Night class.

I thought that taking a night class would be a drag. But it turns out that it is one of my most interesting classes and I don't mind being in it for three hours on a monday night. It is my history of Pentecostalism class and I am really learning a lot. Maybe it is stuff I should have already known, but I really never learned much about church history, the differences between denominations, etc. as a child. As sad as it may sound, the fall of 2011 was the first time I ever learned about the reformation. I had heard the word 'reformation' and knew it was something to do with European history, but I had no idea what it was about. I am not nearly as naive as that makes me sound, but I definitely had a gap in the church history area of my education.

Some of my 'learning' in this class is not so much learning as the teacher teaching us about ridiculous things that people in the church have done. Pentecostalism has its fair share of interesting history.

Two weeks ago we spent the class talking about healing. I don't want to go into the arguments of whether or not faith healing is legitimate (we did enough of that in class), but I did learn about a ridiculous kind of healing. The prosperity gospel is quite interesting, and by interesting I mean hilarious. That people have worked out formulas so you can know how much God owes you based on how much you give is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. In some of the videos my teacher showed us, mixed in with those healed of physical ailments are those who have been financially healed.

My teacher said he saw a car with a bumper sticker with this saying on it.

My teacher showed us an even better video of this guy and his prayer cloth. It was the actual infomercial that aired on TV. He talked about the wallet you had to carry it around in and it was cheesy and hilarious. Unfortunately, that video is not on youtube, this is the best I could do.

Then last week we talked about speaking in tongues and I found out that people who speak in tongues are not speaking any actual language. This was confusing to me since at the start of Pentecostalism, tongues was assumed to be actual languages. The purpose of this gift was to spread the gospel faster. But, it turns out that was not the case. I did not know that, I thought that they were speaking actual language. Linguists have analyzed people speaking in tongues searching for any form of linguistic structure but have been completely unsuccessful.

Today we watched the first half of a documentary on an evangelist name Marjoe Gortner. It was made in 1972. Marjoe was a child evangelist who was ordained as a preacher when he was 4. He preached in travelling revival meetings until he was sixteen. Then he disappeared for a while. When he was in his twenties he came back to the preaching circuit. Then he made a documentary in which he revealed that he had been lying his whole life. His parents forced him to preach, made him memorized sermons, and taught him money making tactics. The punished him by smothering him, or holding him under water, because they couldn't risk doing anything that might leave a mark on him. He figures they made about 3 million dollars off of him, none of which he ever saw. At sixteen his dad took off with the money. Marjoe left and lived as a hippie until his twenties. Then he returned to preaching merely as a way to support himself. He could preach for half the year, then take the other half off and live off his earnings. At some point he suffered a 'crisis of conscience' and decided to stop preaching. He took a film crew with him on his last tour and let them film everything. No one knew the real purpose of the filming until the documentary was released. He gave them behind the scenes interviews and tours, told them about his techniques, and let them film him counting the money he had collected. The documentary won an academy award.

I am pretty sure the whole documentary is on youtube if you are interested. This was just a few excerpts. There is more on his childhood in it. Taking advantage of all those people was terrible, but I kind of respect him for telling the truth and making this.