MetaCatholic

I wish I could believe with a clear conscience that Matt Taibbi is exaggerating in this report. (HT Andrew Brown) Unfortunately, I’ve come across, or had friends who’ve come across, similarly bizarre and scary stuff done in God’s name.

We don’t get to see the utterly batshit world they live in, when the cameras are turned off and their pastors are not afraid of saying the really dumb stuff, for fear of it turning up on CNN. In American evangelical Christianity, in other words, there’s a ready-for-prime-time stage act — toned down and lip-synced to match a set of PG lyrics that won’t scare the advertisers — and then there’s the real party backstage, where the spiritual hair really gets let down.

To fit in, Matt invents the most wonderful problem past

“Well, uh, OK, then,” he said. “Matthew, do you want to tell your story?”  …
“Hello,” I said, taking a deep breath. “My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes.”
“He’d be sitting there in his costume, sucking down a beer and watching television,” I heard myself saying. “And then sometimes, even if I just walked in front of the TV, he’d pull off one of those big shoes and just, you know — whap!”

The trouble is, this is far less bizarre than the kind of stuff that happens on “deliverance camp”:

“In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of cancer!” said Fortenberry.
“Oooh! Unnh! Unnnnnh!” wailed a woman in the front row.
“Bleeech!” puked the bald man behind me.
Within about a minute after that, the whole chapel erupted in pandemonium. About half the men and three-fourths of the women were writhing around and either play-puking or screaming. Not wanting to be a bad sport, I raised my hand for one of the life coaches to see.
“Need . . . a . . . bag,” I said as he came over.
He handed me a bag.
“In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of handwriting analysis!” shouted Fortenberry.
Handwriting analysis? I jammed the bag over my mouth and started coughing, then went into a very real convulsion of disbelief as I listened to this astounding list, half-laughing and half-retching.
“In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!”

You really couldn’t make it up.

That last phrase seems to say it all: “the demon of the intellect”. It is exactly this kind of dangerous nonsense that the church needs to be delivered from, and a healthy application of our God-given intellect is the best way forward. No wonder these idiots think the intellect is dangerous: the exercising of the intellect is the exorcising of this dreadful and demonic drivel.