America 1982-Chapter 480 - 89: What does the Cult Leader Look Like?_2
Black Americans in the South have a deep-seated hatred for the Southern Baptist Church. Despite the abolishment of slavery over a hundred years ago and it now being the civilized year of 1989, the Southern Baptist Church still mandates that its member churches and families must display the Confederate flag.
It’s infamously known by another name: America’s last bastion for racist white Christians.
All black folks in the South despise this damn denomination, and that’s because, over two hundred years ago, the damn Southern Baptist missionaries in the South interpreted the Bible as a sign that God supported slavery, encouraging slaves to toil hard and to see their masters as family, to gather around them.
The missionaries brainwashed the black folks, telling them to accept their status as slaves willingly and to obey their white masters, and that they would ascend to heaven after death.
Not until the damn American Civil War broke out and a large number of black slaves escaped to the North did they realize that the teachings of the Bible they had heard in the Confederate South were completely different from those in the United States of the North.
Furthermore, in those Southern churches, a prerequisite for a white person to become a pastor was that he had to be a slave owner.
In the eyes of someone like Martin, a black man, the Southern Baptist Church was already an unabashedly racist cult, and now Tommy had found an even more extreme white church organization? 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮
"You’re going to help Jeff get sponsorships from the racist Southern Baptist Church?" Martin stepped quickly up to Tommy, "I bet if it comes out, you can forget about black folks in Haiti and Liberty City ever supporting him again."
Tommy took the last can of beer from Martin’s hand, opened the tab, and took a sip, "No, it’s another Christian denomination, a small branch. They don’t discriminate against black people, they have many black members, everyone is kind, although they are all poor, but everyone is just like angels, approachable."
"Then why... do you need to do so much preparation work? If they really are approachable, you could have... just gone and met with them directly." Nick didn’t believe a word coming out of Tommy’s mouth, "I know you often quote the Bible, you might know how to preach its doctrine better than many pastors... but these religious texts you mention are not even accessible to ordinary pastors, let alone the lay faithful."
"What do you imagine a Christian cult leader to be like?" Tommy set down his beer, picked up the first book, and asked Nick with a smile.
Tommy’s question plunged Nick into thought, and after a dozen seconds, he hesitantly said, "Someone like Jim Jones of the People’s Temple? A small-town guy, full of Bible verses, eloquent, always preaching altruism, dedication, and responsibility, but internally greedy, lascivious, and brutal. One minute he’s a believer in God, the next he can force his wife to accept atheism. Whether God exists for him is only dependent on whether he needs God in that moment."
"Boss, I have a question, the man... he mentioned, do I know him too?" After hearing Nick’s description of a cult leader, Martin decisively asked Tommy.
That description, apart from the name and the religion, was not just remarkably similar to his damn boss Tommy Hawk, it was exactly the same.
Tommy, sipping his beer and leaning back in his chair, said in a relaxed tone, "Martin touches on a very important point, which is, why would he think someone he’s never met, Jim Jones, is very similar to me? He hasn’t seen Jim Jones, only me. Why is that? Because he knows me, understands me. I don’t give a damn whether God exists or not. Jim Jones is the same kind of person; God is just a prop we use for our benefit, in our eyes, God and a Trojan are no different. When needed, we just slip it on, apply some lubricant to beautify it, and when I’m done with it, even looking at it disgusts me."
"Jim Jones believed in God, he went to church regularly for worship since he was thirteen, and he wouldn’t show such disrespect to God like you do," Nick said discontentedly, "You should revere God."
Tommy shrugged, "He went for the preacher’s wife. He was involved with the preacher’s wife at thirteen. He went to worship to make sure the preacher was busy, so he could take the chance to comfort the ripe, juicy wife at home. I was forced by my mother to go to church with my brother since I was five, but when I hit twelve and my little bird sprouted some feathers, I changed and started going to church willingly with a couple of buddies. And you know why? Because the pastor’s wife at the church near my house was really pretty... Two of us went to peep at her and the electrician’s affair, and one kept watch at the church. Yes, that’s how dull life in the countryside was without enough money for porn channels."
"And if Jim Jones truly revered God, he would never have crossbred the Bible with atheistic communism to concoct his People’s Temple. Did I mention it? If I hadn’t had the opportunity to study at Stanford University and had prepared to attend a seminary instead, thanks to my mother, I’d put a lot of effort into Christian scriptures. You wouldn’t stand a chance against me in religious debate, and your knowledge of Jim Jones doesn’t compare to mine. If I hadn’t made money for Stanford and had gone to the seminary instead, I might be serving as a pastor in some church right now, messing with kids while preaching."
