This will probably be little more than a footnote, as I don't imagine many here have heard of Ralph Stair. His death has been reported by Allan Weiner, the owner/operator of the WBCQ shortwave radio station, who to be sure is one of the few people who would be in a position to know.
Shortwave radio has fallen on hard times lately. By "lately" I could easily mean "since the 1980's", but even more since the advent of the internet. If you're in the United States and you're looking for domestic-origin, English language broadcasts, there's very little else to be heard on shortwave radio except for conspiracy theorists and politico-religious nuttery.
If you have ever heard any of that politico-religious nuttery on shortwave radio, chances are, you heard Brother Stair. Brother Stair ran the Overcomer Ministry, an insular apocalyptic cult based in South Carolina where he styled himself "the Last Day Prophet of God" and exercised draconic control over his members' lives, and where he used the group's collective funds to pay for hours of airtime on just about every still-remaining commercial shortwave broadcasting station in the US to broadcast his stream-of-consciousness sermons. He was also arrested twice for sexually assaulting women, including minors, at his "commune", most recently in 2018.
Despite his tremendously outsized AM/SW radio presence and large audience that kept him funded to the tune of over a million dollars per year, Brother Stair was not a terribly influential figure among the Christian right in the US at large, due in no small part to his relatively anti-Christian-nationalist leanings.
Here's an excerpt from one of Stair's rants, if you want to see whether you recognize his voice:
[yt]FJQLDKQAjUM[/yt]
Shortwave radio has fallen on hard times lately. By "lately" I could easily mean "since the 1980's", but even more since the advent of the internet. If you're in the United States and you're looking for domestic-origin, English language broadcasts, there's very little else to be heard on shortwave radio except for conspiracy theorists and politico-religious nuttery.
If you have ever heard any of that politico-religious nuttery on shortwave radio, chances are, you heard Brother Stair. Brother Stair ran the Overcomer Ministry, an insular apocalyptic cult based in South Carolina where he styled himself "the Last Day Prophet of God" and exercised draconic control over his members' lives, and where he used the group's collective funds to pay for hours of airtime on just about every still-remaining commercial shortwave broadcasting station in the US to broadcast his stream-of-consciousness sermons. He was also arrested twice for sexually assaulting women, including minors, at his "commune", most recently in 2018.
Despite his tremendously outsized AM/SW radio presence and large audience that kept him funded to the tune of over a million dollars per year, Brother Stair was not a terribly influential figure among the Christian right in the US at large, due in no small part to his relatively anti-Christian-nationalist leanings.
Here's an excerpt from one of Stair's rants, if you want to see whether you recognize his voice:
[yt]FJQLDKQAjUM[/yt]
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/39HsAkt
