shome42

Is anyone else addicted to watching religious TV? I'm an atheist but I can't help myself. I love the 700 club in particular. It's just so damn amusing. If there were a pay religious channel, I swear, I'd subscribe to it.

Enlighten Me

Oh, yeah......I have been known to yell at my family to come and see the antics of Jan Crouch on PTL as she works the crowd with her weepy, overwrought theatrics and her pink cotton candy big hair. She's a hoot!!!

Gurdur

With all respect, but ....



"The Americans are crazy !"

topane

I can't watch religious TV. A couple of times I've flipped on some guy on EWTN talking about the evils of evilution and I just end up getting pissed at the blatant lying. Although the Hour of Healing show is amusing.

HaysooChreesto!

I like to watch religous tv sometimes. Once in a while if I wake up early enough on Sundays I'll catch the old "Davey and Goliath" cartoons/puppet shows or whatever the hell they are. Those things are so bizarre that I can't take my eyes off them.
Not a big fan of 700 club as they don't do a whole lot of fire and brimstone. There's a guy that used to be on and for the life of me I can't remember what his name is right now. He was great. He'd get all lathered up and march in time to the cadence of his preaching and he loved to hear his own voice "Good a' Lord! Looka me, Ima PREACHIN!" People standing up, throwing their arms around, lots of AYYYMEN and HALLAYYYLOOOYAH!

NialScorva

I flipped to the catholic channel one night and saw a nun with two skeletons selling tiffany lamps, so I called them up and ordered a pizza. Unfortunately I called the pizza place, but it worked out because I was hungry 30-45 minutes later. Turns out the skeletons were women giving testimonials. Must've been egyptian tiffany lamps of mummification, but I didn't see any scarabs on them. I was drunk too.

villainess

Not so much religious tv (my various family members and others-with-shared-custody-of-the-tv have tended to veto that over the years) but I used to be addicted to religious radio - especially Pastor Fletcher Brothers and anything with "Hour"* in the title - and I still bring my kooky religious records out at parties.

- the_villainess

*What is it with religious programs that are 30 or even 15 minutes long calling themselves "Hour of Whatever"? Self-aggrandizement?

Cipher44

I spent about two years between 1998-2000 watching Pastor John Hagee from San Antonio, Texas. He's still on TV, too as far as I know, and lemme tell you, the crazy little fuck is a riot. For starters, if Chief Wiggum were to be fleshed out in the real world, he'd look exactly like Hagee. But his uncanny resemblance to a pig is only a small part of the fun. From what I remember, there was:

- The usual fiery rants against liberals, liberal media, the ACLU, and most anything else even remotely connected to freedom of the individual, separation of church and state, and those who disagree with him in any way whatsoever.

- I remember one sermon in particular where he ranted against tattoos and body piercing as breaking the "no false idols" commandment. Stranger still - if you collect nicknacks (like Hummel figures or something), those are false idols, too. You crazy hellbound bastard.

- Military metaphors - one time, he had two mannequins on stage. One was in street clothes, the other in full medieval armor. I remember Hagee sticking swords in the one in the street clothes. Can you guess the message? Pretty obvious, really: the clothed dummy was the heathen (IE non-Baptist person who has the audacity to use more than one brain cell), while the armored dummy, of course, wore the Armor of Christ (TM)

- The usual thing about how "man's law is different from God's law." Underlying message: blow up abortion clinics.

Bottom line: Hagee is as mentally unbalanced as Falwell, but has less exposure and can sometimes even make you believe that he's sane. He begins the hour sounding almost reasonable, then very gradually decends into a crazed, Hitler-esque tirade.

Warning: Watching his congregation - which appears to number in the thousands - as they murmur and nod and chant mindlessly, can seriously depress you. In fact, that was why I stopped watching ...

Daisy

That's funny, I was watching Hagee for the first time this morning and your description is dead on. I don't remember what exactly he was ranting about, but it was appalling enough that I made note of his name.

A friend of mine got me started watching TV evangelists back when I was in high school. She said, quite rightly, that they were most fun if you took a hit of acid first.

I had a boyfriend, poor dear, who thought I was "religious" because I watched the PTL Club every morning. This was in the 80's before the scandal broke. This was pre-cable in Manhattan where the signals bounced off the buildings so much that people appeared to have three or four eyes and I only had a small b&w tv; I didn't find out until much later that Tammy was peculiar-looking. She used to beseech us, the audience, to give up our daily coffee and newspaper and send the savings, only sixty cents a day, to them. If we were really hurting financially, we should scrape together a seeding of $100, for whatsoever we give unto the Lord, or some eartly representative, would be returned seven times over.

Yes, I enjoy the tv evangelists! But only the obvious charlatans.

fatherphil

i figure God can't even stand to watch that stuff. it is a terrible misuse of resources.