Tony Alamo News

4/26/10 – Tony Alamo no man of God ***COMMENTS***

The Current
April 26, 2010
Posted by Andrew Seal

Tony Alamo no man of God

Tony Alamo is leaving leaflets on my car.

Well, he is not doing it himself, but one of his followers is.

The point is, my windshield gets cluttered every few months or so with fundamentalist propaganda.

For those unfamiliar with the “good” “Pastor” (the terms used loosely), Tony Alamo is a fundamentalist Christian preacher— Pentecostal, to be precise. Er wait, he is Jewish. Maybe he is a polygamist? No one knows for sure—his religious beliefs seem to change in every leaflet he writes.

He is definitely Christian. Then again, maybe not, because in one of his leaflets he wrote, “I am a Jew (one of God’s people).” On top of that, Alamo himself may not have been a polygamist, but he certainly was not against the idea— he’s promoted it in several of his leaflets.

At least two things are known for sure about Alamo.

For starters, he is certain that Catholics are agents of the devil and that the U.S. government is run by a satanic cult of Catholics. Oh, and that John F. Kennedy, a Catholic himself, was assassinated by our satanic/Catholic government.

The second is that he is a convicted child sex offender.

Sorry, probably should have mentioned that earlier. In 2009, Alamo was convicted on 10 federal counts of transporting minors across state lines for sex and was sentenced to 175 years in prison.

Alamo still claims he is innocent and that the 8th Circuit court of Appeals will vindicate him. Oh, he also says that he is “just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel.”

While it’s true that over the 1,000-plus-year history of Christianity, some who espoused its values in unpopular times have been jailed, but it certainly was not for having sexual relations with minors.

I am not sure what part of the Bible that whole “child sex” part is in, but Alamo knows, apparently: “I have never done anything that would be considered evil by God,” he wrote on his Web site.

But sex with children was not the first of Alamo’s run-ins with the law.

There is the minor weapons charge that he served time for. Next in 1994, Alamo went to jail for tax evasion and remained there for four years.

Then, in 2008, came the charges of physical abuse, sexual abuse, polygamy and underage miscarriage from some of his followers, which resulted in the 175-year jail term he is currently serving.

Unfortunately, all of that is only a part of the oddness that comprises Alamo Ministries. After his first wife Susan died in 1982, Alamo claimed that she would be resurrected. For six whole months he kept her body on display in front of his followers while they prayed over her.

As can be expected, Susan did not resurrect or reanimate. After 16 years of waiting for it to happen, Alamo eventually gave her remains to her family for a proper burial.

Long terrible story short, Alamo is one of those huckster preachers who epitomizes the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do way of life. To him, everyone who does not agree with his view on religion and life is a Satanist, and woe unto them!

Nowhere in Alamo’s leaflets are there any mentions of Jesus’ teaching of “Love thy neighbor as thyself”— because that kind of drivel would run entirely counter to the atmosphere of xenophobic hatred he has fostered amongst his followers.

What boggles the mind is that despite the fact that Alamo is in jail for having sex with children, he still has people dedicated to him—dedicated enough to print up hundreds of leaflets and put a couple on my car every few months.

While no religion is free of its deviants— even the Catholic Church is not beyond reproach, as has been shown in recent days—it is typically one of the followers who commits the sin, not the founder.

If it looks like a cult, sounds like a cult, and puts inane leaflets on my car like a cult, it is probably a cult.

Right?

Andrew Seal is Staff writer for The Current.