just read this self-serving blurb by jz on yelmonline. (my response below):
"Published: Friday, April 19, 2013 5:20 PM PDT
I was born March 16, 1946, in Roswell, N.M. My parents, Charles and Helen Hampton, were migrant field-workers — cotton production, irrigation, hoeing, and cotton-picking for local farmers.
My mother’s father, my grandfather, Pastor Prentiss Hart, was a hellfire-and-brimstone Baptist preacher. He did not spare the rod and spoil the child, no sir. He took his children out of school and put them to work in the fields.
My mother’s education ended after the third grade. Her life was spent in the fields and in the church. Later in her life, my mother Helen shared a very painful memory with me, that she had not wanted her kids to go to church! But I went anyway with the owners of the hamburger stand where my mother worked at night.
Tommy, the wife of my older brother Marion, also attended and was a baptized member of the Assembly of God Church in Artesia, N.M.
I loved God and Jesus as only children can. But that love was tested when Tommy agreed to wear a teeny-tiny bit of pale lipstick in an effort to get my brother Marion to attend church.
I was in the front pews when the preacher stopped the sermon. He called Tommy up before the congregation and announced she was deceived “by the devil.” Everyone came running up to lay hands on her, screaming, reaching up, and denouncing her and the devil in the name of God.
During the frightening commotion, my brother left and I ran out after him. Could this really be the God I loved and his son, the Good Shepherd? I was 13 years old. I wrestled with this pain of God being, well, God-awful!
Not long after that incident, at this young age of 13, I came to understand that the God I loved was not the God of the Assembly of God church!
I left the church carrying with me the sweet memories of the little congregation I had come to love. But if you listened to Elvis, danced, wore anything other than a dress, wore makeup, listened to the radio, saw a movie, or read a science book, you were going to hell...forever! My brother Marion bought a ski boat for the family to enjoy at the local lake. My sister-in-law Tommy and two nieces had to wear dresses to go skiing because women were not allowed to wear swimsuits.
Years later at my mother’s funeral, I wandered over to the graves of those sweet people of my church long ago. I pondered how they fought life, joy, Elvis, lipstick, the Beach Boys, waterskiing in a real swimming suit, Saturday afternoon movies, or reading F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I was sad. They gave up so much life, missed so many moments just to please their religion. In my mind I knew that there was a large difference between religion and God. I left the religion but kept my personal relationship with God and my love of Jesus.
I admire President Jimmy Carter not only for his difficult presidency — he kept the country out of war — but his immense humanitarian acts from Habitat for Humanity, housing for poor folks, to his efforts at brokering peace between Israel and Palestine, and his exhaustive medical and agricultural work in Africa. Because of his tireless work, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have been affected in his efforts to tender the needs of the poor and forgotten.
Like I did so long ago, Carter has questioned his Christian faith but not his abiding faith in God. He recently separated from the Southern Baptist Convention because of its stance on women’s issues. He titled his statement, “Losing My Religion for Equality.”
“Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God,” Carter said.
I encourage you to read his full statement.
Carter and many others have challenged organized religion and the various interpretations of these male-dominated institutions, and in doing so he is coming as close to living a “God-inspired life” as you can get.
Next week: To be continued.
JZ Knight established the Ramtha School of Enlightenment in Yelm in 1988 and has been the Channeler of Ramtha since 1978. Email her at
info@ramtha.com."
ahem: I was born to Hungarian refugees, Joe and Helen, in a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany in 1947. My mother's family feld mostly on foot from the incoming Communist regime that had both arrested my grandfather, Bela, and taken away his home and all his assets. My father who worked as a mechanic for the Hungarian air force was a prisoner of war at war's end but chose to stay with Allies upon release. We arived in the US at Ellis Island in 1951 after years of living in barracks in DP camps, sponsored by a US Catholic charity for boat fair [it was on a crowded WW2 merchant ship tha made many refugee runs to US and Australia--my mother's family went to Australia]. We had $9 when we boarded a train for PA where my great aunt took us in.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, poor miss cotton picker...
JZ's letter is extremely manipulative.
1. gain the sympathy of your audience with a "poor me story". I've heard any number of cult leaders use this tactic over the years.
2. After baiting the reader with how much abuse one suffers under a horrible family or an eccentric fundamentalist type church, then use this as an excuse for why you hate authority figures and "churches" as if one's PERSONAL EXPERIENCE is the truth for everyone else's personal experience
3. switch quickly to how 'righteous' you are with comparisons to well-known altruists like Jimmy Carter [btw, Jimmy Carter's adminsitration endorsed Jim Jones when Jones was on the San Francisco Housing Commission---Rosalyn Carter sat right next to Jones during the conference in CA.)
4.intimate that this gives you the right and privelege to rectify the global situation with an anti-church god that sets up its own church or cult---How grandiose of you
can't wait to read your next poor me nice me big me letter, jz...forgive me, I know you cannot help it...it's just the way you are...