God Spam

Parodied in the Landover Baptist Church site, the problem of "God Spam" has also been taken up by traditional Baptist congregations, according to this news item from Waterloo, Iowa. Large-scale unsolicited religious e-mail was appearing as early as 1994, allegedly from one "Clarence Thomas," according to historian of spam Brad Templeton. These messages to believers often start with an inflamatory and distorted "news" story, such as this warning that the reading of the Bible may soon be forbidden on the airwaves by the FCC. In the chapel of the enormous cruise ship in which I now travel, I discovered one such mass e-mail message among the holy cards. The message was about how a person who is "too busy" for God may find that God is "too busy" to write that person's name down in the Book of Life for salvation.