In an excerpt from his forthcoming book The Great Derangement, Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi infiltrates a weekend retreat for pastor John Hagee's Cornerstone Church in Texas. It's the one that helped propel George W. Bush to his second term, the home of Christian Zionism, which advocates unity between Jews and Christians in the name of bringing about the apocalypse and subsequent rapture. Being a good stunt journalist, Taibbi makes up a fake name, dons the effete polo and glasses of a Gump-meets-Christopher Guest movie character and goes about the weekend-long ritual of freeing himself of demons and letting Gah-uhd into his his life.
At first, it's all fun 'n' games, like when he has to reveal his "wound," the childhood experience that made him turn away from God. He makes up a tale about his father, a circus clown, who used to beat him with his oversized shoe—save for that brief period when he gave up clowning and went to work as a Carvel Ice Cream mascot.