There Are No Atheists in Foxholes or Hawkins, Texas
Okay, so deep in the heart of East Texas lies the little town of Hawkins, Texas, population ’round about 1,300 folks. Hawkins is in Wood County, a place where Donald Trump got 84% of the vote, which is slightly less than the 85% who voted for Louie Gohmert. It ain’t a festering hotbed of liberalism. Hell, it ain’t even a rocking cradle of moderation.
Mark and Marie McDonald have a church there named the Jesus Christ Open Altar Church and they hold services once a month on the fourth Sunday.
I don’t know why they don’t meet every Sunday but I suspect the explanation has something to do with government, paranoia, and the gun club meetings.
Anyway, the McDonalds erected a huge ole sign that says Jesus Welcomes You To Hawkins.
All their signs are purple and gold and I have no clue why that is. Probably football. I dunno.
They erected this sign on the city easement and somebody got wind of that and next thing you know somebody is complaining. The city told them they had to take it down. The McDonalds hired a lawyer who claimed they own the property. They don’t.
Well, have mercy, they are getting a new lawyer and starting all over again. You wanna know why?
Atheists.
In city damn hall.
The atheists at city hall falsified the paperwork on the land easement and the McDonald’s own lawyer was in on this.
In a seven-page prepared statement released to the News-Journal, the couple said they’re being discriminated against by people in city government or working for the city who are atheists.
“Discrimination by the city which holds the atheist religion over our religion is not allowed by the law,” Marie McDonald said.
Holy cow, alert an archeologist – an adherent of the atheist religion has been found in East Texas and works at city hall.
Right now I’m trying to figure out why the McDonalds don’t just go nail themselves to that cross out front of their church and save the city a mess of court costs.
These KKKristians just refuse to concede that freedom of religion also means freedom FROM their “religion” for folks who have their own right to think otherwise and don’t want to be hit over the head with it.
1They need a little more whine to wash down their free government cheese. Or, we could let them have a good cry by taxing their grifting enterprise.
2Well, gasp! These idiots actually do not know that purple and gold are the Alice Paul colors from the suffrage movement! Talk about liberal! Why, these women actually wanted to vote and they worked hard for it. Somebody ought to drop this data on them like a 20 pound dumbbell and see how quick the backtrack!
3They want to hold their religion (Christianity) over other religions, by erecting a giant sign & cross, on city property?
When the city says no, the McDonalds would like to claim it’s because the city holds a non-religion over their religion?
Church services every 4th Sunday must be a hoot.
4Any god who needs government help or a sign that big is a god whose followers don’t think he or she can do it on their own.
Ben Franklin: “When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors [adherents] are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
And there are atheists in foxholes, actually. Unless you believe that a dying preacher would beg Krishna’s forgiveness for denying him all those years.
5Good letter about Kristians in today’s Washington Post:
Regarding the Jan. 7 front-page article “N.C. town has faith Trump can bring back Mayberry”:
In the article, Thresa Tucker, a pastor’s wife, described a “Christianity” in which Christians can’t just give help to anyone who needs it, because not all who seek help are worthy of it. Those who are worthy of help must “attend church regularly” and meet other requirements, the article reported. As a Christian, might I suggest that Ms. Tucker either has never read the Bible or has missed its message. Jesus healed and comforted people without asking them to submit to a pre-assistance interview to assess whether they met worthiness criteria. His edicts to love one another, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner and minister to the sick were not followed by the caveat “once you’ve vetted them to make sure they fit into your arbitrary criteria to be deserving of charity.”
The residents of Mount Airy, N.C., voiced dismay at the perceived demise of Christianity in America. If Ms. Tucker’s version of Christianity is what they’re referring to, then I say good riddance.
Shelby Harrington, Bethesda
6Does anyone remember Beavis and Butthead? Huh huh…she said atheist religion….huh huh.
7Rhea,
I would love to hear the Theresa Tucker version of the Sermon on the Mount, where a limited supply of loaves and fishes had to feed 4000 people gathered to hear Jesus speak, so the disciples did a pre-assistance interview first before passing the food around.
“Ohhh, sorry. You missed the sermon last week, so I’ll give you some bread, just the crust, but no fish this time.”
8Let us establish the state religion. We can go with the largest denomination. For my Protestant friends a reminder that the Saturday evening Mass covers their Sunday obligation. This should go over real good.
9I love the way that the self righteous can twist and turn when facts are against them.
Rick, yeah, a lot of people who call themselves Christians haven’t actually read the book, not even the red parts in their red-letter Bibles (i.e. everything Jesus is supposed to have said).
Religious wars were fought over whether the book should be translated so that people who didn’t read Latin, Greek, or Hebrew could find out what it actually said instead of having the authorities tell them. And yet “Christians” don’t read it. It’s almost as if women and minorities didn’t bother to vote after all the struggles their predecessors went through to get them the privilege….
10Cole, I loved a cartoon in which a teacher was told that she had to add Creationism to science class, so, being Hispanic, she gave the kids the Aztec version, to the principal’s horror.
11Wow, Rhea, now I have to go look up the Aztec version. That would be amazing in real life for a teacher to do that.
12http://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-creation-story.html
That would have been an entertaining class. Too long to quote here, but go read it for fun.
13I refuse to talk about religion or go off on some religious tangent. This is about building codes, plain and simple. There has been no objection to the sign or its message. The problem is where it was erected.
Listen up, Cowpie Bible Boy, whether it’s your Jesus sign or Bubba’s Bait and Tackle, you’re using public land for private purposes. Stop playing the victim! No one is persecuting you. This situation is one of your own creation. Isn’t there something in your Bible about respecting others and “giving unto Caesar”? If there’s someone in this who doesn’t respect religion, that person seems to be you. Move the damn sign and go read your Bible again. Pop quiz on Friday. And you better get 100% correct or you’re going to Hell. My God and City Hall says so. So there!
14Don’t know if anyone remembers, but Christmas time in 2015, the Orange county (Texas) atheist society wanted to put a sign up at city hall next to the nativity scene. Something to the effect that they wished everybody well no matter what holiday they celebrated. The city manager not only told them not, but evidently assumed a lawsuit was on the way(it wasn’t). So he moved the nativity scene to a privately owned park. Three decades of tradition ended because this paranoid jackwagon projected his a**holishness on someone else. All you heard around here was that the atheists sued. Damn commies. The guy who made the call? Death threats. Cause you know, that’s what Jesus would do.
15P.P.: I think I got a little lost in your story as to who did what, but anyway… That Nativity scene should have been moved. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Seems pretty clear to me. Where I live, the Creche is in a small city park at the corner of a major intersection. That bugs me. Considering that diagonally across the space is a church with enough lawn area to easily accomodate it. One block north, on the main road, is a church well set back from the street with enough lawn area that a Natvity scene by Cecil B. DeMille would have plenty of room. We need to stop this crap.
16AK Lynne: I’m a history nut and love all things Aztec, well, except for the blood-letting part. But, anyway, I find it hard to read about their history. Those names! Why can’t those who write about this culture give a phonetic breakdown in parenthesis or something. I get tongue-tied trying to pronounce that stuff.
17JAK click your tongue through a guttural when you say “chocolate” (txoclatl!!) does that help?
The Lord rains on the just and the unjust. Missus Theresa of the Mt Airy Belles of Heaven ™ Club? Not so much.
Isn’t this guy the former Mayor of said Hawkins, Texas? This fight has been going on a while now! I think the guy that got rid of him is on the Council now. I’ll go dig up some articles later, or y’all can just google Hawkins. It’s pretty damn hilarious in a Molly Ivins-esque fashion, and VERY East Texas. Politics is what they get up to between deer season and squirrel season when they get tired of watching the pine needles drop.
18I am an atheist. It is not a religion.
Who or what do they think we worship given that by definition we do not believe in the existence of gods?
19JAKvirginia: Yeah, I don’t always self-edit very well. The guy who got death threats was the Atheist who called the city manager. Also, rereading my comment, it seems like l was opposed to moving the nativity scene. I wasn’t. It’s just really ironic to me that the good Christians just automatically assumed that the Atheists were demanding removal, when in fact they just wanted their message heard as well. So many Christians project their divisive nature on everyone. And it’s ironic to the point of absurdity that the one guy in this circus who simply wanted to wish EVERYONE happy holidays got death threats. Sorry for the confusion.
20P.P.: Death threats!!!! My, how Christian.
21The byword, these days, seems to be, “I’m rubber, you’re glue.” I don’t believe Trump invented it – in fact I know he didn’t – but he sure has made it worse and more prevalent.
Is it 2020 yet? Damn! What’s taking so long?
22@ LynnN:
Honey, they can’t comprehend a universe in which people take responsibility for themselves. It’s so much easier to hide behind some Big Guy in the Sky when they screw up.
And I’m saying this as a spiritualist – so I don’t partake of either one. But, having been brought up Southern Baptist, I do understand the mindset.
23JAK–I went to a Baptist church for a while (my sisters hoped getting some religion would bring me around…) where the preacher had the good sense to know he couldn’t/didn’t want to pronounce all the weird Old Testament names he ran into and even if he did, the congregation wasn’t going to have a clue who those folks were. So he just substituted modern names and kept on reading as if that’s what his translation really said. Made about as much sense as anything else; if you think Jesus was named “Jesus” and was the son of “Mary” and “Joseph,” you need to think that out again.
24djw: If you tell me used names like Fred and Ethel I swear I will laugh til I burst.
25“Fred and Ethel?!” That would be hilarious! Somewhere in an Old Testament lectionary text there is one that includes a village named “Shittim.” It’s hilarious watching readers in church who haven’t read it before. They stumble, mumble, get red-faced. Hahahahaha! I love it.
I don’t think I’m an atheist because I believe there is a force for good in the world. However, I think it’s probably the cumulative good will of the 95% of the human population. I don’t believe there is a god, so maybe I am an atheist.
Oh who cares. But LynnN is right, atheism is not a religion. It’s the opposite. Duh.
26“extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteem
I’m an atheist who worships reason.
Trump worships himself.
27I believe in God, on a fairly abstract level.
I don’t believe in Religion, which is a human construct superimposed on God, the way that Science is a human construct superimposed on Nature.
28There’s something about the phrase “open altar” that makes me think of sacrifice, as if on “open altar” days ANYTHING can be sacrificed. I would avoid the potluck after the service.
29