Church teens fake armed kidnapping a lesson in religious persecution
THE children are being kidnapped at gunpoint from the Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church in Lower Swatara Township, Pennsylvania. The young teenagers are being blindfolded – hoods placed over their heads – and taken in a van to the pastor’s house. There, the pastor is being beaten.
But it’s a spot of fun. It’s a lesson in religious persecution. One of the kidnappers is an off-duty police officer. His gun is real but it’s not loaded.
Says one teen:
“They pulled my chair out from underneath me and then they told me to get on the ground,” she said. “I was the first person to go into the van. I had my hands behind my back they said ‘just do as I say and you won’t be hurt’….They heard me crying. Why not right then and there tell us it was a joke, when you see me crying?”
Pastor John Lanza, for it was he beting beaten, said the lesson was a surprise “to secure the shock value of it and make it much more real. There are people in other countries that live under this environment on a regular daily basis. They’re not warned that their persecutors are coming in.”
Only, er, he was warned. Indeed, he seems to have set it up. It might be better if next time, to aid the process of authenticity, the pastor and his crew attacked a local mosque without warning. The grateful mosque could then unite with the pastor and raze a synagogue to the ground. The Jews would love it, it helping them keep their hand for when it’s time to run…
Posted: 28th, March 2012 | In: Strange But True Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
