Today, I have a post up on Mom.me about the challenges of explaining the Easter story to kids. While I was researching ideas for teaching the Passion, the Crucifixion, and all that fun, I came across a couple truly terrible suggestions from Christian parenting bloggers and teaching sites. Here are some of the most memorable (with links omitted to protect the innocent):
1. Parading around the backyard with your family, reciting prayers while taking turns carrying a giant wooden cross. Not included in the post: suggestions for where to buy a giant wooden cross.
2. Have the parents pretend to be Jesus and Pilate, respectively, while the kids yell "Crucify him!" No mention of the 39 lashes, thank goodness.
"Rappin' for Jesus" is a hoax, everybody. Yes, I know it's hilarious to watch middle-aged white Republicans use hip-hop slang. But the rapping pastor dropping n-bombs in Dubuque is not a real person, even if approximately 1.4 million viewers say otherwise. (Watch the video below, but be warned, it's offensive.)
It's a very well-executed hoax, complete with a phony out-of-date church website. Here are the four dead giveaways that it's fake:
1. There's no internet record of an Iowa pastor by the name of James Colerick, outside of this video. That's an immediate red flag.
2. An actual Dubuque pastor has confirmed the nonexistence of the church to The Christian Post.
3. That supposedly defunct-since-2004 site was updated in January. (The YouTube video was uploaded in February.)
4. As The Daily Dot smartly observes, the word "swag" wasn't in common use in hip-hop until after 2010. Do your parents even know how to use it in a sentence? What are the odds that this guy, were he a real person, would have said it before 2004?
Those are the facts. But for me, the biggest tip-off is that it has no real message. This is the most reliable test of a Christian viral hoax: would an actual Christian have a good reason to make this? Does it tell people how to get saved? Does it reference the Bible? Or does it just make Christians look like idiots for no apparent purpose?
For comparison, here's a legit Christian rap from the Georgia megachurch 12Stone. It's about tithing.
Here's another one, uploaded in 2008 by a guy named Matthew Fisher. It tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, and there are self-mocking elements, I'll stake my reputation on this one being the real deal.
You'll notice that the fake video got a lot more views than either of the real ones. Not surprising: people (seemingly) making idiots of themselves attract more attention than people trying to do something from the heart. If you associate Christianity with the kind of clueless, culturally tone-deaf ignorance displayed in "Rappin' for Jesus," then you probably didn't question its authenticity. That's what makes it an effective parody -- it strikes a chord, and one that should make mainline Christians very uncomfortable.
Incidentally, if you want to see what the more over-the-top Evangelicals were actually teaching their youth groups 2005, the documentaryJesus Camp is worth a look.
As you no doubt know, 72-year-old former action star Chuck Norris has filmed his own unique endorsement for Mitt Romney, in which he and his wife urge Conservative Evangelical Christians to vote against the coming Obamapocalypse. If Christians do nothing, warns Norris, this great nation is facing "a thousand years of darkness." Watch it below, or look at the transcript here.
Man, that "thousand years of darkness" sure sounds bad. Also, very specific. Where in the Bible, you might wonder, is it prophesied that free health care will switch off the lights for a full millennium?
Here's the funny thing: nowhere in the Bible is there a reference to "a thousand years of darkness." It sounds just like something from the Book of Revelation. But it's not.
So if Chuck Norris isn't spouting Biblical prophecy, what the hell is he talking about?
First, it's important to note that Chuck and his wife aren't using their own words in this part of the ad; they're actually quoting Ronald Reagan. Reagan's "thousand years of darkness" rhetoric originates with a speech he gave at the Republican Convention in 1964, before he was President, before he was even Governor of California. Here's the full quote:
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
What's Reagan talking about here? He's talking about Barry Goldwater defeating Lyndon B. Johnson, for one. To some extent, he's warning against government programs like Medicaid, which Johnson would sign into law the following year. What he's mostly referring to, though, is Communism. This speech was delivered at the height of the Cold War, when those atheist, Socialist Russians seemed to pose a serious threat to American values. If one believes that Obama is ushering in a new age of Socialism, as Norris apparently does, then the parallel makes sense. ("Makes sense" being a relative term these days.)
But that still doesn't explain where Reagan got his thousand-years calculation. We know it's not from the Bible. Why does it sound so familiar?
Here's the irony. The phrase "a thousand years of darkness" was originally used in the 14th century to describe the European Middle Ages, a period when science and learning were in decline, war and famine were rampant, but the church was thriving. It wasn't Christianity's finest hour -- the church was divided, corrupt, and with the exception of some noteworthy individuals, generally a mess -- but it still managed to exercise a tremendous amount of power over people's minds, hearts and wallets. Sounds like Chuck Norris's personal Disneyland to me.
In continuing with the "irony" theme, agnostic astrophysicist Carl Sagan adapted the phrase for his 1980 miniseries Cosmos. For Sagan, "a thousand years of darkness" described the period following the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, the ancient world's great archive of knowledge. He was using this as an example of the dangers of fundamentalism, or in his words, "submission to national, religiousor ethnic identifications."
Back to Walker, Texas Ranger.
It's a safe bet that Chuck Norris didn't spend a whole morning Googling "thousand years of darkness" (ahem) in order to put Reagan's words in context. He chose to use the speech; it resonated with him. And it resonated because it really, honestly sounds like something from the Book of Revelation. Norris is talking about the End Times here.
And that said, most of what Christians believe about the Apocalypse doesn't actually appear in the Bible at all. There are a thousand different "timelines" of the events of Revelation (a decidedly non-linear piece of writing) that one could pick and choose from. Most agree that Christ will reign for a thousand years of harmony prior to the Final Judgement. Perhaps there are some who believe that the anti-Christ will also reign for a thousand years? For symmetry?
Anyhow, if Lyndon B. Johnson did usher in a thousand years of darkness when he was elected, then we are currently in Year 48. Only 952 to go!
Welcome back everyone! It's been a while since we've God Spam'd together, and there's so very much to catch up on. Chick-Fil-A. Hollywood Bible movies. The first Mormon Presidential candidate and the first Mormon-themed Broadway musical! It's all a little much to jump into at once, so let's start with something simple.
This is the new promo image for The Expendables 2, modeled after Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper. Interesting choice, seeing as there's no food at this table; just semi-automatic weapons, bottles of booze, and artfully arranged platters of grenades. On the other hand, there are twelve action stars flanking Sylvester Stallone, just as twelve Disciples surrounded Jesus in the original artwork. (It's far too early in the morning to address the Sly-Stallone-as-Jesus issue.) Which makes the arrangement seem kind of inevitable. You can just imagine the art department at Lionsgate scratching their heads, going, How do we fit 13 stars equally into one eye-catching image? And really, no one has come up with a better composition than Leo did 500 years ago.
The weapons thing is disturbing, though. Maybe I'm just extra-squeamish after the Dark Knight shooting, but adding Uzis and machetes into the Last Supper (a moment in which Jesus chose self-sacrifice over violent retaliation) feels so very wrong. Then again, it also demonstrates how far removed that Da Vinci image has become from the Biblical context. Last Supper homages have become so common that they're more like parodies of one another than references to the original work. A few of the better ones:
The Sopranos, Vanity Fair photo shoot
Battlestar Galactica, promo art
The Simpsons, screengrab
In contrast, here's the very first Last Supper parody in pop culture history (as far as I know), from Luis Bunuel's 1961 film Viridiana. The film, a satire of Catholic hypocrisy, was banned outright in Spain, with this scene being the most controversial. It's clear that Bunuel chose this particular scene for a reason -- not just because he had thirteen actors who needed to be aesthetically arranged.
A beautifully simple argument against the Minnesota gay marriage ban by Representative Steve Simon, now a viral video hero. Sadly, it wasn't enough: the amendment passed the House earlier this week.
During his speech, Simon mentions a "member of the clergy" who testified that "sexual orientation is a gift from God." I dug around the Internet (including the Minnesota State Legislature archives) for a while, but was unable to figure out the identity of the pro-gay clergy member. There is a "Being Gay is a Gift from God" campaign going on at a Methodist church in Ohio, but I assume that whoever testified is somebody local. Perhaps it's the super-awesomely-named Obadiah Ballinger, a Minnesota pastor who's married to a fellow Minnesota pastor? (Okay, really no evidence that it's him -- I just wanted to share his adorable YouTube video, which I have now dubbed When Harry Met Gay Sally at Yale Divinity.) Whoever you are, mystery pastor -- God Spam salutes you.
Here's a list of the Nine Most Heretical Onscreen Priests that I wrote for New York Magazine's Vulture website. To narrow it down from a long, long list of film and TV's corrupt holy men, I limited it to those who explicitly quote the Bible -- and was amazed at how few actually do.
To wit, here's a partial list of the bad bishops and perverse preachers who didn't make the list because they never say a word of Scripture onscreen:
Jonathan Pryce's evil priests in both Stigmata and The Affair of the Necklace
Pope George Carlin in Dogma
F Murray Abraham in In the Name of the Rose
Ewan McGregor in Angels and Demons
Bishop in Caddyshack
The Bishop of Aquila in Ladyhawke
The Bishop of Bath and Wells in Black Adder
Reverend Brian Darling in Dirty Sexy Money
Father Phil Intintola in The Sopranos
Bishop Anthony in V for Vendetta
Then again, maybe I wasn't watching closely enough. Did I miss any passing Bible quotes in these films? Who are your favorite un-holy men?
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