After keeping his doors locked while Texas drowned, Joel Osteen invites flood survivors into his church and then tries to fleece them.

Courtesy of Newsweek:  

A televangelist whose church closed its doors during Hurricane Harvey claims that he is the victim of “misinformation” and told flood victims not to have a “poor me” attitude. 

In his Sunday sermon, multimillionaire pastor Joel Osteen addressed the criticism that has been directed at him after his 16,000 seat Houston megachurch initially closed its doors during the storm, in which thousands of people were left homeless and 40 were killed. 

Pictures and video posted on social media showed the church apparently undamaged by the storm, and Osteen initially claimed he had not opened its doors because he had not been asked to by the state. The church re-opened Tuesday, as floodwaters began to recede. 

“You know I really believe in these times of difficulty it's, for me, certainly not the time to question your faith but to turn to your faith because God is the one that gives you the strength to make it through the difficult times," he said in a video of Sunday's sermon posted on YouTube. 

“We are not going to understand everything that happens but, you know, having a 'poor old me' mentality or 'look what I lost' or 'why did this happen', that's just going to pull you down. Like we've been talking about all night, you just got to turn it over and say 'God you're still on the throne'.”

Yeah don't get a "poor old me" attitude just because your home was swept away by the flood and you lost everything. After all on the bright side Joel Osteen's church was completely untouched and he is still a very, very wealthy man.

However as bad as this completely out of touch sentiment was, it was not the worst of it.

On Saturday, the day before Osteen made his comments, his sister led a service.

Courtesy of Nova Magazine:  

In a video from a Saturday service at Lakewood Church, his sister Lisa Osteen Comes asks for the Hurricane Harvey survivors to stand up so that people could “touch” and “lay hands” on them. Before she does that though, she sends the ushers into the auditorium to start passing around collection plates. As they do, she throws out false words of comfort and carefully avoids ever telling these poor people that the church would help them. Instead, she keeps saying that God will. 

“All these people who stood tonight, they have needs, and financial needs, and you know, I just feel like we should pray for them that God is going to bless them with unprecedented favor in the next coming days and the next coming weeks and the next coming months because you know they have a lot of calls to make, they have a lot of work to get done, and their lives were so interrupted, but you know what we can trust God that it will go smoother than anyone could ever imagine.” 

Comes then called for the congregation to “touch them, hold hands with them…let’s touch them, let’s just let them know we’re praying for them and let’s believe right now that God is going to move supernaturally in their favor.”

So yes this woman actually sent out ushers to ask for donations from the people who had just lost EVERYTHING.

Comes actually went a little further than that and suggested that the flooding might turn out to be a good thing as God will likely reward them with better homes and more prosperity.

That is the trick that these people use to convince morons to give them their last nickle in the belief that God will reward their generosity with great wealth, health, and happiness.

It's really too bad that I don't believe in Hell, because if ever there were people who deserved a standing reservation in that place it is these slimy pieces of shit.

A black minister, in Georgia of all places, has called out Christians for their hypocrisy concerning "teh gays."

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Pastor E. Dewey Smith of the House of Hope, Greater Travelers Rest church in Decatur gave an impassioned sermon, posted to YouTube on Thursday, in which he slammed church leaders for judging gay people but “you change wives like we change underwear.” 

“‘These folks are an abomination, they are nasty,’ tell you what you do then. Go find every song that’s been written by a gay person for the last 100 years and don’t sing it in church,” he said, as the church congregation cheered him on. “Let’s see how many songs you can minister on that Sunday.” 

He went on to criticize the habit of picking and choosing which parts of the Bible to adhere to, based on what is socially advantageous or convenient, but ignore it when it gets in the way of business. 

“We demonize and dehumanize the same people that we use and we don’t say nothing about the gay choir director because he’s good for business” Smith said. “As long as the choir sound good, I ain’t saying nothing about his sexuality. We have done what the slave master did to us. Dehumanize us, degrade us, demonize us, but then use them for our advantage.”

 I can honestly say that there are VERY few times in which I will shout "Amen."

But in this case "A-fricking-men!!!"

Now see if the Christian church hopes to survive in this country, THESE are the types of sermons we need to start hearing a whole lot more.

Florida preacher brags about "male leadership" sign. "It's a man's world."

Courtesy of Raw Story:

During a March 29 sermon about leadership, which was recently highlighted by the Friendly Atheist blog and the Bad Preachers YouTube account, Pastor Bill Lytell of the Gospel Baptist Church told his congregation he was proud to have a “male leadership” sign outside the church because “this is a man’s world.” 

Lytell said that after a 9-year-old boy found a gun in the church’s bathroom last month, he was happy that a local media outlet filmed the “male leadership” sign during its coverage of the incident. 

“And that’s going to go out throughout the whole country. Do you know what we’d have had to pay to do something like that?” he remarked. “That was probably a hundred thousand dollar gift. I’m not going to thank the person that left the weapon, however.” 

“Don’t you be ashamed you go to a church with male leadership,” Lytell said. “Every church that’s right with God oughta have a sign: ‘Male Leadership.’ Because that’s the only kind of leadership, both from Adam all the way to the last part of the Bible. It’s all been male. This is a man’s world!”

And that folks is why, according to the Fundamentalists, women cannot be expected to control their own reproductive organs.

After all, they're just womenfolk. 

Pastor dares to give sermon criticizing the "American Sniper" movie, loses his job. Just a coincidence of course.

Courtesy of Alternet:  

On February 10th, MidAmerica Nazarene University's (MNU) chaplain Randy Beckum gave his morning sermon, which wasn't unusual – it was his job. But what was different that day was the response to the sermon – as one student paper put it, the sermon sparked an “outcry” and a torrent of criticism particularly on social media. The criticism ranged from complaints that Beckum had politicized his sermons to the idea that he had insulted Christians who served in the military.

...

Beckum's sermon that day was about America's addiction to violence, citing the film “American Sniper” as a symptom of that, and how this was problematic for Christianity, a religion founded on the ideals of nonviolence. Here's an excerpt: 

"As you know two movies came out recently. Selma, the story of one of the 20th century most influential Christian leaders, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led a non-violent movement that changed the course of American History forever. And American Sniper, the story of the most deadly Navy SEAL sniper in American history. Selma has made 29-30 million so far. American Sniper made over 103 million in the first 4 days. Gives you an idea about who our heroes are. I don’t think it is an under-statement to say that our culture is addicted to violence, guns, war, revenge and retaliation. Unfortunately, so are a lot of Christians."

He went on to say that we have to “be very careful about equating patriotism with Christianity,” and implored his flock to be “controlled by love, compelled by love for everyone.” 

Shortly after Beckum's sermon, it was announced that he would no longer be the vice president of the university's Community Foundation.

Of course the university president claims that the sermon had nothing to do with Beckum's job loss, and that he was thinking of retiring from that position anyhow, but the pastor's daughter calls BS on that assertion.

Of course this should surprise none of us.

After all in this country you can suggest from the pulpit that Atheists are destroying the fabric of America, or suggest that Barack Obama is the antichrist, but when you dare to suggest that super duper sniper Chris Kyle was a violent thug, well then my friends THAT is when you cross the line!

Florida woman hears sermon about Abraham being stopped by an angel before murdering his son. Sadly no angel available when she acts it out and kills two year old girl.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A Florida woman is accused of drowning one child after trying to poison another, in what she described as accordance with a local pastor’s sermon, WPEC-TV reported on Wednesday. 

Kimberly Dawn Lucas is currently being held in Palm Beach County Jail in connection with the death of her former partner’s 2-year-old daughter and the attempted killing of the child’s 10-year-old brother at their home in Jupiter on Monday. 

Investigators said Lucas attended a sermon by Metropolitan Community Church pastor Lea Brown this past Sunday that covered the Biblical story of Abraham readying himself to sacrifice his son on orders from God, only to be stopped by God at the last minute. 

Lucas is accused of trying the same thing — trying to kill the two young children she was helping to raise, but she wrote in a suicide note that God didn’t step in and stop her, at least in the case of the 2-year-old girl. Lucas’ own suicide attempt failed. Police reportedly found Lucas’ message typed on a computer in the home. 

“In YOUR WORDS “WHEN YOU ARE LAYING IN BED AT NIGHT REMEMBER YOU F*CKING DID THIS TO YOURSELF!” the note stated. “Lea’s sermon really, really touched me yesterday but God never told me to stop. Hell is what we [go] through on Earth. Enjoyed your life with possiblego [sic] out without us, he manage but give you finally what you what want because apparently over the past 20 years I was not able to. Love you Always Kimberly. 

"What harm is there in taking the Bible literally?" they always ask.

Simply put some people are too emotionally fragile, or mentally unstable to be subjected to religion.