I’ve been listening to some of Herbert Armstrong’s sermons the last couple of days, and it’s been a fascinatingly awful experience. I knew what was coming: I grew up listening to this shit, but I still had forgotten about just how awful he was. Just how misogynistic he was. Just how much he liked to yell during sermons to impress upon congregants just how serious his words (and thus God’s words) were.

I made a mental note about a couple of the passages because they just stood out so drastically. In this one, for example, he goes from talking about the fall of Lucifer and his resulting transformation into Satan to the evils of women wearing makeup — without any kind of transition at all. None.

By the end of the sermon, he turns his attention to men and the inappropriate clothing some of them are wearing to church — shirts with no jacket!

What’s most interesting is he suggests that not everyone has to be dressed up just wearing the best clothes they’ve got without even thinking that perhaps the men who aren’t wearing suits are doing just that — wearing the best they’ve got. And then, of course, there’s the misogynistic double standard: women aren’t to worry about their appearance but men had better be dressed smart!

As I’ve listened to these three or four sermons (how many more will I put myself through?!), I’ve come to re-learn the man’s cadences: I can predict with dreadful accuracy when he’s about to ramp up, go off the rails, and start yelling.