Serving the Metropolitan Area

Since 1872

March 22nd

W.W.J.B.?

By Jack Parnell - retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate

Syndicated by Acme Features

"Of all the bad men," Christian writer C. S. Lewis once observed, "religious bad men are the worst!"

Lewis warn't no Unitarian bed-hopper with crooked teeth, oozing sores and Fabian sympathies... he was a churchgoing Ulster Prod, bigoted to the marrow, and wrote about bad religious people because he knew plenty of 'em, all across the board. He remains perennial, though dead four decades and change (since that infamous November 22nd, 1963, with JFK and the perennial philosopher Aldous Huxley, whom he despised), in that the lively trade of interpreting the word of God to the credulous hasn't diminished one decibel. In fact, it's grown, rather to the volume of the bass drum phalanx during that Belfast marching season.

If you look to polls, you'll find most everybody swearing as they're holier than thou. Some have the toll of self-professed born-agains up to seventy, eighty percent in some places... one pollster, canvassing Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and maybe South Carolina (I'm not positive on that) found ninety-eight percent answering that they believed in the inerrancy of the Old Testament; that is, word for word for word handed down without a single error. Even Atlanta, which some think of as the Devil's washbowl, has nine in ten professing sex out of marriage is wrong (if not necessarily practicing so), eight in ten believing in the Divil himself and a veto-proof majority holding that "the government should pass laws to keep it that way."

Of course polls tend to bring out what pollsters are pushing to make happen, and it's not as if some would 'fess up to a stranger on the telephone that they cut the throats of chickens of a Saturday night, or pray to al-Jezreel. Like kids with teachers lookin' over their shoulders, dutifully writing down as how they'd never even heard of drugs or beer or sex, watched such TV as their parents told them and thinking Perry Como was the bees' pajamas! I get over to Shavery Point Baptist and the Reverend Clowthers often as I can on account of his not castin' me out due to my little divorce problem... since, by doing that, he'd lose half his congregation (not even counting prob'ly another ten, fifteen percent as shack up on the sly, plus that photographer and schoolteacher we call Roy and Sigfried!)... but Lord!, how the Rev can paint a beige soul black, then scrub it white!

Shavery's God is vengeful, but also sublimely subtle, as Deities have the propensity to be. A'fore Clowthers or Bily Graham, even, Jonathan Edwards was God's burr between sock and boot, sermonizing, in 1741, that the Lord would "not only hate you," but would "have you in the utmost Contempt; no Place shall be thought fit for you, but under his Feet, to be trodden down as Mire of the Streets."

Most People of the Book ain't rich, but their M-13¹ shepherds promulgate a politics of the comfortable down against the not. All part of the drift... or Imitation Principle, as the eggheads say... holding it just as holy, or better, to reform thy neighbor (even at gun or knifepoint) as thyself. As Herr Nietzsche put it, Paul "romanized" the followers of Jesus by concocting "a showy mystery religion" domestic partnered, if not outright married, to the corporations and gumment. Ever since, the root issue's been Dominion - that states should have authority to regulate both believers and not-believers, that God might continue to favor us, here, over the French, Egyptians and Canadians.

Because the favor of God is extended, or withdrawn, based on the collective virtue of all Americans, it becomes critical who's listening to rap-metal music, what Roy and Siegfried do under their blankets by night and, especially, whether politicians vote the Christian Coalition party line (and whether the casino Bill Bennett casts lots in is or ain't koshered by Ralph Reed). God cares... and He watches! Could come down to li'l Timmy, as I mentioned back when, locking the bathroom door and George Michaeling himself. WHAM!... down comes Hillary, leading her four billion godless Chinese, Ay-rabs, Venezuelans, Hindoos, Mongols an' mongrels... God's new chosen people.

Could happen!

Now the one thing as unifies Cadillac Christers is that they're all persecuted... by the homos, the Hillariacs, by voices of situational ethicity as flap through the air and confound their faith with French verbs. (Not exactly bein' eaten by tigers, like Roy, no... but the pain of having to share the planet with you and I hurts like them arrows of discontent as pierced Saint Sebastien.) No wonder some Christian Identeers disrecognize gumment, rationalize it as a Godly gesture to bounce checks off the neighborhood barber, grocer and the dog license bureau... as that in Nebraska as got shot up by self-styled "patriots".

Most believers, though, fend off persecution's pain by doin' what Americans do best when they hurt... shop! Starts innocently enough with books, audio and videotapes. Some commodity fetishists discovered angels, as others had found divinity in Pokemon or Beanie Babies... angel books and ceramics, of course, but also playing cards, diet books, bobblehead Apostles and computer mousepads. Some Christian stores restocked Nirvana's old CD "In Utero" for the angel on the cover. T-shirt vendors ripped off secular advertising with slogans like "Got Jesus?" (milk), "Yer Save Yer" frogs (ABM beer) or the ubiquitous "Save Mankind" fish (instead of whales). Credit cards bulk-mailed out by moneychangers with that fish sign and 25.95% APR. And all those bumperstickers: WWJD for "What would Jesus do?" (or, recently, "drive")... I've seen yuletide cynics, and not only in Washington, drawing lines through the D to ask: "What would Jesus buy?"

Now most Christians of my acquaintance don't have the time nor inclination to bust up gay weddings, bomb clinics or slip flyers of dead babies under the windshields of those at community pancake breakfasts. Many volunteer in hospitals, or build or repair homes... some in my district eschew gloating over the funerals of dead soldiers to serve as volunteer pallbearers for those who died poor, forgotten and alone. Others help mentor welfare mothers, ex-cons and mental patients, or run soup kitchens and (in godless Vegas and Frisco), get slapped in jail for the doing.

"Find the good in life and praise it," counseled the late author of "Roots", Alex Haley. And Lincoln admonished both Confederate and Union enthusiasts at his Second Inaugural Address, just weeks before his death, thusly...

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invoked His aid against the other... The prayers of both could not be answered... The Almighty has His own purposes."

¹ Christers as discount most of the New Testament save Matthew 13, as promises them what has will have more, them which don't will lose what little they have. Also known as the Parable of the Talents, much beloved by right-wingers as still profess that good things of life come proportionate to one's talent, as opposed to ruthlessness an' the connections.

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