Flirty fellowships
2008-11-26 09:08
Chris Roper
Put the words "fornicate" and "Jesus" into a search engine, and you'll be amazed at what pops up. Before you think this is just gratuitously insulting, or just plain weird, let me hasten to explain that I was trying to find a story I read yesterday, about a pastor who urged his flock to have seven days of "congregational copulation".
I eventually found the story in the Most Popular block on News24 (yes, I was surprised too). Basically - and I won't spend too much time précising the story, since it had over 20 000 reads by time of writing this column, which means you've all read it - an American pastor told his congregation to stop whining about the economy, and to have a bunch of sex instead. I guess the underlying message was, since America is fucked anyway, you might as well get some of it.
Pastor Ed Young is from Texas (home of the longhorn, coincidentally), and his church is the incredibly aptly named Fellowship Church. I have a soft spot for Pastor Young (No! Get off! Not that kind of soft spot, Ed!), because he's a religious leader who knows how to use the internet.
It's refreshing to come across a pastor (again, not in that way) who has a decent, updated blog. In SA, fringe religious groups spend a lot of time decrying the interweb as dangerous ("Bad! Evil! The interweb eats children! While Paris Hilton watches and laughs! Laughs, I tell you!!?), instead of using it for good. There are exceptions, of course. But hell, they're boring, so they have no place in this column.
There's a blog entry where Pastor Young describes how he and Lisa have dropped the ball (note use of singular) on this one a little, because of having to travel to Johannesburg. What, you've never heard of the Mile High Club? Mind you, if you're a pastor, at around 35 000 feet I guess you're a little too close to heaven to be entirely comfortable shouting out "Oh god!"
Good on you
But enough poking gentle fun (boy, the puns never stop on this page) at Pastor Young. His heart's in the right place, and his message makes sense on three levels. It's a good Christian message, it's a good human message, and co-incidentally it got Pastor Young a lot more sex last week. It's the other search engine results that intrigued me.
Google reminded me of a Christian cult called the Children of God. Based on Matthew 4:17, its leader used to send women out to be "flirty fishers" of men. In other words, to seduce men for the cult. According to that wacky Wikipedia, the women, referred to by the cult as "God's whores" or "hookers for Jesus", would get scored on how many "fruits" they managed to pluck.
Not those sort of fruits, silly - this was strictly heterosexual proselytisation, and the women, who kept score, managed to fish more than 223 000 men in 10 years. Ha, so much for Pastor Young's measly Seven Days of Sex. Women who objected were "reminded that their body didn't really belong to them as according to 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 it had been 'bought' (by Jesus through his crucifixion) 'with a price'."
Sick stuff, but as Pastor Young, rather more benignly, has found out, sex sells. Hell, sex can even sell celibacy, that's how effective it is. The good pastor is perhaps being a little disingenuous (or "lying", as secular people would term it), when he writes "The amount of press this challenge has gotten over the last several days has been a little surprising."
Sure, Ed, sure. You told your congregation to fornicate for Jesus, and you thought no-one would notice. I can believe that.
Chris Roper is the newly anointed PICA columnist of the year, in the dead-tree category. Yippee! Say well done on chrisroper.co.za
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