More on blasphemy

by Feòrag

Roz Kaveney remembered to watch Jerry Springer - The Opera and made a few pertinant observations in her LiveJournal. First she notes the despicable behaviour of the alleged Christians protesting about the show:

My reaction to 'Jerry Springer the Musical' was what I thought instantly when very tired. However, I am now angry because of the death threats against television executives and the proposed blasphemy prosecution. One of the reasons for my anger is that the Evangelical Christians are lying again - they claimed 8000 swear words by counting every individual chorus members' every individual curse, for one thing. For another, they claimed that Jesus was represented as a coprophiliac baby fetishist, whereas the truth is that the same actor plays both parts, and the nappy for the one becomes the loin cloth for the other. There is no more identity between the characters claimed than there is when the actor who plays the bisexual multiple adulterer turns up as God the Father. This is known as bearing false witness against your neighbour - when it results in death threats after posting peoples' home addresses alongside lies, it becomes incitement.

The site should be prosecuted, but it won't be.

Then follows an intersting analysis of the show, and how it could be read as a positive religious statement:

There is a more interesting reading which shows us the dysfunctional people who go on the Springer show and suggests that the characters of Christian mythology are not as unlike them as all that. And it does not say so entirely in a ' there is something of God in all of us' idealistic way - it is saying that, viewed objectively, the power struggles of God and Satan, and the treatment of Adam and Eve, and even the decision of Jesus to leave his mother to her fate because of the overpowering demands of his mission, are as dysfunctional as adultery, fetishism and other pastimes.

She concludes with an interesting observation about idolatry.

One of the reasons why I am not a Christian is that it seems to me that to worship any sort of God human minds are capable of creating is to commit idolatry - we are not big enough or clever enough to know what sort of being inhabits the spiritual realm.

Jerry Springer 2 and other stuff - Roz Kaveney's Journal, 10th January 2005. See also 'Christians' show complete lack of faith in God - Pagan Prattle, 10th January 2005.