• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    People love to rip on Joel Osteen for pushing feel-good nothingburgers on an audience of the desperate and vulnerable. And they’re not entirely unfair in doing so. Dude is a shameless parasite who has crafted the illusion of charity over his empire of graft.

    That said, his message and his politics are largely fluff. He’s the “Just Pray More” panacea guy, but he goes out of his way to be inoffensive in order to maximize his market share.

    If you want to see a real freak, take a quick car ride over to the Houston Second Baptist Church. Ed Young is Houston’s own little Antichrist. He’s cultivating an audience of the most blood drenched reactionary psychos the state has to offer. He placates their egos by promising them a seat in God’s Kingdom in exchange for their ruthlessness, their brutality, and their bigotry. Where Joel is an empty suit, full of false hope and hollow cheer, Ed Young is a Drummer Boy of Mamon, urging his congregation onward to new heights of depraved cruelty.

    If you want to know where the folks who want to roll coal and lock up pregnant women and torture LGBT folks straight and glass Palestine go to church, its not Lakewood.