President Biden told a Democratic lawmaker and members of his Cabinet after the State of the Union address that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they will need to have a “come-to-Jesus meeting.”
Biden’s comments, captured on a hot mic as he spoke with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) on the floor of the House chamber, came after Bennet congratulated the commander in chief on his speech and pressed him to keep pressure on Netanyahu over increasing humanitarian issues in Gaza.
It’s American specifically. “Come-to-Jesus” evokes the tent revival culture that started in the second great awakening in the 1830s and continues to the present day.
In the tent revival culture, an itinerant preacher will ride into a (typically small) town and pitch a tent for about a week or two (or more). They then attempt to “revive” the faith of the townspeople by preaching intensely for several hours at a time, sometimes for multiple times per day. In typical Christian fashion these services will include multiple invitations to literally “come to Jesus” by publicly confessing sins and professing faith before the whole group, thereby becoming born again. Regular church goers are expected to attend revival sessions every night when they’re in town.
Everything about the tent revivals evokes imagery of the early Christians in Acts and the epistles. Large crowds and mass conversions. That sort of thing.
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Come to Jesus or cum to Jesus.
Yep. Some of these things get unhinged. People speaking in tongues, mass hysteria, chanting, singing, etc. It’s at these revivals that it definitely looks like the cult it really is.
So much LARPing.
Thank you for the context.