no clergy training, and no individual congregation accountability.

(though the Southern Baptists do have the clergy training, and even some of the non-denominationals have pastors that have gone to seminary, or whatever shithole ignorant podunk fuckass school they call a 'seminary', usually something fucking ignorant like a 'Bible College')

That's the problem with most mega-churches - they tend to have clergy who are basically self-ordained and who have no structure whatsoever of accountability, whether morally, ethically, theologically, Biblically, pastorally, or anything else. Most of the "preachers" on TV are just as equally untrained and basically self-ordained.

Rick Warren's "accountability group" is his wife and a couple other members of his "church". Haggard's was basically the same. Swaggart had some accountability within the Assembly of God, but even then they really had no power over him.

Makes me sick.

Not to say that bad ones don't squeak through, but it's a pretty good bet that if someone is serving a mainline church as pastor, they've been well-trained AND vetted quite well through the process.

I think of the many years and great debtload that legitimate ministers go through for college and seminary and all the time spent with whatever their ministry commission is that oversees ordination, the psychological testing as well as theological testing, internships, field ed, clinical pastoral work, and other things that they have to do before becoming ordained and allowed to serve a church - and then I watch these fuckstain assholes come basically out of nowhere, call themselves a minister, do whatever the fuck they want with basically no training or theological or academic grounding, and then when national TV needs a "Christian expert" to comment on something, these are the assjammers that get the phone call.

Pisses me off.

And the untrained, non-academic dickwagons tend toward tea-bag theology as well: fundamentalist, ignorant, non-critical, politically conservative that can't tell the Bible from the US Constitution, and have an equally empty understanding of either.