Sun
Mar 23 2008
06:16 am
Pearl featured in Washington Post
By: Pam Strickland

"Pearl Has Converted The Faithful in Tennessee"

(link...)

Tells the story we're all familiar w/ and brings in a couple of quotes that are smile worthy, plus something to think about regarding a Jew among Christians.

"He's just so dynamic, so engaged," she says. "It's fun being around him, fun to be around someone who always sees the good in everything."

"He jumped on the Tennessee bandwagon," Summitt says. "If there was an event, he was at it. He could be elected mayor in a heartbeat."

So maybe we won't have to look far to replace Ragsdale.

If there is a subject on which Pearl is most passionate, it's his Judaism, about which he talks so feelingly that his eyes well up. When he first arrived in Knoxville, some local Christian worshipers invited him to church and told him they wished he would make Jesus his personal savior, so he could get to heaven. It wasn't enough for Pearl to politely inform them he was Jewish and attended synagogue. He described the role of God in his life, how he worshiped, lit candles, believed in mitzvahs. (Some of the local Christians still invite him to church.)

I was taken aback by this. I am preparing to go to church this morning, and am unsettled that people would not respect his religion.

But the players do, there's a passage about when they went to Europe last summer, and he took them to the concentration camps. And then there's the story of Pearl watching as the players attended his daughter's bat mitzvah between that trip and the beginning of fall semester.

"Here came these talk, dark, handsome men, all wearing yarmulkes," Pearl says delightedly. Then he adds his favorite detail: how he heard some of the players greeting the other well-wishers.

"They were going, 'Shalom, y'all.' "

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Opinari's picture

I was taken aback by this. I

Submitted by Opinari on Sun, 2008/03/23 - 10:44am.

I was taken aback by this. I am preparing to go to church this morning, and am unsettled that people would not respect his religion.

To those people, this is the commission they are given by God, to proselytize, to share the Word of God with all of the world. The error they make is that they witness not by how they live, but by being obnoxious and overly persistent. I once was a member of such a church, and I watched how put off many people were with such tactics.

All of this is to say, I certainly was not taken aback by this. I would have been surprised had those churches done otherwise.

Bbeanster's picture

I agree with

Submitted by Bbeanster on Sun, 2008/03/23 - 11:45am.

I agree with Opinari.

There's a long tradition of aggressive proselytizing in the Christian church stretching back to Richard I and the Crusades, and the resurgence of evangelicalism pretty much ensures that Bruce and other minority believers will have to endure the well-intentioned efforts of those who believe it is their duty to save the infidel from the fires of hell.

Heck, it used to happen to me at Ritta Elementary School -- and I was a Methodist. The first time one of my foot-washing classmates asked me if I was saved, I said "From what?"They were horrified that I wasn't fully immersed, and they'd come in on Monday and talk about what the Rev. Roy Myers preached about that Sunday. It was usually shorts. He didn't believe women should wear them. His church -- New Beverly Baptist -- grew like a melanoma, and is one of the largest in the area now. It's next to the farmer's market shopping center and has it's own school, I believe. Pretty ironic, since Preacher Myers was never too enthusiastic about education, based on my observations of his son, Roy Jr., who was driving a car by the time he got through the 8th grade -- and wearing shorts.

Opps, sorry for the rant down Memory Lane. :-)
Happy Easter

knoxvegas99's picture

It's not just the

Submitted by knoxvegas99 on Mon, 2008/03/24 - 12:55pm.

It's not just the foot-washing Baptists, Bean. I remember something called "Evangelism Explosion" that came out of a Presbyterian church in (IIRC) Coral Gables, Fla. back in the 70's. I knew some of the people who got involved in the movement and they were relentless.

Larry Van Guilder

redmondkr's picture

I got a video in my email

Submitted by redmondkr on Mon, 2008/03/24 - 1:27pm.

I got a video in my email last week from a friend. It started out talking about the world being created six thousand years ago and ended asking me where I intended to be during the rapture.

There was no mention of how many magic beans I would win if I forwarded it to 500 friends within ten minutes.


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