Perhaps you all remember reading
"Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards, which was penned in 1741, in High School. You probably studied it at the same time as the Salem Witch Trials. What both these historical events represent is the far-reaching, absurdity of evangelical hysteria.
The Religious Right's movement in this country has its foundation in Edwards' brand of fear-mongering, angry-God based rhetoric. These preachers play on the notion of a vengeful God, seeking to punish his creations.
The main tactic used to keep the cattle in line in these speeches is fire and brimstone. As Edwards said in 1741:
More on the flip...
Therefore natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, His anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of His wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment: the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and are eager to grab hold of them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out; and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged patience, of an incensed God.
That's right, you are all sinners, and it's only God's whimsy that keeps you from the fires of Hell. Too bad God's wrath hasn't come in the 250 years since Edwards gave his doom-and-gloom scenario.
This rhetoric continues, telling people just how unworthy they are:
Your wickedness makes you as heavy as lead, and adds a downwards tendency with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf; and your good health, and your own care and prudence, and best plans for salvation, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.
And the fundis eat this stuff up, they'd eat it up today. They would believe they are the few choosen ones, who are being salvaged by God's hand.
Consider this, you that are here, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fury of His anger, implies, that He will inflict wrath without any pity. When God looks upon the inexpressible circumstances of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom; He will have no compassion upon you, He will not withhold the executions of His wrath, or in the least lighten His hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God stop His destroying wind; be will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful for fear that you should suffer too much in any other sense, than only that you shall "not suffer beyond what strict justice requires."
Somehow all of this doesn't gel with Jesus the forgiver and Jesus the compasionate.
Hard to believe that 250 years after Rev. Edwards took to his pulpit to declare we are all on the brink of moral doom, our world is still around. These fundis have been decrying civilization since they stepped onto Plymouth Rock. The Founding Fathers dealt with them then, how do we deal with them now?
Somehow govenrment isn't capable of making better schools, or helping people find jobs, but it's great at legislating morality.
Go figure.