Underaged Fundamentalists Patricio Amerena

Underaged Fundamentalists Patricio Amerena Independent Study Final Project Professor: Kristie Hamilton They say we are of evolution, they say we are relatives of the monkey, they say we are nothing! [...] a few men, liars, know-it-alls, creators of fallacies! [long applause] I want to tell all those persons who are thinking like this, or who are speaking like this... that the male monkey and the female monkey produce little monkeys to this day! [...] I was not brought here by the stork, I am not from evolution! [...] I was created by God in my mother’s womb! Nezareth Casti Rey Castillo Valderrama His slicked black hair glistens as his finger points towards the heavens and his business coat droops, noticeably large for him as he pounces about the stage à la Freddy Mercury, delivering his penetrating speech in a voice that is as self-assured as it is shrill. The megachurch is located in San Juan, Puerto Rico, yet this Peruvian six-year- old’s career had, as family legend maintained, already occupied half of his life. I stared into the computer screen and translated for my amused college roommates what this YouTube sensation was screeching, yet I grimaced internally upon recollecting that I had once regurgitated a variation of Nezareth’s arguments to refute evolutionary theory (or rather a childish misunderstanding of it) when I was about that age. Exposure to this viral phenomenon was my earliest glimpse into the grotesque world of child evangelism. Originally a euphemism for “fundamentalists”, the Evangelists or Evangelical Christians eventually adopted “Born-Again” as their moniker, and among their ranks are counted a staggering number of U.S. politicians. Research into this particular thread of history was prompted by my discovery of Marjoe Gortner, the infamous young minister who abandoned his church and exposed the tricks of the trade to liberal-minded secularists. His confessions led to the filming of Marjoe (1972), an Academy Award winning documentary that follows his return to the gospel circuit. This jaw-dropping tour de force inspired me to start writing a play loosely based on Marjoe’s life, which is why I began researching the topic more seriously. I discovered many surprises along the way: first with the convoluted history of Protestantism, followed by the fascinating events in Marjoe’s life, and culminating with the pandemic of tiny evangelists that has spread like wildfire across the American continent. This essay will describe the historical context surrounding evangelical movements, specifically the Pentecostal groups which gave rise to the Marjoe case. Following this will be a discussion of the narrative of Marjoe’s life springboarding from his biography by Stephen S. Gaines and the documentary by Sarah Kernochan and Howard Smith. Finally, we shall inspect a sample of contemporary child proselytizers from the United States and Latin America in order to gain a larger understanding of this cultural phenomenon. Historical Background Colorful flow charts tracing the Christian family tree for the past two millennia (fig. 1) are notably reminiscent of the cladograms biologists use to describe the evolution of living species (fig. 2). If religious affiliation evolved from a state-church prerequisite to a free-thinking personal decision after the Renaissance (Scharpff 4), then what we might imagine as a spiritual menu in reality looks more like a partisan’s encyclopedia. Protestant denominations exceed thirty-three thousand in number (“How Many Protestant Denominations Are There?” N.p.), and that is just a conservative estimate. Needless to say, awareness of this biodiversity seems to have no effect on each faith’s claiming exclusive access to the proper way of worshipping the person of Jesus Christ. This perplexing topic is a daunting challenge for any outsider to undertake. The devotional tone pervading the literature and cautious circumvention of the darker histories of these religions (sectarian warfare and the burning of witches, to name a few) tend to obscure how these factions proliferated in the first place. The horrifying bloodshed (and blood boiling that resulted from a doctrine against the former practice, Sagan f120), is often explained away by devout historians as having been politically motivated, if it is addressed at all: Unfortunately, this pious monk mixed politics with his evangelistic work. He opposed the Medicis and wanted to make Florence a city of God with Jesus Christ as its King. For this he was subjected to inquisition and burned at the stake in 1498 (Scharpff 9). Some scholars trace the origins of the Pentecostal movement to a 1906 revival in Azusa Street, Los Angeles (Patterson 1), others to 1901 meetings in Topeka, Kansas (Synan 93-94), but they all seem to agree that the movement was born some time around the early 1900’s, the earliest recorded meeting having been presided over by R. G. Spurling on the Tennessee/North Carolina border in 1886 (Patterson 139). Regardless of its multifarious geneses, Pentecostalism distinguishes itself from similar traditions by its emphasis on Spirit-baptism, faith healing, and spiritual “gifts” such as glossolalia, a sophisticated theologian’s term for speaking or singing in heavenly tongues.1 Other fundamentalists condescend to Pentecostal flamboyance, and the latter’s apologists have conversely made self-conscious attempts to disassociate their churches from fundamentalist connotations, neatly dispensing with the fire-and-brimstone messages that the youngest Pentecostal ministers are required to preach (Gaines 231). This is evidenced by tortuous passages such as this one: On balance, the Pentecostals turn out to be more restorationist, less aware of the course of Christian tradition, less polemic, collectively less antimodernist, more oriented toward personal charismatic experience, less politically involved [...] more ecumenical and less separatist, considerably less rationalistic and more inclined toward religious emotion, increasingly less dispensational, and perennially less theologically sophisticated (qtd. in Griffith 66). The early Pentecostals bifurcated into Church Of God (COG), Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and Pentecostal Holiness Church (PHC)2. These creeds incorporated folk songs into their services (Patterson 49-70) and emphasized healing, charismata, and the access to “tongues” that Evangelical scholars are also careful to place inside quotation marks. Thus it is not surprising that Pentecostal theatrics are defensively explained by their most faithful apologists: 1 This is not to be confused with xenolalia, the ability to vocalize in an identifiably human language that the speaker has never learned before. There is an element of wishful thinking behind this myth: an interruption of the barriers erected in Babel would have been very useful to Christian missionaries, who instead had to painstakingly learn the local languages wherever they went. 2 Catchy acronyms such as these foreshadowed an age of the secular religions of self-help and positive thinking (Ehrenreich), and possess a distinctly corporate feel. This is also present in Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s financial and sexual scandals, otherwise known as Gospelgate. Their PTL Club empire has been jokingly described as standing for “Pass the Loot” and “Pay the Lady” instead of “Praise the Lord” and “People that Love” (Martz 5-6). Critics of early Pentecostals, from both fundamentalist and mainline denominations, argued that the experiential component of traditional Pentecostalism was immature, hysterical, psychotic, and perhaps demonic [...] It is true that a minority of Pentecostal events were shallow pep rallies or even rigged media circuses. However, this view of Pentecostal experience fails to appreciate the profounder experiential nature of Pentecostalism. When classical Pentecostals were baptized in the Holy Spirit, it was a life-altering event [...] Such a spiritual experience was simply supernatural (Patterson 198). With the advent of radio and the rise of televangelism, Pentecostals have become less marginal since the 1940s, and one theorist declares that Christianity at large has slowly become more “Pentecostalized,” by embracing an “a-rational means of knowing” (Rybarczyk 3) and eschewing the elitist and racist forms of worship that characterized more traditional branches of Christendom. It was during this period that America was ripe to welcome Marjoe Gortner to its pulpits. “World’s Youngest Ordained Minister” I think religion is a drug. It’s addicting. Can God deliver a religion addict? -Marjoe Gortner Rather than a series of miracles guided by the hand of God, Marjoe’s story seems to have been orchestrated by the comedians responsible for Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1979), and one has to wonder if the former had any influence on the latter. The similarities between both stories abound: exasperated reactions of our reluctant protagonists to their fanatical surroundings, irreverent punchlines delivered at the emotional heights of mob lynchings, and a parochial society providing a seemingly endless supply of gullibility to meet the demands of its rapacious elite. The 1973 biography Marjoe: The Life of Marjoe Gortner is a page-turning polemic: it recounts Marjoe’s early training and life on the road; his rebellion against his tyrannical mother Marge and survival in the secular world; his return to the gospel circuit to make some money and his moral conflict upon fully appreciating the power he wielded; ending abruptly as he drives toward New York City in pursuit of a new life. There are no endnotes, references, or bibliography. All we have to go on are anecdotes, which Steven S. Gaines presumably wove together after interviews with key players, but who they were is not made clear. This might be to preserve their anonymity, but that seems unlikely since all the names and pictures in the book seem to correlate to actual people. Gaines relies heavily on the techniques of fiction to make his narrative more compelling; however, this can at times call into question his credibility and the historical accuracy of scenes which could only be reconstructed by consulting the very people who were least interested in having the story come to light.

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