Thank you for the applause and questions guys! Keep it coming.
As far as the snake-handlers and pentecostalists, those came rarely to our store because they knew that we found their practices theologically dubious. Sometimes they would walk out and try to convert people in the back of the store or ask a patron into their car where they would witness to them and share literature. We tried to have a resident expert theologian on hand who would try to correct their more grievous errors in doctrine. One snake-handler abandoned the practice on the spot and release his snakes in the store, saying “go free creatures of God!” It took me forever to capture them, and I was a little nervous but no one got hurt.
Sometimes a local bishop would come in and ask us if we were selling sacramental wine to underage children. We had many books that were too advanced for young people and could possibly induce them into theologically dubious beliefs, but they would be concerned about the sacramental wine! Shows you the influence of the anti-drinking crowd in this country.
Alright, now this is just getting ridiculous. I mean, this stuff is just too good to actually be true. Bishops coming into the store? Come on! This crap is totally unbelievable. There was stuff in the beginning, but you’ve carried this way too far.
So which troll are you, returning to haunt us? Let me go see if I can find some postings from the “Christianity and Love” thread that might sound a bit, shall we say, familiar. Unless, of course, you just want to come out and admit you’re Phaedrus…
Look guys…clearly there is some history here that I’m not entirely aware of.
I don’t know, I’m new here. I really am. I’m an honest to god real girl, not some alias. But I guess only Prism knows that he didn’t write as me, but whatever.
I found these boards, spent a few days lurking, registered and posted a comment here and there. So some of you think I’m one of his aliases. I can see that, I guess, it’s happened in some of the other boards I post in. But no one even gave me the benefit of the doubt, and as far as I know, I haven’t done anything wrong.
So some of the regulars don’t like this thread or this guy, ok, I’ll respect that. Do I care that his stories might be made up? Not really. I take everything I read on the Net with a grain of salt. Was I pretty fascinated by the thread? Yeah, it was amusing, much like the “Creepy”, “Ogled”, “Gay Guy” threads and a few others I looked at. Does it make one bit of a difference in my day that these stories might be false? No. Why should they? It’s really not a big deal, guys, really. Especially since I don’t think the stories weren’t all that offensive or tedious (which is a greater crime, I think).
I don’t know, I was a little annoyed that oldscratch copied my post, but whatever. I guess some of you took the chance that you were dealing with an alias and never stopped to wonder if just maybe, you weren’t.
I forgot about the Rapture films. We used to get some requests for them, especially the ones where Jesus comes back, and boy is he p***ed, but we didn’t carry those. I think my boss would have wanted to carry them to help warn people that the second coming is near but he didn’t want to create widespread panic either. As it was, we had plenty of reminders to believers that they should be ready for Jesus.
Large congregations were often inconsistent in their policies about our store. Even though the local bookstore was selling bibles in the religion section, they might sometimes complain about us selling Chick tracts. You didn’t even want to get the fundamentalists involved because sometimes the Mayor himself might side with them to get votes even though he was a true-blue Unitarian.
As mentioned before deacons in disguise were constantly verifying that we were not carrying buddhist literature. We decided not to sell books on eastern mysticism or the gnostics because we didn’t want to be accused of straying from the one true religion.
We had sacred heart night lights, dove and crucifix tattoos, “ichthus” fish for the car bumper, bible verses cross-stitched and framed (that sold very well) and christian bracelet charms. We also had some Mormon-specific undergarments but I have to be very careful about describing those or I could get into trouble.
Now and then interesting happenings would occur outside the store at night. I had to chase away Hare Krishnas who were asking for donations, had a couple of Benedictine monks who would try to force anyone leaving the store to join their order and I had to ask them to leave. I caught missionaries wandering around in pairs (from all denominations) and had to chase them off.
I had the local Episcopelian pastor ask some members of his congregation to haul him off. A week later he showed up filled with the holy spirit and wanted to engage me in a religious debate but I threatened to treat him like the Maccabees treated the gentiles and he left.
I was incensed recently when I heard about a Bible superstore being built in my neighbourhood. It was in a suburb filled with godless materialistic liberals and they immediately protested and asked for the store to be closed. I never found out what happened, the newspapers never follow up on the important stories.
Where I live now we are not allowed to have a christian-only bookstore – though Barnes and Nobles sells the writings of John Calvin and some small church book shops can have literature that strictly follows to their denomination.
I personally am proud of my love for Jesus. I figure that most men believe in God, and of those that claim they don’t many of them are lying. I don’t know why they feel guilty about it, or perhaps they are pandering to the atheist vote.
Of course I see the difference. But the setup was too funny in my mind, so I had to say it. I’m not condoning lying, but more ignoring it. Anything I read on the board is false till confirmed anyways, so I’d prefer a well written lie to a boring truth any day. Perhaps I don’t get the same self satisfaction in catching someone in their lies. There’s a big difference between Michael Masterson style trolling and making shit up about your otherwise boring life.
Yesterday I made a comment about creating a second account and flaming myself. Then a “co-worker” logged on, made a post very similar to mine, flamed me a bit (thought no one else would have caught it), and then I responded back with a comment about him. Was that me flaming myself, or was it really a coworker coincidentally joining that day? If I don’t tell you, or if I do and you don’t believe me, there is nothing I can (or would) do to convince you otherwise. The question is, how much does it matter?
I appreciate the support Coldfire. Glad you enjoy the stories.
Did I mention some of the clothes we carried?
Mostly for Passion Plays and Bible Camp of course. We carried a Mary Magdalene outfit (like you see on those Cecil B. DeMille bible movies) complete with a long wig that you could use to wash feet. It came in several sizes. It was made mostly out of white muslim and was hard to wash. We s old quite a few of those. Next to them we had authentic Bible-era undergarments of various sorts.
Then there was the Jezebel outfit in the same sizes. They came in many colours with a veil and a blouse for the top and a matching skirt for the bottom. Since Jezebel was a sinner we had more latitude in showing off her licentiousness and so the materials were more transparent.
Many people bought the outfits: young women, priests, even some male biblical actors. A couple of choir members not only bought those, but shiny robes to wear with them with an embroidered cross that could only be seen in black light. They wore them with sandals or barefoot (for the biblical effect) when they were singing at sunday services. (Hallelujah!)
We carried a crucifixion outfit - a white robe, crown of throwns, and additional “whips” to be used when “flagellating” the actor representing Jesus. The white robe was open in the front so you could see the fake wounds on the chest used by the actor representing Jesus. It was all made of materials used during Biblical times and was very expensive.
For the men, we also sold a Moses outfit complete with staff that could turn into a snake when you pressed the right button. We also had a reproduction of the stone tablets with the ten commandments on it. (I called those “the divine tablets” and joked that the medicine therein was strong enough to cure any case of disbelief.) We also had some other “magic” kits that could be used to represent different miracles by God as described in the Bible: plastic locusts, white confetti that looked like manna, a “pillar” of smoke (actually fog) to lead you through the desert. We sold quite a few.
Kids loved acting out old testament scenes with our miracle kits.
We sold many different types of candles. From the large paschal candles to tiny votive ones. For some of them we sold plastic representations of famous stained glass windows, you could light the candle behind it and see the shadows formed by the “stained glass”. I liked those.
This is one happy entertaining thread. Whatever the real life background behind it, I would not miss it for the world.
Thank you Arnold. Thank you so much. IMO we should just laugh and laugh and laugh at this point. Take the fights somewhere else and honor Arnold’s amazing artistry.
Odieman, I’m not a God, just one of his followers. Thank you for the positive comments everyone!
Hmm. Many are called but few are chosen. Lurkers, please don’t hesitate to participate in our thread.
Occasionally some of our customers would try to return holy water – which we could not take back because we didn’t know where the water had been. They didn’t come in tamper-proof containes back then.
I had to maintain composure when I saw someone with little or no experience in the finer points of theology buying some of our more erudite tomes, such as the collected works of Thomas Aquinas in the original latin with no footnotes. These were the kind of people you would see expounding doctrine on street corners using incorrect translations and quoting the Bible totally out of context. I did my best not to imagine what their audiences would think when they saw them wrestling with theological concepts designed for doctors of divinity.
Our store was surrounded with dogwood trees and other plants. One night after closing up I heard some noise coming from near the prayer pool. So I went around to take a look. One of our local excommunicated catholic priests was offering communion in an unsanctified area, and the two people forming the “congregation” seemed to be raptly listening to him. I left them alone, not being like the local verger and other of our busybodies who would have interrupted this unapproved service immediately. Besides, I’m all for freedom of worship.
You know Estrella. I didn’t think of you one way or the other. You just offered convienient comments to copy. I thought it was funny. Now I’m convinced you are a sock puppet. The complaints about other tedious stories, the comments about it being ok that it’s not true (even though you asked him a question). I wouldn’t ask someone who is posting false information a question. And the final point, you signed a message “a fan”. So get ye out of my sight sockpuppet. I’ll have nothing more to do with you until I’m convinced otherwise. And, just to make people happy.
I’ve posted to this thread a couple times, but I guess my experience as a former christian book store employee wasn’t as interesting to the others as Arnold’s. I ain’t sayin’ you’re a liar, Arnold, but your stories are just SO elaborate…it ain’t as interesting as one might think it would be.
We had events…like I said, occasionally, preachers would be touring stores to promote a new line of cruxifixs or something. They’d sign stuff, baptise customers, spread the word, leave. They were extravagently clad but, not in red tuxedos or anything.
Nuns who worked the stores would never have been allowed to dress in the Mary Madelegne costumes, for the same reason we weren’t allowed to preach to the customers. Corporate wanted to avoid giving overly religous male patrons reason to believe that the female staff was convertable, and frankly, dogmatic though it may be, all the nuns was quite satisfied with that rule.
I’ve been wondering about this:
What year was this? I worked in my store 5-6 years ago, and there was absolutely no letting atheists through the door. If they couldn’t prove they were christian (or at least diests), they were out. Christians were turned away if they tried to bring their atheist friends in with them, even if they were agnostic. Nobody without a firm belief in GOD got within 2 feet of the door.
Also, early on in the thread, Arnold, you said that your store sold Mormon literature. This seems wrong to me, as the Mormons are hell bound and not really Christians anyway. If anything, we had anti-Morman lit.
We didn’t have Hare Krishnas hanging around, either. Or pentecostalists converting people in cars outside. Or bishops trying to sting us.
Again, Arnold. I’m not saying you’re completely lying, but it just doesn’t ring completely true, either. I believe you probably worked in an Christian bookstore, but I think that a lot of your stories are bunk. I believe you’re the poster formerly known as Phaedrus, et al, but I don’t care. As far as this thread goes, all I care about is that you honestly represent the Christian Bookstore industry. The whole reason people are intimidated by it is because they have a false or conditioned notion of it and these outlandish stories just reinforce that notion. The fact is, it’s just a store devoted to Christ. Some heretics come in thinking they can get away with more because of this false notion that they have, but they get straightened out by God quickly. 99% percent of the clientele come, pray, buy what they came in for and leave, nothing to it
I don’t give a hoot if Prism was lying, and I don’t care if he is really Serlinel. His smut shop stories inspired me to finally take a trip to the Video EXXXtra to see what it was all about. I had tons of fun marveling at the merchandise and looking at the dirty magazines. Without this thread, I probably would still be living in ignorance of all the wonderful things that can be created with jelly rubber.
Tomorrow I am going to the Jesus Book & Gift Emporium.
Like I said, I’m new here and I wanted to be friendly to him, to everyone. I’m not looking to argue with anyone but yeah, I’m peeved I have to “prove” myself even though I haven’t done anything but be friendly.
So I asked Prism a question, big deal. I don’t think that means I took everything he said as some sort of end all, be all. It just means I thought he knew a bit of what he was talking about, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask a question. They were interesting stories, I still don’t see what the big deal is if he might have embellished a bit.
So, like if I were to compliment you and ask you a question, would that make others around here question whether I was your sock puppet? I don’t think so. Why is fair then for you to think that of me?
I don’t know where the much hated Serlin was from but odds are he wasn’t from Philly. Get Esprix in here and he’ll confirm that in Philly, Woody’s is on the corner of 13th & Walnut, next to Barbara’s Flower Shop and across the street from Eye Encounters, a bank and a condo. I also graduated from UPenn with a degree in English but I guess I’ll have to offer my senior paper on Joyce for you guys to believe me on that, too.
I don’t care whether Arnold W.'s stories are partially or even completely false.
He seems to know what he’s talking about, and I find them entertaining.
I’d flip through a Gideon’s Bible now and then, but I never before even considered the world of Christian literature and paraphernelia outside of the King James Version.
These stories are helping me to realize that I could go into a store and consider expanding my religious experience outside of the artificial confines I have placed upon it lo these many years. And no one will chase me out the door, screaming Old Testament fire-and-brimstone at me.
For that revelation, I am grateful. And I wish all the rest of you giving Arnold a hard time would just lighten up.
We used to sell these cute novelty rosary beads that I’ve not seen in some time. I still have a broken one around the house sometime. They looked like regular rosary beads, brown plastic, round and smooth. But if you squeezed the largest bead at the end a lid would pop up and you would see a tiny Baby Jesus! I loved it! I used to show this to some of the women customers standing by the counter getting ready to start a prayer circle and they loved it too.
We had a small selection of heavy bookd with lives of the saints, but they didn’t sell well at all (no illustrations.) So we replaced them with shorter booklets with an illustration on each page. They contained a short biopsis of the life of the saint and ended with several pages of biblical quotes. Those sold well.
I like christian books. I like reading the Bible. I’m proud of being a christian. Repressive liberals irritate me and those “separation of church and state” politicians anger me. We used to have some of the local elected officials drop in late at night, “incognito” and trying to act nonchalant, but you could tell they were hungering for holiness and would buy many of our wares, but they usually paid in cash. Yet everytime someone tried to introduce prayer before a football game or posting the ten commandments in the classroom, the same people would oppose it. A court of appeals judge showed up once with a Groucho Marx nose and glasses (like I wouldn’t recognize him), and with several choir members from the local church of Christ, and bought the Book of Common Prayer (both old and revised versions) and some encyclicals.
We kept the tapes on those nights (when politicians arrived) from our surveillance cameras. My boss said he would keep them as insurance in case the government tried to rezone our area as residential and force the store to move. One of the Carmelites from the local monastery of discalced carmelite nuns, came in with an older priest, rented a tape of “The Ten Commandments” and went into one of our viewing rooms. (This wasn’t uncommon, and I didn’t object to the practice.) I got ready and pulled out from our emergency box a small shot bottle of Chartreuse and an icon of the blessed Virgin. 30 minutes letter, the nun came out, looking worried, gave me some money, grabbed the icon and the bottle and went back in. Sometimes the older clergy would be over-excited when seeing Charlton Heston’s bad acting, and while pounding the desk and shouting “I could do Moses better than that!” they might feel dizzy. The chartreuse would help steady them and the icon would encourage them not to give in to feelings of anger. A few minutes later they left, with the clergyman still faintly protesting “Why did Cecil B. DeMille hire that hack?” but the Chartreuse left him with a warm afterglow. Fortunately we never had a heart attack.
I saw some of the congregations our pastors had, where the worshippers were listless and unenthusiastic, with no real energy for the lord at all. If some of the preachers could on weeknights go out to a revival tent and fire up a younger congregation with real passion for the lord, more power to them! It helped them feel vibrant again to do some healing and preaching with a crowd that was not afraid to shout out and dance for love of our saviour, and act like they really wanted to hear a sermon.
Now and then a pastor would come in with communion wine or some of our more explicit books describing the dangers of sinning, that he had confiscated from a young believer, and ask us how the little miscreant could have gotten those. So we would check in our register and show the ledger to the officer. He would find that some overzealous parent had purchased the book to share with their children and sullenly leave. They acted angry because they could not find us in contravention with the church’s policy.
I suppose it’s possible that some children got their hands on inappropriate material (the illustrated story of Lot was in big demand with the younger crowd), but we tried to be careful. We had a Bible at the front desk that we would use to ask the younger-looking crowd to affirm that they were of sufficient age. Right in front of it we had a poster explaining how lying would hurt God, and another showing the suffering of the damned.
Some of the children were bold enough to try to ignore these warnings anyway, but usually we could tell them by their mannerisms.
