Tag Archives: christianity

How to Fake a War on Christianity Featuring Pastor Michael Salman

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DID YOU KNOW THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS CRACKING DOWN ON CHRISTIAN PRAYER?!?



Oh… you didn’t know that? That’s probably because it’s not a real thing. Christianity is safe in the U.S.A. Ain’t nobody gonna kick Jesus out anytime soon.



In fact, Christianity is so safe in this country that it thinks “persecution” means “not getting to do every fucking thing you want all the time ever forever”. Christianity is the rich kid at America High and their version of persecution is getting a different car than the one they wanted for their 16th birthday. Waaaaahhh.



That’s kind of harsh. I really don’t have a mad on for Christianity. What I hate is when some Christians in this country try to create a martyrdom where is none. They think a loss in privilege means a loss in freedom so they lash out at any and all perceived threats. Then they spin the story to make them seem like the put upon victim. I found a perfect example yesterday in this story on foxnews.com’s front page –



Oh shit!





What? No way!. I read the story thinking that maybe the headline was just meant to shock you into reading but once you got to the story it’d be a lot tamer but it wasn’t! Here’s the story –



Michael Salman is this god fearin’ dude that loved to get together with his pals and read some bible in his living room every week. Pretty soon some more friends wanted in on the bible study and after a while over a dozen people were doing this and his living room was getting a little cramped. He built himself a little secondary building where he and his bible buddies could get their pray on but the city government slapped him with a citation, saying if over a dozen people are gonna pray in a building it needs to be classified as a church (or a public school if you’re Texas). Michael Salman tried to explain that they weren’t a church, he wasn’t collecting money, they were just praying in his backyard shed. The city told him to stop but you can’t stop a good Christian from reading the bible with a dozen or more friends so now he’s serving 60 days in jail! Jail! For reading the bible!



This can’t be right. I googled “Michael Salman” to see if I could get a side of the story that isn’t so “Fox Fair and Balanced” but it seemed that the only news sites other than Fox that were reporting it were even more conservative than Fox. The Blaze, The Examiner and The Christian Post all told the same story, each posting the same picture of Pastor Salman surrounded by his loving family –



“Don’t send our daddy to prison!”


their respective comments sections filled to the brim with all caps declarations on how religious freedom in this country is eroding and how Muslims are probably responsible.



Funny thing about that story is that it’s like at least %50 bullshit.



Turns out the Alt Weekly for Phoenix has been doing stories on this guy since day 1 (check them out here!). Here’s the abridged version –



* Michael Salman moves to this nice, quiet neighborhood where the houses have big back yards. He’s a man who likes him some God. He’s a minister for Harvest Christian Fellowship and holds small services in his living room when not preaching on youtube about how you shouldn’t be nice to people who hold different beliefs than you –
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiANZHWx-84&w=420&h=315]
He wants to build a big ol’ church with a basketball court and daycare center and a giant inflatable Jesus floating around (okay I made that last one up) in his backyard.



* Salman’s neighbors ain’t exactly pleased with sharing a back yard with a mega church since that’ll send the property values plummeting and turn their quiet little neighborhood into a loud, congested mess.



* Neighbors fight Salman and win. He can’t build a church in his back yard. Salman withdraws his church plans and then submits plans to the city planner to build a “game room” in his backyard. The city planner, recognizing him from five minutes ago, asks if he’s going to use this game room as a Church. Michael Salman says he will not use the room as a public church. This is a lie.



* Neighbors tip off the cops that Salman might be having church in his “game room”. Salman says it’s merely a bible study and not a church. In his game room are 140 seats, a podium and a portrait of the last supper. You know, like a church. There’s a six foot white cross on his front lawn next to a four by eight foot sign for announcements. You know, like you’d see in front of a church. 50 or more people (numbers vary depending on who you ask) gather there every Sunday to hear Michael Salman, who they call “pastor”, talk about the bible for 1-2 hours. You know, like a church.



* Cops and city inspectors remind him that they said he can’t have a church there. They also point out that his game room is horribly unsafe and there’s a reason commercial zoning is different than residential. See, if you plan on having over 50 people in a place on a weekly basis, you need to make sure that there’s fire sprinklers, properly marked exits, handicap access and permanent wiring as opposed to just a bunch of extension cords (just a few of the dozens of code violations).



* Salman gets warnings, tickets and numerous letters from the city stating he can’t have a church in his back yard. Rather than trying to reach a compromise with neighbors (all who hate him now. His next door neighbor successfully filed a restraining order against him) or complying with the city, he just keeps on Churching and ignoring everybody. Eventually the citations pile up and now he has to go to jail.


So there you go. Michael Salman didn’t go to jail for hosting a home bible study. Despite what Fox, Glenn Beck, The Examiner etc. would have you believe, nobody’s going to jail for having a few friends over to read the bible. Michael Salman went to jail for having a church in his backyard, lying about it, pissing off his neighbors, putting his parishioners in danger by gathering in an unsafe building and ignoring multiple warnings from the city. He’s not a martyr or an example of the erosion of religious freedoms. He’s a stubborn man who thinks religious freedom means immunity from everything.



So shut up, Christians. You’re fine. Nobody’s persecuting you so wipe the tears from your eyes and go back to trying to run everything.

Would You Like to Join My Religion? No? What if I Gave You a Boring, Sneaky Brochure?

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I think the Jehova’s Witnesses are targeting me specifically.



I don’t know what it is. Maybe I had a little too much fun on my birthday and it pissed them off. Maybe one of them saw me hand out fliers for a comedy show and thought those skills would translate well into handing out pamphlets about the bible or whatever but they’ve got it in for me.


The latest sneak attack happened this morning when I was on a walk in my ongoing attempt to be less goddamn fat. I was walking down lake street when a woman in a van parked on the side of the road leaned out the passenger side and said “would you like something to read?” and handed me a pamphlet.



That man’s got the look of a man who trusts what he’s reading.





I took the pamphlet to be polite, gave her a quick nod, mumbled “thank you” and kept walking. I didn’t need to look at it to know it was a Jehova’s Witness thing. Of course it was. Nobody else just gives you something to read without first explaining what they’re handing you. Even the Mormons are nice enough to wear uniforms and ask up front if you want to talk about Jesus. The Jehova’s Witnesses just hit and run. They want you to convert but won’t say it out loud in public. It’s Jehova’s Witness Protection Program (#mynewbandname).



The biggest pamphlet assault against me happened several years ago. I was doing mortgage collections for a huge bank (let’s call them Fells Wargo). It was an awful job. I was making huge paychecks via commission and just blowing them on booze every night to try to forget what I did to earn the money to buy the booze. Almost every day at work was spent hungover and the person sitting next to me was a Jehova’s Witness.



She never said she was. She let her pamphlets do the talking.



Sometimes the calls were slow and since the internet had a “block anything fun” filter on it I would usually bring in a book to read. Once we were working together on Christmas eve because I needed the money and it was just another day to her. There were no calls coming in and I spent most of the day reading Siddhartha. At one point in the day she looked at the book in my hands and said “Siddhartha? What’s that book about?” I told her it was a story about a man in India who left his home searching for enlightenment in the time of Buddha.



She said “Hm. He sounds like a good man. Do you know who the best man ever was? Jesus.”



A few weeks later I was at my desk reading and she was at hers looking at me, just searching for a way to start a conversation about Jesus. She reached into her purse and said “you like reading so much. I got something you can read if you like.” and handed me a pamphlet that said “How Can Blood Save Your Life”.



No mention of Jesus on the cover. Jehova’s Witness sneak attack!”





You can read the whole pamphlet here. It basically starts out with some 6th grade science about what blood does and then tells you you shouldn’t get blood transfusions because the bible said “”Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. . . . But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it” (i.e. don’t eat raw meat, dumbass). Then they liken blood transfusions to cannibalism and say it’s unsafe because it was unsafe 200 years ago.



She asked what I thought and I told her that I donate blood regularly, showing her my red cross card. I then told her a couple of personal stories of relatives and friends who would have died without blood transfusions and then she said “I don’t know… having someone else’s blood in me just seems weird. Yuck!” During my break I went to my supervisor demanding to be moved to a different desk.



The very next day I moved to my new desk but only worked a half day because I was driving up to a small town in North Dakota to tell some jokes. I was driving up with the host and headliner telling them about the Jehova’s Witness who wouldn’t leave me alone and the pamphlets. When we arrive at the hotel and check in I look at the coffee table in the lobby and it’s strewn with Watchtower magazines. I yell out “THEY FOLLOWED ME” and the front desk clerk looked at me and said “What?”



I said “Nothing! Inside joke… ha ha” and he looked at me like I was crazy which was good because then maybe he wouldn’t talk to me about Jesus.



I will say they’ve got one of the more attractive Jesuses. Soulful, not too thin, well groomed. Tell me you wouldn’t hit that.