Philadelphia Church of God Irish Dancing in the UK??
Tonight I had an accidental run in with an American evangelical cult.
My MIL booked tickets to (what we thought was) a fairly normal Irish dancing show because tickets were half-price. I live in England and Irish dancing productions are fairly common here because Riverdance was so popular in the past.
It was on in a 14k seat arena, pretty big for the UK, and the largest venue in this city. But I noticed quickly that ticket sales were very low. We get in and maybe a quarter of the arena is filled (if that). The show starts and an American guy (the producer?) gets up and starts talking about the show. Says they're from Oklahoma and the entire show is teenagers and children. He also makes a very weird comment about how the kids love meeting people after the show and "if anyone wants to hug a sweaty teenager, come say hi". He also says that anyone there can get a free ticket for their show in London (Apollo theatre).
The show starts and it's about a character from Irish legend, Ollom Fotla (who they call Ollav Fola). Except they've added a very odd bit about him supposedly saving the lineage of a king of Jerusalem and bringing them to Ireland. Bit weird, we thought, but it still didn't click. There was quite a bit of Christian reference and I just assumed they all go to the same church or something.
Then, towards the end, they show a montage that includes pictures of a random old white dude in Israel, then an archaeological dig, then some kids in a classroom reading the Bible, then a series of what looked like gaudy mansions.
Afterwards, we leave (without hugging any sweaty teenagers) and I do some googling. It was the fucking Philadelphia Church of God, the WCG offshoot. Turns out the lead dancer is the grandson of their leader/prophet/king Gerald Flurry and he took a liking to Irish Dance so they decided to fund these projects, under the guise of spreading the gospel.
The old white dude in Israel is Gerald, the archaeological dig is from their The Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology that promotes a literal biblical interpretation and the mansions were the church headquarters and Flurry's mansion (I assume). They've also just done several shows in Israel. Ironically, none in Ireland š
These guys are nuts. Among other things, they believe that Gerald will be crowned the true king of England and that Anglo-Saxons are descended from the 10 lost tribes of Israel (explains the weird storyline).
The production was OK but it wasn't "send hundreds of kids abroad to perform in very large venues across 5 cities in the UK" level good. It seemed to me like they were definitely losing money (especially because tickets were £15 each).
I guess I just can't believe that there's been no pushback from local media, or that the arena accommodated them. I watch a lot of fundie documentaries and this felt like I was sitting in a clip of one.
The show itself was exactly how I would imagine Irish dancing done by an evangelist megachurch to be.
2 comments:
I will be glad when Judd comes out of the closet and is his authentic self. He would have a promising career if he left the cult.
Maybe he can star a dancing school over there, call it Bricket Wood.
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