Okay, what the fuck.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/10/atheist-who-convinced-pa-school-board-to-stop-reciting-the-lords-prayer-in-2012-returns-to-apologize/Two years ago, Ernest Perce V (below, the Pennsylvania State Director of American Atheists at the time) and Carl Silverman (of the PA Nonbelievers) tried to convince the Greencastle-Antrim School District board members to drop the Lord’s Prayer, a 50-year-old tradition.
And it worked! The board members realized they weren’t going to win this battle, so they stopped fighting it.
Last week, when the school board held its regular meeting, Ernest Perce was there once again… but for a very different and surprising reason.
He came to apologize:
Wearing a white clergy collar against a black shirt, he said he was now a traveling preacher.
“Every day I kick myself at what I did,” Perce told the board members and public in attendance. “Forgive me.”
...
What changed his mind?
He was an atheist for six years, and then a prophecy turned his life around. That was Revelation 2:9. In the Revised Standard Version the text reads, “I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.”
Umm… okay. I mean, that did nothing for me, but I guess those words are magical. Who knew.
(I should say that his apology doesn’t negate the fact that he was right two years ago — the Christian prayers still have no place at a school board meeting.)
...
He also became convinced, after reading a book by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that Jesus was not a Jew, the Jewish holocaust never occurred, and 9/11 was caused by “the false state of Israel.” He now leads Jesus Was Not a Jew Ministries, with 40 followers. He and his wife intend to pull their boys, Praise, 12, and Apple, 5, out of public school, to be homeschooled while traveling with them on the preaching circuit.
Pardon me, but I must repeat myself. What the fuck.
How the fuck do you go from an anti-theist who doesn't give a shit about what religious people think, to... THAT!?
Help me understand how this can happen, because even as an ex-Christian who was raised as one, I just don't get it.
EDIT:
Okay, apparently, he was a fundie Christian before, lost his faith due to one Bible verse (which wasn't even the largest contradiction in the entire thing), and... I dunno, found god. Or money.