Famous Fundies: Phil Kidd

kiddAmong the ranks of shock-jock evangelists perhaps none have aspired to the verbal exploits of “Dr.” Phil Kid. Popular with many fundamentalist churches of more militant type, Phil is the master of Hair-Raising Sermon Illustration. It’s a rare event when he manages to make it through a sermon without some apocryphal tale of tragedy and gore.

And then there are his screaming rants against all manner of other ungodly things like Nintendo video games and interracial marriage…

Here he is in fine form:

[audio:http://www.stufffundieslike.com/audio/PhilKidd.mp3]

The Founding Fathers

founding-fathers

To many fundamentalists, the Founding Fathers rank right up there with the Twelve Apostles as men to be admired and followed. Their crowning achievement was to plant this country, the Baptist States of America. This name was later changed to the “United States” by the evil left-wing Department of Education who, according to WorldNetDaily, also recently mandated that all public school children must take an oath of allegiance to Satan.

There is no doubt that the founding fathers were a pretty amazing bunch of guys. They were smart and driven, and they loved freedom. And while most of them were religious men, strangely enough not one of them was a Baptist. In fact, the plurality of them were Anglicans with a good number of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Quakers mixed in. One would suppose that good fundamental Baptists would be a bit perturbed by their denomination being underrepresented in the founding of the nation but somehow it never actually comes up in the sermons on God and Country Sunday.

Back when the country was founded, it was a great place. The Founding Fathers outlawed Democrats, rock music, and votes for women. The pregnancy rate for fourteen-year-old was high, but since they’d already been married for two or three years by that point it was to be expected. Everybody went to church on Sunday and most folks worked hard from sun-up to sundown doing things like selling slaves, planting tobacco, and killing Indians. It’s easy to see why these times would evoke nostalgia in many fundamentalists.

If fundamentalists had a process for canonizing saints, one can rest assured that the Founding Fathers would find their place enshrined in their lists, right down to the last beer-swilling, slave-owning philanderer among them.

Testimony Time

testimony“Who would like to share a word of testimony this evening?”

Testimony time in a fundamentalist church is an experience unlike anything one could hope to find in the outside world. It’s equal parts performance art, spiritual posturing, and the kind of long winded delivery that you might expect after mistakenly asking your hypochondriac great-aunt how she’s feeling today. It is, in short, a wonderful and awful spectacle to behold.

Testimony time has many functions. For example, it’s one of a few times when women and divorced folks get to be heard in the church without being accused of preaching. “I’d just like to thank God for the lesson he taught me this week which I’d like to share with all of you. Let me read you a few verses and then after I tell my story I’ll share a poem that I wrote…”

The Biographical testimony is also a popular one usually involving a description of the horrific sin that the teller was involved in “years ago.” The main point to note here is that while some sins are acceptable to talk about in fundy churches (“I used to be such a drunk…”) some are simply not (“I used to be so gay..”).

Another variation of the testimony is the “Bragamony” which is used for establishing the church pecking order by allowing contenders to matching stories of spiritual prowess. In this struggle for dominance, the timing of the testimony is vital. It’s important not to go first lest your story be outmatched by those following and quickly forgotten. Fall into that trap and you may have to postpone until mid-week service with a considerably smaller audience and must less impact.

“If no one else has a testimony to share let’s turn in our hymnbooks…”

Thanks to Mel, Jennifer, and many others who suggested this topic.

Soul Winning

Tim Challies has posted scans of a book named Soul-Winning Made Easy and subtitled (The Encounter Method) by C.S. Lovett. It’s a step by step illustrated guide to getting people saved.

evangelism2

From the book…

The controlled conversation technique is something new in evangelism and represents a real break-through in soul-winning. Older methods, dealing with excuses, seek to convince a prospect of his needy condition and humble him. … The new method ignores excuses and completely side-steps the explosive area of religious debate. Modern soul-winners have discovered that it is unnecessary to change a person’s mind before introducing him to Jesus. If he can truly be made aware of Christ waiting at the door of his heart, his responsibility becomes most clear. This makes soul-winning a positive ministry requiring fewer skills. Actually, it is a new frontier which allows Christian obedience to become fun!

Check out all of the scans.

A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.