MARTIN'S TBN WATCHby Martin Wagner, your smilin' A.E. cohost
MARTIN'S TBN WATCH
by Martin Wagner, your smilin' A.E. cohost
I swear. Turn at random to TBN any given time of the day, and you never know what you'll see. Before the holiday, I recall one quick flick of the remote had me witnessing a gala Christmas pageant complete with live camels onstage and a couple of stalwart players dressed as angels doing a Peter Pannish high wire act. It looked like they were at least thirty feet in the air, and moving at a pretty good clip. Boy, one little mishap there could have really brought the holiday spirit down in a hurry. And those camels. Good grief! I can imagine what a hassle that must have been. I had a bad childhood experience with a camel (no, really!), and my distrust of the species is well founded, I can assure you.
Like all cheesy entertainment, TBN is always dumb but most definitely never boring. (Okay, I take that back...it is boring when all they've got going on is some routine church service; that sort of programming holds nothing of interest to an atheist, and probably bores a lot of Christians pooey as well.) And TBN is at its most unboring when it airs the delusional ravings of a complete section-eight looneytune, such as Jack van Impe.
The happy apocalypse!
Van Impe is a curious case. Obsessed with Revelation and
its fire-from-the-heavens eschatology, he nevertheless always comes across
in an ebullient mood, grinning like a cherub and gesticulating wildly as
he tells us with unreserved glee that it's gonna be game over any second
now. (Jack and his wife Rexella have hysterically been dubbed the "Regis
and Kathie Lee of end-times prophecy" by David Futrelle of salon.com.)
If people who regard the end of the world as if it were a party they can't
wait to get to strike you as ineffably creepy, that's because they are.
Van Impe has spent nearly his entire career telling his gullible flock that
the rapture could "literally happen any second," which, you would
think, would cause somebody's brain somewhere to fire a synapse or two,
making them ask, "Okay, so when already? Give me a date and
time so I can make sure to max out all my credit cards before I go."
After all, there's nothing in the Bible saying thou shalt not dick over
rapacious credit card companies and thumbeth thy nose as thou ascendest
unto Hebbin. If I were a Christian, I don't think I'd mind a little joke
like that before I effervesced away; and besides, since 200 million angels
are going to be swooping down upon the Earth to massacre millions of unbelievers,
you can bet those puny little collection agents will have their hands full
just trying to save their own pathetic sinners' skins! So let us know, Jack!
Millions of grinning, God-fearing consumers await with bated breath.
Alas, specificity is never van Impe's strong suit, because, let's be honest. If he gave a specific date and time, and then the big event didn't actually occur, that'd blow his whole act. Suddenly he wouldn't find too many buyers for his $60 "Prophecy Bible," a tome which claims among other things to explain Revelation, a feat that has eluded real theologians for centuries.
Instead, van Impe doles out the usual moth-eaten interpretations
of "666" (the most recent and hilarious: guess what the letters
in the word "COMPUTER" add up to...) and he has all of the standard
fixations with the never-ending Mideast Israeli/Palestinian crisis. One
theme upon which van Impe persistently beats his drum is that of Russia
coming to the aid of the evil evil evil evil evil Arabs in the coming war
of Armageddon, which is going to get rolling just as soon as the European
Union finds office space for the Antichrist--no names yet from the Impemeister--and
all the world's Christians go poof. (The strident pessimism of Christianity's
view of humanity's future leaves me perenially amazed that anyone would
consider it a religion worth joining.) "Draw a line due north from
Israel," says van Impe, "and you pass directly through Moscow,"
though what this cartographical coincidence has to do with anything van
Impe fails to explain. But this is exactly the sort of minute detail guys
like van Impe absolutely love: to him, there's no way the placement
of Moscow directly north of Israel could possibly be coincidental
or insignificant. It has to be some sort of plan, you see! Now, the fact
that if Russia wanted to, they could just as easily blow the dreidels out
of puny Israel if Moscow was located over by, say, Vladivostok, is of no
consequence to van Impe. People like this--among whose number can be included
those conspiracy fanatics who are dead convinced the government is hiding
UFOs and that virtually every intelligence agency in the world was in on
the Kennedy assassination and has successfully managed to keep it thoroughly
covered up for four decades--thrive on collecting every scrap of detail,
no matter how trivial, to bolster their case, as if the mere act of assembling
a mountain of information would settle the issue. Now, Moscow happening
to be due north of Israel--well, hot dog! Just add that to the pile, thank
you! Don't know what it means, but it's there...so it's gotta mean something!
Fear-mongering pops up consistently on van Impe's show. Most extremists are justifiably paranoid because they do, in fact, have a knack for being a nuisance and annoying people, but part of the way van Impe enhances his own sense of self-importance is by depicting himself as a constant victim of persecution by the godless media and proponents of one-world government (he repeatedly refers to the European Union as the "revived Roman Empire," making them sound theatrically sinister while ignoring the fact that the EU isn't run out of Rome, can't even persuade anyone to use the Euro, or get much of anything else done).
On the 1/2/01 broadcast, Jack claimed he was being bumped from several TV stations because of his courageous defense of the faith. He also alerted his viewers to an "FBI confab," which he claimed was reported in "one of the big newspapers," in which "followers" of van Impe and Pat Robertson were allegedly identified as potential terrorists in a paper called the Megiddo Report. In fact, the Megiddo Report was put together by law enforcement prior to 2000 as an attempt to identify possible religious troublemakers who might be inclined to actually do something to bring about a millennial event of the apocalyptic kind. You'd be right to say that having any U.S. law enforcement agency targeting groups of U.S. citizens just because they're kooks, without any known criminal activity offering probable cause, is a line we don't want to cross. You'd also be right that the FBI is singularly ill-prepared to deal with religious extremists when they actually find them, like those embarrassing Branch Davidians. But the big calendar switch to 2000 was a special case, a date known to have a great deal of significance to fundies of at least a few faiths, who do have a history of losing it and flying off the handle at the most inopportune times--so I can understand the concerns of law enforcement. If one lone hick moron could blow up an entire office building with a truckload of doctored-up cowshit because he was pissed off about the Waco debacle, who knows what an organization of devoted fanatics might attempt on the date most of them have been waiting all their lives for? As long as no groups of Christians, Muslims, Jews, or whomever--no matter how loony--were openly harassed, threatened, or otherwise inconvenienced by the FBI if there was no solid evidence to show they had done or were doing anything illegal, then no one was being persecuted simply for their beliefs, and the Megiddo Report was just that--a report, put together with national security and public safety in mind, not a diabolical attempt by evil atheists to suppress absurd Christian TV shows. As for Pat Robertson, why, on his own program he called upon Christians to launch an open revolt against the U.S. Supreme Court when they voted down school prayer last year, so one can be understandably nervous around fanatics such as he. In America, we have the freedom to hate anything any of our government agencies does, including the Supreme Court. ("The presidency? Here you go, Georgie. Want fries with that?") However, there are proper and legal means to confront and put a stop to government improprieties; we have a word for when someone advocates outright overthrow. That word is sedition.
I have yet to hear van Impe advocate any sort of governmental overthrow, so he's not as wacked out as Robertson on that score. Spreading the paranoia is more van Impe's style. Watching his show, which always ends with the routine promise that Jesus is "coming very soon, friends," (yeah, yeah, yeah) it's all too obvious that van Impe is no revolutionary. He doesn't want believers to "rise up" to do much of anything, except, of course, send him the sixty bucks for his "Prophecy Bible."
Dissent among the ranks
As with such other Christian cathode-ray cretins as Benny
Hinn (about whom I plan to write very very soon, kids), you won't find a
whole lot of anti-JVI websites written and maintained by atheists, quite
possibly for the simple reason that the man is such a run-of-the-mill nut
that he is beneath the attention of rationalist critics. (Mean-spirited
jokers like me excepted, of course.) You do, however, find quite a number
of anti-JVI sites maintained by other Christians, who either feel that van
Impe is too dogmatic or not dogmatic enough. In particular, van Impe has
been excoriated by ultra-fundies for being tolerant of the Catholic church
and sympathetic towards the Pope.
"It breaks my heart writing this page on Jack, as I am so sure he really loves the Lord, but sadly he is being deceived and has fallen into error and we must warn you about him," bleats David McAllister. "My prayer is that Jack will renounce Roman Catholicism false gospel of works and rituals and that he will start to warn people the way he used to about the evils of the Vatican." David W. Cloud, writing in a Religious News and Views article called "Van Impe Slanders Defenders of the Faith," is less sanctimonious and takes the gloves right off. "Roman Catholicism has been apostate for the entire 1,600 years of its wretched history," bellows Cloud with righteous rage, "and countless multitudes have marched into eternal hell trusting the false gospel it has proclaimed." Gawrsh. Even kindly old Mother Teresa? Guess so. But wait...Cloud isn't through. "The answer to Van Impe's question about why men slaughter each other in the name of religion is simple. They do it because they follow false religions and are unregenerate and destitute of the truth. To include the fundamental Baptist preacher with such a crowd is silliness. Tell me, Dr. Van Impe, the name of even ONE person whose blood has been shed by a fundamental Bible preacher who was raging about on a holy jihad!" shrieks Cloud, who obviously hasn't visited godhatesfags.com. Cloud, like most of his insufferable ilk, is working from some glorious illogic here (yes, I know he's mangling the English language too, but let's take things one step at a time). He's basically saying that it isn't enough to be a Christian to be a good person and be saved, you have to be a particular type of Christian, worshiping in a particular way and no other. Then he finds one particular Christian denomination--Baptist fundamentalists--and rationalizes that since they haven't led a Crusade yet, they must be the "real" Christians. But the dumbest thing about Cloud's rant is that he isn't even criticizing van Impe for the right reasons. "Van Impe gives absolutely no support to his claim that his detractors are practicing deceit or that they have their facts wrong. He gives not one fact to support such a serious charge." Got a news flash for you, Cloud: van Impe gives absolutely no support to absolutely any claim he's ever made about anything. And since your whole dippy religion is based on faith, the act of believing in supernatural claims regardless of evidentiary support, it's just a tad dishonest of you suddenly to insist upon evidence now, simply because a claim gets your gander up.
From an atheist perspective, it's always interesting to watch Christians butt heads with one another over who's splitting doctrinal hairs at the correct angle. The moment a believer announces that the most bizarre claims of a belief system must be held to be literally true regardless of evidence, then the seams have already begun to split, and the whole Protestant-vs.-Catholic hatefest is typical. To fundies who consider the Vatican to be a seething cesspool of apostasy, liking Catholics is the worst sin one of their own could commit. That is, next to van Impe's growing friendliness towards general religious ecumenicism and inclusiveness. The late M.H. Reynolds, Jr., in an article for the Oct-Dec 1995 issue of the fundiezine Foundation entitled "The Van Impe's Downward Slide," wrote, "Surely no informed believer today could deny that there is a great need for more love within the Body of Christ....that every child of God needs to be continually on guard against the wrong use of the tongue which so often results in intemperate, personally abusive words...." adding, with typical fundamentalist pedantry, "But it is important to remember that the failure of fallible men to properly represent any Biblical position in no way negates the believer's responsibility to hold to that position." And they call us closed-minded.
Jack van Impe can be summed up as a religious sideshow, his pronouncements a window into a bizarre world that rational atheists can never know. He's a joke. But what is definitely not a joke is the way in which he stands as a shining example of how thoroughly fundamentalist indoctrination can damage the mind, stultify critical thinking skills, and perhaps scariest of all, cultivate the excessive use of hair spray. Jack is funny; that anyone at all takes him seriously is profoundly sad.
Next month's column will be posted 2/28/01, so I'll see you all again then. And don't forget to watch Jeff Dee and myself on Atheist Experience beginning again live, Sunday, February 11, at our new 5:00 PM time slot on TimeWarner Cable channel 16!
Go without gods,
Martin Wagner
© 2001
martinwagner66@excite.com
