(March 2005) Someone has been placing the Midnight Call: The Prophetic Voice for the Endtimes magazine in our employee lounge and every time I see it I am tempted to put a queer magazine out beside it. Instead, I take it to my office and read the crazy stuff.
Confession: I also watch the crazy preachers sometimes and pore over my mother’s southern Baptist mission magazines—they want to convert Mormons—because religion, particularly religious extremism, fascinates me.
In fact, since I was paying my own way, I decided to go for all the practical degrees—you know: writing, studio art, women’s studies—and spent considerable time comparing the second-wave feminist movement to the religious new right movement from 1962—or whenever Betty Freidan’s book came out—to 1988.
This is the period when Orrin Hatch was trying to legislate female submission with the Family Rights Act (which legally defined men as heads of the home); when religious groups were trying to change domestic violence laws because men should be able to do whatever they damn wel want with their so-called property; when Jerry Falwell actually showed up with busloads of protestors at the trial of a man who put his toddlers on an iron heating grate because God (he said) told him to send them back to the gates of Hell.
(One of them died BTW and the other was severely burned)
Unfuck!ngbelievable.
So anyway, I’ll probably read the latest magazine issue tonight and have lots to report later, but here’s a peek at the back ad:
One of the Most Threatening Dangers to Evangelical Christian Churches Today Is Freemasonry!
(gee, i thought it was queers. quick! somebody call Fred Phelps)
The urgency of this subject lies in the fact that many governing positions in today’s evangelical churches are being filled by those who practice Freemasonry—quite possibly including the pastor of your church!
Lodge members emphatically deny that Freemasonry is a religion; however, it is only logical to conclude that any group or institution that does the following must be considered a religious group:
• meets on a regular basis
• uses altars
• prays to a deity
• holds rituals
• baptizes
• meets in temples
• has deacons
• serves communion
• operates according to a generally agreed-upon doctrine
How much of Freemasonry has infiltrated our churches? Why are Masons allowed to retain their positions of leadership in our churches? Why is Freemasonry touted as a harmless fraternal organization when its roots are steeped in mysticism, magic and murder?
These are just a few of the many questions author Keith Harris answers in The Masonic/Christian Conflict Explained. We must take this issue seriously if we intend to take back our churches from unbelievers.
This got me to thinking about those athletic temples we place on our universities and those Gatorade baths that winning coaches receive (baptism?) and my pals who watch basketball games together and how some of them have all these weird rituals (such as rubbing a particular cup that she was holding when someone made a miracle shot), and so on and now I think that maybe college basketball is a religion.
If it is, I wanna be a deacon. I wanna write our pledge of allegiance too!
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