Why are televangelists just so damn funny?

Marissa, Katey, and I asked ourselves this very question on our train ride coming back from Zurich. Between a Catholic and two Protestants of varying degrees of liberalism, we know a thing or two about Christianity in its various forms, and we have each formed our own unique identities within that. And none of them correspond with the popular perception of "the Christian" as the moralizing zealot intent on proving that their belief system is the only legitimate path to fulfillment.

As much as most people within Christianity acknowledge the ideological diversity of its members, the very vocal Christian Right has created a less-than-positive image of the faith for those on the margins or the outside. Granted, there is a sizable group of Evangelical Protestants that does adhere to the ideology of Christian conservatism. Pat Robertson's 700 Club remains on the air, and megachurches on Texas and Colorado Springs get their members from somewhere. But their tenets of exclusiveness and following the Republican Party platform as if it were directly derived from Scripture have tainted the image of Christianity as a whole, leaving the rest of us that have discovered that the Bible does not command us to persecute homosexuals, repress any hint of sexuality as if it were a manifestation of Satan, or place conversion to our own ideology over serving others without pretext to defend our decision to assume a Christian identity.

And televangelists and Evangelical Christian culture as a whole takes a significant portion of the blame. The Christian Right has a lot of money and, for some reason, a disproportionate amount of influence. And many of their spokespeople are just really funny in their ridiculousness.

There's Pat Robertson and the 700 Club, the almost-daily "news and inspiration" program that usually makes me laugh and my friend and first-year roommate Jo cry. Pat Robertson makes mainstream news for declaring that US operatives should assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (to be fair, I haven't exactly decided how I feel about Chavez yet, but that is beside the point) and recently claiming that God has given him a prophesy that there will be some forthcoming disaster that will kill numerous Americans for their "hedonistic ways". And then there is when Robertson and his co-host of the day pray, and it seems that they believe that the more they squint, the more likely God is to listen to them. Somehow conservative political propaganda, pleas for conversion, and self-praising montages about all that Operation Blessing has done are inspirational.

Then there are the even more outrageous ones that seem to do nothing other than ask for money while wearing awful mustard-colored suits, showcasing a wooden wife with a bad blonde dye job who thinks she can sing, and offering to tell you "how to pay your bills supernaturally" in exchange for a "donation". Oh, what you see on TV while proofreading MMW papers at 1 AM. You know you've seen that one.

Then there are the too-happy megachurch pastors that have somehow been able to market everything about themselves. Joel Osteen now has the Your Best Life Now board game (based on his best-selling prosperity gospel treatise) that promises to let you "experience the book in a whole new way". There are also the reportedly awful Rapture sagas known as the Left Behind novels (and movies) and the new video game, where the player tries to convert the "heathen" residents of New York City before it's too late. These people would love for us to believe that all this stuff will be indispensable tools for our lives as "good" Christians. You know, all the good Christian teens have their True Love Waits rings that they received at their purity balls (that's a rant for another time) and their WWJD bracelets... And this is why the off-Broadway musical Altar Boyz is so phenomenal. Evangelical culture was just begging to be parodied. And how can you argue with Scott Porter singing to you that "Girl, you make me want to wait".

No wonder Christianity gets a less-than-honorable reputation. The stories on the news about Christianity are about Ted Haggard and his homosexual prostitute, not the countless Christians who are quietly but truly following the example of Jesus to love our neighbors as ourselves. We need to pay more attention to things like UCSD Intervarsity's Impact1 conference, where we discussed the urgency of a humanitarian response to the burgeoning AIDS epidemic. Or a group of people from a church in Portland, OR who regularly visit homeless people in the city and wash their feet. We need to pay more attention to the varying opinions within Christianity and exalt our ideological diversity. Because really, what ultimately concerned Jesus more- converting people so that they would be saved (and spending countless hours debating who exactly we think gets to partake of salvation) or going out into the world and loving our neighbors, without pretension, recognizing our common humanity and manifesting on Earth at least a portion the love that we know God has for all of us?