Imagine how offensive and in-your-faceChristianity as a whole has been, even laughably offensive! (see below) Christians do more to make people cynical about religion than any other religion does. By the way, my Mom had me nailing up crucifixes above every door in the house just two days ago. I find the image of a half naked man nailed to two pieces of wood "offensive."
CHRISTIAN KITSCH
These days, when it comes to kitsch, it seems like Christianity has been kitsched by Satan. For instance, during Pope John Paul's visits to the U.S., you could buy Pope-on-a-rope soap, a Pope watch (like a Mickey Mouse watch, only holier), a Let Us Spray Lawn Sprinkler (a spinning Pope with outstretched arms waters your lawn), and a T-shirt with George, Ringo?and John Paul on it. Other Catholic kitsch products include Rosary tapes, so you can drive around town and recite the Rosary accompanied by whichever background music you prefer (including jazz, classical, gospel, light rock, even country and western.) There's even a "Jesus doll" that Nancy Pulte Rickard felt she was inspired to create ("One of the big things about the doll," she says, "is it makes it hard for people to deny his presence. They look across a room and go, 'Oh, there's Jesus.'") I am not making this stuff up.
Protestants on the other hand, have not only been kitsched by Satan, but I think he slipped them the tongue too. For instance, there's a company called Living Epistles that sells a T-shirt on the front of which is a muscle-bound Mr. Universe Christ doing push ups with a cross the size of Kansas on his back (labeled "The Sins of the World") and blood gushing from his crown of thorns. Beneath the picture it says, "Bench Press This!" (Yeah, like whenever I see an image of Jesus hanging from the cross, I can't help but think, "Nice abs.") Emblazoned on the back of the T-shirt is a picture of Jesus' blood drenched hands pierced with railroad spikes, and the caption reads, "His Pain, Your Gain." Another T-shirt reads, "His Blood's For You."
Cashing in on Power Rangers' popularity with children, a Vermont toy maker in 1995 marketed violent Holyland Heroes sets (Samson & Philistine; David & Goliath, Moses & Ramses II, Joshua & Canaanite), featuring muscular, grimacing toys wielding spears, swords, and, in Samson's case, the jawbone of a donkey - which the Bible says, he used to smite 1,000 men.
There's also Christian toilet paper that has, "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan" printed on every sheet. I reiterate, I am not making this stuff up.
And whenever a popular band creates a new kind of music (reggae, rap, or alternative rock), Christians copy it and market it, but only after "baptizing" it with simplistic slogans and syrupy sentimentality. In nearly all cases they hold it under the waters of baptism too long to cleanse it of the least bit of devilishness, and it emerges brain dead.
- Skip Church
On the brighter side, there is at least one thing that Christian baptism hasn't hurt. And that's? coffee. A long time ago, when coffee was but a beany baby, it was denounced as "the devil's brew" and outlawed by rulers who viewed it as an intoxicating beverage that leads to "discussions of rebellion and slander of those in power." At that time it was sold in popular coffeehouses nicknamed, "seminars of sedition." Church opposition ended in 1594, when Pope Starbucks VIII tried a cup (O.K., I lied, it was Pope Clement VIII) and liked it so much that he baptized it. "We will not let coffee remain the property of Satan," he announced. "As Christians, our power is greater than Satan's; we shall make coffee our own."
- John Dollison, Pope-Pourri
THE HOLY LAND EXPERIENCE
Zion's Hope, an evangelical group based in Orlando, Florida, is putting $10 million in pledged and donated money up for a seven-acre park, to be called The Holy Land Experience?It will feature biblical characters telling their stories and re-creations of Jesus' tomb and the cave where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
- Liz Langley, "I'm Going to Graceland," Orlando Weekly, Sept. 2, 1999
Funny, isn't it? Followers of the man who drove out the moneychangers from the temple, charging seventeen bucks to see a replica of his tomb. I don't suppose they'll have Gay Days.
- Jonathan
Sixty residents of the Seminole Health Club nudist camp near Miami comprise a Christian mission that worships twice a week in the nude. According to leader Elijah Jackson, "We're not trying to start a cult here, but I think nudity adds something to Christianity."- News of the Weird, "Weird Clergy"
A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back, he's gonna wanna see a cross? Maybe that's why he hasn't shown up yet. "Shit! They're still wearing crosses. When they start wearing fishes I'll go back, this is ridiculous. They've entirely missed the meaning of this thing."
It's like going up to one of the Kennedy clan with a rifle pendant on. "Just thinking of your uncle, the former president. We love him."
- Bill Hicks, Rant in E-minor, CD
We Christians neither want nor worship crosses as the pagans do.
- Minucius Felix (Christian author, circa 200 A.D.)
It was only in the third century (after 400 A.D.) that Christian communities increasingly used "covert" crosses, which have survived in the murals of the catacombs and on tombstones. They might be an anchor with a crosspiece, a ship with a mast and yard, a human figure with outstretched arms, or a juxtaposition of the initials of the name Jesus or Christ (in Greek or Latin) to produce a cross-like shape. It was in the fourth century that the cross became an openly Christian symbol. By that time crucifixion as a method of state execution had been abolished and the cross ceased to have its former cruel and negative associations. Several hundred years later it was deemed a terrific symbol to use to ward off vampires, demons, etc.
- Skip Church
If Christ was executed today I bet Christians would wear little electric chairs around their necks.
- Dick Gregory
After the missionary explained the Bible's superior civilized plan of salvation to several natives, one of them stood and said, "Like you, we love our gods and seek to love one another. What we do not understand is why your god tried to pin down sin by using His son as a voodoo doll."
- Skip Church
Christianity is merely paganism with a more successful advertising campaign.
- Skip Church
Orthodox Christian theology teaches that Jesus had to die before God could forgive sins and send people to heaven. If that's true, then why isn't there a "Saint Judas?"
- Skip Church
Whenever I forgive someone it's relatively easy. But for God, it takes a bloody miracle.
- Skip Church
CONVERSATION, A.D. 33
A: Have you heard the latest?
B: No, what's happened?
A: The world has been redeemed!
B: You don't say!
A: Yes, the Dear Lord took on human form and had himself executed in Jerusalem; and with that the world has been redeemed and the devil hoodwinked.
B: Gosh, that's simply lovely.
- Arthur Shopenhauer
CHIPMUNK CRUCIFIXION
No chipmunk had to be crucified
on a tiny cross of twigs
To save all the other chippies,
Had to have nails pounded
through his little paws,
Had to take upon himself
all the sins of all the chippies
that ever were or would be
and die in agony
So that after they died
all the chippies
could live again forever,
But only if they believed
in all the sayings and doings
of the chipmunk crucified
on the tiny cross of twigs.
- Antler, Last Words
Christianity has a built-in defense system; anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It is a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it, and believe me I was raised Southern Baptist, is to take heroic doses of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, "Show me."
- Bill Hicks
It seems to me that the most spurious of all the great religions is Christianity. Its biblical miracles are childish, pre-scientific myths. Its theology has been taken right out of the caldrons of blood sacrifice and appeasement. For God so loved the world that he allowed the crucifixion of his only son to appease his own wrath, and then he denied eternal life to billions of human souls who refused to accept the gory myth.
- Paul Blanshard (former minister), Personal and Confidential
Isn't it ironic that Christians keep repeating, "Civilization will fail without Christianity" on computers built by Buddhists in Japan?
- Source unknown
Christians are generally creepy people as a direct result of the dysfunctional dynamic of worshipping a dead naked hippie.
- Die Warzau, Engine Tour Shirt, 1995
