Religious melodrama can be popular.
An account of my personal reaction to the Benny Hinn show at Norwich football stadium on 23 July 2005 can be downloaded from here. ("File" drop down and then "download").
As a taster, here is my postscript which I have appended to the account:
I have written many words on the subject Gnostic Christianity, but we may now be passing into days when the swing is away from Christianity with a Gnostic flavouring. A string of false prophecies, authoritarian leadership, failed revivals, failed prophecies, ambiguous healings, and bizarre “blessings” has emptied the language of the cliché surfing anti-intellectual Gnostics. In short they have nothing new to say and their talk of the “latest move of God” no longer has the impact that it once had and, indeed, may now be received with some measure of cynicism. However, memories are short and new inexperienced people enter the fray. So this sort of thing is likely to be recrudescent!
It is an irony that supporters of this kind performance will see it as an outpouring of the "supernatural", but to me it looks all too human in motivation and manifestation.
It is an irony that supporters of this kind performance will see it as an outpouring of the "supernatural", but to me it looks all too human in motivation and manifestation.
