Sunday school things.. in her home as a supplement for thir own church," which latter is a
branch of the Prebyterian Church of America. Marilyn Quayle herself endorsed R.B.
Thieme's devotional materials as "very good." But Quayle and his handlers have
attempted to distance the family from Thieme.
Colonel R.B. Thieme is the pastor of the Berachah Church, an interdenominational-
fundamentalist institution located in the Galleria neighborhood of Houston, Texas.
Thieme is a preacher of decidedly military cast who sometimes wears his World War II
US Army Air Force unform during his appearances in the pulpit. The Bulletin and Prayer
List for the Berachah Church stresses the military motif, with a quarter of its space being
devoted to parishioners who are on active duty with the US military. Thieme sees the
world approaching the end-time, and exhorts his congregation to "prepare for battle,"
while "preparing for the rapture." His ideal is one of "Christian knights, soldiers going to
war for Jesus." The official hymnal of the Berachah Church contains "Christian Soldier,"
with ranting doggerel lyrics by Thieme set to the tune of "Men of Harlech," the
traditional Welsh air: **INDENT Christian solider with Christ soaring Do not fear the
devil's roaring, Wave on wave of Satan's demons Clash with groaning sound.
'Tis the thrust of Satan's dagger Sin and death to make men stagger With their unbelief in
darkness, They shall die in hell.
Gospel of a new salvation, In Christ a new creation The Word of God now going forth
Shall launch its bolts of thunder.
Christian soldiers you're victorious, Trusting Christ the strong and glorious, Faith with
faith a mighty victory Conquers sin and death. **END
In politics, Thieme rails about the modern United States as a "mobocracy" threatened by
"satanic propaganda" and "creeping socialism."
The liturgy for Thieme's lilly-white congregation is built around a lecture in which
Thieme dispenses a strange and eclectic mixture of Hebrew and Greek philology, Biblical
nominalism, modern psychological jargon, and plain gibberish while his audience sit in
what looks like a high school auditorium and busily take notes and underline passages in
their Bibles. Sin nature control, we learn, can lead to dissociation and multiple
personality disorder. There are eight stages of reversionism through which a psycho-
believer may descend to implosion and self-fragmentation. It is a blasphemy to make
promises to God. We should not be sorry for sins, but we should turn our minds away
from sin. It is blasphemy to say that we invite Christ to come into our hearts; rather,
Christ invites us. Spiritually brain dead believers do not understand that they can be
saved by faith alone and by the spirit (pneumatikos). There are those among the born
again who become murderers, and so forth in eclectic and vindictive brew.
R.B. Thieme has been described as "a cult figure" by James Dunn, the executive director
of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs in Washington. Controversial through
he may be even among fundamentalists, Thieme is one of the Quayle family's contact