Many years ago, I worked in the lab of a factory. One day, one of my co-workers came in from the shop floor and asked if I had met the new guy. When I told him I had not, he came up to me and grabbed my hand to shake it, acting like he was the new guy, introducing him in the fashion of our new employee saying, “Hi! I’m Timothy. Timothy Righteous!” He quickly became known as Timothy Timothy Righteous because of his somewhat unique way of introducing himself. Timothy Timothy was a small, young white, kid that I assumed came to work right out of high school because he started with us right after graduation season. He was eager to introduce himself to everyone and I was among the people that got the Timothy Timothy introduction. He was also awkward in some of the social conventions of how to interact with other people, especially in a men’s locker room. He tried to introduce himself to co-workers who were naked, just getting out of the shower. None of these wet, naked men were looking to shake hands with this stranger, especially the big black men living in a community where there was still a lot of racial tension even in the late 1980’s. He was told in no uncertain terms to back off. He was getting a different education.
For the record, Timothy Righteous is not this man’s name but I’m using this one because the cadence of the words are similar to his real name and “Righteous” has spiritual suggestions like his real name.
A couple of weeks later we learned that Timothy Timothy was an evangelist. Not only had he been involved in his mother’s ministry, but they also had a television show that aired every Sunday morning. I watched it soon after I found out about it. His mother sang gospel music and dressed like a cross between Loretta Lynn and Tammy Faye Bakker. Timothy Timothy preached. His preaching consisted of a lot of religious mumbo jumbo that sounded like phrases he had heard his entire life but didn’t understand. He knew the words and phrases to say, but he organized his thoughts in ways that I thought displayed a shallow understanding of religion and scripture. I think he was very sincere but probably not the ideal person to preach to win souls for Christ. He also had a very guttural delivery style that I suspect he had learned that was how preachers were supposed to sound in his religious tradition. His television show came on in what seemed to be the earliest time slot for religious programming on Sunday morning, just after the overnight infomercials and probably the cheapest time available. It was early enough that I would set my VCR to record it. I only made it through a couple of weeks before I stopped recording, and I didn’t watch the entire episodes of the ones that I did record. The music was just ok, and the preaching was hard to understand what point he was trying to make. While I wanted it to be good, it wasn’t. It wasn’t even worth watching to try and get a laugh. The show seemed more embarrassing than inspiring.
Soon after that, I moved to other positions at this facility, and I lost touch with Timothy Timothy. My family would move to Middle Tennessee the back to Jackson, Tennessee before I even thought about this young man again. In the early 2010’s I was driving through Jackson and noticed on the sign of a church that their pastor was Timothy Righteous. I suspected this could be my old co-worker. Soon after, I did a search of him on social media and quickly found a familiar face. When I had seen his name on that sign, I had considered showing up at his church just to see if his ministry had improved. From what I saw on-line, I made the right call in staying away. First, he had shared several videos of his preaching against homosexuality at city park known as a hangout and pickup spot for gay men. He stood in the back of a pickup truck using an electronic megaphone bullhorn speaker shouting a fire and brimstone message to whoever would listen to him. It appeared he wasn’t close enough to any of the targets of his message to draw protests. The only people that could hear him clearly were those there with him. Other videos he had shared had him using similar guerrilla tactics to preach with his bullhorn in the dining room of a McDonald’s and strolling through a Kohl’s department store. There was less shouting at the McDonald’s than at the city park. At the Kohl’s, he seemed to be on the move the whole time, making it difficult to anyone to find him, but also difficult for anyone to hear him long enough to know what he was saying, good or bad. It’s the type of ministry move that seems to be more about showing your righteous than sharing the good news of our Christian faith.
It also looked like he was getting ready to abandon his social media account. I got copies of the videos before he went off the grid. He was concerned about the wrong people finding out who he really was, making it more difficult to stage his stunts. I got the feeling that conservative politics was becoming his religious message. He would return to my attention a few months ago when I was leaving a restaurant where I was eating with my family. In the distance, I could hear a garbled, bullhorn-amplified voice that think would have told me why I’m going to hell if I could have understood it. Timothy Righteous is still at it in strip mall parking lots and he’s back on social media. He no longer shares videos documenting his message. Most of his posts seem to be touting the latest conservative conspiracy theories. I’m not surprised. And his name is still on the church sign that prompted me to search for him again. I pray that I’m wrong in thinking his antics do more harm that good to the targets of his shouting and the church in general.