Gretchen Voss wrote a spectacularly one-sided hit-piece on Pastor Melissa Scott in Marie Claire magazine recently. It doesn't take much perception to quickly figure out that Gretchen Voss's intent was to destroy Pastor Melissa Scott's ministry with this article. Voss who basically rewrites a blogger's story she found on the internet, comes to their same misguided conclusions about Pastor Scott.
If I didn't know the indoctrination Gretchen Voss was subjected to in University, I would truly be at a loss as to how an award winning journalist could screw up so badly about a person I know. But, since I do know that the media in general is waging war on all things Christian, the spin of Voss's story is hardly surprising.
Let's deconstruct Gretchen Voss's article:
"On any given Sunday, several hundred parishioners converge here for a rousing service that has them swaying and shouting Hallelujah!"
Right friggin' there at the beginning of the article is a lie!!! I have been attending the Cathedral since the early 1990's and I have never witnessed the parishioners swaying in mass, shouting Hallelujah. It doesn't happen. People in our church have always been more into the cerebral than the emotional. The last time we shouted something like "Hallelujah" or "Amen" was when Dr. Scott was making fun of fundamentalist preachers. And that happened possibly once in the last 20 years.
Now, if Gretchen had an intern write this part of the article, I could understand the mistake. But she was there in church. I saw Gretchen and knew she was a reporter instantly. She's blonde, and although slightly attractive, she had her hair pulled back in a severe manner to make herself look less so. I remember the miserable look on her face. I'm not sure if she's chronically unhappy because of her mother issues (she writes all about them), or if she was in a bad mood being surrounded by so many Christians whom she naturally considers inferior. I just know she looked miserable and she kept craning her neck around to look back at the congregation (which made her stand out like a sore-thumb).
If Voss is an honest reporter of the facts, she must admit that she lied about the first part of the story. "Swaying and shouting Hallelujah?" That is an insult to all of us who attend that church. I was there and it did NOT happen. So she starts the article with the insinuation that we're all a bunch of swaying retards duped by this Pastor Melissa Scott charlatan. If you read Gretchen Voss's article on abortion, then you already know how she feels about retards. She eliminates them before they have a chance at being born. Hence, as a superior secular thinker, Voss is obviously writing about what she THINKS goes on in church, rather than about what she actually observed.
Voss continues...
"Dr. Gene "Doc" Scott, the wildly popular "shock jock of televangelism" — nearly 40 years her senior..."
Ok, sounds like she's quoting old articles from people like Greg Stacy who tried to dismiss Dr. Scott's intelligence with the simple moniker, "shock jock." (Voss visits and posts to Stacy's blog here before she came to our church: http://gregstacy.wordpress.com/about/ Next Voss has to accentuate the age difference, yet more proof from her perspective that Pastor Scott is little more than another Anna Nicole Smith.
"In his heyday as pastor, Doc Scott reportedly collected $1 million a month in donations and amassed an empire that included two horse ranches, a 35,000-square-foot mansion in Pasadena, a private plane, and a collection of luxury cars."
I love it when reporters use the word, "reportedly." It absolves them from sticking to facts and gives license to exaggeration. If called on it, they can claim they weren't making a concrete allegation. But the insinuation is obvious: Dr. Scott was a greedy con-man building an empire for himself, so don't even bother listening to the thousands of hours of Bible teaching the man amassed in his lifetime. And pay no attention to the terrible personal price he paid for standing up to government encroachment on church freedoms. All of the good he did in his life is dismissed with a wave of Voss's hand and a convenient, "reportedly."
"Shortly after his funeral, Doc Scott's comely young wife assumed University's pulpit."
Another subtle put-down.
"But after her first sermon, someone anonymously mailed churchgoers Easter cards featuring snapshots of a porn star named Barbie Bridges, who looked remarkably similar to Pastor Melissa Scott. One image showed the woman with her legs spread wide, Virgin Mary and baby Jesus postage stamps covering her privates. Another featured a "See you Sunday!" banner plastered across her bare chest; underneath, it read: "The Church Where You Can Do Anything ... Anything."
What's amazing about this statement is Voss' lack of outrage in reporting the act. She just breezes past it like it's nothing! Put yourself in the position of the poor people who received the Easter card. Dr. Scott taught us years ago that Easter itself streams from "Ishtar" and that the Catholic Church has incorporated a lot of heathen iconography (like the egg and the rabbit) into what is supposed to be a celebration of Christ's Resurrection. But forget all that. Easter still has very strong religious connotations for Christians. How do you think these families felt when they received such an iconoclastic mailer on one of their holy days?
The sick-mindedness of the individual who sent such a card isn't even addressed by Voss. Of course it was sent anonymously. Even the sick freak who engaged in the despicable act isn't insane enough to pen his/her own name to the filth. And the fact that Marie Claire would display such a filthy slap-in-the-face for Christians on one of their sacred holidays only serves to accentuate their own bias. Of course, Voss doesn't think twice about having Marie Claire post this picture. She thinks Christianity is a joke, so why wouldn't she? I wonder if she (or Marie Claire) would be so bold as to post a card featuring a Muslim cleric having sex with a farm animal? I wonder if Gretchen Voss would enjoy it if someone sent an anonymous card to her family and friends on one of their anniversaries showing a nude woman's legs spread apart, claiming it was a picture of Gretchen and her aborted fetus. Sorry to be so graphic, but when I see utter disregard for my own religion and what I consider a holy day, why should I spare Gretchen's feelings? By putting this card on public display, Marie Claire magazine and Gretchen Voss are just as guilty as the monster who mailed it out in the first place.
"It seemed as if Scott had joined the long, sordid list of disgraced televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and, most recently, Ted Haggard, ousted from his Colorado church following allegations that he solicited a male prostitute."
No, Gretchen is wrong again. She's trying to equivocate Pastor Scott with these other idiots. I realize in Voss's prejudiced mind, every preacher on TV is a "televangelist" (she's using the word deliberately as a pejorative), but there is NO equivocation. Voss delights in listing Pastor's age as 40 then alleges that 20-year-old photos of someone named Barbi Bridges is fodder for a recent scandal. First off, the Barbi Bridges photo I saw has someone with different facial features, particularly the nose. Secondly, these photos were proliferated around the web by disgruntled ex-members years ago after Dr. Scott died. Just because Gretchen is out of touch old media, and she thinks she discovered a new rumor, doesn't make it a new rumor or a new scandal. We've all heard this Barbi Bridges blogger nonsense years before Marie Claire ran their article.
The ridiculous thing is, even if this lying allegation was true, where is the scandal? Pastor Scott has never put herself on a pedestal and condemned others from a self-righteous pulpit ala Swaggart, Falwell, Bakker, etc. If Voss had listened to even a few hours of Pastor Scott's teaching, she would know that Pastor describes herself as being worse than Paul, who was "the chiefest of sinners," "the lowest of the low," "a sinner saved by grace..." Pastor regularly goes on like this with self-deprecatory comments. She preaches Christ, His forgiveness, His righteousness. Never her own. Pastor is all about teaching the message of grace and that no matter what condition we find ourselves in, or how badly we've screwed things up, it's never too late to turn our lives around.
For Voss to try and trick the readers into making the cognitive leap that Pastor Scott is a hypocrite like Bakker, Swaggert and that Boy-Buggerer is disgusting. Voss reports the story as if Pastor Scott was teaching church on a Sunday morning condemning sinners to hell, and then on Monday she got caught on Larry Flynt's set. It's ridiculous. The televangelists Voss compares Pastor to were all self-righteous hypocrites, preaching a perfectionist doctrine they themselves couldn't live up to. And they were caught doing things in the PRESENT that they were preaching against. That is diametrically opposed to the Barbi Bridges allegations Voss tries to make a comparison with.
I personally don't believe Gretchen Voss and the negative bloggers whom she plagiarized when writing this hit-piece. She starts the article off with a lie, didn't spend ten minutes researching or studying Pastor Melissa Scott, and she reeks of her own secular bias. I don't believe these allegations are true. But in the article, Pastor Scott is never quoted as answering either way. Even if she was Barbi Bridges when she was young and dumb, it doesn't matter to me. I did plenty of things when I was young and dumb. And even though Gretchen likes to play the "my life's an open-book" ruse when she describes her abortion and her vodka-swilling mother, I'm sure she's done things in her past that she wishes she hadn't. We all have.
"But unlike those toppled icons, Scott clung to her denial and carried on preaching."
Again, Voss distorts the message. I've never heard Pastor Scott DENY any allegations in the article. Deciding to live one's life in the present and not talk about events from the past is a far-cry from making a denial. Voss is word-twisting in order to protect the agenda of her story and it's wrong. She's making Pastor sound like Bill Clinton when he vehemently claimed, "I never had sexual relations with that woman!" Telling someone (especially a reporter) that some things are "none of your damned business" is a far cry from making a denial.
The quandry that people like Pastor Melissa Scott who live in the public eye face when journalists level attacks, is that they basically have one of two choices: They can defend themselves and run the risk of fueling the fire and keeping the story alive. Or they can take the high-ground and ignore the allegations but run the risk that silence will be taken as consent. As one who has had to deal with reporters ravenous for a story, it can be quite a Catch-22.
I for one don't care about Pastor Melissa Scott's past. I only know she's the best living Bible teacher in the world today. I've heard that the real Barbi Bridges presently lives in Las Vegas and is a completely different person, but I couldn't care less. I don't judge people based on what they've done in their distant pasts. I've witnessed God's power to change lives. I've seen Pastor grow spiritually and change with my own eyes, and I have nothing but glowing reviews for how she's handled the ministry the last five years. She's made extraordinary accomplishments.
What Voss was hoping to accomplish with her article and rehashed allegations, was the same thing that previous sadists in the news media accomplished when they broke down ministers of God and turned them into groveling, bawling, sycophants ala Bakker and Swaggert. The Swaggerts and the Bakkers of the world were all-self-righteous, all-condemnation, all-perfectionism, all-the-time, until they themselves got caught. We had to suffer those two grown men publicly blubbering for forgiveness, so that the almighty news media could play God and judge whether or not their blubbering was sincere enough to grant them a chance to get on with their lives and their ministries. Thank God Pastor didn't roll over and grovel for this Voss person. The affirmation of Voss and her negative blogger friends means absolutely NOTHING. Which leads to the next asinine statement:
Some parishioners just don't get it. "I think she'd have a much bigger congregation if she came clean," says a former member who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. "People would have more respect for her if she said, 'Yes, that was me, but I've repented and turned to Christ.' Instead it's, 'What else are you lying about?'"
"Some parishioners???"Again, I always love it when the media couches their own prejudicial remarks with, "Some people say..." or "Some would say..." Whenever I read a journalist start off their sentence with that, I always wonder who the "some" really is. Their fellow reporters BS'ing with them the night before at the bar? Or is it really the opinion of the journalist deceptively disguised under the blanket of a "some say..." Whatever. Voss has found a courageous soulmate who refuses to give his/her name due to "fear of reprisals." What reprisal would that be I wonder? Is Voss insinuating that we're like the Jim Jones cult that sent out thugs to beat up those who expressed dissent? What friggin' reprisals is she talking about? If this person actually exists outside of Voss's imagination, then what kind of reprisals could they truly be expecting? I can only think of one: Getting kicked out of the church. Now, what the hell kind of a reprisal would that be to a person who openly calls their Pastor a liar and has run away to a different church? Anyone that judgmental and distrustful of their Pastor obviously belongs in a different church. But Voss chooses to print one minority voice from the disgruntled realm of the ex-member bloggers. For those of you who don't know, most of us did not leave when Dr. Scott died. But of course, only the opinion of the brave former member makes it into Voss's objective story.
Here's the other idiotic thing Voss prints that proves she wrote the article without doing any research. "A much bigger congregation???" Pastor doesn't give a monkey's about building a mega-church. God's message is a tough one, it's never going to be popular with the masses and Pastor has stated that numerous times. Voss is so ignorant (along with her fantasy ex-parishioner) to even write that "the church could be bigger only if Pastor would behave the way the ex-parishioner wants her to...." If one wants a larger congregation, it's quite easy to accomplish:
1) Have three separate services on Sunday to accomodate the crowd so they can watch football, go to the beach, and choose to go to church on their own schedule.
2) Put a Starbucks in.
3) Provide marriage counseling and other hand-holding services.
4) Tell the congregation how great they are, how lucky God is to have them, and how rich God's going to make them.
And presto! You now have a larger congregation... I'm sorry to sound mean, but Voss and her ex-parishioner friend are just imbeciles.
I have read other articles that Gretchen has written, and she definitely has a bias toward people of faith (unless of course they're trendy Buddhists or dangerous Muslims). When she writes about abortion, alcoholism, and eating disorders, she appears to be more in her element. However, moving into more complex arenas like theology is obviously beyond her intellectual comfort zone, hence she's left flailing about in a desperate attempt to drag the subject of her story down into the gutter she's most comfortable with. In the shallow mind of Gretchen Voss, there can't possibly be anything of depth to this Pastor Melissa Scott nor this God-thing. So Gretchen gives the people what they want: More stories about sex, money, power and corruption. More bread and circuses for the minions who read Voss and Marie Claire.
Find more articles by this self-proclaimed, award-winning journalist at: http://gretchenvoss.net/
