TONY SPELL, Louisiana pastor of Life Tabernacle Church, is using his position of leadership in a church and the power of religion as a means to prey upon the weak, the frightened and the most vulnerable people in his care. He has now proposed his “Stimulus Challenge”, to convince his flock to turn over their stimulus checks to “”North American Evangelists and missionaries”.
This pastor has had his church open for all Lent and Easter services, defying the state’s mandate to avoid large gatherings. Spell justified his packed church on Easter by says that “the word of God commands us to assemble together” and insists that the civil rights movement discriminates against his parishioners. He bragged on an interview this morning that people from 16 different states have appeared at his services. He evidently thinks that having these worshipers place themselves and others at risk of catching and spreading the virus is a bona fide statement of their faith, since “True Christians do not mind dying” from the virus because they’d be doing so in the name of God and freedom!
This pastor blithely utters such Biblical quotations as “The day that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we will fear no evil for God is with us” claiming that any pure religious person looks upon death as a welcome friend. Perhaps Tony Spell does not mind the deaths of members of his flock, and perhaps they themselves do not mind dying, but I do. I mind them bringing sickness and possible death to their fellow men.
His carefully chosen Biblical references glorifying death for Christians make me wonder what he would have to say about the encounter Christ had with the Devil, who was urging him to throw himself off the roof of a building because God would save him. As I recollect, the response given by Jesus was something about not putting The Lord Thy God to the test.
This slickly-groomed, well-fed pastor brags that he is donating his stimulus check, along with the checks of his wife and son to the Evangelical cause, but doesn’t mention whether or not doing so will leave him without funds for food or mortgage payments. Is he indeed making a personal sacrifice or has he just devised a tricky way to relieve the needy of their much needed stimulus funds? Judging by the smartness of his dress, I’d be willing to guess that he has plenty of funds with which to weather the storm and I’d love to see the place he calls home. His Baton Rouge church is certainly well above the norm as the average church building goes and I’m sure uses up a great deal of weekly offering funds to maintain.
These constant pleas for more and more money from those least able to provide it by the likes of Tony Spell and others like Joel Osteen, the Bakers, Jim Jones, through their self-centered power trips and greedy life styles, have caused more harm to religion and done more to turn people away from Christianity than any of the anti-Christian philosophers and humanists possibly could manage to do.