Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 10: “No Assemblies Required.”
The Christian denominations I’m most familiar with are Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. I went to Catholic school not because my mother was Catholic, but because she thought I would get a better education in the Catholic system than in the public school system. This was in a small city in the eastern Canadian province of Newfoundland in the ‘60s and ‘70s. A kind nun, whom I know to this day, showed empathy to my then single mom and allowed my brother and me to enroll. My father, a nominal Catholic ironically, had impregnated another woman and had chosen to be with her and to abandon his family at Christmas time in the early ‘60s, when my mother, my brother, and me were aged, respectively, about 24, 2, and 3. I was never baptized a Catholic but I did get to witness and partake in its schooling system and Mass services. Even confession once. (Note: it was not good for the soul.)
Pentecostalism is actually not a denomination per se, but a “movement,” very decentralized and composed of about 700 denominations, all subsumed under the broader term evangelical Protestantism (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism). One of the denominations is the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostal_Assemblies_of_Newfoundland_and_Labrador). Some of my mother’s siblings and other relatives were, as they put it briefly, Pentecostals.
I also have never been baptized as a Pentecostal, but my mother often took us to the Sunday evening services anyway, either in the small city we lived in or in the tiny community she was born in about 40 km away (population: about 1,200 back then). I still have vivid memories, now even almost fifty years later, of attending Pentecostal services. They were long, for one thing, typically two or three hours of singing hymns and being preached at. People were also called on to, as they put it, testify, which meant standing up at your pew seat and praising God or relating something he had supposedly done to make your life better. I remember hearing one person speak in tongues, and, oh, how I wish I had a recording of it so that I could have evidence of the non-language gibberish he was likely spewing. The baptism services were a spectacle too. Pentecostals are not baptized as babies but when they are adults, and it involves the pastor and another congregant supporting the person by the back while they dip them backwards into the water, usually outdoors.
One of the odd beliefs I remember from my relatives was that the Antichrist was already alive on earth, and they even named him: Henry Kissinger. And supposedly the letters of his name somehow could be calculated as 666, which is the famous “Number of the Beast” as referred to in the Book of Revelation (13:18). Well, he just died last year at the age of 100, and we’re all still standing for now. (Though, secularly speaking, it feels like the whole project of homo sapiens, with the other species in nuclear tow, could go down any day now, and nothing to do with Kissinger.)
Pentecostals, or at least the denomination I’m familiar with, are strict and conservative. They believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. You die and if you have been born again and accepted Jesus as your saviour, then you go to heaven. Otherwise, it’s the fires of hell. As I mentioned in an earlier episode of this podcast, I’m headed for hell after I die because I used to believe but now I don’t. The upside is that most of my friends will be there, because they are atheists or agnostics like me, but I’ll miss not being able to see some of my relatives and others for all eternity. Pentecostals, like most denominations and religions, are also strict about and somewhat obsessed with the control of sex and sexuality. None of the letters in LGBTQ are going to make it to heaven unfortunately. Heterosexual sex is the only non-sinful sex, and of course you shouldn’t be engaging in it until you are married.
And here of course is one area where the simplistic and impossible idealism of Pentecostalism bumps up against the practicalities and desires of real life. In one source I found, even though pre-marital sex is forbidden by the Pentecostal faith, a full 62% of Pentecostal girls are having it (https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7060066). In another one, it was 66% (https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-021-10645-8). These are teens and people in their early 20’s, so the hypocrisy starts early. There’s no cognitive dissonance between having sex with your boyfriend on Saturday night and then waving your hands around, “Praise Jesus,” and singing hymns at full throttle at the church service the next day.
On the website of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland & Labrador, they say that their member believe (among other things):
- the Bible is the inspired and only infallible and authoritative Word of God
- in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, His sinless life, His miracles, His vicarious and atoning death, His bodily resurrection, His ascension to the right hand of the Father and His personal future return to this earth in power and glory to rule a thousand years
- in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost, the one to everlasting life and the other to everlasting damnation (Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland & Labrador, “About,” https://www.paonl.ca/about/)
The last one is of course a bit of a kick in the teeth for atheists and presumably for non-Pentecostals as well. “Everlasting damnation.” That is one vengeful God they have, that’s for sure.
The site also lists their “core values,” and the following is a selection
- We value God: His Word, His Creation, His redemptive purposes in His son, his presence through the Holy Spirit and the imminent return of Chris
- We value “the lost” to whom we owe the compassion of Christ, an opportunity to receive the gospel, and entrance into Christian fellowship
Again, there is the assertion that Jesus is coming back again. This guy is busier in death than most people are when they’re alive. He died, he was entombed, he escaped from the tomb after a few days, he ascended into heaven, and he is waiting for the word from his father for when he has to not only return to earth, but also to rule it for a thousand years. I think he’s due a peaceful retirement, perhaps hanging out with the other made-up gods at some heavenly coffee shop, sleeping in late, having naps, and generally taking it pretty easy.
Note also in the list of values the mention of evangelism and giving “the lost” the (ahem) “opportunity” to receive the gospel. In simpler terms, this means trying to convince non-believers of the errancy of their ways and to convert them to Pentecostalism. Proselytization, in other words. I like the response of the great Christopher Hitchens to this “opportunity” to be converted:
Question: My question to Christopher is how you can justify why you take something away from people that gives meaning to 95% of the American people and replace it with something that gives meaning to just 5% of the American people.
Hitchens: Well, what an incredibly stupid question. First, I’ve said repeatedly that this stuff cannot be taken away from people. It is their favourite toy and it will remain so. As Freud said, in The Future of an Illusion, it will remain that way as long as we’re afraid of death, which I think is likely to be quite a long time. Second, I hope I’ve made it clear that I’m perfectly happy for people to have these toys and to play with them at home and hug them to themselves and so on and share them with other people who come around and play with the toys.
So that’s absolutely fine. They are not to make me play with these toys. I will not play with the toys. Don’t bring the toys to my house. Don’t say my children must play with these toys. Don’t say my toys—might be a condom, here we go again—I’m not allowed by their toys. I’m not going to have any of that. Enough with clerical and religious bullying and intimidation. Is that finally clear? Have I got that across? Thank you.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n56u6omxeOs&ab_channel=serialced; transcribed using notta.ai)
That seems like a good place to end.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for a full transcript and for how to contact me. And please join me again on Thursday.