Dog on a Skateboard vs Baby in the Pulpit
American Christianity is increasingly weirder than Christianity in other countries (except, I am told, Brazil, although I have never visited). When I was younger, this video of a infant preaching in the hellfire tones of a death metal band would have been an alien artifact from a backwater Bayou. Today, it would fit comfortably on the cultural flagpole of ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’. Perhaps the fact that this one year old does a fairly good impersonation of a Baptist preacher says more about the intellectual culture of evangelical sermons than the infant’s prodigy.
This is the point where you might think that I have posted exactly what I said I wouldn’t – the equivalent of a 30 second clip of a dog on a skateboard. The difference is that encouraging dogs to perform human acts like skateboarding is more amusing than cruel, whereas encouraging children to perform adult tasks like preaching or fellatio, is inhuman.
This seemingly bland video sums up for me, something very serious, the rise of nationalism in the guise of an artless bastardization of a religion that was pretty fucked up to start with.