Plutocrap

It’s time to meet Jesusistani preacher Jack Schaap, the preacher (til the last few days) of one of America’s largest megachurches. Jack Schaap certainly has a lot of curious ideas when it comes to sexuality and Christianity. Let’s look at a few of them.

“Psalm 119:30 says, ‘I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me.’ That word laid is a sexual term which literally means the same thing as a man laying with a woman. God was saying that God’s laws should be as intimate as a marriage partner in a sexual liaison.”

“In the next verse [Ps 119:31], David gets more graphic. ‘I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O LORD, put me not to shame.’ That word stuck means the act of a man entering his wife; it is sexual intercourse. God says that the Word of God should be the Christian’s lover, and nothing should be closer to him than the Bible. The Words of God are supposed to be the most intimate lover of his life.“

“Lady, your husband wants you to play multiple roles. As a matter of fact, a husband probably would not mind if his wife played the role of an exotic dancer and danced for him in the privacy of their bedroom. A wife might say, ‘I couldn’t do that. I’m not that kind of woman!’ Would you rather your husband go to some gentleman’s club and have another woman give him what you will not?!“

Jack certainly has some interesting ideas, and he doesn’t hesitate to preach them from the pulpit.

He also, by all appearances, doesn’t hesitate to put action to his words.

Schaap, 54, was fired from First Baptist Church in Hammond on Tuesday after 11 years in the pulpit, a church spokesman told WBBM-TV.

Former First Baptist member Trisha Kee said Schaap left his cell phone behind and a deacon picked it up to bring it to him.

“The deacon then saw a text come through from a teenage girl in the church, and it was a picture of Jack Schaap and this girl making out,” she said.

The spokesman would not confirm the girl’s age, but said she was thought to be over 18. Others believe she is about 16, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Yeah, this is bad. This is downright awful. But this isn’t anything we wouldn’t expect from the pastor of a megachurch, is it?

Now let me tell you about some things you may not have expected.

Jack Schapp’s father-in-law used to preach at this church. Let’s have a look at the “fatherly advice” he gave to his daughter before she married Jack.

Cindy Schaap writes about her marriage and after having to deal with her young children all day, “…[that] can take away your desire for sex.” She then mentions the following, “My father sat down with me before I got married and told me over and over again the importance of the sexual relationship in marriage. So I did something to correct my feelings.“

What in the HELL does THAT mean?!? Who on Earth tells his daughter something like this?

Apparently this kind of a father.

Additionally, the foreword, written by her husband Jack Schaap, makes mention of how Dr. Hyles said, “…if we would wait one year longer and give him time to groom and polish her, that he could insure Cindy would not be a good wife –rather, she would be a great wife.“

Sick to your stomach yet? Is your mind reeling with exactly what it means for a father to “groom” his daughter in order to make her a “great” wife?

This church, which only has TEN larger than it is in the whole country, has been a hotbed of preacher perverts. Like that Dr. Hyles we’ve been learning about.

Statement by the Indianapolis Baptist Temple on Breaking Fellowship With First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana; Hyles-Anderson College — (Unanimous Action of the Church on February 12, 1992 — this is a partial statement only; the entire statement is reprinted in the 7/20/92, Christian News, p. 14.):

1) Dr. Hyles destroyed a man’s [Victor Nischik's] family, alienated the affection of his wife from him and his children. Even though he [Hyles] knew of this estranged relationship, he continued to employ her and have close, private, and intimate contact with her in their offices behind closed and locked doors for long periods of time. He also took her on long automobile rides and trips for hours, including resort hotels with neither of their spouses present. He refused to stop seeing the man’s wife under these circumstances even after being confronted many times by her husband. Dr. Hyles’ conduct is a clear violation of several Scriptures … (Rom. 14:16; I Cor. 8:13; I Thes. 5:22).

2) Dr. Hyles lied to the preachers of America when he wrote in letters dated June 7, 1990, and August 3, 1990, that he had no evidence whatsoever that his son [David] was having moral problems before he left First Baptist Church. The fact is he had been told by many witnesses again and again that his son was a fornicator and later an adulterer (I Sam. 2:12-36; 4:1-22; Deut. 19:15- 19). He further refused to exercise church discipline on his son when he [the son] and his second wife returned to the First Baptist Church of Hammond although it had been known that David was continuing to have affairs with women. It was also known that his wife posed for a pornographic magazine in a most lewd manner. In this magazine she was featured in an advertisement for group sex.

3) Dr. Hyles lied to the preachers in his letter of August 3, 1989, saying in point number 11: “I did not recommend my son David to the Miller Road Baptist Church of Garland, Texas. They contacted him apart from my knowledge and never sought my recommendation.” Jack Hyles actually recommended David to the pulpit of Miller Road in several personal phone calls with deacons. [Hyles once called David Hyles "the most brilliant, spiritual man I have ever met."] By recommending David, he deliberately turned a sex maniac loose on the unsuspecting congregation. This resulted in the near destruction of the church when David became involved with at least nineteen different women in the church. Dr. Hyles then added insult to injury when he instructed David not to confess his sin before the church when he was willing to do so.

4) Dr. Hyles deceived preachers when he implied that there was no door between his and Mrs. Nischik’s offices. … In reality, there had been a door between their offices from the time he became pastor until it was shut after the Sumner article was published [5/1/89, Biblical Evangelist].

5) Dr. Hyles lied several times about his involvement with this woman [Jenny Nischik] in dispositions taken in early 1986. Under oath he admitted that he gave her from Church and personal funds more than $100,000 over a 20-year period. This was in addition to her salary.

Dr. Hyles was drilling his married secretary, and paying her handsomely for it. That’s in-between his “grooming” sessions, I presume. And yet, this clown, and his sick-assed family, still managed to build up a church of the size of FBC Hammond? This guy was so damned nasty that a documentary detailing his School for Pedophiles  (also called Hyles-Anderson College) was made back in the 1990s. And he had a preacher son that they stuck far away, Catholic Church style, because of his dalliances with righteous congrgants’ wives. But you’d never know that by reading his tributes in fundie sites: he is, to this day, considered a good old back-to-basics preacher.

Oh, and FTR, Schaap hates women and gays. But I suspect you knew that without me telling you.

People like Hyles and Schaap expose, yet again, the lessons we should have learned from people like Jim Jones, Jimmy Swaggart, David Berg, Bob Moorhead, and a slew of other names I remember, but won’t bore you with. The lesson is a simple one: any religious flavor that vests a huge amount of authority in a man, is quite liable to wind up with a corrupt, unhealthy man in charge of it. The reason for this is easy to understand, of course, as any position of high authority will attract a measurable number of misfits who want to lord it (pardon pun) over people. But it is especially bad among fundie preachers of all stripes, who are ordering people to kill themselves (or other people, or both) when they aren’t violating children.

Anyone who submits themselves to an all_powerful authoritarian is asking for trouble. And getting it a lot of the time, too. Obviously.