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Ship of Fools: Vision Baptist, Glendale, Arizona, USA
The Mystery Worshipper
Shipmate
Ship of Fools: Vision Baptist, Glendale, Arizona, USA
Heaven or hell – choose wisely!
Read the full Mystery Worshipper report here
Comments
I can identify with your description of your escape. The last time I visited a fundamentalist Baptist service, I tried to escape after the service, but as soon as I was out of the door I heard a voice in the church saying “Watch out, he’s getting away!” I was immediately surrounded by a group of men, one of whom put his arm around my shoulder and slowly pulled me back into the church, asking me if I preferred Cool-Aid or coffee. I was then subjected to a long testimony of faith experiences.
What sort of 'religion' is it that is so desperate for adherents, that it has to resort to what surely amounts to physical assault, and spiritual abuse?
Miss Amanda's Guardian Angel was clearly working overtime, whereas Portola's appears to have been off duty!
But there are details I left out of the report that even my strongest smelling salts would have been ineffective against.
The disconnect from reality really did put me off. I've heard it before, though -- a Catholic priest, for example, saying that Protestants pick and choose those books of the Bible that they want to include. (Never mind that St. Jerome himself doubted the canonicity of the apocrypha.) Or a well-known and generally well-respected television preacher opining that "No priest can forgive sin." (Someone must have picked and chosen not to include John 20:23 in his Protestant Bible.)
The ones I pity the most are the children. What kind of life do those boys have ahead of them who were told to marry the woman that God chooses for them?
Cuts out all the messy stuff in the middle...
Yuck.
Yes, I thought that, too.
Now, Miss Amanda, we are Big Boys and Girls around here, so might it be possible for you to divulge some of those Other Details you left out? On a Hell thread, perhaps, if more appropriate...
Fair comment.
Apologies for prying, and I think you need Say No More.
I'm suddenly hearing Eric Idle and Terry Jones.