Suzanne Hinn, wife of quirky televangelist Benny Hinn, suggests that if you’re a backslidden Christian you need a “Holy Ghost enema right up your rear end.” It’s in a 2-minute video clip available on Beliefnet which shows her stalking across the stage, making the strange comment, removing her shoes, running back and forth and finally collapsing.
While I think this story is pretty funny, it’s more funny to me because of the delivery and the fact that I’d never expect this kind of a comment from someone like her. Despite her apparent intoxicated state, it’s not a terrible metaphor (though it is a horrible image). It’s the kind of off-beat comment you’d expect from someone like Bono (though he has a little more tact).
Basically, Sara Thorson was fired from the BGEA in 2002 after coworkers saw her kissing another woman in the parking lot. Thorson worked in bulk mail processing and had nothing to do with the organization’s evangelistic mission. According to court documents, she had worked at the BGEA since 1971. Regardless, she was fired.
GQ (yeah, that GQ) covers the Christian rock fest Creation in long, hilarious style. It’s written by one of those liberal, going to hell, media types who James Dobson likes to accuse of undermining America’s youth. He also failed as a backstage counselor at a Petra concert in 1988.
I loved this bit from a Philip Yancey interview on a U2 fan site, of all places:
“I tend to think that we humans are the only creatures in the universe concerned with what’s natural and what’s supernatural, what’s miracle and what’s not. From God’s perspective there is no ‘natural’ or ‘supernatural.’ Everything that happens is an outgrowth of what God set in motion. C. S. Lewis has a great passage where he describes miracles as ‘speeded-up ordinaries.’ When Jesus converted water into wine, he merely speeded up the process that has long been occurring, of rain and sun making seeds sprout and turn into vines that bear fruit that ferment and create wine. All of life is, in that point of view, a ‘slow-motion miracle.’ I like that. We keep yearning for the supernatural. I can barely handle the natural.”
One of the Twin Cities’ alternative weeklies went to church last week, offering an article exploring the mega-church from a liberal perspective. The author visited Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie and the piece is more or less what you’d expect–the typical ‘Alice in Wonderland’ experience (complete with illustrations) with plenty of fair questions and but no room given for real answers. But the perspective alone is interesting.
The Beatles can step aside; America’s largest Jesus is taking the stage. The 62-foot Jesus towers over Interstate 75 in Monroe, Ohio, a “beacon of hope and salvation” erected by the Solid Rock Church.
The Beatles can step aside; America’s largest Jesus is taking the stage. The 62-foot Jesus towers over Interstate 75 in Monroe, Ohio, a “beacon of hope and salvation” erected by the Solid Rock Church.