Even More Tales of the Christ Weary:

When the Rude Pundit started this series, little did he know the nerve he had touched. From across the Christian spectrum, men and women have written in about how fucked up they've been by the righteous who evangelize in the name of false preaching. From molesting priests to families driven mad with Jesus love to the condemning of souls and actions, the endless abuse is, well, fuck, kind of un-Christ-like, you know. The Rude Pundit will deal later to using Jesus against the Bush administration and maybe pick up a vote or two for Dems in the process. But for now, here, once again, on a Rude Pundit travel day to the deep, dark red states, are the stories (with no vouching for truthfulness and with minimal editing):



From KD in New York: My cousin, a self-described New York Humanist Jew, and his wife (Southern, but generally an atheist, raising her kids with more Jewish traditions than Christian) lived in Mobile, Alabama for several years.  Their very young son, Abraham, attempted to play with the girl next door, the daughter of some sort of minister.  The little girl told him she couldn't play because her daddy said that Abe was damned.  In early public elementary school, Abe was repeatedly derided and told by his classmates that he was going to Hell for being a Jew.  My cousin and his wife went in for a meeting with the teacher to discuss this travesty.  The teacher showed up -- knowing what the meeting was about -- in a t-shirt that read, "Jesus Loves All the Children."  When my cousins made very clear what the kids had been saying to their son, the teacher replied, "Well, you wouldn't want them to lie to him, would you?"  I guess Jesus loves all the children, except for the Jews, etc.  Shortly after, they moved to Connecticut.



From Baskar in India: I am from India, and live in New Delhi. Back in 1994, I had just joined college, pursuing a BA History degree. My college was St. Stephens' College, which is still regarded as the Yale of India. It was set up by missionaries in 1884, and they have a big quota for Christian students. I of course got admission on merit, not being a Christian (my folks are Hindu). So what happened was this. I was in my room in the hostel on a Saturday, listening to old Kurt Cobain's Nirvana Unplugged album. This white dude knocks and comes in. He's one of those young missionaries, and he parks his ass and starts sprouting the usual missionary bullshit. Itry hard to look as disinterested as I can, but they're pros, these guys. The most hilarious part is when he checks out my Nirvana tape, and one of the song titles- "Jesus Don't Want Me For A Sunbeam"- really gets his goat. "Now this is not true. The Lord DOES want you!" He exclaims. He then dishes into his tote bag and takes out a cassette full of Jesus-y songs, asking me to buy (yeah, buy) it. I tell him I'll take it, but that I got no cash on me. He says that ain't a problem, that I can mail him a cheque later. So what I did, I sold the tape to a classmate who was really into Jesus, and bought a couple of packs of cigarrettes with it. Then I got back to Cobain.



From Tomi: My cousin's wife has above average intelligence and yet will argue that the creation myth is factually true. My sister-in-law has refused to send my nephews to school and has been home "schooling". The eldest one is bright (although he has swallowed all of the silly dogma so far) so he's managed to learn to read and write and has recently entered the public school system at the high school level. The younger two, however, are not so lucky. "Jay" is about 13 now. He was paralyzed in a tragic car accident at the age of four so he can't walk. He can't read or write either, and neither can his younger brother. Both of them also have speech difficulties, which have not been addressed, although they would've been had they been in public school. Their mother fears that the secular school system is evil even though she never personally had any bad experiences there.



When I was in junior high, I befriended a new girl who had moved to Southern California from Texas. My mother's second husband had recently left us to be with another woman. I had two younger brothers and a half-brother who was only about

one or two. This girl told me that if my baby brother died he would go to hell for my mother's "sins."



From JE: My story is set in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a small fundamentalist offshoot of the main Presbyterian Church.  My grandparents were members of a rural Arkansas church, and I was taken to a revival there sometime in the mid 1950's.  The preacher told a story about a little boy accidentally being run over by his mother.  The Lord, he explained, put the little boy under the wheels to "bring the mother back to God."



Keep the stories coming to rudepundit@yahoo.com.



Check the archives for previous posts of the Christ Weary.