So what happens when a fundamentalist preacher gets an advice column in a mainstream daily newspaper?
The Sun-Sentinel recently found out.
Pastor Bob Coy of the Cavalry Chapel has been doing occasional columns in the Sentinel's Saturday newspaper called "Ask Pastor Bob." I never noticed the thing and probably wouldn't have had not NT writer and unofficial Pulp correspondent Wyatt Olson brought Coy's March 11 column to my attention. In that little piece, a woman calling herself P.B. wrote that her husband was verbally abusing her and wrote about the Bible saying something about words being sharper than swords. "Do I need to take this, or can I leave my marriage?" she asked.
Coy told her, "God still desires you to remain committed to your husband." He concluded, "I hope I have helped encourage you not only to stay in your marriage, but to go the extra mile by humbly submitting to your husband, as unto the Lord."
Not surprisingly, several readers complained bitterly to the Sentinel about it. To pay its penance, the newspaper published readers' diatribes against Coy this Saturday in place of the pastor's column. A retired police captain told P.B. that she was in a potentially dangerous situation and to get help immediately. A survivor of abuse conveyed a simple truth that should have had Coy on his knees asking for forgiveness: "It is the abuser who must change their behavior, not the abused." Another survivor wrote that she'd seen women who tried to "behave" better for their abusive husband wind up dead. "If [she] does, then her death is not only on the head of her spouse, but also on that of Rev. Coy, and this paper for printing such a dangerous message," she wrote. Another reader demanded that the Sentinel strip Coy of his column.
If you ask Reporter Bob, I think the Sentinel should take that last bit of advice.
The Pulp's New Home The long and the short of it is that New Times wanted the Pulp on its site and, like the Bible says, I submitted. Set your favorites people. And new folks, check out the original site to see what the Pulp has been cooking.
At this time there is no membership system in place, so I want to thank all of you who signed up. I know how much junk e-mail we all get and for so many of you -- at newspapers, political offices, personal e-mails, etc -- to get mine, well, it was an honor. Seriously.
Fellow bloggers who read this, I ask that you put the new URL on your Pulp links. I am updating all links that were on original Pulp here now.
I'm going to address more about the move tomorrow, but now all I ask is that you bear with me. There's gonna be some glitches, some photos in the wrong place, messed-up text, a catastrophic o-ring pressure seal failure or two, that kind of thing. But nothing else is gonna change. It's still the Pulp.