she..."
But I couldn't relate. I couldn't image myself as a bride. I didn't want to feel the kisses of a male lover-god. In the same chapter that Vyckie reviewed, Chris Hedges made a brief reference to this very issue.
I've seen a whole generation of young evangelical males, who ironically are as anti-gay as they come. Yet they were all being emasculated in this way. I remember one young man at a conference who spoke to me with face aglow and said, "Last night I had a dream in which Jesus came to me. And He gave me a rose!"
If I, a hetero male, were to relate romantically and with sublimated eroticism to the deity, it would have to be a female form of deity; i.e. a goddess. But that of course would make me a vile heretic, a pagan. Socially and sexually I was commanded to be 100% heterosexual, but spiritually I was commanded to be 100% female in the arms of a male god.
One well-known prayer leader of the Christian Right obviously struggled with this issue, and he came up with a unique solution. He preached one day about "the warrior-bride." "You go into the secret place with Jesus and feel his caresses and kisses," he said, "and then you come out with your armor and sword and storm the gates of hell!"
Had Chris Hedges been at that Colorado Springs church that day. It would have given him the perfect illustration for his chapter. To compensate for his emasculation, for his being spiritually penetrated by the ultimate Alpha Male of the universe, the pastor became all the more belligerent in his religious right war efforts.
After a few years of this emphasis in the churches, and after finding a long tradition of it in church history (e.g. Saint Bernard, Rupert of Deutz, etc.), I began to cool off spiritually. When I went to church I felt like an outsider looking in. I noticed that many in the congregation were in the habit of using their laptops to take sermon notes, and that became a perfect cover. Every Sunday I sat with my laptop, supposedly taking sermon notes, but really working on other projects.
Then I read Eilberg-Schwartz's book and found I wasn't alone. Like Hedges, he claimed that this form of monotheism emasculates men. But he spent a whole book on the subject, going back to the book of Genesis, then onward throughout Jewish and Christian history.
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Post by jwr on Jul 6, 2010 5:54:12 GMT -5
Vyckie, I loved Hedges's book from the time I first read it and I'm so glad you're calling attention to it in your blog! I hope every one of this forum will get a copy.
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Post by jwr on Mar 19, 2010 12:05:45 GMT -5
Two people were playing guitar and we all were singing "It only takes a spark to get the fire going.....". And I just fell in love with the feeling of it. musicmom, this made me laugh out loud. I totally remember that song, and how we sang it at Christian camp about a thousand times. LOL! Ok, this is really messed up but...this is how I got suspended a week from my Christian high school when I was 16. It was an outdoor-ed backpacking trip. We were in a public campground, several tents and campfires all around. Our small school group was around our own campfire singing, "It only takes a spark..." I slipped away to another campfire about 20 feet away, populated with stoners like myself. I was laughing at the lyrics drifting our way..."It only takes a spark...you want to pass it on..." For us, the spark was the match that lit the joint, and we all passed it on, getting totally ripped. Unfortunately, our headmaster had slipped away from the school campfire and watched me toking joints for 20 minutes or so...and the next week I was suspended from school. Yes...it only takes a spark...you want to pass it on.
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Post by jwr on Mar 19, 2010 11:45:00 GMT -5
musicmom, Yeah, I agree about this site. We can learn through lectures and through books/articles. But this kind of interactive stuff brings education to an entirely new level. Because of this, Vyckie could probably charge tuition to join this forum. But don't tell her that or we'll all have to start taking out student loans. ;D
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Post by jwr on Mar 19, 2010 2:57:39 GMT -5
I'm rather overwhelmed and quite grateful for the many responses to my article. It's beyond anything I'd remotely expected. But I need to give credit where it is due. What I'm about to write is not just an attempt to be "nice." On the contrary, it's the simple, real truth of the matter.
Had I not joined this forum last November, it never would have happened. On the surface that sounds obvious: if I hadn't joined, Vyckie wouldn't have met me online and therefore wouldn't have posted it. While that's true, it's not what I'm talking about here.
The article I wrote is the direct result of three months non-stop interaction with the people on this board. One person's idea triggered another in my mind, which I posted. That idea then triggered someone else's; and on and on and back and forth. All the while, my own memories were awakened and new ideas birthed. Finally, in mid-Feb, MusicMom started the thread, "How Did You Get Into This Mess?" Her post was a real "trigger," but in a good way. My reply to it was the final push that caused Vyckie to mention making it a separate blog post, and caused me to expand it.
Without any sense of exaggeration, I believe that everyone I interacted with from Nov through Feb (even those who sometimes sharply disagreed with me and got really pissed) are just as responsible for the article as I. Sure, technically speaking I'm the author. But on a much deeper level, you all are. It's a full group project, not one person's idea.
Thank you all for enriching my life so greatly and in so many ways, and in such a short time. NLQ is, in my opinion, totally awesome and I'm much the better for it!
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Post by jwr on Mar 16, 2010 22:49:19 GMT -5
@ Tapati Thanks for posting those interesting points on thought control. Now that I know these things, I can start my own re-education camp and make everyone repeat 10,000 times per day, "I am an enemy of the people."
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Post by jwr on Mar 16, 2010 20:13:56 GMT -5
Hey, thanks for all the encouragements. I'm glad it could be of some help. An old friend of mine read the blog and his response was, "The history of anyone "coming out" of evangelfundism is like driving through the aftermath of a tornado." That says it all! ROFL!
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Post by jwr on Mar 9, 2010 0:12:35 GMT -5
Bill Gothard (mentioned in the blog article) is so friggin' creepy. With all his strictures regarding sex, marriage and child-rearing, you'd think that at least he'd be married himself and speak from experience. But no. He's unmarried and lived with his mom all his life. Unless she's dead now (I don't know either way) he's still living with her.
The first "born again" church my mom took me to (mid-1970s, when I was a teen) had a pretty good youth pastor in retrospect. Gothard was planning a huge Youth Conflicts seminar at a major stadium nearby and someone in the youth group asked the pastor about it. Looking uneasy, he replied, "I've known people who tried to apply all his principles in their lives and it made them have nervous breakdowns."
Hearing that caused me not to go. But I've read some of his stuff over the years and it's way creepy. Since the Duggars are so into it, they're Gothard's personal robots.
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Post by jwr on Mar 8, 2010 23:39:57 GMT -5
RE: Breaking a sheep's legsI've heard the story of breaking the sheep's legs several times over the decades. Never thought much of it until now. But after reading the posts, I did a Google search. On one q & a message board someone asked about it and another person replied. Here's a quote from the person's answer: Again, this does not come from the Bible. As far as I can tell, it comes from a sermon delivered by Brother William Marrion Branham called 'The Good Shepherd Of The Sheep', delivered on Friday, 8th March 1957. ( delveintojesus.com/Questions/60/Need-Help-Finding-Scripture.aspx ). Go figure! "Brother William Marion Branham" was the founder of that outrageous sect that Sierra from this forum was raised in; the sect that made her life a living hell all those years.
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Post by jwr on Mar 4, 2010 23:10:49 GMT -5
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Post by jwr on Mar 4, 2010 18:29:45 GMT -5
I must say that I am at a complete loss for words. I've been out of the fundie/qf life for a dozen years now...and their casual cruelty in the name of Jesus never ceases to amaze me. Jesus said: " Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not. For such is the kingdom of Heaven." Is this verse missing from Mr. Pearl's bible??? Maybe this is his favorite verse. "suffer the children," i.e. make them suffer. Also, Pearl showed a similar calloused attitude about the beating death of 4-year-old Sean Paddock that his materials incited in 2006. Kathryn Joyce writes, "The Pearls, of course, distanced themselves from the death and other reported--sometimes self-reported--accounts of abuse, though one of Michael Pearl's sole comments to a local paper was the dismissive estimation that, of the thousands of families following their teachings, 'the chance of one of them committing a crime is pretty good'" (QF, p. 77).
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Post by jwr on Mar 4, 2010 10:44:01 GMT -5
Arietty, your writing is totally awesome. You took me there. Made it all real to me. I hope that somehow a lot of current QF people find and read this. It might set a lot of people free.
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Post by jwr on Mar 1, 2010 1:55:49 GMT -5
The Hall of Shame moniker originally came from a category Vyckie suggested for carnival posts back in November. I submitted a few things at that time. The goal was to come up with past writings that reflected our viewpoint back in the day, when we were still believers. I don't really like the us-and-them tone, the disparagement of Christians, or the wide-eyed eagerness to neglect my education for an organization that would mostly exploit me, but no, I don't really think it's deeply shameful. More embarrassing than anything. Ok, now I understand the "Hall of Shame" title. We all have things we're embarrassed about. Speaking of "...neglect[ing] my education...": you would be shocked to know how many young evangelicals/pentecostals etc got (and still get) suckered into attending a one or two year Bible School or "School of Ministry." These are usually connected to a local church and are unaccredited. The diploma isn't even worth the paper and ink used to print it. Years later they look back with deep regret. One friend of mine had all the intelligence and drive to become a doctor but his pentecostal pastor said he was called to ministry; so he did the bible school thing instead. It was a dead-end. Now he's in his late 30s, has changed jobs many times, and utterly loathes himself for not having gone to med school. He lives with constant regret hollowness in his heart about it. I bet a lot of people on this forum have a million such stories. Really tragic and such a waste of human life.
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Post by jwr on Feb 27, 2010 22:07:22 GMT -5
Hi Tapati Thanks for this. It reminds me of a book I got in 1988, Monkey On A Stick: Murder, Madness and the Hare Krishnas, by journalists Hubner and Gruson. They were the first ones I read who referred to ISKCON as a fundamentalist group. Here's the relevant passage. It's a description of Keith Ham's first encounter with Prabhupada: "As Keith Ham listened, he realized the swami was a Hindu fundamentalist, one who believed that the battle described in the Gita was a historical event. That didn't bother Ham. Although he knew that most interpreters of the Gita believed the battle was a metaphor for the internal struggle between man's higher and lower natures, he was comfortable with the fundamentalist view--he'd grown up with fundamentalism and had never really rejected it. "Much of Ham's life, his work at Columbia and his search for spiritual truth, had been shaped by a revolt against his father, a fundamentalist Baptist minister... But it wasn't a revolt against his father's orthodoxy; Ham liked that. For all his sophistication, he wanted absolutes. He was pleased that the Swami and his father were both convinced they possessed the truth. The difference between the two preachers was that his father taught fear and punishment; his God was the vengeful, white-bearded Jehovah. The swami preached love; his God was a playful, sensual, blue-skinned boy." (pp. 48, 49). BTW, I lost track of the movement over the years. Last I remember, Ham had become the official successor to Prabhupada, and was trying to run the organization from inside a prison, where he was doing life for murder. Is he still the leader? And is he still in the joint? Keith Ham was ONE of the initiating gurus after Prabhupada left. I'm sure in his OWN mind he was THE successor but no one else (other than his group of sycophants) saw him that way. As far as I'm concerned, he is evil--a sociopath--who saw the movement from the very beginning as a vehicle for grabbing power and control of others. He is out of prison but fortunately for the world, suffering various illnesses so the damage he can do is limited. That's a good thing! Yeah, he's a real predator. I remember reading that he claimed to be THE MAN; the Big Dog; the Only one. He's also the main alleged culprit in the conspiracy-theory poisoning death of Srila Prabhubada. And the Wikipedia article on him yesterday claims he moved to India in 2008. So perhaps we're neighbors. He's supposedly wheelchair-bound, so like you said, I doubt he can do much harm. (except for psychological/spiritual harm; which is bad enough). What a mess. "Silly human race..."
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jwr
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Post by jwr on Feb 26, 2010 3:52:24 GMT -5
To paraphrase one of their points crudely: If a young child insists upon playing on the freeway in direct disobedience to the parent, is it better to let him become road-pizza, or to spank him and save his life? Most people, when reading it framed in this manner would think, "Of course it's better to spank him than to let him get killed." Isn't it Doug Phillips of Vision Forum who says that whoever defines, wins? Or is it Bill Gothard? It sounds like the Pearls are creating a scenario in which the only two options are hitting, or letting a child be "road pizza." As if parents who don't spank just let their kids be road pizza! susan, Yes, exactly. They're always framing as my way or (literally in this illustration) the highway. They don't want people to realize there might be three or four other options. Example: when our daughter was almost three, she really did have a serious problem about running into the street. It happened several times. We couldn't reason with her and the little swats on the butt were no deterrent at all. It came to a head when she dashed out into a major 4-lane blvd, full of traffic with a 45 MPH speed limit. If my friend hadn't grabbed her (he was closest to her) she would have died. So what to do? We could have bought plumbing supply line or steel rebar or something, but it just wasn't our style. And we could have locked her in the house until she was 7 or something, but that wasn't our style either. So we got a baby leash, sort of like a dog leash for kids. But after a few weeks it got old, and we knew we couldn't keep her on a leash the rest of her childhood. She wasn't improving in this behavior, and we really were worried about her survival. And then one day, opportunity came knocking. Her little 3-year-old friend from the church nursery ran out in the street and: BANG! He got mauled by a car and was in intensive care for a few weeks. We cured our daughter by taking her to visit him in the hospital when he got out of I.C.U. and into the regular pediatrics ward. Poor kid, he was a hell of a sight: casts, stitches, the entire left side of his face one big nasty swollen bruise, etc. Our daughter was very distraught to see her friend in this condition and we told her exactly how it happened. On the ride home from the hospital she started singing a little rhyme to herself: "I stay away from fast cars; cars will eat me up." And she never ran out in the street again. It took no brutal beatings, no being locked away in a closet; not even the baby leash. She never stepped off the curb after that unless it was a crosswalk and we were with her. That's just one example of correcting destructive behavior. But fortunately, not everyone has a childhood friend to visit in the hospital, so I could never prescribe it for everyone. But that's ok. There are probably ten or more other options that I haven't considered, if people are creative. But with the Pearl's, the only right thing to do is beat. If you don't beat, the kid will be road-pizza, or grow up to be a criminal or an anarchist. P.S. to this post: Somebody might object that it's cruel to subject a kid to such a traumatizing sight. But she really had almost died about a month earlier and we needed something extreme. It worked. She's still alive, and we didn't have to even lay a finger on her; nor did we have to scream and rail at her, or anything of the sort.
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jwr
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Post by jwr on Feb 26, 2010 1:13:00 GMT -5
P.S. @ Tapati
I replied to your blog before reading the other comments on the thread. After reading them I agree that it's strange to use "hall of shame" for your blog. Really, there's nothing shameful about it. It's totally normal for adolescents to think in an "us vs. them" mentality. And in that awkward, scary time of life--no longer quite a child but not yet quite an adult--it's also quite normal to look for a strong foundation upon which to stand; in your case and many others' cases, it was a form of fundamentalism.
What stuck out to me in your blog was the description of spiritual conflict. Away from school you could get totally absorbed in Krishna-consciousness (which in our nick of the woods we call "bhava," pronounced bhab), but at school it would fade away. And yet at other times, the bhava would come on spontaneously, in your words like a "flashback."
Again, nothing at all shameful here. On the contrary, you were struggling with a major issue that all the world's religions have faced over centuries. Your struggle has been the struggle of everyone, whether Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever, who chose a monastic (renouncer) life over a secular or "householder" lifestyle. Since you were just a kid and yet were trying to address these age-old, very real issues, it sounds like you were both intelligent and mystically gifted. Again, where's the shame in that?
As an aside, if you had succeeded in maintaining your Krishna bhava at school, you might have regretted it. Although my wife is a Christian, she is of the same race and culture, and is from the same city as Prabhupada. She was very mystically gifted from childhood and in high school would go spontaneously into bhava during class; only to be rudely jerked out of it when the teacher smacked her up side her head. Her struggle was the mirror inversion of yours; she had to train herself to turn it off when the situation required.
Again, I really see no shame in any of this. If there's an ISKCON Hall of Shame, it's for people like Tirtha das (Thomas Drescher); not the normal high school kid that you were.
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jwr
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Post by jwr on Feb 25, 2010 23:55:48 GMT -5
Hi Tapati
Thanks for this. It reminds me of a book I got in 1988, Monkey On A Stick: Murder, Madness and the Hare Krishnas, by journalists Hubner and Gruson. They were the first ones I read who referred to ISKCON as a fundamentalist group. Here's the relevant passage. It's a description of Keith Ham's first encounter with Prabhupada:
"As Keith Ham listened, he realized the swami was a Hindu fundamentalist, one who believed that the battle described in the Gita was a historical event. That didn't bother Ham. Although he knew that most interpreters of the Gita believed the battle was a metaphor for the internal struggle between man's higher and lower natures, he was comfortable with the fundamentalist view--he'd grown up with fundamentalism and had never really rejected it.
"Much of Ham's life, his work at Columbia and his search for spiritual truth, had been shaped by a revolt against his father, a fundamentalist Baptist minister... But it wasn't a revolt against his father's orthodoxy; Ham liked that. For all his sophistication, he wanted absolutes. He was pleased that the Swami and his father were both convinced they possessed the truth. The difference between the two preachers was that his father taught fear and punishment; his God was the vengeful, white-bearded Jehovah. The swami preached love; his God was a playful, sensual, blue-skinned boy." (pp. 48, 49).
BTW, I lost track of the movement over the years. Last I remember, Ham had become the official successor to Prabhupada, and was trying to run the organization from inside a prison, where he was doing life for murder. Is he still the leader? And is he still in the joint?
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