Epic Christian Fails: A Malefic Mix-Up

It’s the end of the month, and you know what that means. It’s time for this month’s edition of #EpicChristianFails, in which Not Your Mission Field sifts through a month’s worth of the always abundant examples of unintentionally amusing incompetence in Christian contexts and highlights one as the month’s most “epic” Christian fail.

In a first, the June 2019 honor is being awarded to Catholics rather than Protestants. The panel of judges, which consists entirely of myself (Chrissy Stroop) and my imaginary conservative frenemy B. Mercenarius III, has voted unanimously in favor of the Foundation for a Christian Civilization’s Return to Order Campaign and its “intellectual” guiding light, John Horvat II, whose name is almost as funny as Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer’s.

While it’s true that at times Catholics have quite ridiculous names, one would think they should have conceded witchfinding to the Puritans centuries ago. Their own record in such capacity is less than stellar, as exemplified most recently in the attempt by the good traditionalist fascist Catholics behind Return to Order to get Good Omens, a television adaptation of the novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, canceled.

On what grounds would they wish to remove so delightful a miniseries from the public,  you may ask? Why, on grounds of “mocking God’s wisdom,” of course, and not least over the deeply troubling fact that “God is voiced by a woman,” which is apparently on par with the portrayal of the Antichrist “as a normal kid that has special powers and a mission to destroy the world which he doesn’t really want to do.” The horror!

While I’m sure that any readers of Not Your Mission Field in possession of pearls are currently clutching them, readers who have been been living under a rock for the past few weeks may nevertheless be wondering what, exactly, about this whole situation is funny. While I personally find the Return to Order campaign’s petition quite amusing on its face (get a hobby, traddies!), what elevates it to the status of this month’s Epic Christian Fails “winner” is that, much like the bungled way in which Crowley failed to make sure that the baby Antichrist was raised by the designated family according to the plans of Heaven and Hell, Return to Order initially directed its moralizing drivel to the wrong network.

That’s right. While Good Omens is an Amazon Prime original, Return to Order initially directed its petition to Netflix, giving a public worn down by the relentless onslaught of Trumpist horrors a much needed belly laugh. Clearly, this was not a great plan, though I suppose it might have been an ineffable one.

The moral of the story? Leave puritanism to the Puritans, I suppose. Also, and more importantly, if this is the kind of busybodying you’re prone to–(makes Jedi mind trick hand gesture)–you want to go home and rethink your life.

Hat tip to Caitlyn B., whose post in a Facebook group about the incident first alerted me to this Epic Christian Fail.