Tennessee Gets The Call: Slouching Towards Africa, The Lou Engle-Honored State Proudly Touts The Right To Bully

Over four year ago, the state of Tennessee made a proclamation raising "prophet" Lou Engle to genuine religious icon status:

On April 9th, 2007 the One Hundred Fifth General Assembly of the State of Tennessee and the House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing and blessing TheCall and Lou Engle, passed by the Tennessee state legislature.
A resolution is a deeper legislative act than a "proclamation". A resolution carries more weight of authority, and goes through a more complicated legal process before passing.

And now, Tennessee - the state that never got over the Scopes trial* - is emulating Engle's work in Africa by pushing a bill that would definitely make it OK to bully gays in schools - for religious purposes, of course.

Harassment, intimidation, or bullying prevention task forces, programs, and other initiatives formed by school districts, including any curriculum adopted for such purposes, shall not include materials or training that explicitly or implicitly promote a political agenda, make the characteristics of the victim the focus rather than the conduct of the person engaged in harassment, intimidation, or bullying, or teach or suggest that certain beliefs or viewpoints are discriminatory when an act or practice based on such belief or viewpoint is not a discriminatory practice as defined in 4-21-102(4).

Last July, Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law a measure that prohibits local districts from passing and enforcing any anti-discrimination laws stricter than the ones set down by the state of Tennessee (hint: the state doesn't have any real anti-discrimination laws). The state legislature also created a firestorm in prohibiting educators from discussing homosexuality in schools with the infamous "Don't Say Gay" bill (see video below).

Tennessee has been known for years to house anti-gay hate-mongers ala Fred Phelps, people like Glynis Bethel who pepper-sprayed a woman who protested her anti-gay preaching, then pepper-sprayed the police who took her into custody. And the country made note of the gay bashing attacked instigated by one young man's own preacher father. But the latest attempt by the Tennessee legislature to allow anti-gay bullying is considered a step back in time and culture. Or in a lock-step with the likes of Uganda.

Too Close To Home


But while leaders of the anti-gay movement in Uganda were spurred on by the likes of Lou Engle and The Call (his ministry), the efforts of Engle and his followers in the U.S. have garnered attention mainly for their anti-Muslim attacks, side-lining their influence in local governments like the counties of Tennessee on issues of anti-gay discrimination.


So just who is supporting the bill?


FACT (?)

The leading proponent of the bill is the Family Action Council of Tennessee, a social conservative group linked to Focus On The Family and to the virulently anti-gay Family Research Council. And the leader of FACT is former Republican state senator, David Fowler who now admits that he has helped create a firestorm, but seems to be rather proud of it: In an interview, Fowler said, "the purpose is to stop bullying, not create special classes of people who are more important than others."

In the past, the denial of Fowler and FACT concerning anti-gay bullying in the suicide of teen Jacob Rogers demonstrated how uncompromising in its attitude towards teen sexual identity many people in Tennessee are:

The Nashville Scene reported that, according to FACT, Rogers' suicide was a result of "the rotten fruit of the all-about-me individualist culture that comes when we deny the existence of God and his image in us."

But for some people, the way to stop bullying is to yank the kids of FACT's families out of school: "You're going to hell" is a common bullying tactic too often heard by gay teens across the country and it is this particular tactic that FACT wants to preserve.

Because Tennessee has over 35 designated hate groups in the state, it ranks as one of the most serious outposts of hate in the country per capita.**

FACT will definitely make the total 36.

*Rhea county, where the Scopes Trial was held, celebrates Scopes' conviction annually. It is also the county that tried to get the state to pass a resolution allowing it to criminalize homosexuality.
**According to the Southern Poverty Law Center. There are 9 KKK affiliates in the state.

And finally, the rhetoric of Lou Engle:


If we’re struggling with a homosexual, same-sex desire, LET THE BIBLE KILL YOU, rather than make it easier for you, and say well, there must be a better scriptural answer to this …

Demonizing America - Part III: SPECIAL REPORT - HELL HOUSES - Causing Teen Suicides Or Rescuing Souls?

DEMONIZING AMERICA, Part 3: Prologue


The following two paragraphs are excerpted from the 2005 edition Hell House Outreach Kit by Pastor Keenan Roberts of New Destiny Church of Arvada, Colorado. While this kit may have been updated, the basic scenes are being played in Hell Houses across the country. 

* Gay Wedding ($45) — This energetic scene will give you another powerful weapon in your arsenal against the homosexual stronghold and the born-gay deception. The demon tour guide conducts the ceremony that actually involves a young married couple. (The wife dons masculine make-up for the necessary male look.) The tour guide pronounces them “husband and husband”. Then the scene utilizes a time warp to move several years into the future with one of the partners dying of AIDS as demon imps swarm into a hospital room. This package comes with the originally produced rock-n-roll wedding march CD, the air of evil background music CD and the death drum track also on compact disc.

* Gay/Lesbian Suicide ($45) — This scene creatively combines two cutting-edge issues into one script. The drama for the scene calls for a spiritual battle between the angel of the Lord and the demon tour guide. They wrestle for Jamie's intellect as she struggles with whether or not God has made her this way. This script captures an incredibly compelling exposé that unmasks the “born-gay” lie.

DEMONIZING THE DEMONIZERS

For once, I'm at a loss for cynical words. I can't demonize someone - simply because to do so would be pointless. People who are caught demonizing are already demonizing themselves. Hypocrisy is like that. 

Once when I was a kid, my dad took me and my cousin Pat to a "Haunted House", put on by the local Chicagoland flower-grower, Otto Amling. It had real actors in skeleton costumes who said "boo" a lot, and had a mechanical "Frankenstein" who lunged at you when you tried to go out the back door. I took it in stride as fun. Pat, however, did not. He held my father's hand so tight my father mumbled something about circulation. When we left, he was as white as a sheet. Pat was three years older than I was. I was nine.

With the spate of teen suicides caused by bullying, it is impossible for some people to see today's Hell Houses as anything but the worst demonizing force ever devised by man. Based on the morality plays of the Middle Ages, they take young people through vignettes as horrific as any Halloween film or venue. And even though they've been parodied and laughed at by others*, their purpose, they insist, is not to scare, but to save. And they are very, very specific about who and what they want today's youth to be saved from. 

I spoke to Pastor Keenan Roberts of New Destiny Church in Arvada, Colorado last week. Pastor Roberts has been selling "Hell House Outreach" kits to churches across the country for the past 19 years. His "Hell House" kits provide a full working script complete with suggestions on props, costumes sound effects. As a cottage industry, in fact, it has been very successful. 

To be fair, I won't quote Pastor Roberts extensively because as every good writer knows, quotes can be edited in such a way as to be very, well... demonizing. Instead I will cite a few key phrases and paraphrase what he believes about Hell House and the current situation.

Pastor Roberts' primary points were:

1. He does not have connections with churches who purchased hell house "kits" and scripts. Therefore, he does not know if any have edited their scripts considering the present situation of teen suicides.

2. People don't really understand Hell House and its purposes. He asked me to define "demonizing". "Our calling is to help people understand what the Bible says. We have choices - and choices that are outside of God's plan are sins."

3. A Hell House simply states that it does not condone homosexual behavior.

4. Media is unfair because it uses "filters of convenience," meaning that it uses one set of criteria and applies it to the whole concept of Hell House. He noted that media criticism was not pointed quite as much to the issues of pre-marital sex and abortion as to the issue of homosexuality.

5. Hell House should be considered a "rescue operation." "You can't point at us and say 'you're part of the problem.'"

6. "Don't shoot the messenger"

Pastor Keenan, I should relate, seemed very sincere in his efforts to impress upon me that what he was doing was right.

But if you look at the text above and the video below, you will now find out how difficult it is not to demonize Pastor Roberts.** A Hell House states more than "we don't condone homosexual behavior"; it states in big, bold letters BECAUSE YOU ARE IN SATAN'S GRASP, YOU ARE A SINNER AND WILL BE PUNISHED BY EVERLASTING HELL. Quite overshadows any message of love, doesn't it?

The most salient point in the entire Hell House script is the depiction of homosexuality as a bad (read: sinful and unhealthy) choice that is spread because activist homosexuals need to recruit young people as part of their "agenda." The immutability of this point cannot be stressed enough: anyone believing otherwise is an un-Christian liberal. Criticism about other aspects of the script are also met with scorn. (e.g.: parents across the country have voiced criticism concerning Hell Houses' violence. They are brushed aside as not knowing the true meaning of Hell Houses.) But the tenacity by which Hell Houses cling to the original script may be more indicative of the respect/power churches demand: alter the script in any way, and that power deflates.

HOW FAR WILL THEY GO?

The legends that sprung up from Columbine were tenuous as actual facts about the shootings began to trickle in. One legend, however, did not die - at least in the minds of Hell House producers: the legend of the martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. 


The legend was simple:  one of the gunmen supposedly asked Cassie if she believed in God, and when she replied "yes" he shot her. The media and Cassie's parents focused on that last moment extensively. The problem was, that's not what happened: 


wikipedia:

Most examinations of witness testimony state that Cassie was not asked anything before she was shot. According to witness Emily Wyant, who was hiding under a wood table with Cassie, Eric Harris said "peekaboo" before shooting Cassie, while Cassie continued to pray silently.It is believed the famous exchange actually took place between Klebold and Valeen Schnurr, and was mistakenly attributed to Bernall.

The Bernall's website still carries the legend and makes no attempt at hiding the fact that it is still up for sales of the book, She Said "Yes."


Salon. com, Sept. 30, 1999:

The belated media outing of the truth about Cassie Bernall raises questions about why the story took so long to find its way into print. Misty Bernall's book landed on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list at No. 14 this week, with 350,000 copies in print and more than 250,000 already sold, according to the publisher. In the past three weeks, the Bernalls have appeared on Today, 20/20 and Larry King Live, among others. The story has inspired a massive surge in Christian youth groups' recruitment around the country and overseas.

Hell Houses also play fast and loose with other issues: e.g., the abortion scene ends with the young girl DYING because of the abortion. Medical journals have consistently stated that about one girl in one MILLION ever expire from an abortion. Another point: prepared scripts have been edited to suit the ideas of each church. While some churches may prefer to tone down the violence and demonizing, some even ratchet it up, even including Muslims or other religious or ethnic groups they deem headed for eternal damnation. Pictures from the Freres  Corbusier performance show the abortionist wearing a yarmulke (Jewish skull cap).

LOVE THE SINNER



Some scholars believe that the proper exegesis of Christ's philosophy of love was that it took more courage to love your enemy than to hate him. He also knew that the concept of loving your enemy would be a hard sell - in fact, downright unpopular. 


It still is. In days of war, intrigue, terrorism and distrust, loving your enemy - or even those who are "different" - has never been harder. This brings about the question of culpability and its admission in regards to Hell Houses. You see, one small piece of demonization can make it nearly impossible to love the person at whom it is directed. And any extreme demonization can entirely cancel out all of the commands to love someone, particularly if those commands are voiced afterwards. In other words, no matter how many times someone tells you that God wants you to love someone, that plea has been rendered moot and senseless by the first disparaging word about them.


Telling the public that Hell Houses do not demonize and instead demonstrate love is almost ridiculous. I say "almost" because there are people who believe Hell Houses preach the "love-the-sinner" meme effectively. They must believe - if they are to support their church. And we must accept the fact that they exist, because to think otherwise would be dangerous:

A 2001 study published in the Journal of Psychology found that “the belief in an active Satan [is] directly related to intolerance toward gay men and lesbians.” Given that all of the gay and lesbian characters in Hell House scenes are condemned to hell by Satan and his demons, this research raises serious questions about the impact of Hell Houses on impressionable youth.

One upset parent wrote that Judgment Houses (aka Hell Houses) are just another form of child abuse:

It has been said that “hell serves the holy purpose of cradle to grave intimidation,” and this is exactly what that church is attempting to do. But for civilized people, including most Christian people, what they did can be considered child abuse. They can only be thankful that with the separation of church and state, child protective service agencies cannot do anything about it. 

A review from Newsweek of the Les Freres Corbusier New York production:

"It was a grotesque and shocking imagining of contemporary secular culture, an extreme version of the way some very conservative Christians may think the unsaved live."

 CBS Texas affiliate 2008:

"One skit is a girl on Facebook," says Houghteling. "She meets a friend and gets raped and the demon says she deserved it."...[Reporter] Houghteling tells CBS 11 News that the message Trinity Church is sending to the young members is that if you struggle with certain issues then God has no place for you."

BULLY ENABLERS

One of the most frequent taunts that are used against gay teens is, of course, "you're going to HELL!"  I should stop at this point, because the correlation to Hell Houses is so obvious. But it doesn't seem obvious to the producers and supporters of Hell Houses. The denial of Christian Right stalwarts like Pat Robertson and Tony Perkins of the increasingly strident Family Research Council has demonstrated that the rhetoric of any debate will be contentious. To them, demonization does not exist. Neither does the possibility of enabling bullies to torment students.

Fortunately, there are Christian groups across the country that have taken a stand against vehicles such as Hell Houses:

With clear implications for the Hell House message, the Council of Bishops, Elders and Christian Leaders, which represents organizations and congregations that reach 98 million Americans, has publicly stated that they are “united“united in [their] rejection of all forms of fear-based religion” and refuse to “cooperate with or support political or religious leaders who caricature and condemn the lives of gays and lesbians.”

THE NUMBERS ARE OUT THERE - SOMEWHERE

The only concrete numbers I have been able to come up with are from 2007: approximately 1.6 million people visited Hell Houses. “Hell House Kits” were distributed to 800 churches across the US and 18 countries. Some churches reported that their Hell Houses received 12,000 visitors per year and utilize as much as 300 people either as professionals or volunteers. Every year since 2007, the numbers have increased.

So have the number of teen suicides and reported instances of bullying in schools. Concerned parents and educators are going over past research and teen suicide statistics. The future may hold a surprise for supporters of Hell Houses. Until then, however, culpability is the predominant issue. Some people may have already asked themselves (as I have done): do the producers and supporters of Hell Houses honestly think they aren't culpable in any way? Can they take one more look at the scenes, the scripts, the props, the acting and say that teens could not in any way be affected in such a way as to contemplate suicide? Or contemplate bullying as an accepted behavior, especially if it's bullying someone who's "going to hell" anyway? Some Hell Houses have been driven to given advance warnings that emotional distress might result - before they go on with the performance! Some attending children are under 12 years old. Are Hell House churches so bent on tormenting youth into salvation that they will risk inflicting severe emotional stress? Do they care at all?

From Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council on the subject of gay teen suicides:

Despite how threatened they are by the truth, there is nothing more compassionate than trying to rescue people from a lifestyle that is physically and emotionally destructive. GLAAD doesn't see it that way. Just as they did with Matthew Shepard, they're exploiting Tyler Clementi's tragic death as a weapon to scare Christians into retreating--or, in this case, as a way to pressure the media to muzzle any opposition.

As you can see, Perkins is a master at demonizing, especially when he's defending himself: he never talks about any gay organization without framing it  in  "battlefield" terms.

So what do we have now? At best, we have a group of dedicated Evangelicals burying their heads in the sand for God. At worst, we have ...

Tony Perkins, Bryan Fisher and Lou Engle.

EPILOGUE:

If nothing else, I hope that I have conveyed that this is an urgent issue that must be addressed NOW. Just as some evangelicals see the Halloween season as a fleeting chance to save souls, others must take this chance to save lives. If you know of a Hell House in any area in the country, please contact your local media to investigate it and contact local child welfare organizations to help organize protests. It's vitally important.

UPDATE: Another gay suicide has been reported: Corey Jackson, of Warren, MI (Detroit), hanged himself last Tuesday. Corey was a 19 year-old sophomore at Oakland University. Police and friends denied that it was a consequence of bullying. PROBLEM: The portrayal of gays as "making a wrong choice" still sends a message to gay youth: "if you keep on being the way you are, you're going to hell."

*Landover Baptist Church has the Lake of Fire Dunking Booth.

**I am biased, to be sure: my 6-year stint at the AIDS Emergency Fund in San Francisco showed me then just who were the demonized and who were demonizing. In the one photo above, I might as well have been that demon who was talking to the young man in the hospital bed, the only difference being that I wasn't telling him that he was going to hell.

To read the first two parts of DEMONIZING AMERICA click HERE and HERE or go to The Devil and Dan Vojir

Demonizing America - Part 2: "Kill Them All! God Will Take Care Of His Kind!"

Like it or not, the concept of bullying has been with man since the very beginning of his existence. We called it "survival of the fittest," to rationalize terrorizing the weaker species. During ancient times, bullying took the form of slavery. It took the form of victors lording it over vanquished: male rape was seen as an excellent form of bullying as well as slavery, which, if one thinks about it, is perhaps the ultimate form of bullying. In the Bible,  the ultimate bully was embodied in Goliath, the man-mountain whom the Philistines sent out to daily harass and taunt the Hebrew armies. Some people argue, however, that the ultimate bully was the God of the Old Testament. Israel was His schoolyard. Look what He did to poor, defenseless Job!

On a bet with Satan.

Size and strength characterized bullies whether in personal size or number of soldiers in an army: Napoleon and Hitler were considered bullies by the relatively defenseless Eastern European countries: when Neville Chamberlain waved the paper treaty with Hitler in front of the Britons and declared "peace in our time,"  the Czechs cowered with the thoughts of the bully Nazi army  - which did, in fact, march into Czechoslovakia days later.

Whatever the form, however, bullying was always a state of the strong ruthlessly handling the weak.

Religious bullying is not new: if you think of one sect purposely taunting, terrorizing, then ultimately killing off another sect as bullying, then you're right. The first case of western civilization genocide was the bullying, then annihilation of the Cathars of Southern France. They were different than anyone else, wore different clothes, worshipped not in churches but out in fields, did not eat meat, did not believe in hierarchy such as bishops and were extremely good to their neighbors. Naturally, the pope hated them.

To publicize their heresy, they were forced by the Church to wear yellow crosses sewn onto their tunics (demonstrating that Hitler wasn't very original) and routinely had their hands cut off, the only reason being that the church considered them heretics. Their numbers continued to grow despite the vicissitudes imposed on them, until the pope had a plan: get together with the king of France, Louis the VIII,  take their lands and simply eradicate them. That's when the battle cry above was born: while beseiging the city of Beziers, one of Louis' commanders asked the papal legate how he could tell the 200 Cathars from the rest of the 15,000 Christian citizens of Beziers. The legate's answer went down in history: "Kill them all - God will take care of his kind." Louis and Clement's strategy claimed approximately 120,000 lives over a period of some 20 years, becoming the first genocide in modern history. It was known, of course, as the Albigensian "Crusade."* 

Revisionist "historians" of Christianity always seem to overlook the Albigensian Crusade, perhaps because it not only stained the church of the Middle Ages but because it also gave rise to another dark era of religious bullying: The Inquisition. For hundreds of years, men like the legendary Torquemada  carried out the bullying of Jews and Moors (Muslims) in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and scattered places across the rest of Europe. 

I remember the evening I went to see the film adaptation of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. A nun was holding a makeshift sign that said "Lies, lies, lies!" But while the movie focused on the Church organization, Opus Dei, it did not touch upon the Albigensian Crusade to any substantial degree. That was, to me, the typical philosophy touted by almost all of America's religious leaders: never admit to anything and never, ever apologize. And if you have to apologize, do it when people won't remember what you're apologizing for. The Vatican recently apologized to a very dead Gallileo for imprisoning him, and the Southern Baptist Convention apologized for its part in the institution of slavery 140 years after the U.S. condemned and abolished the inhumane practice.

Just how many religious people in America know of the "dark side" of their religion?  The percentage would be closer to "0" than you think. Today's religion and yesterday's history aren't exactly friends, which is why we're seeing revisionists cropping up, so that people of faith need not apologize for anything. One wonders if people actually know about the first Christian theologian - Tertullian - and his last-minute conversion to Montanism or that many of the Vandals and Visigoths sacking Rome were Arian Christians.  How they would react to the stories about the concentration camps for pagans in Skythopolis, Syria?  Or the persecution of heretics? And for the last hundred years little has been made about Martin Luther's horrendous anti-Semitism (he wrote the seminal work, On The Jews and Their Lies)

Other instances of religious demonizing, then bullying, were the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (40,000 "heretical" French Protestants massacred in one day), Native American Indian slavery ("ungodly heathens" forced to build and work on the California Missions - approximately 50,000), and Chatila (massacre of 1500 Muslims by Christian Phalangists). Bullying on a continuous scale came in the form of The Crusades (millions of Jews and Muslims killed in the an untold number of major wars, minor wars and massacres), Charlemagne's forced conversions of the Saxons (legend of Widukind) and in later years, the Russian pogroms and massacres of Jewish villages and settlements.

The worst incident at demonizing in history?  There are so many, but arguably the most vile was the "Blood Libel" of the Jews, so strongly entrenched into the European psyche that it took hundreds of years to convince Christians that Jews did not kill gentile children to drink their blood for secret ceremonies. (BTW, this gave rise to the Jewish Legend of the Golem)

DEMONIZING PWAs

Many people were demonized during the "Age of AIDS" (1982 - 2000).. PWAs ( People With AIDS -primarily gay men) were the new lepers since during the first years medical establishments and health organizations were uncertain about how contagious the virus was. There were a few faith-based agencies in San Francisco during the beginning and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles stepped up to the plate in 1986, but so very many churches abstained from doling out compassion. They just weren't up to the courage of Father Damien.

The Christian Right's eagerness to demonize gays, politicians and non-Christians became evident with the like of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's 700 Club. Of course, statements from people like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms didn't hurt either:

Americablog:

Sen. Jesse Helms says the government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct," The New York Times reported Wednesday....

Pat Robertson:

- I have a zero tolerance for sanctimonious morons who try to scare people.

- I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to his wife and the only thing they did was kiss.

Such was the fervor of the Moral Majority at the time, that it seemed as if they danced in the streets while people were dying in the streets: "Thank you God, you have sent a plague to our enemies."

THE LAST HOLDOUT?

Probably the most obvious (and the most vicious) holdout as far as demonizing PWAs is concerned is the powerful Southern Baptist Convention. Almost thirty years after the start of the epidemic, the SBC still cannot point to the sponsorship of any faith-based agency dealing with AIDS ...in this country. They lauded Mike Huckabee in 1996 when he wanted to quaranteen PWAs (the casual contact theory had been disproven years befor then, but Huckabee still pushed the quarnateen - to his own embarrassment years later). Today, they still follow Jesse Helms dictum that helping AIDS victims in Africa was fine because they were "all heterosexuals" while all AIDS victims in America were perverted sodomites.***

Next Up: 

Demonizing America - Part 3:  HELL HOUSES - Causing Teen Suicides Or Rescuing Souls?

* Scholar Steven Runciman wrote:

"High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed ... the Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God".

 **"That massacre, said Pope Gregory XIII, gave him more pleasure than fifty Battles of Lepanto, and he commissioned Vasari to paint frescoes of it in the Vatican"."

***I may be wrong on this since my research is over a year old.