Jesus Windshield Ninjas

So last week our parking lot was hit by the Jesus Windshield Ninjas (not my name for them, but appropriate). These are the folks that leave religious pamphlets under your windshield wipers in the hope that you will find them not an irritating imposition on your personal space but rather the first step to your personal redemption.

The item in particular was a 16 page full-color glossy newspaper from The Alamo Christian MInistry in Alma, Arkansas. The Alamo Christian Ministry is headed up by Tony Alamo, and its always a good warning when the minister gets top billing.

The pamphlet has a few articles on its good works in Ghana and elsewhere, and a picture of the center’s founder, Tony Alamo posing with the late Sonny Bono and his wife (who are both wearing Tony Alamo’s custom-made jackets). But the bulk of the 16-pager (and coming from a printing background, I can tell you that this stuff ain’t cheap) is a screed about about how the secret anti-Christian one-world government has infiltrated all branches of the US Government, and acts at the will of non-christians like Clinton, Bush, and the Pope. Waco? Oklahoma City? 9/11? All machinations of this one-world government. It waits until page two before stating to besiege you in Bible quotes.

Yep, its tinfoil hat territory. The Jesus Windshield Ninjas hit a number of local mall parking lots in addition to us, but not the FAA parking lot next door. Of cource, the FAA has security guards in its parking lot and limited access. (and may be infiltrated already by the secret one-world government)

So most of the stuff was recycled (in the east parking lot, an enterprising soul went back to everyone’s care and REMOVED the offending documents - the Reverse Jesus Windshield Ninja Maneuver). End of story. But this was posted from a fellow editor later in the day:

Wow, now there's a name I haven't heard in years.

Tony Alamo used to run a restaurant near Fort Worth, Arkansas, back around 1978-79. It was the last stop once you turned off the interstate before you reached Fayetteville on the other side of the Boston Mountains (a branch of the Ozarks). Alamo's was notorious because it was said you'd sit down and order a meal, and after it was served someone would come and sit at your table and talk to you about Jesus.

Originally it was a husband-and-wife operation, which relocated to Arkansas after they got run out of their home state (somewhere in the southwest, I forget where) by the likelihood of attorny general prosecution. The wife was a faith healer who became terminally ill with cancer after coming to Arkansas, and they announced that she would experience a miracle cure shortly before the poor woman's death. He carried on alone after that, and I never did know what happened to him. Everyone in Arkansas thought of him as a Yankee, that weird guy who gave Christians a bad name. I remember he got in some kind of trouble (again) in the early '80s, I suspect through fraud investigation under Gov. Clinton (who was Attorney General Clinton before he became governor), but I was living in Milwaukee at the time and never did get the details.

Now I want to see the flyer and see if he's changed his pitch any in twenty-five years.

Needless to say he was besieged in flyers.

I'm just impressed with the cross-connections in our lives.

More later,