IN THE wake of the March kidnapping of a group of youngsters by members of Pennsylvanian church comes news that criminal charges have been filed against the church and its pastor.
The fake raid occurred at Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church in Lower Swatara Township when four men – one carrying an unloaded but real gun – rushed into a room full of youth-group participants, put pillowcases over their heads and forced them into a van. The children didn’t know the raid was fake. One was injured.
Pastor John Lanza
The mock terrorism raid was led by John Lanza, the pastor at the church, to show the youngsters what might befall “persecuted” Christian missionaries in foreign lands.
After bursting in on the youth group, the raiders – one of whom was an off-duty police officer and another a retired army captain – prodded the hooded kids into a church van and drove across the parking lot to the pastor’s house. They led the teens through the garage, past the pastor’s motorcycle with crucifixes painted on its gas tank to an interrogation room in a dark corner of the musty basement.
A single-bulb light was suspended from the ceiling. It illuminated a lone chair. The men interrogated each teen for 30 seconds in the room, raising their voices to invoke fear, before releasing them.
The district attorney’s office filed charges of false imprisonment, a felony, and simple assault against the church and youth pastor Andrew D Jordan, 28.
Lower Swatara Police Chief Richard Wiley said he didn’t understand the rationale of the church leaders and that he’s never witnessed a case like this.
District Attorney Edward M Marsico Jr said that while the intentions of the church were not necessarily harmful:
They in essence terrorised several children.
Lanza and Jordan are still listed as lead and youth pastors, respectively, on the church’s website.
Hat tip: Gasputin
Isn’t terrorizing children in the name of Jesus exactly what the church is supposed to be doing? Just because they’re using guns rather than switches and paddles I don’t see why people are having the vapors. [/sarcasm]
Christians have been kidnapping children for ages. It happened to me!
This says something about the mental state of these nutters. Then again, what can we expect of people in a cult of blood and human sacrifice? It’s not surprising they’d take sadistic pleasure in tormenting young people.
I had a look at the 16 basic beliefs of these nutters. Here is demented belief 15.
“15.WE BELIEVE…A Final Judgment Will Take Place for those who have rejected Christ. They will be judged for their sin and consigned to eternal punishment in a punishing lake of fire.”
This indicates that inflicting terror is the day to day activity of their faith. Seems to me that the threat of an eternal lake of fire trumps with plenty to spare what they did to these children. The mystery remains as to why sane person would get involved with these dements.
I grew up AG. I used to long to be persecuted. Such a delicious thought! I’m not as keen on it anymore.
Yeah – “Glad Tidings”: God has discovered a way whereby he won’t be forced to send you to that Lake of Fire to be tortured beyond belief for the whole of eternity. How fucking kind of the sadistic bastard!
@mikespeir: I know many Christians who take great pride in their “persecution”. It shows them how godly they are, as opposed to the evil souls who surround them, and of course, not only did Jesus (uncannily) predict that his followers would be a misunderstood and persecuted minority, but they are also privileged to experience exactly what their master himself experienced whilst “upon earth”!
The self-obsession of these characters is at the level of dangerous mental illness. The consequence of their actions on others matters nothing to them as long as their complex is fed.
@Ivan: If their beliefs were not protected under the aegis of religion they would fall within the definition of clinical mental illness. And that includes the RCs. What is believing bread turns into flesh which you eat and blood into wine which you drink except the outcome of paranoid psychosis. Instead of sectioning them under the Mental Health Act and locking them up we let them open schools and preach to the nation on the BBC.
OT. There has been a welcome absence of clergy as preachers or competitors featuring in the coverage of the Olympic Games. The BBC usually manages to insert them somewhere. Or have I missed them? Shouldn’t we as a “christian nation” have them on board to win medals for GB?
Broga: I did espy Rowan Williams standing behind the Queen during that piss-poor Olympic opening ceremony yesterday (knighthood for Danny Boyle in the post, of course!).
Can I just add that I also know some Christians who take delight in their unpopularity with members of their own church, believe it or not? They take as their example Joseph, who was “hated by his brethren”, and who, to them, was the foreruunner of Jesus, a man who was “misunderstood by his disciples”. I know that popularity isn’t everything in life, but this sort of love affair with “persecution” borders on masochism!
All made plain here:
http://www.persecution.net/download/whypers.pdf
@barriejohn. I only watched the start of the Olympic Opening Ceremony and then gave up. My wife, English with a dash of French recorded the lot, so I may watch more. I thought I was in a minority of one in finding it a confusing and chaotic shambles. I thought the piece about Liz and James Bond was so twee that even the English might have spotted that. But they are there to admire, to be reverential and to swoon at the sight of a royal.
I’m a Celt myself and paid a couple of hundred quid recently to have my Scottish DNA investigated and I do have a dash of Viking in the mix – like Tony Hancock. I do have Duyputren’s contracture so I was interested to find that the theory of that being found in those of Viking ancestry was confirmed in me at least. For the rest my ancestors have been there from the start. Fascinating stuff, by the way, and they are now doing this DNA analysis for the English.
I agree with you. Danny Boyle is a dead cert for a knighthood. The ceremony cost,I think, around £27 million. I thought this country was broke. By the way, I do intend to enjoy the Olympics (mu taxes have helped pay for them) and I admire the discipline and effort needed to compete.
Lower Swatara Police Chief Richard Wiley said he didn’t understand the rationale of the church leaders and that he’s never witnessed a case like this.
Some other and more extreme cases: Edgardo Mortara and Elizabeth Smart.
These simulated kidnappings were more common in the USA during the ‘satanic panic’ of the 1980s. While Christians accused satanists of stealing and abusing children, they were… stealing and abusing children.
The Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church is, unfortunately, correct: many Christians are kidnaped, tortured and killed in Muslim countries. I’m all for that fact being more widely known. And I’m all for persecuting Christians (and Muslims) by RELENTLESS mockery and scorn. But I’m not for kidnappings, simulated or actual.
barriejohn, Broga. What is wrong with you two? The opening ceremony was absolutely brilliant. Perhaps the best ever. The set pieces were stunning and the music was inspired.
Even the feckin’ queen parachuting out of a helicopter was incredible. She’s 86, you know!
And the Red Arrows flew right over my house. Scared the life out of me, it did.
@remigius: Yeh. My wife says the same. Or, not to paraphrase, she said, “What the fuck did you expect? They had to show something. And they didn’t hide the misery of the Industrial revolution and they did acknowledge the achievement of thew NHS. So get real you miserable bastard.” She did work as a doctor so she may have had a tinge of bias there but she wasn’t accepting that. I think you and she would get on well together.
Broga, don’t forget that the next games are gonna be in Rio de Janeiro; so we can expect The Big Concrete Zombie to feature heavily in their opening ceremony!
And as for your missus – have her scrubbed and brought to my tent. Pronto.
@remigius: You would love her. She is the best. Honest. I often wonder how I got to be so lucky. And that is without the help of the Sky Fairy.
@Broga,
Cheers mate – I’m now feeling a bit guilty.
My best friend suffers from ‘Duyputren’s contracture’ and over the past 3 years I called him the ‘Wanabee Rap Meister’ due to the extreme angles his hands took.
I hope you see the funny side.
I feel like shit.
remigius said:
(Even the feckin’ queen parachuting out of a helicopter was incredible. She’s 86, you know!)…LOL, your kidding me right? U know it was not her but a stand-in?
As for the Olympics, I don’t watch them since I consider the games much hype for advertisers and less about the true competitiveness of the human athlete. Since most will do anything to win to get that advertising contract…remember Tanya Harding?
Actually, after the female ice skaters started putting hits out, and started clubbing eachother to eliminate their competition, I actually watched them for once.
As for these psycho’s terrorizing children…the church has been doing this for years! I’m just surprised they did not rape them too.
Marky Mark’s mention of Tanya Harding reminded me of ‘Headline News’, Wierd Al’s spoof of Mm Mm Mm by the Crash Test Dummies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU95v23MQ4c
@tony e. No problem in my case. I’m lucky as I have the mild version of Duyputren’s Contracture which is little more than a raised ridge on my palm. However, the severe kind is no joke and I have a friend who needed an operation to free his hand. Before that it was twisting into a claw.
Once more, a church demonstrates that it sees children as tools and toys, not at all sentient beings worthy of any kind of respect. Christians really, really hate children for some reason.
@JohnMWhite: It’s probably just an extension of the general resentment that every generation feels for the one that follows it.
“Grr. The yoofa today. They’re free from all the shackles I’m fettered with, born of my neuroses and guilt-feelings. They should not be free in that manner. Enslave them!”