That's the title of Matt Taibbi's latest dispatch in Rolling Stone, based on his undercover visit to an "Encounter" weekend organized by John Hagee's Cornerstone Church, and held at a church-owned retreat in Tarpley, Texas. (It's excerpted from Taibbi's forthcoming book, The Great Derangement.) In his inimitable style, Taibbi manages to capture the desperation of Encounter participants, the authoritarianism of the Encounter leader, Phil Fortenberry (a Promise Keeper alum), the absurdity of what is essentially a vapid, watered-down 12-step program masquerading as religion, and how all of that converges to exert a powerful hold on the participants -- even Taibbi himself.
Taibbi recounts how the participants were asked to confess their "wounds" -- events from their past in which they were physically, psychologically, or spiritually harmed by a family member or close relationship. Taibbi, on the spot, makes up a story about how his "father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes." He was then forced to stick with the story for the rest of the weekend and went on to describe for the group how his father quit the clown business to hand out fliers at a Carvel ice cream store. He added, "I laugh about it now, but once he chased me, drunk, in his Fudgie the Whale costume. He chased me into the bathroom, laid me across the toilet seat and hit me with his fins, which underneath were still a man's hands." All of this passes as Matt's "wounds" with nary a look askance from his fellow wounded.
I know people who used to belong to Hagee's church, and who used to go to these retreats. They see how bogus it is now, but at the time, they were damaged, abused, ashamed, and -- as evidenced by their belief in the healing power of such retreats -- enormously suggestible, as Taibbi describes in the piece. And the real attendees aren't the only suggestible ones; even Taibbi himself starts to feel the power:
