7 year old boy preaches ...

[MissHoneychurch]

Out of the mouths of babes

Pint-size preacher Samuel Boutwell, 7, sat on a cardboard box near a downtown Market Square corner and belted out “Amazing Grace” as he strummed his tiny guitar.
...
I do this to try and get people saved,” said the 55-pound boy. “Hell burns with fire. You will be down there forever. Your days are numbered on the earth — you got to choose. You can go up or you can go down to Devil’s hell.”
...
The evangelical Baptist couple nurtured his talents with Bible readings in the womb and bought Samuel his first guitar at age four, said his mother. They read the Bible together every day as a family and have home-schooled their two boys.
Asked if their son is being exploited, his mother said, “We’re not making him preach. That’s God’s job.”

Full article
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/121284

YouTube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiStIFRH8Ic

[gateley]

1. Marjoe Gortner. Anybody remember him? link

Edit for link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSdI8ag1k0A

[murielm99]

11. Marjoe is the first person I thought of when I saw this.

Did you ever see the documentary Marjoe made about himself? It came out some time in the seventies, and won an Oscar. Even though it is somewhat dated, it is still worth viewing. Marjoe was a bit before the TV preachers really took over the business, but his techniques are much the same.

Marjoe said that the preaching he did as a child was completely coached. Every sermon was a memorized event. He learned each gesture and each voice inflection and was taught when to use them most effectively. His parents pocketed millions of dollars from his preaching.

Marjoe tried to make a career for himself as an actor, but was never all that successful. When he turned fifty, he quit doing that. He now works as ...guess what...a professional fundraiser! He works for nonprofits and such things, and is quite effective.

I have come to like Marjoe quite a bit.

[MissHoneychurch]

12. Thank you for the information

I never heard this name before. But then I never heard of children preaching either.

[no_hypocrisy]

16. "Coaching" meant that Marjoe's mother, Marjorie, held a four year old's head under

a faucet of streaming water until he choked and then read him the Bible verse until he could repeat it verbatim. It's in his biography, Marjoe. She used him because she was an evangelist who was frustrated with being a wife and mother. Beyond the usual stage mother BS.

[knitter4democracy]

21. That video was seriously creepy.

:scared:

[Warpy]

29. I sure do, if only for his

"Glory Gee to Beezus!" while he was counting the take from a prayer meeting.

He finally came out and had a film made about what he'd been doing since he was a kid, a film that was shown on PBS back in the 70s. It demonstrated that the whole evangelical thing was show business more than anything else, pure entertainment with nothing behind it but the gullibility of his crowds.

I haven't heard much about him since then except as a minor actor.

[LeftyMom]

2. There's a documentary on this kid and other child preachers

called Baby Bible Bashers. It's from the beeb, but we get it here in the land of the free to indoctrinate the kids in stupid shit, thanks to that tool of teh debil, youtube.

Part one here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP-s3AV9Kzs

[MissHoneychurch]

3. I hope that kid will grow out of it when he becomes a teenager

or he will become another nutcase. I am afraid it will be the second.

They had a documentary about this little boy yesterday on a German channel. The boy was preaching in front of an abortion clinic!!!??? At age 7!!!! He shouldn't know shit about that stuff. In his little mind they are murderers, but he doesn't understand that there are circumstances when a woman has no other choice.

His parents are using him and that is just horrible.

[Vickers]

4. He doesn't sound like your typical Noo Yawker.

:P

[MissHoneychurch]

5. Maybe because he is from Mississippi

:P

In the TV documentary yesterday the boy was crushed because the typical Noo Yawker gave a sh*t about what he was preaching. He was trying to hand out flyers. Nobody would take them.

[Vickers]

25. omg, a Noo Yawker that won't accept some bullshit from a religious carpetbagger?

I'm shocked!

:P

[Oeditpus Rex]

6. There's a whole series on this kid on YouTube

A British documentary, I think.



I hope he gets help.

[MissHoneychurch]

7. Well, he doesn't has the healthy surrounding of a public school

I think it will be some more years till he finally can break free. If he still wants to by then. I hope it for him.

[bumblebee1]

8. Just watched the BBC video on Youtube.

I have one thing to say: I want to see what becomes of these children in 10 or 15 yrs.

[MissHoneychurch]

10. This is what I would like to know too

it is scary how those parents are using their children. And yes, I think it is brain washing.

[TechBear_Seattle]

23. That is easy enough to tell, even without a crystal ball or tarot cards

Most will get married in their late teens to a woman they knocked up due to ignorance of birth control. They will divorce within a few years, and as the ink on the decree is still drying, have another quicky wedding to the girlfriend they got pregnant while married to the first wife. That marriage too will probably end in divorce.

Almost half will become chronic alcoholics or abuse some other substance, as that will be the only way they can cope with the disparity between reality and what they have been brainwashed to believe. Physical and mental abuse will be rampant in their adult lives, as neither their wives nor children will be spiritual enough, submissive enough, Christian enough to merit anything other than everlasting damnation; in short, they will pass on to the next generation the same habits of abuse that they learned from their own parents.

Few will get a job that pays a living wage, as few big employers will be willing -- or able, under state and federal law -- to hire and keep employees who repeatedly demean women, gays and other minorities. Those few who do get decent jobs will work for places like Liberty University, the Creation Institute or the Mississippi Republican Party, and face a high probability of getting fired when videos surface on Youtube of their rubber fetish and taste in minor children.

Did I miss anything?

[tkmorris]

9. That is just appalling, on several levels.

[papapi]

13. Serial killer in the making.

[MissHoneychurch]

14. Unfortunately yes

if he doesn't break free in some years.

[rateyes]

15. Child abuse. nt

[HamdenRice]

17. The great writer, James Baldwin, was a child preacher

He wrote very movingly about having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian environment in "Go Tell it on the Mountain."

[uberllama42]

18. This really is a form of abuse

Everyone has the right to believe whatever they want, right? Then no one should be indoctrinated by his/her parents like that.

Also, I think it's kind of crass that they set him up at the WTC site like that. When I went, I wanted to reflect quietly on what happened there. The last thing I would have wanted would have been somebody yelling their superstitions at me.

[VP505]

19. What bothers me most about

this kind of thing is that those children haven't experienced enough of life to be telling ANYBODY how they should live theirs.

[TechBear_Seattle]

20. I'm reminded of a story about a parrot that performed Shakespeare

He was quite good. But of course, he had absolutely no understand of what he was parroting.

[knitter4democracy]

22. This kind of stuff really bothers me.

That same church doesn't believe in infant baptism because babies can't choose their faith-path, but somehow a seven year old can? Has he really reached any kind of age of discernment at all? It sounds more like his parents have chosen his path for him and are calling it God's will. My in-laws did the same thing to my husband about him being a doctor (his mom often tells the story of when he told her he was going to be a doctor when he was three while ignoring all the times he told her something else), and it made him seriously question his path when he got to med school and hated it. He took a year off, and during that time--as an adult--figured out he really did love medicine but not because of his parents and not for the money but instead because it brought him joy. He was pretty messed up during that year, though.

[Goblinmonger]

24. OK, couple observations

1. Why is this so much different or worse than the Catholic Church (an example I use because it is relevant to my youth, not as "Catholic-bashing") convincing youth that they will burn in hell for masturbation? Isn't indoctrination bad regardless?

2. Why hasn't the person who is so dead set against atheists saying anything bad about religion not chiming in on this thread to say that people should back off? Is it possible that there is a double standard?

[Book Lover]

26. Explain to me why I should listen to a 7 year old about *anything*

except, maybe, Transformers.

"Samuel, who studies the Bible for about one hour each night, wasn’t sure if he wanted to grow up to be a minister.

“It’s harder to learn to be a pastor than to preach,” he said haltingly."

Yeah, effectively helping people with their spiritual and temporal crises is a smidgen more difficult than yelling at them on the street. Maybe you'll learn someday, child.

[uberllama42]

27. "Except, maybe, about Transformers"

:rofl:

[Evoman]

28. You beat me to it. That was EXACTLY what I was going to say.

Except I would have said something like, "gulping juice", which is about the only thing little kids know anything about.

Although, heh...when a kid can memorize and spout the same thing as adults, you gotta wonder about the "complexity" of the subject. Of course, I'm one of those guys that doesn't really take theology, or ministry studies, very seriously. I guess it's just one of those egotistical scientist things.

[knitter4democracy]

30. My five year old may not gulp juice, but he knows a lot about worms.

Worms, farming, and building things. Yeah, I wouldn't listen to him on faith-stuff, either, considering he has some odd and funny ideas about that. My daughter, who's the same age as the kid of the OP, knows tons about Webkinz and her bike and her favorite tv shows, but I would never feel comfortable indoctrinating her in the faith and not exposing her to other faiths and other ways.