The most overt motif of "Assembly 2007" was the collective rewriting of history, to erase the fact that the United States was founded as a secular pluralist democracy and to substitute a mythologized version of events in which America was founded as a "Christian nation". But, there were attractions to appeal to more than Christian supremacists and fake history buffs.

P.T. Barnum, to whom the famous quip "there's a sucker born every minute" has been incorrectly attributed, would have approved. Barnum was an early genius of marketing, and one of his key insights was on the value of packing as many attractions as possible into a small space. "Assembly 2007" had fake history and Christian supremacy, mass religious ecstasy, and celebrations of sex, domination and, of course, money.

For the ecstatically and experientially inclined, there was mass glossolalia. When I arrived, the conference was in full swing with what seemed like a couple of thousand tongue-speaking devotees speaking this unique language: tongue, when God speaks through the individual and it comes out sounding like complete gibberish. But tongue speakers sure do love to speak tongue and, believe me, it's an experience that makes one question the sanity of our world. Or theirs. Or one's own.

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The conference leaders had chosen Virginia Beach for its historical value, and symbolically the idea was to reclaim our fallen nation on the 400th anniversary of the first landing at Jamestown.

"Assembly 2007" was organized by Jim and Ann Jimenez.  Pastor Jim is a proud ex-con whose was saved when he was born again.  The Jimenez's had assembled such luminaries as John Hagee, Pat and Gordon Robertson, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Bishop Harry Jackson, homophobe, Peter LaBarbera, Bill Bright's widow Vonette, revisionist historians Stephen McDowell and Mark Beliles, Paula White, Wellington Boone, Lou Engle, and other lesser known but equally pungent bundles of anger and hatred.  Sadly, Rod Parsley, who was to keynote Saturday evening, backed out last minute due to a "family emergency".

It was largely a Word of Faith crowd, and so the preachers Word-Faithed by boldly demanding that attendees to fork over big money in sacrifice to the Lord.

One of Martin Luther's most seriously gripes, that helped lead to the schism of Christianity and the subsequent religious wars, that wracked Europe for centuries, between Catholics and Protestants, with both sides contriving cute ad-hoc tortures such as slowly extracting the intestines of wounded enemy combatants, was the Catholic Church's practice of selling "indulgences": tickets to grace, redemption, and Heaven for those who could afford to pop enough pieces of Gold into the God-slot at the Vatican. It's odd to see Protestant Christianity returning to where Christian practice was at about five hundred years ago, but maybe that's in line with the rejection of Evolution and growing outbreaks of people who say Galileo and Copernicus were wrong and that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Numerology, money, and sex all got blended in as Bishop Ken McNatt of Atlanta suggested that 2007, having the biblically significant number seven in it, may well be the year to end all years and proudly bespoke of his personal communication with God, saying, "God told me that tonight one hundred individuals in this room will step beyond the borderline of the usual.  One hundred people.  I am getting ready to take the lid off . . . . . to remove the limitations,   One hundred people tonight who need to sow a $700 seed.  We'll take cash, check, credit card, debit card.  This is not an option!  Thirty to fifty people came forward, payment in hand.

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If someone says,"I can't afford to do that,"   ask yourself, will $700 get you a house or get you out of debt?  A seed can get your harvest." Translate, $700 buys you a place in heaven.  Not a bad deal.

Despite periodic proclamations of love , hatred pulsed sporadically throughout the week-end, directed intermittently toward Muslims, homosexuals (where's Ted Haggard when you need him?), the U.N. and the E.U. Most often, though, venom was hurled toward the God hating liberals. Neither was the traditional church cut any slack, being described as the prime cause of moral decay, thanks to "weakness, apathy and laziness.  True believers are calling for a severe church, for biblical law, for personal prosperity at any cost, for no sin being so heinous it can't be forgiven: except for liberals who should all be destroyed by the wrath of God. Forgive? Heck, if you buy in, maybe you too can drink, steal, lie, and God knows what else before you turn it all in for redemption.

But it wasn't all hate. After sharing the good news, "the Bible is the world's greatest sex manual ever written. Read the Song of Solomon to your wife.  It'll turn your motor on!", the corpulent, perhaps lascivious, probably gluttonous John Hagee treated the crowd to a lusty, expert sex ululation that seemed more pornographic than pictures or movies ever could be, and oddly  misplaced coming from a man who looked much more in love with all-you-can-eat buffets than with conjugal erotic arts. Laced in with his standard rhetoric of undying love for Israel, Hagee mentioned that "There is no other name by which we can be saved than Jesus Christ." Could that bubble over his head really be reading, "Jews. Left behind?"

"Do not let anyone claim to be an American if they separate religion from politics," said Hagee, as if most people in contemporary America do that. "We are and we shall be one nation under God," he went on, belying the question: whose God?   . . ."The Bible has been taken out of the public schools and is now being passed out at the jailhouse"  I guess that's why there are so many ex-con ministers at these conferences.  And they shouldn't be complaining. They seem to be thriving financially.  "We intend to take America back to the Ten Commandments . . . to the Bible's basic instructions, before leaving this earth. . . .For it is the inerrant word of God, the only foundation upon which America can live and survive." Prohibitions from Leviticus on the eating of shellfish seemed to have been left behind somewhere, outside the rubric of Biblical inerrancy. But, maybe Hagee was angling for an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet that evening.

I could go on, describing various rants. But it's not new. Actually, it was just an extension of the sort of fare that one can get every day, on Trinity Broadcasting Network or other Christian broadcast networks, that's like a caustic type of elevator music which, by endless repetition, gradually etches selected themes onto the grey matter of listeners' heads: the coming apocalypse, hatred of liberals, the "Christian nation" motif, the need to fork over cash, endlessly, into the ravenous maws of gluttonous evangelists, to get right with God.

It was interesting though, to go, on Sunday, to the 20th Street Beach where these dangerously ambitious people had erected an enormous professional stage replete with crosses and a super-sized American flag as backdrop. Curiously, the flag was punctured with holes and crescents.  Shofars were blown, Pat Robertson was trotted out and showcased for a few minutes, US Congress members spoke, Indian Chiefs exchanged gifts with their Christian brothers, and all the while a replica of Robert Hunt's original ship that landed at Jamestown, 400 years ago, slowly made its way to shore. I was unable to stay for the landing and the re-dedication of our country to Christ, and I missed the planting of the supposed thousands of crosses on the beach. Sadly, also, I had to forego the "afterglow" of the whole orgiastic event, provided Ron Luce and his Teen Mania Ministries. But I had a plane to catch and I'd seen enough.

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