I’m Gonna Tell You A Story
About 15 years ago, when I was still working at the newspaper, we had a state representative named Charlie Howard. Charlie has gone on to the great Republican Shock in the sky, but he was a doozy while he was here.
Charlie was a Tom DeLay Christian, you know the kind, the kind that came to Christianity later in life to try to cover up some truly evil things they’d done. He and Tom, neighbors, were zealots at the Holy House of Rich Zealots – Sugar Creek Baptist Church.
Charlie was giving a speech to the Belles of Heaven Republican Women’s Club one night and one of the women was spying. She had a tape recorder in her purse.
Charlie was asked a question about the role of women in politics. He said they had a role and were doing a fine job of it, without ever defining what it was. But, he wanted to make it clear that men were still head of the household and should making all the big decisions. “I’m not saying that. God is saying that.” You gotta admire a man who gives God his due.
One woman asked, “My husband died and I still have children at home. Who should be making the decisions?” Charlie, a man with answers, suggested that there would surely be a man in her neighborhood or in her church who could help her with decisions and prayer.
No, really, it was on tape. He said that.
So, I took it to the newspaper and ran a column directly quoting Charlie. I said I seriously doubted there were any women in Sugar Creek willing to loan their husbands out the the newly life-insurance rich lady, so since this was all Charlie’s idea, I’m sure he’d be glad to help.
I said, “So if you need a man to sit in his ratty shorts making a damn mess with peanuts during the football game, call Charlie. If you need a man to go to your office party with you and make a fool of himself, Charlie is your guy! If you need a man to move a snake off your patio or somebody to belch and scratch at the dinner table, Charlie can help you with that. If you need someone to have a stoopid opinion, call Charlie. Charlie will be your man.” And I published his phone number.
He called me the day after publication and was miffed, informing me that his “private” phone number had been ringing off the wall. “Susan, it clearly says on the tape that this is not my decision, it’s God’s decision.” I replied that I quoted him about that but, apparently, nobody believed him. “And that private phone number, you better get a different name for it, Charlie. Hey, God told me me to say that.”
Well, I think Charlie has been reincarnated.
A Wylie, Texas, Church of Christ minister is also the mayor. Eric Hogue has announced to city council that only men can lead the prayer at city council meetings.
“I am a Church of Christ preacher and I am a member of the Church of Christ and we take the new testament literally,” Mayor Hogue said.
In the email, Mayor Hogue quotes a bible verse that says: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”
Now the mayor claims this is just political thing because the election got moved until November for Coronavirus. Nope, I’m pretty sure I thought women could lead prayers before Coronavirus. And I also though government prescribed prayer has been un-American for a long damn time.
Thanks to everybody for the heads up.
Mollie said it about Baptists but I’m sure it could apply here. During baptism they just didn’t hold them under long enough,
1God works in mysterious ways, and when Republicans are involved, it’s even more mysterious than usual.
2This kind of behavior is yet one more argument in favor of ending the practice of including ANY kind of prayer or other religious ritual in ANY government meeting or function. If this is an issue you care about, you might check into Americans United for Separation of Church and State at http://www.au.org
3I remember hearing old Charlie in person, when I was undercover at a Tom DeLay event (Fenway Fran’s debut at the WMDBS). It was REALLY hard to keep my jaw from falling to the floor.
4Anyone claiming to be a minister that believes the Bible literally has never read much less studied the Bible. There’s a LOT of hype and personal opinion. Maybe he should go back and read the red-letter parts a bit more carefully!
5Kinda makes me wonder if Tammy Faye Baker ever heard of that verse . . .
6Many years ago a Dean at my university told me that a tenure dossier should have enough material in it so that he could pick and choose what he wanted … to justify the decision he had already made.
Especially if you throw in the Old Testament along with the New, it’s possible to use the bible to justify any wild claim you want to make. Hey, that’s how we get snake handlers, holy rollers, and megawealthy megachurch “pastors”. And that’s how we get church “leaders” claiming that Trump is a holy man but Obama is the son of Satan.
7I’ve got a meme of Jesus facepalming.
The caption: “So let me get this straight, you take the Bible literally enough to disbelieve everything scientists say but not literally enough to FEED THE POOR?”
I’m sure someone could generate a meme that asks the same about subjugating half the human race — you know — that God invented?
I can understand men during the time of Genesis going for it. They were tired of being second class citizens when the Mother Goddess was the religion du jour. But I would have thought we’d have matured beyond that point by now.
Oh. Republican. Silly me.
8It’s actually worse than you say. The Christers not only want to keep women from making decisions but to have the men defer to the preachers. Calvary Chapel, which claims to be the fastest-growing Jesus cult, is explicit about this.
9Matthew 6: 5-6.
105 And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. Truly I tell you, they already have their full reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your inner room, shut your door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Here we are with people still reading and following something that some man said 2000 years ago that didnt even know what a eclipse of the sun was.
11Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction”
12Blaise Pasqual
The name of the game is power. The women in this bunch need to shout down those morons and keep shouting at home until their men learn the lesson of equality. This is KKKristianity and it has to go.
13Diane@12: amen. I mean, you betcha!
I’ll avoid bruising the sensibilities of any youngsters here at the WMDBS , but will follow up your quote with one from William Burroughs:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70052-never-do-business-with-a-religious-son-of-a-bitch-his-word-ain-t
14Diane @12, what Pasqual said about men, evil, and religion was true in his time. He had no way of imagining 21st century Republicons and America. Hell, those of us who have lived through Dubya and the Teabag movement weren’t prepared for the ***king moron’s* level of self licking crazy cone marriage of fascists, religious grifters and oligarchs.
The Surly Professor, rofl, “sensibilities of any youngsters” … as a millennial, albeit OLDer on the far edge of age millennial, …. oh snort, chuckle … allow me to catch my breath. Snicker, gasp, …. ok … start with the preposition that whatever you have learned from what was on a bookshelf, we’ve seen things on the internet that would curl your socks without the courtesy of removing your shoes. In print, Potter Stewart was a blind man who never saw the internet coming. But fwiw we think your concern is both cute and genuine. Some things are ageless like respect for Mama, that’s the gold standard of what to print or not print as what might be acceptable for all audiences.
15Who showed up at the tomb to annoint Jesus’ body that first Easter morning? The women.
Who ran away, afraid, and hid themselves? The men.
16Grandma Ada: I think you must be my sister-from-another-mother. You usually say what I’m thinking!
As for that particular quote, attributed to Paul – folks who actually study the Bible, rather than just thump it, figured out years ago that it was added in the Middle Ages by one of those monks copying the thing out by hand, in a drafty cloister (read: open hallway around a grass patch), in bad lighting. (My guess is that he became a monk because he was spurned by a woman with a lot of sense.) I’m always amused when THAT’s the verse Bible-thumpers choose to quote.
17@Grandma Ada: “Anyone claiming to be a minister that believes the Bible literally has never read much less studied the Bible.”
Uhh, you mean the 16th century english rewrite of the late latin rewrite of the early latin translation of the greek transcriptions of the retellings of the stories in multiple languages from a century or two earlier?
That literal belief?
(or something like that I may have a few swapped)
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