Podcast #118: Churches, Christians, and Valet Parking

9 October 9, 2016 by

118Episode #118 of Drunk Ex-Pastors begins with a voicemail about a bodily function that one of us may or may not have exhibited and then continues with a caller’s request for an explanation of why there are so many Christian denominations. Jason then shares some stories about the various hijinks and tomfoolery that valets engage in when they think no one is watching (but when there are 700 cameras being used, someone always is). We discuss the connection between Pentecostalism and the prosperity gospel and then tackle the issue of whether God can be judged by what assholes his followers can be. We take voicemails about protesting injustice and the recent comments by Rudy Giuliani, and then conclude with our biebers. Christian’s has to do with his apparently not caring how many babydaddies his daughter ends up having, while Jason’s results from having so much ADD that he can’t even pay attention during a two-minute movie trailer.

Also, those Buddhist monks protesting the Vietnam War were really onto something.

9 Comments (click here to leave a comment)

  1. On buying Christmas gifts for your wife. I completely agree with Christian, only I would go further. Don’t buy domestic gifts at all, if your house needs a toaster oven or an iron, buy it; but not as a gift.

  2. Do you think that the gung-ho I’m going to shoot my daughter’s boyfriend is a reaction to the implicit knowledge of how common sexual assault is?

  3. • The Clown menace started in the East coast, where people reported seeing clowns emerge from the woods and beckon children to come follow them with candy or money.

    • It spread probably via hysteria or copycats into other states, and now some people are doing it on the West coast to freak people out. Regardless, it’s clear we need people to start dressing up like Batman and chase the clowns.

    • Meh… I’d be more worried about Seattle. They say that sometime in the next 50 years, your city won’t exist following an earthquake/tsunami combo.

    • Not all Pentecostals are prosperity gospel types, but 100% of people who speak in tongues are making it up.

    • Well, it all started 2,000 years ago. There were a bunch of Jesus followers who went out and probably told stories about Jesus and what he said. From this, a bunch of people thought Jesus was pretty neat and started to build on those stories, and then you had various churches pop up everywhere. Most of them probably had the same basic Jesus stories, but differences arose. And then one group started calling the other groups wrong and vice versa and you had proto-Catholics and Gnostics and Coptics and Nicolaitans and some groups still more affiliated with Judaism, and Paul and other anonymous guys wrote letters to their churches saying those other Jesus followers suck and shouldn’t be listened to, and then later Constantine converted and the church and state pretty much said, these proto-Catholic guys are the right ones and everyone else wasn’t really Christian, so we got the one united Catholic church. And the other groups got branded heretics, except for the Coptics whom everyone just sort of ignored because they were sort of Catholic, but weird.

    And then the Orthodox split off because they liked icons, didn’t like statues, and didn’t like the Pope and the Catholics liked statues, hated icons, and loved the Pope

    And then a few Popes were kind of assholes and killed people and drank and fathered lots of kids and there were anti-Popes and three Popes at once and everyone excommunicated the others. And then one Pope started saying you could get time off of Purgatory if you gave money or went on a Crusade and that bothered Martin Luther and we got Lutherans who were basically Catholic, but they didn’t like Rome.

    And then Calvin… he’s sort of a dick and if he’s right most of us are going to hell and can’t do anything about it, but God’s still good somehow.

    And then King Henry wanted to divorce his wife and marry a younger, hotter girl who could crank out sons for him, but the Pope said no, so Henry made his own church. Thus Anglicanism and Episcopalians were born. They’re Catholics, but their head is the monarch of England officially.

    And then other groups rose and said, “Infant baptism isn’t real baptism. You have to do it voluntarily…” Thus the Anabaptists.

    And Catholics killed Protestants for being wrong and Protestants kill Catholics for being wrong and 500 years later, we all sort of calmed down and now we have a million denominations out there that run the gamut between the God Hates Fags ultra-conservative loons to the ultra-liberal Unitarian hippies.

    And Southern Baptists came about because they wanted to appoint slave owners as pastors and bishops and the regular Baptist convention did not.

    But Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are still out of the club because fuck those newcomers.

    Basically people are assholes and can’t get along, so they go off and form their own church for political reasons, financial reasons, for power, or just because they found a group of assholes they can tolerate.

    • Telling you, you guys should become prosperity gospel pastors. Then your Patreons would be to buy a new jet. For God, of course.

    • Of course, unlike Science, the Church does teach that by converting you’ve been imbued with the Holy Spirit and become a better person.

    • And what happens when you read your bible and just no longer believe what you were told?

    • Well, the Catholics do have a thousand five hundred years on us Protestants and, as I recall, they had their own little phase back then where they weren’t so tolerant about people following their conscience. 🙂

    • Kind of reminds me the Mormons and how their latter prophets sort of ‘clarify’ what the previous prophets said to prove that they really didn’t mean what they said they mean.

    • You ever think that the reason we’re so sensitive about protest and challenges is because deep down we all have this nagging suspicion that it’s bullshit?

    • I do think that it’s funny that Mel Gibson is persona non grata for his sins despite his directing talents, while Roman Polanski gets a pass for child rape and continues to put out movies.

    • I think we have a cultural mindset that says, “Boys will be boys” when it comes to sex and places the women in the role of gatekeeper and preserver. She’s supposed to keep other men off of her, and she’s supposed to be the seductress that keeps her man at home satisfied and if a woman is raped or a woman is cheated on, then she’s judged as having failed at one of those roles.

    • Bieber: Why do cars wait until it’s financially inconvenient for you to break down?

  4. Eh, maybe. I’m going to spring for juijitsu and MMA lessons for my little girl and trust that she can beat the ever living shit out of a man that tries to hurt her.

  7. Exactly. I’m so glad that the conversation is now shifting to focus on boys as well, and to have meaningful conversations about what consent looks like.

    When I was a kid girls were constantly talked to about how not to get assaulted (don’t walk out to your car alone after dark, etc.) and I always thought that suggested it would be the girl’s fault. So I went ahead and walked out to my car in the dark parking lot when I got off work at Starbucks (sad Seattle cliche, I know). I just had pepper spray in my bag just in case.

  8. Do people even use irons anymore?

    While I totally agree that the goal is to raise smart daughters who can make their own decisions, I don’t think that’s where the gun-totin’ dad thing comes from. I think it has its roots in the same traditions as fathers giving away their daughters at weddings. Back in the day a daughter’s sexuality belonged to her father until it belonged to her husband. So the gun-toter is just protecting his property.

    Incidentally, I’m guessing this is also why infidelity was unspeakable for a woman but fine for a man. He wasn’t her property, but she was his. That and he had to know for sure that her children were his so he wouldn’t be leaving his property to someone else’s offspring.

    I’ve never known how to respond to the jokes people make to me about how striking my kid is and how I’m going to have to be fighting off the boys when she’s a teenager. For a while when she was really small I started responding “we don’t even know if she’s going to be straight – she might like girls better” but I had to stop for fear of giving a well-meaning elderly acquaintance a heart attack. It’s also striking that she picked up on it and asked “mom, why is blond hair better than black hair?” when she was 4. So many landmines to navigate…

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