I wrote about the Mars Hill church and its creator, Mark Driscoll, eight years ago on this very blog! You can even read that antique post.
The Mars Hill church is a good case study on extreme religionists and what makes their little hearts thump and their little minds tick.
I sometimes suspect (fairly often, actually) that one big draw of extremist literal interpretations of Islam, Christianity and Judaism is the very literal permissions the holy books give to hate on women and to control women and to state that gods want women subjugated. That is, I think some people, especially misogynists, are drawn to those interpretations because they sanctify their unpleasant bundles of feelings about women and sex and give permission to hate on women. All this could work in the reverse direction, naturally, so that someone who finds the literal God or Allah then just realizes that now he or she must hate on women and build them tiny little corrals in which they can breed for the purposes of one sire. The reverse direction seems more likely to me.
So how is the church of misogyny and homophobia working out for Mark Driscoll, it's sole progenitor? It's done pretty well over the years. Lots of people have joined Driscoll's flock of true believers. But not that long ago someone found that Driscoll has been foaming-at-the-mouth about the perfidy of the wimminz on the Internet. Under a pen-name. Here are a few examples:
Mark Driscoll has long been a controversial figure, whether posting on Facebook about effeminate worship leaders, or saying wives had to take some of the blame for their husband's infidelity if they had 'let themselves go'.
Revelations this week that the Mars Hill pastor had in 2000 posted a series of condemning messages online under a pseudonym were therefore met with almost universal horror.
The series of posts, which have been removed from message boards, reveal a tirade of angry rants.
Beginning with the words "We live in a completely pussified nation," Driscoll – under the name 'William Wallace II' – initiated a thread in which he condemns the majority of Christian men for being "Promise Keeping homoerotic worship loving mama's boy sensitive emasculated neutered exact male replica evangellyfish."
According to Driscoll, "It all began with Adam, the first of the pussified nation, who kept his mouth shut and watched everything fall headlong down the slippery slide of hell/feminism when he shut his mouth and listened to his wife who thought Satan was a good theologian when he should have lead her and exercised his delegated authority as king of the planet.
"As a result, he was cursed for listening to his wife and every man since has been his pussified sit quietly by and watch a nation of men be raised by bitter penis envying burned feministed single mothers."
Driscoll ended his comment by noting that he expected many women to disagree with him, but "they like Eve should not speak on this matter".The linked article states that these revelations were met with horror. But surely everyone knew what Driscoll preaches? I seem to have figured it out eight years ago. Is it the stronger language that makes the new revelations so horrifying? That we see his Freudian slip hanging tattered under his priestly robes? Or is it that we cannot criticize someone's religious beliefs until that someone says the same thing with nasty slurs?
"And, many men will also disagree," he added, "which is further proof of the pussified epidemic having now become air born and universal."
Whatever. Driscoll isn't doing quite so well right now. He was removed from the Act 29 network in August, and now his evangelical mega-church is shutting down some of its member churches:
The Washington-based evangelical megachurch Mars Hill is shutting (some of) its doors. Following controversy over founder Mark Driscoll’s well-documented homophobic and sexist remarks, church officials announced over the weekend that they would be closing several of Mars Hills 15 Pacific Northwest branches, citing financial difficulties caused by “negative media attention.” Several staff and clergy members have also been laid off. At the end of last month, Driscoll himself announced that he would be taking a six-week-long leave of absence.