Hey, lookit that, I can upload now.

So anyway, yesterday I was watching ABC Evening News, and they were going on about John Ashcroft, and then they did a piece on his religion, "Pentecostalism." I honestly had never heard this word before last night. I had to go look it up to make sure it was a real word. The media were using it as a blanket term to cover the entire charismatic segment of Christianity, which is what we call it in these parts: Charismatics. Spirit filled. Evangelicals. Full Gospel. Even Holy Rollers. These names I'm familiar with. Imagine my surprise to find out that I'm a "Pentecostalist."

Surprised because while Pentecostals fall under that group, they're a denomination in and of themselves (and then there's that whole denomination-within-a-denomination, the Holiness Pentecostals, with that whole thing about women never wearing makeup or pants and never cutting their hair--that definitely leaves me out).

Except for the time when I was a little kid that our dad made us go to a Methodist church (and not counting all of my summers spent at a Baptist vacation bible school), I've always attended non-denominational, charismatic churches. Some have had more Pentecostal flavor than others, but we certainly didn't consider ourselves Pentecostals.

Anyway, the segment then proceeded to show footage of us wacky "Pentecostalists" in various stages of praise and worship (actually, every charismatic church I've ever been to, for every person dancing in the aisles and shouting in tongues and worshipping with complete abandon, there are usually at least twice as many people standing quietly in front of their chairs, tentatively clapping and singing along with the band, trying not to be freaked out by the aisle-dancers; I'm usually in this latter category) and to talk about how nutty we are to take the Bible for what it says and not try to intellectualize it and twist it around to fit our own world views and comfort zones until all the life is squeezed out of it. At least they didn't throw in any shots of those creepy snake handlers, and they did mention that we place a great deal of emphasis on forgiveness and on being non-judgemental, so the piece wasn't entirely insulting.