
I went to a Gospel Singing with my parents on Saturday. At the midpoint of the show they stopped the singing and each of the three acts took turns promoting their merchandise. They took up about 15 minutes of the show with this. I'd never seen anything so shameless. It was KISS level huckstering. These two items were among the products on offer by the headliners Legacy 5.
I won't even go into how antagonistic that t-shirt is. I'll just let it stand on it's own. I will say that they know it's antagonistic because they said "If you want to see people turn and walk the other way wear this shirt."
But that Bible though. The leader of Legacy 5, Scott Fowler said he made a deal with the publisher. To get the price down he had to purchase 6,000 copies, so naturally he was really pushing that particular item extra hard.
It's called the American Patriot Bible because for some reason it contains quotes and biographies from the Founding Fathers of the United States. It's purpose is to foster the idea that America is a Christian country, to try and tear down the wall separating Church and State. There is a strain of Christianity that hates the fact that their discredited ideas are losing ground with the American public, particularly where LGBT rights are concerned.
I love gospel singing and was really enjoying the performance, all three of the groups were fantastic singers. The voices and the harmonies filled me with gladness. Then Scott Fowler, the leader of Legacy 5, the headliners, stopped the show to talk. This was before even the intermission infomercial. He wanted to tell us a story which involved he and his wife's decision to pull their children out of public school and and home school them instead. He gave as his primary reason that they no longer teach the children anything about the Constitution, or the founding fathers, particularly, their Christian faith. Then he pulled out this Bible which he uses to educate his kids. He cited as an example Patrick Henry. He quoted from the book
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!" While sitting in the Pews I Googled this phrase. Turns out
it's fake.
After that I found it very difficult to enjoy the music.