First, let me say that you can find many different kinds of Christian religious practice. The Catholics have a very attractive and solemn, if highly standardized ritual service. When the priest holds up the cup of wine to be blessed, it is easy to imagine the blessing coming down from on high like a shining gem. Priests and their supporting actors must go to theatrical school, or some equivalent, to get the degree of skill that they have. I know that their choirs and organists must practice frequently, as they are usually much more highly trained than is typical for Protestant Churches.
Among the latter, however, there is also much variation. Many Protestant denominations have a dignified, if plain-folksy, flavor to their services. Many of them sing off-key, and they sometimes can't find anyone who can play the piano for them, but they are serious about their religion. You have to respect that.
But several years ago, I attended my first—and so far only—worship service in a "Church of God," sometimes called a "Holiness Church." I have refrained until now from publicly commenting on what I saw there, mostly because some of my White nationalist allies are Christians, and I don't want to offend them. On the other hand, what I witnessed bothers me, and I think that I should talk about it.
The Holiness service was held in what might have been the most impressive church building in a small Alabama town. It began with relative informality, as is often the case with Protestant services. The congregation sang a few songs. Then the preacher gave a sermon that was much less fiery than I'd expected. He might have been reading aloud from the county deed book, such was the lack of emotion or conviction in his voice. The sermon revolved around the world's need for "peace," which the preacher sagely defined as "the absence of war." Just before the closing or "testimonial" phase of the service, the whole congregation—which had until then been divided by sex on either side of the aisle, with the men on stage right and the women on stage left—gathered before the altar and held a lengthy prayer.
It was the testimonial phase that gave me qualms. What seriousness the congregation had kept until then quickly evaporated, as each member tried to out-do the others in their degree of being possessed by the Holy Ghost. One young man, who may have been one of the younger deacons of the church, had a long-practiced technique of whipping his head three times in rapid sequence at least once per paragraph of his eloquent testimony speech. Other men did other things, such as feigning a speech impediment.
But although they tried mightily, the men simply could not equal the women in the shenanigans of being filled with the spirit. The women testified in order of decreasing age. An elderly woman, in the midst of her testimonial, suddenly began uttering syllables of baby talk. And the entire congregation, except for me, pretended to understand her fully. I wish that I could have interviewed them separately afterward to get, from each of them, a translation. I wonder how they would have compared.
A middle-aged woman, in the middle of her words of divine adulation, started having "fainting spells" as the spirit overcame her, but somehow she always recovered from her near-fall before she could hit the floor and bruise herself. I suppose that you might say that heavenly angels had been dispatched to hold her upright. But I noticed that the soles of her shoes remained squarely in contact with the floor, and from what you could see of her legs, beneath her long dress, her muscles were at work in this business of arranging for a fall and for the subsequent recovery, every time.
A young lady in her mid-20s started roaming the congregation while cooing, "Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo," over and over. She would approach a member and gently touch his/her face with her fingertips, as though imitating the touch of a feather, and she'd have done it to me, too, if I had not frowned her away. (By this time, the falseness of the proceedings had fairly disgusted me.) So instead of feathering my face, she started pawing at her own, still cooing away.
But it was the last (and youngest) female who took the prize for the most extravagant behavior under the influence of the Divine Presence. She was about 14 years old. She began her testimony, and being young she had not worked out a standard line farther than two sentences, whereupon she unfocused her eyes in the usual manner. Assuming a blank-faced "I'm a puppet on strings" attitude, she raised her arms out before her with her hands curved inward and held at arms' length. Then she began circling before the altar and flexing her mouth between open and almost shut, apparently trying to give oral sex to God. Instead of demanding an instant stop to this outrageous spectacle, the adults in the congregation, including the preacher and the deacons, clapped and shouted their approval. (For some reason, the men were louder than the women in voicing this approval.)
I don't think that I'd respect a God who took his offerings after the manner of Bill Clinton from Monica Lewinsky. Beyond that, it was evident to me that every member of this church had practiced some technique or other to get momentary attention and approval from the others, using religion as an excuse for behavior that, anywhere else, would have been considered abnormal, foolish, or obscene. A psychologist could probably explain the social factors at work better than I can. I can't help wondering how the hell (excuse me) a church with such customs ever got started.
I never attended another worship service at any "Holiness" Church of God. Even though I am not a Christian, and wasn't one then, I was more offended than amused by the put-on displays of spiritual highness.
During this church service, there was one other apparent visitor besides myself. He was a man of medium height in his early 50's, and he had a large, hooked nose. He remained apart from the others, even during the prayer prior to the testimonials. He did not partake in the testimonials, nor did he join in the hymns. His attitude throughout the service seemed to be that of an aloof, dutiful observer. I don't know whether the man was a field operative for one of the subversive Zionist organizations. But I wonder.
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