Tuesday, August 10, 2010

People Who Love You Get to Hit You and Hurt You, Cape Cod Church Edition

Cape Cod Calvary Church pastor Silas Coellner advocates causing children -- and crawling infants -- pain. On purpose. To teach them that people who love you get to hit you and hurt you, a lesson they will carry with them forever.

MATTAPOISETT — A pastor and father of three poised to become the assistant principal at Old Rochester Regional Junior High School is under fire for sermonizing that spanking children is "critical" — starting with when they crawl.

"I have this little bundle of innocence. When do I start dealing with them?" Silas Coellner said in an online podcast he took down after the Herald inquired about it.

"There's something about when they reach that crawling stage, I have found, in my experience, when you can suddenly see that heart of defiance, of rebellion, for the first time. That's when you begin."

Pastor Silas is one sick puppy. Maybe he needs someone to beat some sense into him?

2 comments:

Ahab said...

Twisted and tragic ... but unfortunately not the first Christian fundamentalist who had avocated striking small children. What is wrong with these people!?

Rev.Paperboy said...

I really don't think his religion has much to do with this. It is just a cover for an authoritarian mindset. If it wasn't religion, it would be the need for "discipline" or "order" or "strong leadership" -- it is all about control for some people. That "heart of defiance, of rebellion" Pastor Silas decries is the spark of imagination and independent thought that is natural to all humans until some authoritarian control freak crushes it. I bet he spanks his kids for "talking back" all the time. And I bet they grow up cowering, resentful, fearful and desperate for positive reinforcement from an authority figure.