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Worst Evangelical Blog Post Ever

John Mark Reynolds of Houston Baptist University tries his hand at parodying the narcissistic, confessional style of a certain kind of middle-class Evangelical, who may or may not be emergent, but who is certainly full of himself. Excerpt: Authenticity is hard, requiring vulnerability, openness, and an acceptance of the fact that we are all on […]

John Mark Reynolds of Houston Baptist University tries his hand at parodying the narcissistic, confessional style of a certain kind of middle-class Evangelical, who may or may not be emergent, but who is certainly full of himself. Excerpt:

Authenticity is hard, requiring vulnerability, openness, and an acceptance of the fact that we are all on a journey made up of unfulfilled dreams, dreams often inauthentic to who we would be if we could each just be the me God made me to be. To be authentic is to rip away the Band-Aids of “orthodoxy” or Church-ianity and be real with ourselves and each other.

Society calls us “lepers,” the way ancient cultures called lepers “lepers,” but we are lepers without the disease and that marginalization is raw, as raw as bears mauling boys for calling out a prophet: impiety tartar. I would use raw words, but Christian sub-culture has left me profanity neutered unable to achieve the cathartic release of swearing. The journal of my journey will be muted, my trumpets of profanity stilled by the privileged pious.

The journey we are on is personal, but also communitarian. Nobody can take the steps I am taking for me, but other people are walking too. We may not be going to the same place or doing the same thing, but we are united by our going.

Read the whole thing, especially the Sea World part. Hilarious.

Any of you readers care to try your hand at the Worst Catholic Blog Post Ever, or the Worst Orthodox Blog Post Ever? I once wrote a self-parody — basically, the Worst Rod Dreher Post Ever — but can’t find it. If any of you can locate it, please post the link.

UPDATE: James C. came through with that Rod Dreher self-parody blog post. It started out with me riffing on a Thomas Friedman parody post based on the question, “What If Thomas Friedman Wrote For The IHOP Menu?” Well, what if Rod Dreher did? It would look like this:

When I was Catholic, I loved plain pancakes, with nothing but butter and cane syrup. Then came the abuse scandal, and I lost my ability to enjoy pancakes in the old, uncomplicated way. Dante held that breakfast is the consolation God provides to those who have endured a dark night of non-snacking, though really, in this post-Christian age of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, can we really say we take the morning meal seriously enough? I have to read MacIntyre’s After Pop-Tarts sometime. Anyway, the other day, preoccupied with all things pancake, I was thinking back to how my lesbian Great Aunt Jemima — no, really, that was her name; she used to catch hell for that from American merchant marine sailors back when she sang cabaret in a waterfront boîte in Brest — so, anyway, years later, after my ancient great aunt had returned to Louisiana, she’d dose her morning coffee withmarc and go on and on about how much better Breton galettes were than our common pancakes. How my sister hated her for that, and silently prayed to her plainspoken Methodist God for our great aunt to serve those haughty French pancakes one morning so she could refuse to eat them. I had no such rusticated scruples, naturally, and years later, pricking galettes with my fork at a café off the Rue Mouffetard, I could hear the ghost of Aunt Jemima — not kidding! Her spirit actually stood at my left shoulder! — badgering me about the view from my table, and it occurred to me that now might an opportunity to ask the waiter what made galettes taste so special. “Buckwheat flour, monsieur,” he said. So that’s it! Anyway, so if I’m thinking about the pancakes I really want to have, it’s going to be one made with buckwheat flour, because hey, France! Here in America, though, it’s hard to find flour made from buckwheat. Might as well just satisfy yourself with our delicious stack of four hearty whole wheat pancakes, and make them even more special with lightly sweetened blueberries straight from our local farmer’s market — you know, the booth run by ol’ Needlenose, who’s been mute ever since he caught the parish priest buggering his brother. Man, if I had been there, I would have cut that SOB’s tallywacker off with a butter knife [NFR: Apologies; I let my emotions get the best of me there. — RD]. Look, these things are great, trust me, especially with a light dusting of powdered sugar that mediates the kind of culinary grace that purifies and sanctifies one’s intellection (“The mind herein attains simplicity” — Wallace Stevens). On the other hand, these bad boys will make you really disgustingly fat, so maybe just have the oatmeal with Splenda. I don’t know. Thoughts?

 

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