{"id":2696,"date":"2020-02-18T12:36:06","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T10:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/?p=2696"},"modified":"2024-08-07T10:22:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T08:22:14","slug":"false-teachers-promoted-by-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/?p=2696","title":{"rendered":"False Teachers Promoted by Bars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thursday morning at 11:00 am I arrived in Mpombo, the\nwestern section of Valdezia to visit house by house and begin Bible studies in\nongoing efforts to evangelize. The houses display a mix of the middle class and\nthe poor. But as I walked between them, I heard a Tsonga man \u201cpreaching\u201d in\nEnglish while a Tsonga woman translated after him into Tsonga. Because the\ngrass was growing tall, I could not see the unusual church that would have a\nservice on Thursday morning. The man shouted that \u201call my enemies will fall\nbefore me\u201d along with all the other mantras of the prosperity religion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Tsonga home in Valdezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, I met two men on the road who were both drunk\nand carrying bottles away from the sound of the \u201cpreaching.\u201d I spoke with them\nbriefly about their souls, but they could not carry any serious thought.\nShortly after them, I reached a beautiful home with a gardener and a decorated\nwall. The woman at home kindly told me that the bottle store (bar, see the\nphoto) next door was owned by her and that she played these things from the TV\nin order to attract people to drink there. The two men I had met came from this\nplace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The tavern that played the Prosperity preachers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So here is the situation: A shouting preacher is being blasted by enormous speakers from a tavern throughout a large swath of Mpombo. The owner and the inhabitants appear to find no noticeable incongruity between the religious message or the business of alcohol. Why? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The Prosperity Gospel appeals to the base sentiment of globalized entertainment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The overall volume combines with the undulating rhythms of the speaker\u2019s voice. He has copied so many television preachers<\/a> that he can bounce and screech in an ear-catching way. There is a lot about vague \u201cenemies\u201d who are trying to \u201ctake you down.\u201d And there is a lot of God-talk about a salvation without the Cross from the demons of poverty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The Prosperity Gospel soothes carnal habits rather than confronting sin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing about this kind of preaching would awaken a drunkard. There is no word of warning unless the preacher begins to shout about someone \u201ccoming out from under my umbrella of authority.\u201d I have a newspaper behind me on my shelf from a prosperity preacher in this area announcing that sex before marriage does not matter. I don\u2019t think most Africans in the rural areas are surprised at these things because they have grown up nourished with a diet of ATR<\/a> over which they don the clothes of Prosperity<\/a>. Many in the West however accept this as Christian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The Prosperity Gospel bypasses the Christian God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no tremendous lightning and fire coming from the\nMountain to terrify sinners. There is no heart-stopping grace to melt hard\nhearts. There is no exaltation. A man might understand and enjoy the\npresentation of this kind of religion immediately without the interposition of\na new heart or even any conviction of sin. Though it is loud, it deadens the\nsenses by an entire visceral experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mind of the average person in the rural areas,\nalcohol is immediately and intrinsically connected to drunkenness. The rural\nmind takes alcohol as antithetical to Christianity because traditional brewing took\nplace among the Tsongas after the harvest and lasted a number of days during\nwhich drunkenness and sexual sins were commonplace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point of this post is to demonstrate not the evil of beer, but the unconscious statement that the dominant religion in the villages fits neatly with the culture of the bar. It does not call for and could not co-exist with holiness, repentance, Bible study, reflection, or Christian faith. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday morning at 11:00 am I arrived in Mpombo, the western section of Valdezia to visit house by house and begin Bible studies in ongoing efforts to evangelize. The houses display a mix of the middle class and the poor. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[541],"tags":[420,357,361],"class_list":["post-2696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accounts-of-african-religion","tag-atr","tag-missions","tag-prosperity-gospel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3QrZa-Hu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2699,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions\/2699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}