Holy Moly

Why, exactly, do fundamentalist preachers read passages from the Bible and ask their flocks to turn to their Bibles and read the same freaking passage they're saying? Did some huckster preacher pull a fast one once?

PREACHER: Yeah, uh, in the Book of Second Evasions it says ... "Give all your money to me, the guy with the bad haircut." Yeah. Chapter 11 verse whatever. That's exactly what it says. "Thou shalt givest all your money to me." Something like that. Come on. Cough up, you stupid rubes.

So, the rubes get cheated out of all their stuff. Then, one day, one of the few yokels who could actually read looked the passage up. Lo and behold, there AIN'T no such passage. The Book of Second Evasions doesn't exist! Sadly, the PREACHER has already left town with all their money. They rubes vowed ...

RUBES: Goldang it, next preacher reads something, we's gonna look it up! We ain't fallin' for that shit again!

Hence, the read-what-I'm-saying-in-the Bible tradition in the fundamentalist community. OK, fine, the preacher isn't bullshitting you, like Lucy telling Linus that the music in the radio comes from a tiny little orchestra trapped inside. The stuff he's saying is actually in there. But that's a pretty low standard.

Preacher need to try harder. Why don't they?

It seems to me having a captive audience shouting "Amen" is a bad relationship to begin with. Imagine comedians playing to audiences that never stopped laughing, no matter how crappy the joke was. Comedians would get lazy. Standards would go down. What fundamentalist Christianity really needs is sacred hecklers.

PREACHER: What does God want for us?

HECKLER: He wants you to shut up.

PREACHER: He wants us to be happy.

HECKLER: It'd make God happy if you'd FUCKING SHUT UP.

PREACHER: Hey -- you wanna get up here and do this? You think this is easy.

HECKLER: Yeah, I do. But that's OK. I've got a real job.

Congregation laughs. HECKLER gets up, bows, blows kisses, leaves.

The sermons would get better. Real fast.

Popcorn would also be nice.