chris hiosis - Arz-e-Pak

The Cult ofMasculinity 93
throwing up sparks from the fireplace on her patio. "I had been a
'baby Christian' for only two short years. I was just beginning to
learn that Christians perceived an unwed woman [as] a source of
temptation. This was a man's world. And I had to be anchored to
a man in order to move freely around them."
Her reception at the gatherings she addressed was frightening.
Crowds swarmed toward her, asking her to touch them and heal
them. Her statuS was nothing compared with that of Robertson,
she said, "who stands for his followers as the embodiment of
God's conscience.
"They were seeking a message, a healing, hope, a little encouragement,"
she remembered. ''They wanted a little piece of God.
They thought I could give it to them. People wept when I prayed
for them, touched them or hugged them. It was as if they were
meeting a rock star."
She was increasingly disturbed by the power that had been
thrust upon her and the emotions unleashed by those who
begged her for guidance in every aspect oftheir lives. She understood
how pliant these people had become and how cleverly they
were being manipulated. The realization led her finally to leave
the movement. Her experience was a window into how willingly
followers handed over their consciences to these leaders, abandoned
all moral responsibility for the word ofthose who had elevated
themselves to the status ofquasi-deities.
"They truSted us more than their family," she says. "They
thought we had a clearer path to God because we were on television.
They thought we were on television because God put us
there. We were prophets to these people. We were seen as people
who could walk on clouds and heal and pray. We were God's special
messengers. Pat was seen as having the ear of God. He had
words ofknowledge that could identify their deepest fears and illnesses.
We would identify people on the air by speaking about the
color oftheir clothes or an illness they had. We would say, 'There
is a woman with a blue blouse crying at this moment. She has bad