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Available by subscription only, Insight Into Government is Alberta's independent, weekly newsletter on policy and politics. On this Web site we have provided a free sample of Insight Into Government, subscription and contact information, related links, as well as the feature column below which is available only online. All material on this site remains the copyright of MSL Publishing Ltd. |
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Excerpt from The Klein Revolution: Technically it was not a church. It was called a Christian Centre. It lacked the usual Christian symbols. The interior had blank walls, intense stage lights, theatre seats with no racks for Bibles or hymnals. The service opened with a half-hour floor show by a seven-piece band and well-trained singers. The pastor came out in a sharply cut downtown suit. He mentioned that the grand piano behind him cost $35,000. His money pitch lasted a good half-hour. The idea was to “throw money at the altars” although this place had no altar. Sowing a sacrifice of money every week would produce success and rewards. This would happen supernaturally. The church of prosperity had no comfortable place for the weak and the failed. “I love to be on the right side,” the pastor said. “I hate to be on the losing side.” When he finally began his hour-long sermon it had a strangely disconnected structure. He jumped from one chapter of the Bible to another. He said the Word was reality. But words were missing from his sermon. It was all noise and picture. Sometimes he tried to revise the meaning of words. He said that “peace” in the Bible meant “success.” Sometimes he babbled in tongues. This was not religion. This was television taking on the form of religion. The church was a television studio. The Word had become sound bites. The congregation was part of the stage set. They had mostly arrived in the parking lot in cheap compact cars and six-year-old sedans. They were there to buy hope. . . . But even in the church of prosperity, where ushers roamed up and down the aisles staring at the congregation, there had been moments of quiet dissent. The pastor got into a complicated analogy about mirrors. He started joking about wives having a daily ritual of looking at themselves. They spend four hours a day in front of mirrors, he said. He had the crowd laughing for a good five minutes. One woman who appeared to be in her sixties held her Bible, looked at him and kept her lips pressed tight. She finally muttered something that sounded like, “That’s stupid.” |
