xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Televangelist Joyce Meyer has risen from the pack of TV ministers (and from the ordinariness of her pre-preaching life) by her uninhibited pursuit of donations ($95 million in 2003), according to a December St. Louis Post-Dispatch profile. “Make your checks payable to Joyce Meyer Ministries,” she shouted, “and ‘million’ is spelled m-i-l-l-i-o-n.” Of once receiving $1 million in stocks from a worshipper, she said, “I didn’t have that (gift) for five minutes and I said, ‘OK, God, next I’ll take $5 million.” “Fear,” she reminds her parishioners, as in their fear of making sacrifices in order to have more money to give her, “is the work of the devil.”
The Los Angeles Kabbalah Centre is enjoying soaring income due to the Jewish mysticism’s recent embrace by pop celebrities (e.g., Madonna, Britney Spears), according to a December New York Times report. Kabbalah bottled water (which has supposedly absorbed the energy of the Torah by osmosis from being in the same room with it and which “changes you on a molecular level,” said a Centre employee) costs $3.50, and red string bracelets, which supposedly ward off negative spirits (which Jewish traditionalists say is an appalling oversimplification of their purpose) cost $26 to $36.
Ten months before election day, God has handicapped the 2004 presidential race as a “blowout” victory for President Bush, according to Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network program “700 Club” (January).
And Connecticut’s besieged governor, John Rowland, who is in deep trouble for having taken favors from contractors and then (as he later admitted) lying about it, said he can’t resign because God spoke to him directly and ordered him to hang in and defend himself (December).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD