Robot Jesus in space and the future Superman church of God.


Negativland's Mark Hosler talks to a man who makes robots and murals for Christian theme parks

JOE: Some churches want a sort of natural environment, like rocks and trees. And then there's the other extreme where you build a time machine prop that lights up and fogs as people walk out of it in costume on stage: Moses brought back from the past, for example. We do Bible stories, and there's a Jesus-in-space theme, which is basically the idea that this religion will endure into the Jetson age. That's a pretty popular theme, actually; it's not about the Apocalyptic side of the religion.

Joe makes robots for Christian theme parks and churches. I thought this article was pretty lame actually, but I was looking for an easy blog to do.

The pastor of my old Baptist church would always scream and rant excitedly about how excited he was about what God was going to so soon. He and his caffeinited wife would jump around the stage every week telling us how 'excited' they were. He kept saying we were on the brink of something, and I think it used to keep me coming back so I could find out what what the hell it was. I think he was on the brink of some sort of mental disorder.

What will the Christians be thinking of life 500 hundred years from now? Will we eventually get sick of waiting for something exciting to happen? It's been pretty boring since the last big event of the crucifiction (Cruci-fiction). If we make space stations or populate other planets will we bring Jesus and Buddha and the who gang with us? Or will we be working the Superhero mythos into a new religion? I can honestly see us studying DC Comics in order to help us understand our new triune God - Superman, Batman and Wonderwoman. Now there's a trinity... there's a threesome. They are things I can (and presently do worship). I bet we'll be waging war with the Marvel Universe who believe in Spiderman, X-Men, and the Hulk and laugh at our DC Heroes.

JOE: One huge church has a 24-hour prayer group called Prayer Warriors. Each person will pray for an hour and then call the next, so that someone is praying every hour in the day. They have it structured so that a group of them prays for the west wall, another group prays for the east wall, and for the north and south so at all times there's somebody praying to keep the spirits out; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every wall of the church is protected by prayer.

This is a pretty big responsibility. Imagine if you fucked up and forgot to pray for a particular wall of the church... and you let a demon in because of a thoughtless selfish moment when you watched the Simpsons, instead of supporting a brick wall from demonic invasion. How would you live with yourself? Shields up captain, we've got a phase three full torso vector demon sneaking in through the handi-capped toilet plumbing system. Christians are a cowardly superstitious lot, from where I stand, but I'm sure there are saner ones than these wall wailers.

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