After Listening All Day to a Revival-Style Retreat

I do not like being yelled at. Never have. Something must have happened when I was a child that I don’t remember, but I can’t stand someone shouting to prove their point, as if volume equals truth, especially when that person purports to be a person of God.

I feel if you have to scream your message to persuade or inspire, you don’t have much of a message. One speaking to a religious community should seek to inspire people to move in a unified direction and to feel they are not alone, but are supported by each other (including the speaker.)

But religious preaching and religion in general, shows its worse side when the goal is one of manipulation: to make everyone think the same, act the same, and feel the same (which is, of course the preacher’s set of belief.)

Churchill’s speech of “blood and sweat” was inspiring; any of the oratory of Hitler was manipulative.

Religious demagoguery convinces you that, not only do you face an evil enemy, but that enemy is YOU. Only by doing what the shouters and screamers say will you be spared.

“Don’t follow leaders. Watch your parking meters.”