Church Soup Ep. 08 (Liquid Trees, Alice Cooper, Joe Biden's Corvette, and more!)

The Debate Recap and the Burger King Crown Joke

What do Liquid Trees, Alice Cooper, and Joe Biden's Corvette all have in common? We're going to talk about them all today on this episode of Church Soup. Welcome back to Church Soup, your number one source for evangelical news.

I'm your host, Keith Foskey. Though recently I was in a conversation with a man who called me Pastor Kevin the whole time, and I didn't have the heart to correct him. So apparently, if you want to call me Kevin, I'm fine with it.

Our top story. The debate of the century has concluded. Doug Wilson and I went head-to-head for 30 minutes of verbal combat last week, and in the end, neither man came away claiming victory. But both said they had a lot of fun.

Seriously though, I want to thank everyone who showed support by watching the video. It's received a ton of positive responses, and I'm grateful for the encouraging words. And I want to thank Pastor Doug for donating his time, and the guys at Eschatology Matters for setting the whole thing up.

And anyone who's disappointed that we didn't go longer or we didn't dive deeper into the issues, please remember that all of this started with me and a Burger King crown, and it was not intended to be taken too seriously.

The Indoor Roller Coaster Church and Barbie Sermon

In big even news, Faith Church in St. Louis, Missouri, pastored by David and Nicole Crank, yes, that's their real name, recently built an indoor roller coaster on the stage of their multiplex megachurch, which the masculine Crank preached his sermon from, while the worship band played Roller Coaster of Love.

For copyright purposes, I can't play the song, but here's the video, which was put out by Protestia News website. Not to be outdone in the entertainment-driven church category, Pastrix Cara Montinez of Liquid Church is inviting everyone to come to her Barbie sermon and asking both men and women to make sure that they wear pink.

And I am thrilled because this weekend, I'm going to be talking about, you guessed it, by the color of my shirt. It is all things Barbie this weekend. If you are coming, you need to wear your pink. Men, wear pink too, because come on now, Ken wore pink and real men wear pink.

I'll be sure to get my Methodist polo ready. Can we just stop for a minute and discuss the name Liquid Church? This is the worst in a long line of church names that could also be used for nightclubs like Elevate, Create, Destiny, Epiphany, Epic, Ignite, Emerge, Submerge, The Verge, Pursuit, and my personal favorite, Potential.

Is this a real church? No, but it has potential. Speaking of liquid, we now turn to international news. Belgrade is the fourth most polluted city in Serbia due to two large coal power plants nearby, and they have an innovative tool in the fight against dirty air.

Liquid 3 is an urban photobioreactor that uses the power of microalgae to effectively remove CO2 and produce O2 and biomass. This revolutionary technology is being called a liquid tree. Other companies are trying to match this technology, but instead of giant aquariums, which would require ongoing maintenance, they've chosen a more self-sustaining option which upholds in various conditions.

They call it simply a tree. The city of San Francisco also decided to erect some of these liquid trees in their city, but they're having a problem keeping people from trying to bathe in them. In national news, President Biden is receiving negative reactions to recent comments he made following the terrible wildfires in Maui, which caused the destruction of over 2 ,000 structures and has taken the lives of over 100 people.

In an attempt to form some semblance of solidarity, Biden told a story about how his home once caught fire.

I don't want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it's like to lose a home. Years ago, now 15 years ago, I was in Washington doing Meet the Press. It was a sunny Sunday, and lightning struck at home.

I almost lost my wife, my 67 Corvette, and my cat.

Republicans were quick to respond with some facts about Biden's house fire, digging up a 2004 AP report which stated it was a small fire contained in the kitchen and was under control in 20 minutes, showing that Biden was making a very unfair comparison between his minor experience and those who have lost everything in the Maui fires.

Later, Biden met with a group of parents of incarcerated juveniles and lamented with them that he too has a son who is always getting into mischief. Again, isn't it wonderful to know we have such an honest and thoughtful man of integrity.

In the Oval Office? And Corn Pop was a bad dude.

Kevin Sorbo, Hollywood, and Let the Lion Roar

In entertainment news, actor Kevin Sorbo said in a recent interview that he is no longer able to get parts in Hollywood because of his strong Christian beliefs. The now 64-year-old star of my grandmother's favorite version of Hercules and the film God's Not Dead says that even his manager parted ways with him because of his politics.

I actually believe Sorbo is likely correct in his assessment, as it seems clear that Hollywood has no interest in promoting conservative voices. However, one could argue that Sorbo's acting choices are responsible for his career hitting a wall, like his appearance in the little-known film Let the Lion Roar in which Sorbo plays a creative version of the Genevan reformer John Calvin.

Rotten and unbending, steep nakedness. Deserves that they be oppressed unendingly without measure or end. And that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.

So we aren't sure whether it's his politics or his acting which is keeping him out of Hollywood, but we'll all be looking forward to seeing him in the next Alex Kendrick film, which is where all Christian actors go when they retire.

Also, quick side note, the entire film Let the Lion Roar is available free on YouTube. However, I want to add that I do not endorse the theology it presents. Speaking of things my grandmother loved, Bob Barker, the legendary host of the game show The Price is Right, passed away on August 26th.

Every child who's ever stayed home sick from school in the 80s and 90s remembers Barker as the man who kept us entertained in the mid-morning hours as he faithfully tried to get America to guess the price of the next item up for bid.

We also love it when he beat up Adam Sandler in the film Happy Gilmore.

I don't want a piece of you, I want the whole thing.

True to his reputation as a legend, Barker passed away at the age of 99, which means he came as close as he could to 100 without going over. In honor of Barker, I want to remind everyone to please have your pets spayed and neutered.

Jackie Chan, the Kardashians, and the Feral Animal Clip

Continuing in entertainment news, as if we needed another reason to love international martial arts movie legend Jackie Chan, a video recently surfaced of an interview of the star being asked about his favorite Kardashian.

Name your favorite Kardashian. Who do you like?

Kardashian? What do you mean Kardashian?

Do you know the Kardashians even better?

No, I don't know. Is that English? That's English.

I've never heard that before. This is hilarious and it makes me love JC all the more. Yes, I call him JC because we're such good friends. We've gone beyond first name basis. We now just go by initials.

I call him JC, he calls me Big K when I see him, and you'll never know for certain whether or not that's the truth. But just for fun, I thought I would ask my 78-year-old father the same question for comparison.

All right, so I'm going to ask you a question. I just want you to answer it honestly, okay? All right. Who is your favorite Kardashian?

Is that something to eat? Okay. I don't know who your Kardashian is. You don't know what it is? No.

Okay. All right. Thank you. That's my daddy. In our last episode, I told the story of a Texas woman having a snake fall on her while cutting the grass. I said that this was my absolute worst case scenario.

Well, the internet has gone above and beyond and provided me with new nightmare fuel, which I want to share with you. This one comes from the land down under. How will we get him away? We won't. That is feral, isn't it?

They're freaky, aren't they? Oh, feral. Wait until his tail... Oh, look, his tail's going to go. His tail's going to go. I hate everything. In political news, the first debate in the primary race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination happened on August 23rd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with eight candidates taking their platform to square off over the issues.

Conspicuously absent was Donald Trump, who instead chose to do an interview on Tucker Carlson's show on the social media platform Twitter, which I refuse to call X. Unfortunately, Fox News has restricted video use of the primary debate, limiting other news outlets to only three minutes of excerpts from the debate to be used for commentary purposes.

So we here at Church Soup have made the decision to not play any video from the event. Instead, since the debate was held in Milwaukee, I thought I would share why everything I know about that great city comes from Alice Cooper.

Milwaukee, Alice Cooper, and the Jacksonville Pronoun Lawsuit

So, do you come to Milwaukee often?

Well, I'm a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers were coming here as early as the late 1600s to trade with the Native Americans.

In fact, isn't Milwaukee an Indian name? Yes, Pete, it is. Actually, it's pronounced Miliwaukee, which is Algonquin for the good land. I was not aware of that. I think one of the most interesting aspects of Milwaukee is the fact that it's the only major American city to have ever elected three socialist mayors.

Does this guy know how to party or what?

Little known fact, Alice Cooper once played a round of golf with the late Dr. R .C. Sproul, who said Cooper was both a committed Christian and golfer. In local news, a company in Jacksonville recently fired an employee because he put assigned by God as his pronouns in his company profile.

Chad Scharf was given the option to take down the statement from his profile or he would forfeit his job, which he refused to do. Scharf then filed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly violating his Title VII rights against religious discrimination, proving himself worthy of the name Chad.

Is it just me or does Chad Scharf look like a better multiverse version of Joel Osteen? Several people have pointed out that the real Joel Osteen is beginning to look like Martin Short doing an impression of Tim Allen.

And since hearing that, I can't see anything else. Thank you for watching Church Soup. If you like the show, please hit the thumbs up button. And if you didn't, go ahead and hit that thumbs down button twice.

And don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you want more. I want to thank Protestia for allowing me to use them as a source for Church News. You can check them out at protestia .com. If you have ideas for a future show, please leave them in the comments below with the hashtag church soup.