Category Archives: Public Life

Public Life

Tales of Ãœber Devotions

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In Christianity it is widely acknowledged that periods of quiet reading, prayer, and meditation are a good thing for a person’s spiritual state. Fundamentalist, of course, take it one step further and declare that if you fail to do devotional exercise every single day that your fate will be to  “shrink, shrink, shrink.”

Fundamentalists love the stories of the grooves worn in George Muller’s floor. Or was that Praying Hyde? Or perhaps John Knox? It’s anybody’s guess. But the real point is that a young man who sleeps in and disregarded his devotions just one time will be without the proper weapons to do battle with spiritual wickedness in high places — or a magazine cover at the grocery checkout line, whichever comes first. A little sleep, a little slumber and before you know it not reading the daily dose of Proverbs will allow an errant copy of Ladies Home Journal to bring him to the very brink of ruin.

Fundies reverence the tales of those who read the bible through multiple times a year. They praise the stories of missionaries and pastors who would rise at 4:00 a.m. (somehow what time they went to bed never gets mentioned) and pray for hours until callouses form on the supplicant’s knees. But strangely, none dare call it asceticism.

Public Life

Protection

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The doorbell jingles as two men in dark suits briskly enter the small restaurant. Wasting no time, they head right for the counter. Mr. Campello, the proprietor, tries to ignore the icicles forming in his gut and greets them with a forced smile.

“Tony, Jimmy, what can I do for you today?”

“We’re just out visiting some of our folks in the neighborhood,” says Jimmy easily. “Just seeing how folks are doing.”

“We’re fine here, fellas. Everybody is getting by.”

“That’s good to know” answers Jimmy. “Because accidents can happen so easily in places like this. You know what I mean?”

“What?”

“You know how this works,” says Tony. “You just make a ‘donation’ of ten percent and it saves a lot of unpleasantness. If you don’t contribute then the Boss sees to it that things break and your people run into trouble. It will cost you a whole lot more than a measly ten.”

“I already give what I can. Business hasn’t been great….”

“It’s either ten percent up front or you’ll find that things are going to get ugly in mysterious ways. We’ll be seeing you soon.”

The doorbell jingles again as the two make their way outside.

“Who were those guys?” asks a customer  seated at the lunch counter. “Mafioso types?”

“Worse,” groans Mr. Campello holding his face in his hands “deacons from my church. The mob hasn’t got anything on the protection racket that the Baptists have going. God is their Enforcer.”

Family, Preachers, Public Life

Bad Pay

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If you’ve ever made $ 11,000 per year working in a ministry, while supporting a wife, three children, and a dog and then had the senior pastor you work for tell you that taking government assistance wasn’t “trusting God”…you might have been a fundamentalist.

Fundamentalist churches are generally not full of professional, high-income members. Doctors, Lawyers, and other such folks are noticeably absent from the church rolls and their tithes are noticeably absent from the church budget. As a result of this lack of funds, these churches often rely on a workforce of very poorly paid employees to take care of the ministry. Woe unto you if you’ve spent six years in school to get a Masters Degree in Education at an unaccredited fundamentalist college. At the local fundy school (the only place you’re qualified to work) that effort will probably net you church staff housing, no insurance, and less pay than you might get working at the local McDonalds.

To compound this problem, — and for reasons more political than doctrinal — many fundamentalists are deathly opposed to welfare of any kind. The claim is that if the government is helping you then they get the credit instead of God getting the credit. The idea that maybe God uses the government to help folks sometimes has evidently never dawned on them.

This lack of funds combined with an inability to seek help from any other source (not to mention threats that leaving this glorious ministry will ruin God’s will for your life), combines to create a class of indentured servitude with people who are too literally too poor to escape the cycle. Add to this the bellowing of preachers who blast their lackeys for even daring to inquire about how much money a ministry position might pay and you end up with a very sad situation indeed.

It’s all fine and good to be told that slaving away for sub-minimum wages is laying up treasure in heaven. One has to wonder if it’s inconceivable that it might be possible to get both treasure in heaven and a decent dental plan down here on earth in the meantime.