Spare the rod? Heck no! God says beat and pimp your child!
March 29, 2001 1:48 PM   Subscribe

Spare the rod? Heck no! God says beat and pimp your child! "House of Prayer" cult encourages group beatings of children in church. "Reverend" encourages marriages of 14-year-olds to "prevent potential whores." He also discusses genitalia and hikes up skirts during services. He's not the unaspanker, he's much worse.
posted by darren (13 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Hey! stop! We have religious freedom in our country. This church may we eligible for getting faith-based carity money.
posted by Postroad at 2:09 PM on March 29, 2001


Is this something that everyone at MF can agree on? I think the tension between freedom of religion and the responsibility of society to protect children can sometimes be an interesting issue. But the facts of this case are so extreme that it's tough to debate. However, it would be a good point to make in the thread on underage marriages.
posted by anapestic at 2:12 PM on March 29, 2001


That made for . . . horrible reading. Yow.

I hate zealots.
posted by Skot at 2:32 PM on March 29, 2001


Every time I see an incident like this, I always find myself asking, "How come they always consider 'the word of God' to be whatever their pastor says it is?"
posted by aaron at 3:04 PM on March 29, 2001


If you're a devout Christian you believe the Bible is the word of God because, well, the Bible says so. That's not too far off from believing just about anything anyone says.
posted by Doug at 3:59 PM on March 29, 2001


The Bible is a great book. It is a great piece of literature. (Personally, I find the newer stuff a little boring, but that's me.) It is a book that has been translated, and re-translated. Any many versions, the ones being used in mainstream Christian faiths in the United States, and even abroad (we are talking King James version here), was edited by a King, and is highly inaccurate in many respects.

There have been many studies, proving that there is a good portion of the anthology missing. Much of it is supposed to have to deal with things that would have toppled the monarchy, or destroyed the church, and that could never happen in that time, because of the absolute and totalitarian control of the church. They were brutal to anyone who stood in there way (think Spanish inquisition).

But, to relate directly and interpret literally a book, literature, that has been translated twelve million times left to right, well, that's a little silly.

Keeping in mind that I am not a Christian by any means, I have many people tell me, "God says..." God never said. People said. People wrote the book. Not God. But then I'm an unholy sinner, so what I says has no impact.

Simple... its just not a good idea to take everything you read literally, especially a book so old, and so many times over-translated.
posted by benjh at 5:50 PM on March 29, 2001


benjh, you unholy sinner! repent or else... yourgoingtohell!

(see this thread)

btw, if I remember my religion classes correctly (I spent a decade in Catholic school and came out a non-believer), the Bible was actively rewritten by the Catholic Church in past centuries to excise things they didn't feel were correct, or should be read by laymen. Um. Whatever.
posted by lia at 12:18 AM on March 30, 2001


Just as a pedantic point of interest...

The Authorised Version of the Bible (or the King James version) wasn't actually translated by King James I and VI, though it was published during his reign, was undertaken partly at his behest and had a picture of him as a frontispiece, hence the name. It was produced by a committee of translators after a conference in 1604, and the members of the committee were gathered from the universities and included professors of Hebrew and Greek. The committee also used earlier translations by Wycliffe and Tyndale. The seventeenth century syntax doesn't mean it's unreliable; it just needs to be read with rigour, like any translation.
posted by Caffa at 1:43 AM on March 30, 2001


There have been many studies, proving that there is a good portion of the anthology missing. Much of it is supposed to have to deal with things that would have toppled the monarchy, or destroyed the church, and that could never happen in that time, because of the absolute and totalitarian control of the church.

the Bible was actively rewritten by the Catholic Church in past centuries to excise things they didn't feel were correct

Both of these statements look pretty inaccurate, if I understand what you're trying to say.

1. "Good portion of the anthology missing": A Bible you buy in the store today has pretty much all the books that have ever been considered part of the Bible (there are a few books, called the Apocrypha that Catholics accept but Protestants don't). There are other books that are similar in format to books in the Bible ("books" being a generic term that covers a lot of different types of material: history, collections of poetry, letters, gospels, etc.), such as the Gospel of Thomas which have never been accepted as part of "The Bible," so it doesn't make much sense to say they are "missing" from the anthology if they've never been considered part of the anthology in the first place. What makes it an anthology is that someone (a group of church leaders in AD 300something) gathered together a bunch of stuff and decided that these were the books that deserved to be in the Bible.

2. "Actively re-written": I don't know everything the Roman Catholic Church has done throughout the centuries, but the the Bibles you buy today--Catholic, Protestant, King James, Modern English, whatever--are all very, very similar. The differences among translations really don't amount to very much except style and ease of reading.

The translations are all based on very old manuscripts and the places where there are disagreements about the original text again don't amount to very much (unless you start getting in to trying to reconstruct how they were written in the first place like scholars do with the Gospels, trying to sort out which material seems older or more authentic, but that's really speculative and way back in history before you get a big centralized, hierarchical Roman Catholic Church that you imagine was re-writing things.)
posted by straight at 7:00 AM on March 30, 2001


there are a few books, called the Apocrypha that Catholics accept but Protestants don't

Actually, the Episcopal Church includes them too.

For a good read on the subject of the gospels and the Council of Nicea that helped decide the books of the Christian Bible, check this out.
posted by darren at 10:47 AM on March 30, 2001


Man, I really feel for the kids in this situation.
posted by amanda at 11:51 AM on March 30, 2001


I am going to hell. But not for beating kids. That article is sad.

I have always wondered why you have to get a license to drive, a license to get married, why not a license to have kids? I mean you are only spawning a new life. Shouldn't you at least be qualified?
posted by a3matrix at 4:10 PM on March 30, 2001


aaron:
Every time I see an incident like this, I always find myself asking, "How come they always consider 'the word of God' to be whatever their pastor says it is?"

Illiteracy. Pure and simple. You can always spot a fundie as one who's never actually studied the Bible. The Bible contains complex and metaphorical truths; most people (products of our so-called "educational" system) lack the ability to comprehend them, it's much easier to listen to the dumbed-down preachings of your pastor and do what he says.

a3matrix:
I have always wondered why you have to get a license to drive, a license to get married, why not a license to have kids? I mean you are only spawning a new life. Shouldn't you at least be qualified?

How would it be enforced? Abortions? You could get both sides of that argument on your case; obviously the pro-liferes wouldn't want it, and the pro-choicers generally argue "keep your laws off my body" ... that is simply beyond totalitarian.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:09 PM on March 30, 2001


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