A Church Teaches Bigotry to the Next Generation May 30, 2012

A Church Teaches Bigotry to the Next Generation

By Jessica Bluemke
May 30, 2012

The Apostolic Truth Tabernacle in Greensburg, IN apparently is teachin’ em young!

This 4-year-old boy is already singing about homos going to hell:

I know the Bible’s right,

Somebody’s wrong…

Ain’t no homo’s gonna make it to heaven

Perhaps even worse, he received a standing ovation with hollers, and a proud father shouting, “That’s my boy!”

I really have nothing more to say.  This is just about the worst thing I have seen in quite some time.  If this is what Christianity teaches, no one should want any part of it. (And just to be clear, even the kinder, gentler, “love the sinner, hate the sin” type of Christians still believe acting on your homosexuality is a sin. It’s not just the extreme types like in this video.)

Feel free to let Pastor Jeff Sangl know what a great job he’s doing preaching peace and love! And don’t resort to his level when writing any emails.

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  • TheAnalogKid

    Homosexuality is the only sin that matters. Well, and abortion.

  • Todd

    When I saw this yesterday I was stunned; it’s jaw-droppingly sickening. We all know how parents indoctrinate hate into their children, but usually the bigots aren’t usually this blatant. If the “good” Christians don’t want their names associated with this type of hate, they should be speaking out against it. Simply claiming that it’s an isolated incident at a small-town church isn’t good enough.  Any Christian who doesn’t denounce this is tacitly approving of it, and should be ashamed.

    What’s really funny is that the gays are supposed to be the ones recruiting children…

  • Kevin_Of_Bangor
  • Mike

    And this town has had at least one teen suicide related to anti-gay bullying:  
    http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2010/09/indiana-teens-suicide-thought-to-be-result-of-anti-gay-bullying/

  • Makes me ill… With friends like these America needs no enemies.. the utter glee of teaching these little kids to hate makes me want to puke! 

  • OMG

    But . . . I thoughts the problem with gay public affection was that parents might have to explain what a ‘homo’ is to their innocent little babies. Dammit, Christians, get your story straight!

  • 00001000_bit

    Totally despicable.

    Anyone know what the line he’s saying is right before the one about
    “heaven”? It’s something with “twenty-seven” but I can’t make it out. 

  • Thinker

    Apparently, “apostolic truth” is quite different than actual truth.

  • “Romans 1:27″… which says:

    “In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

  • Onamission5

    Somebody remind me why this isn’t child abuse again? I’m at a total fucking loss.

  • Graham Martin-Royle

    And this type of bigotry ends up with people calling for governments to kill gay people.

    http://freethinker.co.uk/2012/05/30/another-baptist-pastor-calls-for-gay-genocide/ 

  • Onamission5

    I look at something like this, and I think… 50 years ago, these are the people who were sewing little white hoods for their infants and teaching them to light crosses on fire in the name of jeezus. It’s no different. Sickening.

  • sunburned

     I don’t expect for *good* Christians to denounce anything. 

    The fact of the matter is that not every Christian is *responsible*  and/or condoning this type of activity.   I would make a wager that a majority of self declared so-called Christians are totally oblivious to it.

    I think  it’s the same as expecting Muslims to denounce acts of terrorism, even when they do it’s ignored and followed up by people wanting to know why Muslims don’t denounce acts of terror.

  • Onamission5

    I’ve never been able to wrap my brain around the whole “gay recruiting” thing that gets hounded upon by the religious right. Projection, maybe? Seeing in others what is true about oneself? I have never in my life seen gay folks handing out come be gay with us pamphlets on the street, but I’ve seen groups of religious people doing that for jesus a’plenty.

    Fwiw, the protest against Worley’s church? Local churches were bussing in their entire congregations to stand up against him. So there are progressive religious people who are willing to speak out. They may be less in numbers than I’d prefer, but they’re out there.

  • Kevin_Of_Bangor

    Well they took down their facebook page. What a bunch of cowards.

  • Baby_Raptor

    Because they say so. 

  • always have to point out that ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ is NOT a xian saying.  It is a quote from Ghandi who was not xian.  Still gross and intended to shame/cripple

  • How long before this kid is bullying gay kids in school, and whining “persecution” when he’s told to stop? 

  • scinquiry

     Oh, they’re still doing that too.

    http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/05/23/north-carolina/

  • Tinker

    My mother in law has always impressed me as a fair minded, intelligent woman, despite her Christianity (of course she would say because of it). When the subject of tolerance came up she flew off the handle for the first time I have ever seen and compared homosexuality to murder. I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to say. It made me feel really bad because my sister is gay. While she claims that churches like Eastboro Baptist are ‘not real Christians’. She would agree with this church.

  • And the 33rd verse of Romans 1 is the real killer. 

    Which is why they hid it from view.

  • Thanks for the email address! It’ll probably fall on deaf ears, though. Bullies don’t care what anyone says.

  • It is. And a sane government would remove any children from that family and put them into foster care. And they should put the parents and the pastor in jail for child abuse.

  • Checkout the update on their webpage:
    —5/30/12 – The Pastor and members of Apostolic Truth Tabernacle do not condone, teach, or practice hate of any person for any reason. We believe and hope that every person can find true Bible salvation and the mercy and grace of God in their lives. We are a strong advocate of the family unit according to the teachings and precepts found in the Holy Bible. We believe the Holy Bible is the Divinely-inspired Word of God and we will continue to uphold and preach that which is found in scripture.—In other words – “$%^!$%^@$! you, the Bible says so, so we’ll keep doing what we’re doing”.Despicable human beings.

  • Miss_Beara

    “compared homosexuality to murder.”

    Ugh! I heard this before too! I asked “how is violently taking someone’s life equal to being attracted to/being in a relationship with someone of the same gender?” They managed to avoid the question all together. 

  • Miss_Beara

    I feel so bad for the other kids in that video as well. 🙁 

  • The Other Weirdo

     You know, the Bible advocates many things in respect to the family unit, one of which is the killing of daughters who turn out not to be virgins on their wedding day. That’s the OT. The NT teaches us to abandon our families to follow Jesus, and to love Jesus but hate our families and friends. It further advocates that sex(therefore procreation) is bad and should be avoided, but if you really really can’t go without sex, then it’s better to do it inside a marriage.

    I wonder if this is what they advocate in regards to the family unit according to the teachings and precepts found in the Holy Bible.

  • The Other Weirdo

     There is no Romans 1:33, at least not that I can find. Do you have a link for it?

  • Pseudonym

    The fact of the matter is that not every Christian is *responsible* 
    and/or condoning this type of activity.   I would make a wager that a
    majority of self declared so-called Christians are totally oblivious to
    it.

    Once again, I’m reminded of the tongue-in-cheek purpose behind the Jon Stewart rally. Real-life moderates generally don’t speak up in public denouncing the loonies because they, to use Stewart’s words, “have shit to do”.

    Unlike those who run this blog, most people don’t have the time or inclination to chase up every instance of religious lunacy in the world. In fact, about 10% of the reason why I read this blog is that if I didn’t, I’d never hear about stuff like this.

  • Hansono5

    It sounds as if most people who post on this site hate christians. I know that we Christians give you much to dislike us for.  The fact is though that the  Bible and all it teaches is for all those who would call themselves followers of Jesus.  It would be expected that a follower of Jesus would not be a homosexual because the Bible teaches against it. If you are not a Christian then you can live however you choose to live, its up to you.  The problems start when Christians feel the need to judge others and tell them how they should live.  The Bible says “do not judge”, the Bible says, “love your neighbor as yourself”.  There are many true Christians out there who would take a bullet for you, just as Jesus took one for us. There are many who profess to be followers of Christ who are not,  they have no idea what it means to be a true follower of Christ.  Jesus loves the poor, the broken, the hurting, the prostitutes, etc  that is who he hung out with when he walked the earth. Jesus was a homeless guy.  That is who his followers should love as well.

  • So much for Christian love, I guess.

  • Glasofruix

    The problem is that your little book of fairytales “teaches” a lot of not so nice things, so when people say “we follow the bible” i assume that they follow ALL of it’s aspects and therefore i have no respect for their beliefs, cherry picking parts from the book makes it even worse. Now, we don’t hate religious people as long as they keep their beliefs for themselves, we’re fine with them believing whatever crazy bullshit they like.

  • Hanson05

    No need for the personal insults, stick to the discussion.  What cherry picking are you referring to?  Have you read the teachings of Jesus? do you know what they are?  Tell me the “aspects” of Jesus teachings that you find so offensive. 
    I believe most people who post on these sites have never done any actual research for themselves but rely on sites like this to fill in the blanks for them.  

  • Glasofruix

    Personnal insults? I haven’t directed any on you. Now about cherry picking, you people all go “jebus is love, jebus is nice, the bible teaches only good things” but you leave the parts that:

    – tell women to shut the fuck up
    – are about children being killed for whatever reason (like mocking a bald man, disobeying their parents etc…)
    – promote slavery
    – show jesus telling people to forget their families
    – show fathers giving their daughters to be raped
    – marriage that does not seems to be about one man and one woman
    – tell that a divorce is not permitted
    ….

    The list just goes on and on and on, and i’m not even talking about flagrant inconsistencies in the chronology of the events described or those that defy the plain and simple logic. I’m not some savant xtian monkey to recite the exact location of those passages in the bible (after all reading it once was sickening enough), i’m sure there’s people around here that could direct you to them.

  • Anon

    Speaking personally, I don’t hate christians.

    What I do think is that christianity shouldn’t be ingrained into children, so they have the freedom to make their own choice (and doesn’t that make it better if they know about the rest of the world in the most unbiased way possible and still choose your religion rather than being a Christian because they don’t know how to be anything else); it shouldn’t be used as a basis to discriminate against people when the book itself promotes things like slavery and it should not be the default.

    Yes there are parts of the Bible which promote good things but what does annoy me is when christians act like the Bible invented those good things. FYI, people were loving their neighbors long before somebody wrote the Bible.

    Also I’m always amused when christians talk about other people not being ‘true’ christians. Mostly because the standards are always different, entirely subjective and it usually means ‘people who disagree with me on a particular issue’. Or people who used to be christian and are now atheists.

  • Anon

    I’d also wager that it’s difficult to impossible to ‘make’ somebody be gay just by telling them about it.

    Also, I’m bisexual. Does that mean that my gay recruiter did a kind of half-assed job, am I just a special type of abomination or do I just not exist?

    That’s, of course, discounting the ‘you’re just pretending to get attention’ vote.

  • Jett Perrobone

    Personnal insults?

    I can practically taste those tears of Hanson05’s Christian persecution complex.  *looks in bathroom cupboard for some Listerine*

  • Onamission5

    Considering I have heard folks make some similar statements about us bisexuals that I have heard fundies make about so called lukewarm christians, I’m going to go with the half assed recruiter hypothesis. As much as I want to be my own special kind of abomination, I really think it’s someone else’s fault that I am the way I am. lol. 

  • James

    I pray to the spaghetti monster that these children discover punk rock and marijuana during their teen years and move away for college never to return! OH GOD, WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

  • Tom

    Of course you believe that.  You have to, otherwise you’d be faced with the terrifying possibility that we might be right.

  • Anon

    I’ve been told straight that I’m just pretending to be bisexual to get attention.

    My response was short, succint and contained the words ‘fuck’ and ‘you’. Because the only people my sexuality actively concerns are myself and my partner.

    Also if I ever actually come across somebody who believes gay people are actively recruiting young people to be gay I’m going to be ‘yeah my gay recruiter was kind of shit, so I ended up bisexual. Is that better or worse?’

    There’s a thought. Is being bisexual worse or better from a Christian point of view. I mean I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the bible that says ‘no bisexuality’, same as I don’t think lesbianism is covered.

  • These people are why I hate Christianity. Who’s more likely to commit a violent act against another human being: a gay, or a Christian? So much for their religion of peace and love. I don’t condone violence, but as a gay man I would shed no tears for any one of these people if they were to meet with some grisly end. Utterly disgusting.

  • Akita Mix

    ..and your belief sucks.

  • TheAnalogKid

    Yawn.

  • Heather Emme

    There’s a one in ten chance that this kid is gay. I was raised by fundamentalists and I am bisexual. This stuff sticks in the neurons. It makes hating yourself and hurting yourself easier. To do this to kid is cruel. 

  • ts

    well the kid is technically right. no homo will make it to heaven because heaven doesnt exist