Christianity’s Sick Obsession with Sex

The following is the bare-bones version of Chapter 10 in 24 Reasons to Abandon Christianity, which will be out in a little over year. I’ll add to it considerably over the next few months, but this’ll give you a good idea of where I’m going with it — I’ll basically be adding more documentation and illustrative passages and quotes.

For now, here ’tis:

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10. Christianity’s morbid preoccupation with sex

Since its inception, Christianity has had an exceptionally unhealthy fixation on sex, to the exclusion of almost everything else (except power, money, and the infliction of cruelty). This stems from the numerous “thou shalt nots” relating to sex, and the calumnies heaped upon it, in the Bible. To quote only a few of the many passages maligning sex and warning against it:

“”Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” — I Peter 2:11

“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lasciviousness.” –Galatians 5:19

“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” — Romans 8:6

The church fathers echoed these views:

“We Christians regard a stain upon our chastity as more dreadful than any punishment, or even death itself.” –Tertullian, Apologeticus

“The children of the flesh can never be compared to the glory of holy virginity.” — St. Augustine, On Holy Virginity

“Nothing so much casts down the mind of man from its citadel as do the blandishments of women, and that physical contact without which a wife cannot be possessed.” — St. Augustine, Soliloquies

“Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.” –St. Augustine, Soliloquies

And lest we forget:

“It is time to cut down the forest of marriage with the ax of virginity.” –St. Jerome, Epistle 123

All of this prudishness and calumny stems from Christianity’s most basic scriptures, especially the Ten Commandments.

That the Ten Commandments (enumerated in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) command keeping the sabbath, forbid taking the Lord’s name, and forbid coveting one’s neighbor’s wife, but do not even mention, let alone forbid, slavery, rape, incest, torture, or cruelty—all of which were abundantly common in the time the Commandments were written. This speaks volumes about their writers’ preoccupation with sex (and women as property), as well as the pettiness of the Judeo-Christian deity.

Over the centuries, Christian religious leaders have echoed and amplified the perverted morality espoused in the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Bible. To cite but two examples from relatively recent popes:

“When Christianity is rejected, marriage inevitably sinks into the slavery of man’s vile passions.” –Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum divinae sapientiae (1880)

“You cannot belong to Christ unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires.” –Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prior to ascending to the papacy), Pastoral Letter on the Care of Homosexual Persons (1986)

Today, judging from the pronouncements of many Christian leaders, one would think that morality consists solely of what one does (more precisely, doesn’t) in one’s bedroom. For a completely bonkers example of this, let’s turn to a prominent televangelist and former GOP presidential candidate who has posited that tolerance of homosexuality is the cause of hurricanes:

“If you wanted to get America destroyed, if you were a malevolent, evil force and you said, “How can I turn God against America? What can I do to get God mad at the people of America to cause this great land to vomit out the people?” Well, I’d pick five things. I’d begin to have incest. I’d begin to commit adultery wherever possible, all over the country, and sexuality. I’d begin to have them offering up and killing their babies. I’d get them having homosexual relations, and then I’d have them having sex with animals.”

–Pat Robertson, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle, September 7, 1986

The Catholic Church, though less flamboyant than Robertson, is the prime example of sex negativity, with its moral pronouncements rarely going beyond the matters of birth control and abortion, and with its moral emphasis seemingly entirely on those matters.

Also note that the official Catholic view of sex—that it’s for the purpose of procreation only—reduces human sexual relations to those of brood animals. Many of the Church fathers (and later popes) were quite explicit about this, with Augustine, in his work Conjugal Adultery, stating: “Intercourse with even a lawful wife is unlawful and wicked if the conception of offspring be prevented.”

Thus it’s no surprise that for centuries the Catholic Church has been the driving force behind efforts to prohibit access to birth control devices and information—to everyone, not just Catholics.

The Catholic Church, however, is far from alone in its sick obsession with sex. The evangelical hate campaign against gay people is probably the most prominent current manifestation of this perverse preoccupation. Even at this writing, condemnation of “sodomites” from church pulpits is still very common—with Christian clergymen wringing their hands as they piously proclaim that their words of hate have nothing to do with gay bashings and the murder of gays.

Christianity produces sexual misery

“[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism — everything that the Bible condemns.” –Pat Robertson (12)

In addition to the misery produced by Christian intrusions into the sex lives of non-Christians, Christianity produces great misery among its own adherents through its insistence that sex, except the very narrow variety it sanctions, is evil, against God’s law. Christianity proscribes sex between unmarried people, sex outside of marriage, homosexual relations, bestiality, and even “impure” thoughts. Indulging in such things can and will, in the conventional Christian view, lead straight to hell.

(One indication of the Christian obsession with sex is the repeated mention of bestiality in medieval ecclesiastical writings. One 8th-century penitential [list of sins and punishments] quoted in A.A. Hadden’s Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents states: “If a cleric has fornicated with a quadruped let him do penance for, if he is a simple cleric, two years, if a deacon, three years, if a priest, seven years, if a bishop, ten years.” All this leads one to wonder just exactly how common this practice was in the medieval church.)

Given that human beings are by nature highly sexual beings, and that their urges very often do not fit into the only officially sanctioned Christian form of sexual relations (monogamous, heterosexual marriage), it’s inevitable that those who attempt to follow Christian “morals” in this area are often miserable, as their strongest urges run smack dab into the wall of religious belief. This is inevitable in Christian adolescents and unmarried young people in that the only “pure” way for them to behave is celibately—in the strict Christian view, even masturbation is prohibited. (Philip Roth well described the dilemma of the religiously/sexually repressed young in Portnoy’s Complaint as “being torn between desires that are repugnant to my conscience and a conscience repugnant to my desires.”) Thus the years of adolescence and young adulthood for many Christians are poisoned by “sinful” urges, unfulfilled longings, and intense guilt (after the urges become too much to bear and are acted upon).

Even after Christian young people receive a license from church and state to have sex, they often discover that the sexual release promised by marriage is not all that it’s cracked up to be. One gathers that in marriages between those who have followed Christian rules up until marriage—that is, no sex (and often no sex education) at all—sexual ineptitude and lack of fulfillment are all too common. Even when Christian married people do have good sexual relations, the problems do not end. Sexual attractions ebb and flow, and new attractions inevitably arise. In conventional Christian relationships, one is not allowed to act on these new attractions. One is often not even permitted to admit that such attractions exist. As Sten Linnander put it, “with traditional [Christian] morality, you have to choose between being unfaithful to yourself or to another.”

The dilemma is even worse for gay teens and young people in that Christianity never offers them release from their unrequited urges. They are simply condemned to lifelong celibacy. If they indulge their natural desires, they become “sodomites” subject not only to earthly persecution under religion-inspired laws, but to being roasted alive forever in the pit. Given the internalized homophobia Christian teachings inspire, not to mention the very real discrimination gay people face, it’s not surprising that a great many homosexually oriented Christians choose to live a lie and feign heterosexual marriage. In most cases, this leads to lifelong personal torture and gross unfairness to their spouses, who deserve someone who desires them sexually. But such internalized homophobia can have even more tragic results.

A prime example is Marshall Applewhite, “John Do,” the guru of the Heaven’s Gate religious cult, whose members committed mass suicide in 1997. Applewhite grew up in the South in a repressive Christian fundamentalist family. Horrified by his homosexual urges, he began to think of sexuality itself as evil, and eventually underwent castration to curb his sexual urges. Several of his followers took his anti-sexual teachings to heart and likewise underwent castration before, at Applewhite’s direction, killing themselves.

One strongly suspects that Applewhite, given his fundamentalist upbringing, was aware of and took to heart Christ’s words in Matthew 19:12: “For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be some eunuchs which have made themselves for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

Finally, the astounding level of sexual hypocrisy displayed by Christian clergymen and politicians is mute testimony to Christianity’s impossible-to-meet “moral” demands and the misery they produce. It’s also of note that the sexual behavior of repressed Christians often leaks out in incredibly unhealthy ways. The Catholic Church’s ongoing pedophilia scandal is exhibit A. A church that preaches abstinence for the unmarried, celibacy for clergy, and sex within marriage only for procreative purposes, has harbored myriad pedophiles, has shielded them from prosecution, and has made it a routine practice to shuffle them from parish to parish – thus providing them with one fresh set of victims after another.

Protestants have nothing to brag about regarding sexual hypocrisy, either. Exemplary Protestant hypocrites include the Rev. Ted Haggerd, whose meth-and-male-hooker scandal occurred while he was spiritual advisor to George W. Bush; Rev. Jimmy “I have sinned!” Swaggart, whose involvement with female hookers led to his defrocking by the Assemblies of God; homophobic Republican senator Larry “Wide Stance” Crane, who was arrested for soliciting sex in an airport bathroom; Rev. Jim Bakker, who was involved in orgies with members of both sexes – though he went to jail for financial fraud involving his Heritage USA Christian theme park; and family-values Republican senator David “Diaper Man” Vitter, who was re-elected after his hooker scandal came to light.

All of this hypocritical, sordid behavior points to one thing: Christian sexual “morality” produces so much misery that even its most ardent advocates often find Christian “morals” impossible to follow.

(repost) more on Pat Robertson and Fundamentalists

FUNDAMENTALIST, n. One in whom something is fundamentally wrong — most commonly lack of reasoning ability and vicious intolerance toward those not sharing the fundamentalist’s delusions. Thus, fundamentalists are especially intolerant of those able to draw obvious conclusions from observed facts, those who refuse to seek shelter in comforting falsehoods, and those who wish to lead their own lives.

Members of the fundamentalist subspecies known as “Slack-Jawed Drooling Idiots” have been known to give so much of their income to “electronic churches” that they subsist on Alpo at the end of the month.

In herds, fundamentalists are about as useful to society as wandering bands of baboons brandishing machetes.

The following statements by the Reverend Pat Robertson — prominent televangelist, Christian Coalition honcho, former Republican presidential candidate, blood diamond profiteer (look it up), and close “personal friend” of both corrupt, murderous former Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and corrupt, murderous former Liberian president and convicted, mass murdering and torturing war criminal Charles Taylor — are perhaps the most revealing illustration of the fundamentalist mentality that this lexicographer has ever seen:

People have immortal spirits with incredible power over elemental things. The way to deal with inanimate matter is to talk to it.

…and…

If you wanted to get America destroyed, if you were a malevolent, evil force and you said, “How can I turn God against America? What can I do to get God mad at the people of America to cause this great land to vomit out the people?” Well, I’d pick five things. I’d begin to have incest. I’d begin to commit adultery wherever possible, all over the country, and sexuality. I’d begin to have them offering up and killing their babies. I’d get them having homosexual relations, and then I’d have them having sex with animals.

And, yes folks, these are actual, direct quotations.

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–from the revised and expanded edition of The American Heretic’s Dictionary, the best modern successor to Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary

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• The 10 Wackiest Fundamentalist Conspiracy Theories Out There (prosebeforehos.com)

 

Quote of the Day 4-5-20 (Pat Robertson)

Here’s the latest from fundie fanatic Pat Robertson regarding the origins of Covid-19:

“Some of these younguns are doin’ all kinds of unnatural things with their sex organs. When people do that, they transfer all kinds of chemicals from ladies’ private parts and that’s where I think the virus came from. We never had this kind of thing when I was comin’ up. But no one was committing oral sex back then.” (700 Club a few days ago)

It’s good to see that The Rev hasn’t lost his touch. But as enjoyable as this one is, my favorite Robertson quote remains:

“If you wanted to get America destroyed, if you were a malevolent, evil force and you said, “How can I turn God against America? What can I do to get God mad at the people of America to cause this great land to vomit out the people?” Well, I’d pick five things. I’d begin to have incest. I’d begin to commit adultery wherever possible, all over the country, and sexuality. I’d begin to have them offering up and killing their babies. I’d get them having homosexual relations, and then I’d have them having sex with animals.” (San Francisco Examiner, September 7, 1986)

 

Definition of the Day 9-23-17 — Fundamentalist

FUNDAMENTALIST, n. One in whom something is fundamentally wrong — most commonly lack of reasoning ability and vicious intolerance toward those not sharing the fundamentalist’s delusions. Thus, fundamentalists are especially intolerant of those able to draw obvious conclusions from observed facts, those who refuse to seek shelter in comforting falsehoods, and those who wish to lead their own lives.

Members of the fundamentalist subspecies known as “Slack-Jawed Drooling Idiots” have been known to give so much of their income to “electronic churches” that they subsist on Alpo at the end of the month.

In herds, fundamentalists are about as useful to society as wandering bands of baboons brandishing machetes.

The following statements by the Reverend Pat Robertson — prominent televangelist, Christian Coalition honcho, former Republican presidential candidate, blood diamond profiteer, and close “personal friend” of both corrupt, murderous former Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and corrupt, murderous former Liberian president and convicted war criminal Charles Taylor — are perhaps the most revealing illustration of the fundamentalist mentality that this lexicographer has ever seen:

People have immortal spirits with incredible power over elemental things. The way to deal with inanimate matter is to talk to it.

…and…

If you wanted to get America destroyed, if you were a malevolent, evil force and you said, “How can I turn God against America? What can I do to get God mad at the people of America to cause this great land to vomit out the people?” Well, I’d pick five things. I’d begin to have incest. I’d begin to commit adultery wherever possible, all over the country, and sexuality. I’d begin to have them offering up and killing their babies. I’d get them having homosexual relations, and then I’d have them having sex with animals.

And, yes folks, these are actual, direct quotations.

* * *

–from the revised and expanded edition of The American Heretic’s Dictionary, the best modern successor to Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary

Related articles

• Ex-Evangelical Frank Schaeffer: ‘Fundamentalist’ Christians Enabled the ‘Rape’ of the 99% (theblaze.com)
• The 10 Wackiest Fundamentalist Conspiracy Theories Out There (prosebeforehos.com)

 

Who Prospers from the Prosperity Gospel?

(Excerpted from Chapter 7 of Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom, by Marie Alena Castle)

 

Churches fight to keep their tax exemptions and charitable perks—and to get more. The national Citizens for Tax Justice (www.ctj.org), founded in 1979, lobbies legislatures to ensure taxes are adequate to maintain social programs. Its coalition members and directors include religious organizations. In Minnesota, it works with the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition (www.jrlc.org) whose four sponsoring members are the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the Minnesota Council of Churches, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, and the Islamic Center of Minnesota. (JRLC, founded in 1971, was the first interfaith public-interest lobby group in the United States. Since then, groups in other states have formed.)

While JRLC cites the need for fairness and bemoans the plight of the poor, its members never offer to pay any taxes themselves. Yet in 1992 the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition made specific proposals for raising taxes by $649 million on businesses and on higher incomes to fund social programs, with no suggestion that their own tax-free havens be tapped to help achieve what they call a “need for fairness.”12 The JRLC, of course, sings the same tune whenever budget crises arise.13
Many social welfare programs are administered through churches, which contract with the government to provide services or are paid from government sources such as Medicaid and Medicare. In either case, taxpayers, not the churches, pay for these services.

The comfortable financial status of many religious institutions is fairly well known. Despite the Vatican’s well over a billion dollars in losses in court judgments and in out-of-court settlements for shielding pedophile priests, it remains extremely wealthy, not just in its financial investments and property holdings, but in its collection of priceless works of art—a major tourist attraction in Rome. (As of this writing, five U.S. Catholic dioceses—including the dioceses of Tucson and Portland—have declared bankruptcy to avoid paying pedophilia victims in full, and eight other dioceses have filed for bankruptcy for the same reason.) As for Protestants, the media regularly report on the lavish lifestyles of televangelists, as documented by Senator Charles Grassley in his now-aborted campaign to make lavish-spending churches accountable for abusing their tax-exempt status.

In 1977, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a multi-part investigative piece that revealed that Billy Graham had millions of tax-exempt dollars deposited in foreign bank accounts, while paying most of his employees minimum wage or less.14 In 1987, the paper reported that Graham’s tax-free profits for 1986 amounted to $3.8 million.15 There is no reason to think the Graham operation, which has ministries in several countries, is any less profitable today. Certainly his organization—now run by his son, Franklin Graham—can afford to pay taxes.

In 2011, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a First Amendment watchdog group, reported the following multi-million-dollar annual budgets for several prominent religious right organizations:

Pat Robertson empire — $412,581,050
Jerry Falwell empire — $400,479,039
Focus on the Family — $130,258,480
Alliance Defense Fund — $30,127,514
American Family Association — $21,408,342
Family Research Council/FRC Action/FRC Action PAC — $14,569,081
Coral Ridge Ministries — $17,263,536
Traditional Values Coalition — $9,888,233
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention $3,236,000

Then there are the “prosperity gospel” evangelical megachurches—a huge national network inspired by Kenneth Copeland, “The Godfather of the Prosperity Gospel”—all of which have palatial facilities, acres of property, and thousands of members. Most of these churches seem to be prospering nicely. Several were featured prominently in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in September, 2011. One was the Substance Church, with an income that grew from $150,000 in 2004 to $2.5 million in 2010. The church has accomplished this by preaching Bible verses such as Proverbs 11:24-25: “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.” The “evidence” that such giving is rewarded came from occasional reports by churchgoers who gave when it was difficult, then unexpectedly recovered financially, always certain their god was rewarding them, never realizing that it is a mathematical certainty that some of those thousands of donors will prosper financially, getting something they can interpret as a reward.16

One might argue that, even though a religious organization’s financial activities are questionable, donors are free to support the institution regardless. Maybe so, but what if those activities cause considerable harm? We seldom see reports from those who gave and gave and gave, and whose finances worsened as a result. But some of them do surface to shed light on this particular aspect of religious tax-exempt activities.

In 2008, CBS Evening News investigated Kenneth Copeland Ministries (KCM). Highlights of the CBS report included:

It’s a business, it’s a bottom-line business,” said a former ministry employee-who feared being identified. The employee answered hundreds of prayer requests a day, most sent in with donations, before quitting, feeling ‘betrayed’ by Copeland’s gospel of prosperity.

Michael Hoover, who worked for Kenneth Copeland Ministries for five years, quit in 2005 over disagreements with the church. He says he witnessed other employees doing work on behalf of for-profit businesses tied to the Copeland family. “In my viewpoint, I believe that they were using a lot of the ministry’s assets for personal businesses,” he said.

The nonprofit activity and the for-profit activity are so intertwined that you can’t, you can’t separate them,” said Ole Anthony of the Trinity foundation.17

Chuck Gallagher, a “business ethics and fraud prevention expert,” recently commented negatively on the Kenneth Copeland Ministries (KCM) on his web site.18 Gallagher’s site includes comments from visitors. Most said they supported the Copelands, noting that “rappers and thuggish figures” and other high living celebrities make millions and fly corporate jets and nobody investigates them. The fact that those celebrities paid taxes while FCM was tax-exempt and abusing that privilege did not seem to occur to them.

But there were other comments. This one says it all. It’s from a woman who tried to get an accounting of all the money her mother gave to KCM:

Being only human, our quest for health and wealth regrettably does lead some in the wrong direction. Promises and guarantees, made by the Prosperity Gospel ministers give people that have not obtained these blessings on their own a second chance at achieving their goals in life. An important discovery I made while reviewing testimonies revealed that numerous victims had very little knowledge of the Prosperity Gospel’s dark side. These unfortunate victims appear to be [acquainted] with only a small portion of the web of deceit these ministers weave.

Picture yourself being raised in a small country town, with a population of only a few hundred, the closest city [having] only a population of a few thousand. Computers, Internet, cable, satellite TV, and other high tech gadgets are not needed or desired. You are living a simple, solemn life you wouldn’t trade for any amount of cash. After your working day is done, you gladly remove your shoes, kick back in your easy chair, and relax without a care in the world for a while. After flipping on the TV to view the local evening news, you are reminded to give thanks that you don’t have the worries that accompany life outside the safe haven of your home and your community. Religion is your safeguard, your faith is strong, and you have no doubts about the truth behind your sacred beliefs.

This was my life, before KCM. Prosperity Gospel ministers enter the homes of many victims through a 30-minute Sunday morning worship service on a local broadcast station. Growing up in Jigger, Louisiana, truly located in the middle of nowhere, I can testify that we only received on a clear day about three or four channels at most. Warnings of dangers associated with Prosperity Gospel ministries made by critics, ministers, and victims go unheard; therefore, tragically for many, when the realization of this scam is discovered it is already too late. Families have lost their homes, life savings and some even their lives due to the Prosperity Gospel’s misleading doctrines.

Unfortunately, my mother was not one of the lucky ones. Her confidence and faith in this false Gospel ultimately cost her her life. After more than a decade of programming her mind to believe and think the Prosperity Gospel way of life she lost her battle with cancer. By refusing medical attention, she sealed her fate, but the programming she had acquired from Kenneth and Gloria Copeland proved strong all the way to her last breath. A diary she left behind revealed the horrific tale of her life from 1992–2002, the top of each page titled with Kenneth Copeland, Gloria Copeland or BVOV [Believers Voice of Victory—Copeland’s Internet TV “station”]. . . . The use of miraculous healing confessions and newly found wealth testimonies are their sales pitch. Sadly, my mom among many others are proof that their sales pitch works.

When all is said and done, perhaps [it] will be tagged not as the Prosperity Gospel, but the false Gospel.18

Preaching a Prosperity Gospel is not the only way to take advantage of trusting people. For months, in 2011, doomsday was yet again prophesied—this time to occur on May 21st, 2011. It never happened, of course. The “prophet” this time was the Reverend Harold Camping, from Alameda, California.

If such foolishness were treated as just that, we could dismiss it with a few jokes and end-of-the-world parties. But it’s not. Many people take doomsday predictions seriously. Camping’s national promotion through billboards and other media resulted in people inflicting great harm on themselves and others. Some liquidated their assets to donate money to publicize the event, or incurred heavy debt to finance purchases and vacatis in the expectation that they would be gone to Glory on May 22nd, or they quit their jobs; some even killed themselves and/or their loved ones to avoid the post-Rapture Tribulation.

Camping’s tax-exempt organization, Family Stations, a multi-million-dollar radio enterprise, promoted Camping’s doomsday prophesies, and it in turn was supported by donations. But Camping made no personal preparations for being Raptured. And he certainly wasn’t among those who liquidated their assets. This sort of thing happens every time someone promotes a doomsday scenario.19

At the very least, it is difficult to see what justifies preferential tax treatment for Camping.

___________

12. “Deficit: Religious coalition says state should raise taxes and increase spending,” by Dennis J. McGrath, Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 3, 1992.
13. “Legislators, there is no magic number,” (op-ed piece) by Brian Rusche, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 7, 2011.
14. “Immigration: Faith leaders call for compassion,” (op-ed piece) Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 16, 2011.
15. Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Graham Association won’t reveal finances to avoid rich image,” 6-25-77; “Graham admits Association has secret $22.9 million fund,” 6-27-77; “North Carolina paper says Graham Association worth $23 million,” 6-27-77.
16. “A recession-proof gospel of giving,” by Rose French, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Sept. 24, 2011, p.A1.
17. See http://trinityfi.org/2008/01/29/cbs-evening-news-w-katie-couric-looking-at-kenneth-copeland/%5D
18. “Kenneth Copeland-Godfather of ‘Prosperity Gospel’? Why Not Comply with Grassley?” at http://www.chuckgallagher.com.
19. “FFRF calls for fraud probe into Rapture campaign,” news release distributed by Freedom From Religion Foundation, June 1, 2011. See http://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-calls-for-fraud-probe-into-rapture-campaign/

 

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