SubscribeMy name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes.You know, that's just how I've always pictured Taibbi.
"One of the more eye-opening statements made by controversial Christian fundamentalist Pastor John Hagee -- and Sen. John McCain supporter -- was that Hurricane Katrina was the result of God being angry at the residents of the city because of a scheduled gay parade. Hagee originally made the statement to NPR's Terri Gross. (Hagee has also made lots of disparaging comments about other groups he doesn't like - Catholics in particular.)"
“The Rev. John Hagee, whose endorsement of John McCain has caused headaches for the presumptive Republican nominee because of some controversial statements he has made, retracted one of them this evening.
Hagee, who has also been criticized for his remarks about the Catholic Church, suggested this week that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for a planned gay-pride parade. ‘What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God,’ the Texas televangelist told a radio show host. ‘It was a city that was planning sinful conduct.’
‘As a believing Christian, I see the hand of God in everything that happens here on earth, both the blessings and the curses,’ Hagee said in a statement issued through his public relations firm. ‘But ultimately neither I nor any other person can know the mind of God concerning Hurricane Katrina. I should not have suggested otherwise. No matter what the cause of the storm, my heart goes out to all who suffered in this terrible tragedy. There but for the grace of God go any one of us.’”
STEPHANOPOULOS: "...you solicited and accepted [Hagee's] endorsement?
MCCAIN: Yes, indeed. I did...
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you're going to hold onto his endorsement? Your own campaign acknowledged that you should have done a better job of vetting Pastor Hagee.
MCCAIN: Oh, sure...
MCCAIN: I'm glad to have his endorsement.*
I would agree that most churches will want you to talk with the minister and perhaps take classes and attend for a few weeks before becoming a member. What evidence do you have that Taibbi didn't do this?The evidence is irrefutable: His psot will vanish. Explain excaly how that could be if the minister sought out Taibbi's verasity.
Well then don't let them read threads like this on Metafilter!Absolutely! It's really a good thing that the Constution protects religious groups from people thinking they're strange and the horrible fate of someone, somewhere on the internet, saying mean things about them.
What's ironic is that we have a post on the holy rolling Pentecostals (who are condemned and mocked) at the same time we have a post lauding Tibetan Buddhism and meditation.Having spent the better part of two decades as one of the holy rollers, this doesn't strike me as odd in the least. I've yet to encounter a Tibetan Buddhist who wanted to drag me to a big ol' mediation meeting where a couple thousand people would whip themselves into a dog-barking fervor of and try to sell me VHS tapes about how Rome would cause Armageddon. Pentacostals? Yeah, been there. Done that.
1 Corinthians 14:22
So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers (New American Standard Bible)
Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not (King James Bible)
The people I associated with think that the Pentacostals are, at the very least, in error doctrinally. They condemn most televangelists as crooks. They do not speak in tongues, and they do not handle snakes.Why do they not speak in tongues or handle snakes? That, along with being unharmed by poisons, is exactly how Jesus said you would know that they believe in him.
For what it's worth the Bible instructs that speaking in tongues-except when a translation is provided-is supposed to be a private prayer language.Except for the fact that the story of Pentacost -- the single blinking-neon-lights incident of speaking in tongues that scripture recounts -- is the story of a bunch of Christians going into the middle of the city square and speaking in tongues. It's the story of them converting a bunch of foreigners passing through, because their "tongues" were actually foreign languages and they were (without realizing it) preaching the gospel in languages they did not know. Even today in the charismatic/pentacostal circles I grew up in, apocryphal stories about Pentacost-like events are everywhere. "Mary's uncle's friend who was a missionary said he recognized Sally speaking in Zulu at church today... And the girl had never even heard of Zulu!" etc. etc.
I don't think that what Paul describes in Corinth and what Luke recounts in Jerusalem were necessarily the same thing--but even if they are, Paul would have approved of what happened, because the message was intelligible. That's the whole point of the tongues in Acts 2--so the very diverse crowd could all understand--and understanding was the big point for Paul.I would agree -- but the functional distinction is lost on the folks that I have known. I don't really feel like reliving the theological tug of war that was the Torronto Blessing, the Pensacola Revival, and the Kansas City Prophets, but I'll just say that I've been down the hair-splitting road with this stuff as I'm sure that you have.
I'm not sure why you think that this was happening without the speakers realizing it.My apologies -- it was clumsily worded, and I meant to convey the idea that the speakers did not otherwise understand or speak the languages that they spoke during Pentacost. IE, if a French teacher speaks in French, no one is startled. If someone who doesn't know or understand French starts evangelizing in fluent French, that is a 'Pentacost-style' case of speaking in tongues. And those are the kinds of incidents that are retold and shared in the charismatic/pentacostal circles I grew up in.
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I found this fascinating because, up until about the age of twelve, my family attended a church that believed in personal demons and speaking in tongues. The simularity between the tongue-speaking represented in the article, and that I heard in our old church, make it clear that there has been little innovation in that field in the years since.
In any case, I was well out of that place.
posted by JHarris at 7:05 PM on April 27, 2008