The Second District of Virginia is the cities of Virginia Beach and Norfolk and the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Pretty diverse group with the majority being made up of the conservative city of Virginia Beach, home to Pat Robertson, Regent University and a populace still reeling from Greekfest '89.
Oh, there are nice things about Vabeach. There's a beach. The schools aren't awful and there's a fair amount to do. But what I really came here to do is talk about our large community of religious fundamentalists and what they reveal about themselves to their neighbors.
Back in the eighties, when Pat Robertson was gearing up to take over the world he rented space in an office building in Virginia Beach. I worked remodeling the space while it was still occupied by Robertson. Even then his employees were required to attend a long prayer meeting at noon. If Robertson still has his faculties he will remember the day somebody working on the job lit up a particularly pungent doobie in the room next door to his pontificating. Since the ceiling tiles were missing it didn't take long to spread to the meeting. I know for a fact they never found the culprit. However when it came time to build CBN University Robertson had learned his lesson. The contractors were told not to bid unless they drug tested the on site personnel. Hi Ho.
In the early nineties I lived in an apartment building where I shared a common wall with an administrator type from what was then CBN and his wife. One night a severely anorexic woman knocked on my door. After some chit-chat she finally gets around to telling me why she came over. You see the poor wraith's husband can hear my stereo and it makes him mad, its not loud enough to complain about she knows, but can I do something so he won't get so mad. And please don't say anything to him. He's an important man at CBN and he was very devout. Devout like the Taliban, and this miserable woman's life was a living hell. I rearranged the living room and stopped playing the stereo at night.
Tonight a friend called me, he was very upset. He has been laid-off. Yesterday he had swallowed his pride and gone to get some food from Rock Church.
Rock Church is another one of those television ministries that rake in millions of tax free dollars plucked directly from your grannie's wallet. I remember when they first came to town back when I was in high school. The Rev. John Jiminez had come to Virginia Beach from the mean streets of New York and he was going around to the schools giving cautionary talks about how his prostitute sister died of a heroin overdose but he had given his life to Jesus. Rev. John is dead now but his widow Ann is still rolling.
I went to Rock Church one time when a friend's mother was visiting from Boston and simply had to go. They performed healings and the entire congregation spoke in tongues. When the service was over the minister said, "Now you visitors give what you want but for the members its ten percent."
But I digress. My friend went to this church to get some food and they forced him to sit through what he had expected to be sermon but what ended up being an hour long rant about how a turban wearing Muslim A-rab was living in the White House, and the Muslim race were the descendents of a man having sex with a prostitute who was his wife's maid. For an hour this went on and then they gave him four bags of stale bread some out of date 7-11 sanwiches and some expired lunchmeat and yogurt. He had to throw it all away.
I'm not the least bit suprised by this . Neither was my friend. It was Rock Church. What I was was mad. But I feel much better now that I got all that off my chest.