Baptist Church Fasts - McDonald's Declares Bankruptcy

NASHVILLE, TN - The McDonald's restaurant in Riverton, TN has had a "fast" trip into bankruptcy. According to the McDonald's Corporation, their franchise in this suburb of Nashville recently went belly-up due to a rare turn of events.

Ronald Roth, owner of the Riverton McDonald's, blames Riverton Baptist Church, "It's all their fault. If not for their decision to boycott our restaurant, things would be going along fine. While they were eating here, we turned a nice profit. Since they stopped, we can't meet the bills. It just ain't fair."

What exactly is going on here? We at Religion Roundtable went to the senior pastor of Riverton Baptist to find out. Pastor James (Jimmy) Black was kind enough to sit down with us. According to Pastor Black, "This all began about two months ago. Our church had just completed building a new worship center. We went into a bit of debt ($850,000) in order to finance the building. We ran out of Sunday School space, and needed somewhere for our bored youth to meet. What else were we to do?"

Black continued, "We really needed God to answer our prayer as to how to pay for this building. As a church, we had tried fasting before but it just has never really worked out. Last year we tried to get the folks to give up fast food in order to pray for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. People weren't willing to do it. However, this year when they could see what they would be paying off, they rose to the occasion."

Riverton Baptist decided to really sacrifice this time. They knew that a complete fast for even a few days was an impossibility. In fact, due to last year's failure, the guess was that even asking the body to refrain from fast food in general would lead straight to disaster. Although difficult, one option appealed to most (62%) of the church - they would give up McDonald's for three months. The results have been astounding.

Riverton Baptist has collected the money they would normally have spent at McDonald's and put it toward the new building. As of this past Sunday, the near 1 million dollar debt was completely paid off. "What a blessing from God this is!" said Pastor Black. "When you are willing to sacrifice and be right in the center of God's will, He delivers!"

Ronald Roth does not see things in quite the same manner as does Pastor Black. "Those Baptists have put quite a few people out of work. They are so selfish to think about themselves rather that the good folk of this town who now won't have McD's to sup at. It just goes to show that Christians do a lot more harm than good. Those terrorists!"

It is clear that most of the Riverton townspeople are divided over this issue. Nancy Harris, who attends the local Church of God, said, "There's no way I'm fasting now. I need my Cracker Barrel!"

Woman pastor feels convicted - gets sex change

In a blog post from earlier today (May 30th), Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, reported about a United Methodist pastor in Maryland who recently underwent surgery to switch from a woman to a man.

Dr. Mohler treats the subject in his normal intelligent and biblical manner. Of course there are numerous problems with a pastor, or anyone for that matter, trying to change genders. Thank you, Dr. Mohler, for your solid blog post.

However, Dr. Mohler may not be privy to all of our insider information. Religion Roundtable has heard from reliable sources that Rev. Ann Gordon (her name before the switch) made her change for biblical reasons.

Rev. Gordon reportedly struggled for most of the past two years with various bible passages that show only men to be pastors. She especially could not get past I Timothy 2:8-3:7. Rev. Gordon said, "I just could not ignore those verses. They make it so clear that God's plan is for only males to be pastors. Anyone denying this is purposely trying to distort scripture."

What was Gordon to do? She wanted to stick with scripture, and also wanted to obey her "subjective call to be a pastor." She could only find one answer. According to Gordon, "The decision was simple. In order to follow the bible, I had to have a sex change. What other choice was there?"

Today, the former Rev. Gordon, now the Rev. Phoenix, feels liberated. "Now I can do what God has called me to do - preach the word! And, I can do it by biblical standards. What a thrill it is to be right in the center of God's will."

There is no word yet from the church as to how they plan to handle the situation with the women deacons. Apparently, the husbands of the female deacons are very much against them having sex change operations.

When asked about this, Rev. Phoenix responded, "We'll just have to wait and see if the female deacons will follow scripture or not."

United Methodists proclaim "Free Willy" as favorite movie

In a recent survey conducted by the Barna Group, members of various religious groups in the United States were asked to name their favorite movie of all time (to view all of the results, see below). Some of the favorites were expected, some were surprising, and one was downright shocking.

By far the most shocking result was United Methodist's choice of Free Willy as their favorite movie of all time. In case you missed it, Free Willy is not exactly considered a classic. Rather it is generally considered to be a kids' movie about a Killer Whale named "Willy" who gets trapped and needs to be freed by some children.

What, then, would cause thousands of Methodists to vote for Free Willy over classics such as Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, The Sound of Music, and Star Wars? Bishop Karen Sanders, head of the Northern California Conference of the UMC, said that most Methodists probably have not actually seen Free Willy. Rather, they were just voting based on the title of the movie.

According to Bishop Sanders, "We Methodists know that John Wesley preached a lot about people having free will. Since we are Wesley's followers, we hold up the free will of people as the greatest of his teachings. We focus so much of our thought on free will that when we were asked what our favorite movie is, the answer was obvious: Free Willy. We believe that even John Wesley himself would have loved the movie, or at least the title."

Bishop Sanders further stressed that United Methodists all had a free choice in what movie they selected. "We in leadership positions put no pressure on any of our laypeople. The common folk, out of their own wisdom and insight, chose Free Willy on their own. Any pressure from the outside would have been unfair."


Below are all of the results of the Barna movie survey:
Hindus - Gandhi
Buddhists - Seven Years in Tibet
Muslims - Flight 93
Jews - Schindler's List (Raiders of the Lost Ark was a close second)
Orthodox - My Big, Fat Greek Wedding
Catholics - The Passion of the Christ
Anglicans - The English Patient
Lutherans - Luther
Presbyterians - Chariots of Fire
Baptists - Super Size Me
Pentecostals - Dirty Dancing
Mormons - Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Animists - Poltergeist
Unitarians - No preference (anything is good)
Native Americans - Dances with Wolves
Secular Humanists - Brokeback Mountain
Atheists - Contact
Scientology - Anything with Tom Cruise

Liberty names shocking new president

LYNCHBURG, VA - In a shocking turn of events, Liberty University has named Rosie O'Donnell as the school's second president.

After the recent death of the school's founder, Jerry Falwell, there was much speculation about who his successor would be. Names such as Jerry Falwell, Jr., Ergun Caner, James Dobson, and even Bill O'Reilly were mentioned. Apparently Rosie was not even on most people's radar screen.

However, Rosie announced on Friday that she had appeared for the final time on "The View." Almost everyone thought she was leaving due to her recent cat fight on the show over her belief that our troops in Iraq are terrorists. In O'Donnell's statement about leaving "The View," she wanted to set things straight. According to Rosie, she has not singled out our troops as being terrorists. "All Americans are terrorists!" she responded.

Only later, however, did she indicate the real reason why she is leaving TV. "When Liberty contacted me," she said, "it was just too good to pass up. I am so grateful to Liberty for its tolerance of the fact that I do not even have a college diploma. What a great opportunity it will be to positively impact the lives of so many young people. I can see a few changes coming in Lynchburg."

When asked what changes Rosie has in mind, she gave no specifics. However, the presence of both Elton John and Richard Simmons on the platform behind her gave some clue of what is coming.

Ergun Caner, head of the seminary at Liberty, was asked for his reaction to the situation. "Well," said Caner, "at least she's not a Muslim or a Calvinist."

Democrats oppose abstinence - cite virgin birth

Democrats in the House of Representatives report that they will allow abstinence education funding to expire in June. Despite outcry from conservative Republicans, the Democratic leadership seems determined to do away with all abstinence education programs in public schools.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, told the media last week, "All the research studies that the Democratic party has funded have come back with the same results. We have found that abstinence education programs do not reduce either the rate of pre-marital sex or teen pregnancy."

Pelosi was then asked by a reporter about other research studies that showed opposing results. The Speaker dismissed those studies as part of the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy."

Pelosi then surprised everyone in the press with the following statement. "I don't see why all of these conservative Christians are so upset about this. Don't they know their bibles? Look in the book of Luke. The bible says that a virgin gave birth to a child. If Mary was a virgin, she had therefore been abstinent. But what happened? She still got pregnant. You see, even the bible shows us that abstinence cannot and does not stop unwanted pregnancies."

Harry Reid, Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate, agrees with Pelosi, and added the following. "We are also concerned about jobs. If kids really did start being abstinent, we would have no need for Planned Parenthood. What are we going to do? We can't put all of those hard-working Planned Parenthood employees out of work. Let's be honest. Our culture needs teenagers to be having pre-marital sex. It keeps people working."