Thursday, August 16, 2007
In His Stone House In R'lyeh, Great Yahweh Lies Dreaming
As many of you know, I am a RPG geek. And, as a RPG geek, I hang out on message boards with other RPG geeks. And one comparison that usually gets made on these boards is between certain Christian groups and "Cthulhu cults." For those of you not familiar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a "Cthulhu cult" is a cult that worships one of the Great Old Ones, squamous beings of infinite might who can squash all of humanity like a fly. These cults endeavor to bring about the end times, when...
"...the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth....Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."
As such, many comparisons have been made with certain Christian groups-- y'know, the types who perform rituals in the Supreme Court in hopes of getting Alito elected, or say that aneurysms are willed on people by God because they didn't support His plans, or, say, actually want to bring about the end of the world.
Here, for example, is the case of Dr. Wiley S. Drake, a noted Southern Baptist preacher. Drake issued a press release from his church-- not a personal one, but one from his church-- saying that he would be supporting Mike Huckabee for president, and that his brothers and sisters in the faith should likewise throw their support behind him. Now, as any good constitutional scholar would tell you, church and state are supposed to remain separate-- which means that no preacher can tell his congregation to vote any one way for any one politician. So, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State noticed this, and contacted the IRS.
Then it got really weird:
Drake responded almost immediately with a hastily written press release calling for our demise.
“In light of the recent attack from the ememies (sic) of God,” he wrote, “I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer.” An imprecatory prayer is one that asks God to curse, injure or kill one’s adversaries.
Y'know, I think we can all say that when you get to the point where you're calling for your followers to pray to your deity that they visit a fatal curse upon your enemies, you've officially crossed the line from "peaceful disciple of Christ" to "Yahweh cultist."
Apparently, some other Baptists are organizing a "counter-prayer" campaign, because they too recognize that Drake has gone batshit crazy. Just goes to show you that people can get so devoted to an idea that they forget everything that it stands for.
"...the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth....Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."
As such, many comparisons have been made with certain Christian groups-- y'know, the types who perform rituals in the Supreme Court in hopes of getting Alito elected, or say that aneurysms are willed on people by God because they didn't support His plans, or, say, actually want to bring about the end of the world.
Here, for example, is the case of Dr. Wiley S. Drake, a noted Southern Baptist preacher. Drake issued a press release from his church-- not a personal one, but one from his church-- saying that he would be supporting Mike Huckabee for president, and that his brothers and sisters in the faith should likewise throw their support behind him. Now, as any good constitutional scholar would tell you, church and state are supposed to remain separate-- which means that no preacher can tell his congregation to vote any one way for any one politician. So, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State noticed this, and contacted the IRS.
Then it got really weird:
Drake responded almost immediately with a hastily written press release calling for our demise.
“In light of the recent attack from the ememies (sic) of God,” he wrote, “I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer.” An imprecatory prayer is one that asks God to curse, injure or kill one’s adversaries.
Y'know, I think we can all say that when you get to the point where you're calling for your followers to pray to your deity that they visit a fatal curse upon your enemies, you've officially crossed the line from "peaceful disciple of Christ" to "Yahweh cultist."
Apparently, some other Baptists are organizing a "counter-prayer" campaign, because they too recognize that Drake has gone batshit crazy. Just goes to show you that people can get so devoted to an idea that they forget everything that it stands for.
