The Great White Hype

WHAT THE DEVIL ARE SATANIC PREGNANCIES?

Executive branch sociopath Paula White says that her recent sermon about aborting “Satanic pregnancies” has gotten a bad rap.

She evidently does not realize how much more freakish this post hoc White-washing makes the whole weird thing seem. But hey, why convert to the competing faith of self-awareness now?

White, a dotty presidential televangelist whose surname encompasses all things about her public persona, opened her mouth and expelled words like locusts in a video rewound by Right Wing Watch last week:

“Any strange winds that have been sent against this nation, we break it by the superior blood of Jesus. Let pride fall, in the name of Jesus we command all Satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now. We declare that anything that’s been conceived in Satanic wombs will not carry forth.”

If you ever wondered what happens when a Stepford Wife does mescaline, consider your itch scratched.

Fundy types say the weirdest and most disturbing shit the English language will bear all the time–it’s what keeps Right Wing Watch in business.

For whatever reason, this one churned up the waters. The Guardian’s Poppy Noor called it “outlandish,” which is sort of like calling decapitation an ouchie boo-boo. You’re not wrong, but at the same time feel free to open up the throttle.

Washington Post readers complained White should “withdraw from any role in government,” which again is like saying bank robbers should cease trying to influence the world of finance.

Superhero OB/GYN Jennifer Gunter noted on Twitter that White needn’t resort to magic in order to end pregnancies, we already have abortions for that. Satanic Temple cofounder Lucien Greaves dryly thanked White for supporting Satanist’s right to terminate pregnancies.

White protested that she was taken out of context. Which is true, for example, I pruned the quote above to exclude things like White briefly falling into a trance and repeating “Let pride fall” over and over again while her system cleared up a loading error. I assume stuff like that is supposed to make her sound more credible.

In this case she claims she was speaking metaphorically. Which did not get me off the hook for threatening that drive-thru callbox, so I don’t see why anyone would adopt a more lenient standard now.

A “Satanic pregnancy” is actually just a plot of the devil, according to further White noise. “I was praying Ephesians 6:12,” she said via Twitter. That’s this bit right here:

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Fundy types cite this verse a lot to remind each other than everyday things are not really ordinary but all part of a spooky magical battle with Satan.

You no doubt noticed that the pregnancy metaphor does not appear in this King James translation. Nor in 28 other commonly cited English variations.

Nevertheless there is apparently some corroboration for these little White lies. Atheist writer Libby Anne says via Patheos that “Satanic pregnancy” is apparently a common turn of phrase for Pentecostals.

Which seems credible, since rambling in nonsense dialect is a popular badge of faith for such folks. Given that, it’s hard to imagine how they haven’t scored any White House gigs themselves.

To be honest, I find this White flag routine more confusing than anything else. To be clear, she’s saying that she doesn’t believe in aborting devil babies–just that she and our alleged president are under constant supernatural attack by demons and need to be defended by praying incantations.

And this is supposed to make us…less alienated from her rhetoric? Um…

Paula White’s entire job is to say the craziest possible shit. Notice her reference to the “superior blood of Jesus,” a stock phrase she employs habitually and which sounds, ah, suspiciously close to a White supremacy doctrine.

Or how about the time she claimed that supporting basic abortion access means you’ve sold your soul to Satan, or that prayer drove down the crime rate after 9/11. These were all just in January. And suddenly now we’re to think she’s just being colorful?

In fact, Candida Moss points out on the Daily Beast that actual, literal Satanic pregnancies have been a matter of doctrine for various Christian sects for hundreds of years.

Sometimes a Satanic pregnancy really is, well, a Satanic pregnancy. “The Roman Catholic Church teaches at its annual exorcism course in Rome that people can be possessed in the womb,” Moss says. That’s the exorcism course they teach today, mind you.

So you see, sometimes when fundy type say freaky shit they’re “speaking metaphorically.” And sometimes they mean every word. And oftentimes even they can’t decide.

Genesis says that god created the world in six days. Does that mean, you know, days days? I would guess so, since, ya know, that’s what the book fucking says, but apparently for some people six days truly means, seemingly, any amount of time that you want instead.

Alleged scholars of books like Daniel and Revelation insist that a year in the Bible is not actually, you know, a year, it’s really 360 years. There’s even a Wikipedia page about it.

If you read prophecy and assume that words mean what they mean, you end up pretty well fucked, because the prophecies should all have happened centuries ago. But if we just, I don’t know, intuit that a day is really a year somehow, then it’s all good.

Myself, I’m a Biblical literalist. I believe that the Bible means what it says. That’s how I know it’s nonsense.

And when Paula White says shit like America is outlawing the Bible, I assume that she means that too, which is how I know that she’s the human equivalent of blank tape.

If the White trash of the world want the rest of us to be charitable when they play with figurative language, maybe they should start by ever being consistent about anything else.