seebs

Wow. Calling that a "dramatic youth service" is really a rather solid missing of the point.

Damn.

Amos

WOW, if you place this on a slippery slope every "saved sinner" style protestant evangelist should end up in jail.

Yellum Notnef

You go round them up and I'll go oil the slope!

Undercurrent

I read the article that way, too. If there are no criminal charges being pressed, I struggle to think of a non-cynical reason why not. Either the victims just want the cash and don't care about justice, or they preceive that no jury would send the staff of a church to jail.

DamagedGoods

I would bet on the latter, especially if the trial were to take place in the same area where this church is located. Something tells me that most people there would see nothing wrong with their 'simulation.' Of course I guess the same could be expected in a civil suit, so I don't know why they would do one and not the other.

beth

The girl was told that she would have one chance to deny Christ or she would die and when she wouldn't, she heard a gunshot and was splashed with water..... Things like this could cause heart failure. The church leaders were irresponsible to even have this type of similation. I feel that the lawsuit is completely valid.

I understand that Christians face severe persecution and oftentimes their faith in Christ costs them their lives, but I do not see such a thing happening in America at all. When I was a Christian, I would often watch Christian TV. It was filled with anti-Christian conspiracy theories. It made me feel like my rights to worship freely were in constant danger of being removed. After a while, when I pulled away from such books and programming, I realized that unless there was a rapture of the saints, such persecution would not be possible.

Instead of spreading the message of fear amongst their community, Christians should try to spread their message of love and tolerance. If they did, this country would be nicer, at least.

Biff the unclean

That IS their message of "love." That IS their message of "tolerance."
This country isn't nicer because these Xians have their own definitions for the words "love,' "tolerance," "justice," "honesty" and "truth." And they have nothing to do with the definitions the rest of us use

Amos

Don't you mean bladder failure?

Abel Stable

Yes, Amos. She meant bladder failure.

BrotherMan

I could forgive misleading the youths who were participating. There is no excuse however in not telling her parents precisely what events will be taking place. As the article says, Mr. Doe was worried about aggravating an injury that had recently been opertated on. "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye," comes to mind.

That's on one hand. On the other hand, I'm becoming steadily more worried about the pentacostal fundamentalist movement and the 'games' they want to play with their congregations and their congregations' friends. Events such as this and Hell House have this creepy desire to be as realistic as possible, sparing no room to allow for the alleged decent sensabilities for their Christian audience. Sadly, my own former church was falling into this kind of habit. Every Easter we had a Cantata which reenacted the life-death-and life of Christ. It seemed that every year the actor who played Jesus was made up to appear more gruesome than the last (for that scene where he is to carry his cross and be hanged upon it).

Finally, if Janie were my daughter, a measley two million dollar lawsuit would be the least of their worries.