Years ago, I wrote about Bill Schnoebelen as part of the Cult of Before Stories series. The Cult includes that vast collection of fake, bombastic Satanism-and-witchcraft-themed testimonies that hucksters peddle for attention and profit to evangelicals. These fake testimonies hit their peak around the late 1980s before petering out in Read more
Years ago in the 2000s and 2010s, evangelicals tangled with atheists all the time. This squabbling formed part of what we now call internet blood sports. Nowadays, though, the landscape of the Christ-o-sphere looks very different. Out-and-out squabbling and entanglement aren’t as popular as they once were. Gen Z and Read more
I came face-to-face with two completely untrue beliefs I held: that my god transformed people upon conversion, and that Christians would never lie while representing that god. Hooboy, don’t ya just have to laugh sometimes? I was so innocent. So this story is about how my then-husband Biff arrived at that dais to lie for Jesus. To get there, he had to fool a whole lot of people–and that is exactly what he did. Today, let me tell you what happened right before that devastating night.
Today, I’ll show you the shared features of these two popular testimony styles, and which testimony I think wins the fight for Christians’ attention and money–for now.
A line’s determined by two points, so I reckon we’ve found a new trend. His end of Christianity might have come to the Satanic Panic too late for the dancing, but they arrived eventually. So today we welcome Benedict Atkins to the Cult of “Before” Stories!
I want to show you today how Glenn Hobbs’ claims line up with our checklist for the Cult of Before Stories–and what happens to one of these people after their gravy train jumps the rails for good. We’re going to see a lot more of these people as Christianity continues to decline, and I want us prepared for them.
Zachary King gave an extensive XM radio interview a couple of years just after becoming semi-popular. Today I want to show you that interview–and show you how it fits into the narratives we find within the Cult of Before Stories.
Halloween is that magical time of year when Christians can dial up to 11 their Happy Pretendy Fun Time Games. It is their everything.
Bill Schnoebelen is one such storyteller. Once a popular figure in fundagelical Christianity, his narrative long ago lost its cachet. He’s had to reinvent himself–but is finding that once someone’s joined the Cult of Before Stories, that’s really hard to do.
A long time ago, I wrote a post called “A Cult of “Before” Stories” in which I described what it was like as a young Christian to realize that my then-husband had constructed a testimony full of lies–and how I realized that pretty much all of the really dramatic testimonies I heard from other Christians were largely untrue as well. On the heels of realizing that these stories were untrue, I also began to perceive the unbelievably rich rewards Christians get for concocting and sharing these dramatic testimonies. I began to see my tribe as one that was simply obsessed with these “before” stories–thus, my name for the mindset.