Charismatics still claim smoking weed is like summoning demons… Question of the day: is it OK to yell “HAND JOB!” in a crowded theater? Also Trump patiently waits for Jewish holiday in order to go full anti-Semitic …
One Toke Over the Line Sweet Jesus!
The late Chuck Smith, founder of the lucrative, global franchise known as Calvary Chapel, was one of the first mainstream Evangelicals to openly proselytize hippies in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
It’s difficult to trace the origin with any certainty, but Smith and his early CC minions were also some of the first Evangelicals to use Revelation 21:8 to scare pot-smokers into believing that playing recreationally with a natural-growing flower was in fact a damnable, soul-destroying form of Satanism/witchcraft.
The old tract is still available on the franchise home page, with a few modern updates thrown in.
Chuck Smith’s angle was that the original Greek word for sorcery in the New Testament was φάρμακος or pharmakos. This is the word which we derive the English word “pharmacy” from and Smith claimed these ancient pharmakos/sorcerers were people who simply tried to bend reality with herbal potions and such. According to the author of the book of Revelation, these people are on God’s shortlist of those with a reservation in the Lake of Fire. And so the divine equation smoking pot = sorcery = endless fire torture has been used, more or less, for 50 years in American evangelicalism– to great effect.
I remember first hearing it as a teen in the 80’s and feeling a cold wash of terror as a cranky street evangelist casually informed me and my friends that we had become active Satanists by smoking weed and were going to hell. Because my own experiences with weed at the time weren’t exactly pleasant experiences, I felt this had to be true.
Here we are in 2023 and MAGA Church leaders like Larry Tomzcak at Charisma News are still getting mileage off of Chuck Smith’s 1970’s leaflets. Larry knows that the two most frightening accusations that can be leveled against a human being in Right Wing Evangelical circles are:
- Communist/Leftist
- Satanist/Witch/Sorcerer
In this video a wide-eyed Larry delivers a one-two punch by stating that partaking of cannabis makes you a demonic conjurer and probably an unwitting accomplice in a progressive Leftist agenda too.
In addition to the old Calvary Chapel “Satanists are thrown into the lake of fire” threats, Larry trots out the well-worn slippery slope fallacies about “gateway drugs”, while casually suggesting that many pot-smokers move on to mainlining heroin.
Like all his peers, Larry conveniently ignores the historical fact that cannabis would probably be perfectly legal in the US as a recreational substance just like alcohol and cigarettes, if not for the work of one blatantly racist Right Wing drug czar.
When Republicans boastfully challenge their opponents to show just one example of systemic racism in America today, the long history of the federal war on drugs should be a handy slapback. The War on Drugs is one of the great moral catastrophes of 20th century America. Eight long decades, disproportionately targeting people of color with prison and total ruination, and the only thing Evangelicals have is more fear-mongering about witchcraft and hell. One more example of how Evangelicalism so often provides a totally unreliable compass for morality and ethics.
“Let’s turn on the juice and see what shakes loose!”
Last week, Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was kicked out of a theatrical production of the show Beetlejuice, after repeatedly vaping during the performance (directly in front of a pregnant woman, no less, who repeatedly asked her to stop), taking flash photos with her phone mid-show and being a nuisance to other patrons while acting like a drunken college freshman. While being escorted out, she reportedly flipped off security and threatened them with the politician’s last resort threat, “Do you know who I AM?” All of this news would frankly be a bore in any other context. But in the case of an obnoxious Qanon, Christian Dominionist, known for her loud, self-righteous denunciations of gays and others she disagrees with, this is a delicious moment of schadenfreude to be savored.
Over the weekend, surveillance video inside the theater clearly showed Representative Boebert stroking the shaft of her date in the middle of the show, while he groped her boobs under her top.
Like a good Evangelical politician, Boebert initially denied all the accusations but has since blamed her public handjobs on her “eccentricities”. The hypocrisy of Right Wing religious demagoguery is staggering.
Trump commemorates a Jewish High Holy Day with an oily spurt of anti-Semitism.
All authoritarians demand loyalty. And the Jews apparently have been disloyal to the Great Leader. This Olestra-laden discharge was posted this morning on “Troth Central” :
