God loved him so much that he made Jim humiliate himself through his later years by having to sell Bakker Buckets. (Why didn’t they call them Bakker Bukkets? Missed opportunity.)
Frankly, a Vic Berger video is a fitting tribute. When you look at his life, it’s impossible to feel sorry for him; maybe that time when Jerry Falwell kicked him out of PTL, but that was ultimately his own fault too. Tammy Faye deserved better.
I mean… yeah, atheism will be a bit redundant if that Christ fellow reappears and unambiguously proves his existence. Indeed, I suspect most non-believers will actually be quite pleased to know he is in fact real, cos we’ll finally have a definitive answer to that question, at least, and we’ll finally have good reason to believe in him (though whether that’s also good reason to worship him too or not is something he’d have to demonstrate separately, of course). And we’ll probably look quite foolish. Personally, though, I think it’s the chuds like OP who really shouldn’t be too “gangster” about Jesus; he might not wind up being what you expected, and you might just look even more foolish than all of us who hadn’t believed in him until now…
Oooh. I think THAT’s a bit nasty. I mean, Christian rock isn’t exactly the most original and brilliant art, indeed almost nothing made in the name of Christian culture is…
…and Seth Andrews has a whole video on that theme, about how Christian media essentially takes its ideas from secular popular culture to try and keep pace with the latter. It’s kind of a form of exploitation in some respects. Which is not to say that it’s necessarily all bad and irredeemable, is it? Even if we concede almost all of it probably is, surely there’s got to be some exception that proves the rule. And I do believe that one of Australia’s more perplexing international success stories provides one…
Michael Tait might have irrevocably ruined things for the band with his misbehaving, but they did produce this song which may have kind of inspired this somewhat regrettable film series in which the band makes guest appearances as themselves, but which is nonetheless something of a banger. I actually encountered it in parodic form, it should be said, courtesy of God Awful Movies, whose review of the second GND film from ten years ago featured a stellar rewrite of the song by Eli Bosnick… it took me years to actually hear the original, but when I did it not only gave me a new appreciation of just how good the GAM parody was, but also how good the original had been too.
I mean, I’ve no use for the theology behind it and even less for its evangelising purpose (and it’s obviously failed to work on me in that regard), but the song slaps. It obviously gave GAM something solid to build their parody upon. Artistically speaking, Christian media may be stuck in the past somewhat and almost all of it may well be irredeemable shit, but actual people made this thing in a way I don’t think AI would have done. And as counterintuitive as Christian black metal sounds on paper and surely is in practice, I’ve actually liked what I’ve heard by Antestor:
I mean, fucking HELLHAMMER drummed for this lot at one point. So there’s something of value out there, maybe not much but some exists. I suspect that’s a lot more than we’ll ever say about AI art…
That Joel Webbon nonsense also reminded me of this nonsense:
Found this on Tumblr recently. This was published in 1963, by which time enough research existed to say that “yes, yes it does” was the correct answer to the first two questions; Wikipedia notes that pipe smokng and cancer were linked to each other as early as the 1700s. As for the third question, well, the numerous authors of that volume had no idea what tobacco even was, so… no? I gather that Gordon Lindsay was opposed to smoking anyway, so I presume he didn’t let the fact that the Bible doesn’t even mention it get in the way, much like tobacco enthusiast Joel seems to be doing (just the other way round)…
American Christian Pastor Claims Smoking Weed Makes Men ‘Spiritually Gay’
Christ (as it were). I’ve never actually been a stoner (it’s probably 25 years or more since I last tried the stuff), but I have seen films like Reefer Madness so I have some idea of the sort of propaganda that’s been deployed against it over the decades. This, however, is a new one to me, though Joel Webbon himself isn’t…
If you had “American Christian nationalist pastor launches pro-smoking campaign because he reckons marijuana is making men gay” on your 2026 bingo card, congratulations I guess! You may now mark off the square and mourn the ridiculousness of the world we live in.
Far-right pastor Joel Webbon is copping widespread ridicule after claiming Christian men should embrace tobacco and nicotine because marijuana makes men “spiritually gay” and is contributing to the decline of Western civilisation.
In a video posted to X on 31 May, Webbon argued that anti-smoking campaigns have been one of the biggest “psyops” of the last half-century, dismissing decades of factual medical evidence linking tobacco use to cancer and other serious illnesses.
“I think you know one of the biggest propaganda psyops that we’ve experienced in the last 50-60 years is the war against tobacco and nicotine, that tobacco and nicotine are the worst thing in the world, and they’ll kill you and give you cancer. I don’t believe that,” he says in the video. […]
“Marijuana makes you less masculine, more feminine, soft, gay — at least spiritually gay,” he said, before claiming cannabis users are lazy, unfocused and lacking ambition.
Webbon went on to declare that “hard times create nicotine men” while “weed boys ruin the world,” suggesting tobacco helped build America and could help restore it.
Well, I must give Joel some credit, that is an original spin on the tedious far-right “good times create weak men” bullshit meme; given how much of his schtick otherwise seems to be boilerplate bigotry, it’s a good distinguishing mark. Incidentally, Joel Webbon has apparently only just turned 40, making him a bit more than a decade my junior, yet looking more than a decade my senior. Hate ages you, doesn’t it? Perhaps he should have a spliff and relax a bit.
Washington priest removed as exorcist after linking UFOs to work of demons
The Catholic archbishop of Washington DC on Wednesday removed a well-known priest as an exorcist of the archdiocese after he made public comments suggesting that UFO sightings were the work of demons.
Cardinal Robert McElroy said the archdiocese also was cutting ties with the St Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, a Washington-based non-profit headed by the priest, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti.
The archbishop said Rossetti’s statements “linking UFOs to demonic presence and the Center’s recent use of social media gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism”.
“There’s a danger here,” Rossetti said in a 29 May video posted on his Facebook page addressing UFO sightings and the existence of aliens. “As an exorcist I wanted to raise that danger. And that is that demons like to hide … They don’t want us to know what they’re doing because they’re more effective when we don’t realize it.
“They can kind of get into your head, you know, and manipulate things in the world to influence us to do evil.
“It’s my personal belief that probably many if not most of these UFO sightings are in fact demons,” Rossetti added.
I’m pleased to see the Church responding to this idiocy with the seriousness it deserves, and I look forward to them replacing the Monsignor with someone who’ll maintain the traditional idiocy about demons.
It wasn’t enough for Mushroom Cock to snark at the Pope; J. Divans felt someone more qualified should join in.
Vance is, of course, currently the most famous Catholic convert in the US, and we know he is because he’s written that book about it and kids will probably have to read it in school… so obviously someone who only became a Catholic in 2019 is far more adept than Bob Prevost, who was born into Catholicism and has been a Catholic for, what, over 60 years longer than Vance at judging matters of faith. I mean, the Pope’s statement could well be criticised cos it’s not like the church has been historically afraid of violence and war… but the warmonger and nouveau Catholique Vance is probably the last person to be making any such criticism.
And a lot of people have been judging him accordingly. Vance put out this bullshit at a Turning Point USA event where he was fairly roundly heckled and at which he already wasn’t a big drawcard:
Only about a quarter of the 8000 seats in this space had bums on them, apparently, and the crowd outside protesting him was pretty substantial too. Erika Kirk was supposed to be there with him but pulled out because of death threats or something. Apparently J. Divans could look after himself, though…
Indeed, I am reminded of the chihuahua that lives a few doors down from me. Lola is J. Divans, but she’s a lot funnier than him, and, though this is debatable, possibly less stupid…
I’ve seen a few people commenting on this:
…a tweet from the US Department of Homeland Security marking the occasion of Easter with a picture of whatisname on the cross and the text from Luke 23:46 with a crucifix above it. And there is indeed much that could be said about this, particularly the inappropriateness of a US government department ignoring the whole church & state separation thing to the fact that the current regime likely wouldn’t even let their putative saviour into the US to begin with, but it was cartoonist Tom Tomorrow who pointed out on Bluesky the most… interesting thing about it; namely, the way the crucifix above the text was placed right over the Lord’s crotch. And… yeah, there it be. I don’t really know what else to say about it.
J. Divans has a new book:
This is the story of the First Bitch’s journey from atheism to Catholicism. Apparently there’s one slight problem, though, which is that the lovely cover art actually depicts a Methodist church. Apparently it is from somewhere in JD’s native Appalachia, but it is… not of his religion. I wouldn’t have known had someone else not mentioned it online, admittedly; I did do a quick Google search which suggests Catholics are less than one percent of the Appalachian populachian, so it may just have been awfully difficult to find an actually Catholic structure… but surely there’s at least one? Something else for Pope Leo to snipe at him about, I suppose…
Another book I spotted online. I don’t know what we can say about the diet of someone who may or may not have even existed in the first place, but, even if we assume that he did, Jesus’ diet didn’t make him, you know, live longer… unless, of course, you accept that he is still alive in heaven and/or has always existed as the second person of God, in which case(s) I don’t think his diet has had much to do with his longevity. And he certainly wouldn’t have been eating those tomatoes on the cover, given they didn’t make it to the middle east until the 1800s…
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