re: Back story of Ponchatoula tent church for True Detective Season 1?

From being around the pastor, I understood the poor man just wasn't a sharp individual. I don't think he should have even been pastoring. I'm sure he had gifts in other areas, but I just don't think he was gifted to lead a congregation. His father founded that church and I think it thrived under his leadership. But I believe the father had passed away and the son had taken over and was in over his head.

That sets the tone for the rest. From what I've been able to read and put together, the church declined. As is often the case, when there is a leadership void people will begin to step into that void to fill it. There apparently was a lady in that church who began to use her role to manipulate people. I've seen this before being as our church has a charismatic history. I've been around a long time and seen a lot of spiritual wackiness and abuses of spiritual gifts. Bottom line- people can be weird.

From what I've read, that lady began to control the people who were left in the church under the guise of spiritual authority. It got very weird and very freaky. The pastor, being very passive, let her dictate to him how he should act and what he should do. I know it sounds extreme but even to the point of saying he'd done some things I don't think he even really did. Even confessing these things to law enforcement as if he'd actually done them. Because according to her, he'd thought them (I doubt it) and thinking is good as doing.

In my opinion the biggest thing he's guilty of is being weak and simple-minded- and that's being kind. I know it can be hard to understand unless you've seen some of this nonsense in a church setting. That's about the most drastic case I've heard about, but I could see how it could go that far in a perfect storm of weirdness. Satanic occult? Mass child abuse? No. I don't believe so. Just weird, simple minded and manipulative people playing weird , life altering spiritual games. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Sad story.