The Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey April 5, 2010

The Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey

By Guest Contributor
April 5, 2010

If someone had shown this to me when I was younger, I would’ve become a Christian *immediately*.

And by Christian, I mean atheist. Or anti-theist. Or whatever else is as far away from Christianity as possible.

I mean, seriously, what the hell was that? And who among the Christians is letting this happen? And who is getting “healed” while singing this song?!

Someone’s making this up, right? Right?!

The money clip is at 3:27.

(Thanks to skepticalProgrammer for the link)

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  • Siobhan in Vermont

    YAARRRGH!!!!!

    I couldn’t even make it that far, I had to skip to hear about the healed knees.

    BLEAH!

  • Heidi

    So how does one get into this line of work? Does a kid wake up one day and say “when I grow up, I want to sing the Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey in my Backstreet Boy voice.” Or is there some kind of actual brain trauma involved?

  • schism

  • Wow, churches have clearly become a lot more retarded since I stopped going…

  • Canadiannalberta

    I couldn’t watch. I mean, I’m the kid that left the gym in grade one because I thought the Hokey-Pokey was stupid, and that was before I knew it had a Christian version.

    Gah!

  • a thought

    Holy what the

  • Daniel

    Entirely too cringe-worthy to make it straight through to 3:27. And then..

    Back pain, knee pain? Hell, I’m a runner and have a persistently painful knee; but on race days it doesn’t hurt at all or nearly as much. I’ve called it, informally: mind over matter, the placebo affect, adrenaline, runner’s high, etc. But apparently, unbeknownst to me, I’ve been repeatedly touched by the holy ghost.

    I wanna see an arm grow back or wounds close… c’mon, God, gimme some of that ol’ time religion (minus the laying to waste and so on, please.)

  • it’s amazing how a little good old fashion exercise can help!

  • beckster

    Maybe the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about. (sorry, couldn’t resist)

  • You deserve an award if you can make it through that entire clip. This clip is far more painful than the Christian side hug clip…

  • Judith Bandsma

    Mind over matter? Sure, if you have no mind, it doesn’t matter.

  • What wasn’t filmed was the singing of the song at the time of the offering: “Put your whole wallet in and shake it all about”.

  • Nancy

    “Alzheimer’s is not scriptural.” What the h*ll does THAT mean?

  • Jason

    Even more interesting is another YouTube video seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8kKunCCopU
    This video was posted by a Christian organization, Alliance for Biblical Integrity…ah, the irony! I love it. I happen to agree with most (if not all) of the criticisms that the ABI had regarding this whackiness…maybe the ABI is a skeptical organization that just hasn’t found it’s true calling yet?

  • alex

    Jason:
    Sorry, couldn’t watch this BS a second time, as I barely got through it the first one without barfing all over keyboard.

    Seriously, WTF.

  • Someone needs to sue these people for plagarizing a pre-school song.

  • TheRealistMom/Spamamander

    @ Andrew Martens

    Please don’t call this retarded- I have a daughter with Down syndrome who is 14. Even she would be going “WTF”??? watching that…

  • Martin

    I always thought there was, you know, some kind of maximum age for kindergarten. Guess I was wrong.

  • For my money the 8:00 girl is the best. “HE IS REAL HE IS REAL HE IS REAL RAHHHH”

    Not terrible lookin’ though.

  • Houndies

    WTF??? wow, its amazing how retarded it all is.

  • maddogdelta

    Sorry, but I have to nominate “Christian Side Hug” for the ultimate in Christian Music Fail.

    And, to put it in proper perspective, here is zomgitskris…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpTokfdfV_w

  • TheRealistMom/Spamamander: Please provide us with a list of all the other words we shouldn’t use, for fear that we might hurt someone’s feelings.

  • Chal

    TheRealistMom/Spamamander: Please provide us with a list of all the other words we shouldn’t use, for fear that we might hurt someone’s feelings.

    After this vid, “Christian” is my go-to pejorative. 😛

    Also, “Short-term memory is not Biblical” o.0 WTF is wrong with these people?

  • As a guy with close-up experience with Charismatic Christianity, I have to tell ya guys: on a scale of one to ten for “Holy Ghost”-inspired puke-inducement? This is only about a FIVE.

    Try sitting in on a deliverance service sometime, when they’re casting out demons on a large scale.

  • Richard P.

    Damn, I resisted looking at this one all day, then in a moment of boredom I caved..

    If I have this song stuck in my head, someone is going to have to pay…

    Damn you Hemant, that was not nice… not nice at all…

  • TheRealistMom/Spamamander

    Oh ffs I didn’t say my feelings were hurt. I said my mentally challenged kid would find this just as stupid as we do- therefore “retarded” isn’t a good descriptor. I am guessing though with that kind of rapier wit you think people should just get over being called n*ggers or f*gs.

  • Would you call your mentally challenged kid retarded? If not – because it’s inherently insulting – then what’s the problem?

    What these people are doing is mind-numbingly stupid. It has nothing to do with being mentally challenged. If someone called your kid retarded, I’d be pissed, because it’s insulting your child for something that’s nobody’s fault. If someone’s choosing to do something inane and ridiculous, and the point is to insult them, why not use insulting language?

    This episode of South Park is apropos of this discussion.

    If you don’t like the meaning of a word, don’t try to ban it – try to change how it’s used. I use ‘retarded’ to describe behavior, ideas, etc. that don’t make any sense or that wind up with the person making a fool of themselves. Mental disorders, handicaps, etc. aren’t part of it.

  • Autumnal Harvest

    If you don’t like the meaning of a word, don’t try to ban it.

    Who the hell talked about trying to “ban” anything? Someone told you they didn’t like your use of a certain word. You chose to respond by sarcastically asking for a list of all the words that people might find offensive, instead of trying to put yourself in their shoes and consider why they might not like that word. That’s fine, that’s your right, there’s no need to pretend that someone’s trying to “ban” you from doing anything.

    I use ‘retarded’ to describe behavior, ideas, etc. . .that don’t make any sense or that wind up with the person making a fool of themselves.

    So, if you use that word that way, then the word doesn’t have any other connotations or historical meanings? Is it OK to insult people by calling them “gay” as long as I’ve decided I am not referring to their sexual orientation?

  • Did you see the first sentence in the post you responded to? Either she doesn’t think the word applies to her child, in which case she shouldn’t be offended if the word is considered insulting, or she does think the word applies to her child, in which case she should reconsider its status as an insult.

    As for who’s trying to ban anything? There are groups out there that would like to classify ‘retarded’ as hate speech, and this was the second time within fifteen minutes that I’d seen someone jump on someone else for using it.

    If you don’t think your child could accurately be called ‘retarded’ (in fact, you think that nobody with mental challenges should be), then why do you have a problem with using the word as an insult? Yes, words have history, but their meanings are not set in stone. The word ‘moron’ used to be an official, legally-recognized classification for people within a specific IQ range, but clearly nobody uses it for that anymore.

  • It’s simple math. He says at the beginning that only 12 were healed during the School of the Spirit Word of Knowledge (?) while 40 were healed during the Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey.

    It would be plain stupid not to Hokey Pokey. An increase of three-fold is nothing to scoff at. You can’t argue with statistics.

  • Canadiannalberta

    To call the actions of these people in the clip ‘retarded’ is actually a correct use of the word.

    ‘Retard’ simply means “to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede.” from Dictionary.com.

    I think we can all agree that this behavior is hindering these people in being adults – unless of course this was purely for fun, but somehow I don’t think so.

  • Definitely the hokiest poky i’ve ever seen!

  • muggle

    I see they admit they’re operating at a kindergarten level at least.

    “Release your glory” clearly wasn’t thought out as it certainly can be taken a couple of ways. I wonder if anyone got flashed after that particular shout-out.

  • That first bit with waving the hands and jumping up and down — is that the Christian version of a rave? (I wouldn’t know — I’m too old to have been to a rave). Anyways, for mass religiously-motivated jumping and down, the party scene in The Matrix has these folks beat.