Back to the Whirled: Let us prey

Cosmic Connie here, reporting back for duty after being mostly absent for a bit longer than intended. For several reasons, it has been a chaotic couple of months, but I am beginning to feel as if I've landed on my feet, though there are some days when I wonder whether I've landed at all. I won't bore you with details (or, alternatively, I won't top off your bourbon or other drink of choice with a splash of schadenfreude, should you happen to be a scammer in whose blubbery hide this blog has been a thorn). I'll just say it has been a fairly rough road, one that involved transitioning from the Shire to the Woodland Realm, and leave it at that. It's very green here, and lovely, and there are many distractions, some upsetting and some quite wonderful. But I need to get back to work.

We're probably long past the point where I have to explain that this is not a political blog, except when it has to be. And in fact it has had to be on too many occasions in the two-plus years since Donald J. Trump, scammer extraordinaire, finally and fully insinuated himself into the presidential race, irreversibly blurring the line between my normal beat and politix.

In large part because of said blurring of lines, another line has been fuzzed as well: the one between my normal beat (New-Wage/McSpirituality etc.) and That Old-Time Religion. I've been asked on more than one occasion why I don't spend more time going after religion, i.e., more traditional faiths. The short answer is that this isn't a "religious" blog either, except when it has to be. But. When you have fundie hypoChristians and evangescammers getting together to pray for Trump to "protect" him from various sources of evil ... well, there you have it: it sort of has to be.

Earlier this month televangelist Frank Amedia appeared on the show of his religious-huckster colleague, convicted fraudster Jim Bakker.* Amedia is the perpetrator of something called Touch Heaven Ministries, which, according to their web site, "is commissioned by the Spirit of God as an outreach to the world to help to Prepare The Way for The Coming of Our Lord.  Jesus is indeed returning, the time is short, and ALL of us have much to do."

More to the point of this blog, he is a self-proclaimed "Christian policy advisor" for Trump's campaign, and even claimed to have once stopped a tsunami. (In the latter regard he has plenty of company among the New-Wage hucksters and earnest but misguided McSpirituality practitioners who make up my normal beat. They've been known to stop hurricanes and wildfires.)

Amedia's message on the Bakker show centered around a so-called "conspiracy" against Trump. This is congruent with Trump's own narrative, since Trump himself is a conspiracy fan, as are many of his followers. Anyway, Amedia led a group prayer of evangescammers to protect the Mad King against those evil conspirators, and at one point Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church, added:

We lift up witches and warlocks who have been a part of this assignment, as they have gathered in numbers almost immeasurable to curse this specific president. We cancel, we bind their authority, we bind their curses, we lift up your word that says you shall not revile the gods and neither shall you bring a curse upon the rule of God’s people. We declare those assignments null and void and we claim the souls of many of the witches and warlocks.

When I shared the link to the Amedia vid on Facebook, my husband Ron commented, "And he isn't even including the orcs and cave trolls! Woe is 'Murika!"

But here. You need to watch it yourself. Here's a link, or just click below.




In case it isn't painfully obvious why the above-referenced blurring of lines has necessitated a few potshots at religions that were once mostly outside the normal scope of this Whirled, the answer lies in the astonishing fact that the notoriously libertine Donald John continues to be the darling of the evangelical set. The more "scandals" emerge about his past and present, the more passionately they seem to embrace him. Partly that's because he shamelessly panders to them, seemingly welcoming their retrogressive ideas and allowing them to dictate policy, thus preserving the white patriarchy and helping to move America dangerously in the direction of theocracy. As well, the "End Times" enthusiasts have glommed on to him because they believe he is helping to hasten the Second Coming. They apparently just can't wait to be Raptured Up so they can watch the rest of us suffer from a safe distance.

It would be funny, if it weren't kind of scary. Oh, who am I fooling. It's funny anyway.

But also scary.

* As you might imagine, Bakker himself is up to no good, using his pulpit to spread hypoChristian propaganda, a recent example being his declaration that the Good Lord has already tried to send two people into this world who were destined to cure cancer, but alas, they were aborted before they had a chance.

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