Let me give you a little background. Part of my “beat” is the Evangeliban, the far-right Christian component of conservative politics. A great place (if you are into cathartic rage, that is) is worldviewweekend.com, where I came across Pastor Steve Cornell’s talk about the authority of the Bible.
This is a repost from my other site, Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes.
(A reading from the First Email of God to the Millersville Bible Church)
From: God Himself [noreply-comment@blogger.com]
To: Steve Cornell, Pastor, Millersville Bible Church
[studmonkey@MBC.org]
Chapter 1
1. Dear Steve,
2. Hi. It’s God. Just got on the Internet here in Heaven and someone forwarded me your article “Is the Bible Really from God?”, which was republished on the Evangelical humor site worldviewweekend.com.
3. What caught my attention was your proof that the Bible was straight from the Horse’s mouth:
4. “The Bible gives clear testimony to its own origin. The internal witness of Scripture demands a response from those who deny its divine origin.”
5. For this reason, I demand that you recognize this email’s divine origin, because it clearly claims its own heavenly provenance.
6. And let’s face it, you don’t really understand how email works, so it probably seems like a miracle anyway.
7. There are many important passages in the First Email of God to the Millersville Bible Church that establish without a doubt the divine origins of the First Email of God to the Millersville Bible Church (I am using the New American Translation).
8. For instance, I refer you to Email 1:2, where the sender of the email identifies himself as “God,” and I quote:,”It’s God,” and to the signature which clearly reads “God” (Email 1:15).
9. Another clue to the divine origin of this email is found in Email 1:5, where I, who have already established Myself as the author, demand that you “recognize […] this email’s divine origin.”
10. I also refer you to Email 1:7, in a passage that discusses how we know that this email comes from God, wherein it is “establish[ed] without a doubt the divine origins of “the First Email of God to the Millersville Bible Church,” and to Email 1:10, where I make it clear that “this email comes from God.”
11. With such devastatingly clear and unambiguous evidence, which is “devastatingly clear and unambiguous evidence” (Email 1:11), one can without fail trust entirely in the reliability and divine origin of the First Email of God to the Millersville Bible Church.
12. Thus armed with the divine guidance of the First Email of God to the Millersville Bible Church, one may in all confidence, “buy fuel efficient cars, vote for Democrats and deliver your sermons in a dress” (Email 1:13).
13. So I want you, recognizing the authority of this Divine email, to buy fuel efficient cars, vote for Democrats and deliver your sermons in a dress, that last one mostly because it would crack my Shit up.
14. Toodles,
15. God