Thursday: Wrong Side of the Bed
Still on my mind after last Friday's SCOTUS SSM decision is this petition from the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church, that we prayed from 1549 until the 1976-79 Book of Common Prayer, when it was deleted,
"We beseech thee also, so to direct and dispose the hearts of all Christian Rulers, that they may truly and impartially administer justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue."
And I’ve been thinking about it in terms of backward American culture and society, especially but not exclusively the certitudinous Bible belt of our Old South remnant, though our Yankee friends who hate our flag also are pretty sure they're right about everything. If anyone is offended, sorry, this is my own, my native land, and my freedom of speech is as dark as the next man’s.
With some of them running hopefully for president, the notion of “Christian rulers” truly punishing wickedness and vice is frightening, but clearly that is what they have in mind, eh: to punish wickedness and vice. Again, whose vice, theirs of course. Comes to mind the pulpits shrieking against playing cards. Evenings when Brother Abney from East Hill Baptist Church knocked on my Gentry grandparents front door, there was a loud whisper, “It’s the preacher” and a flurry of activity as cards, poker chips, glasses and the empty bourbon bottle were cleared from the kitchen table while someone in the living room opened the family Bible on the coffee table. At EHBC, the Sunday sermons I heard were mostly against whiskey, but rotated regularly against card playing, drinking alcohol, dancing, and going to the baseball game on Sunday afternoon. My mother liked to tell about the Sunday when, after the "baseball game sermon," Daddy Walt, my grandfather, humiliated my grandmother by raising his hand from the middle of the congregation and saying, "I'll be going out to the game this afternoon, preacher, if you need a ride."
Count on it: the thus vehement preacher invariably preaches against himself, too obtuse to realize the depth of self-revelation in his obsession. And vices, whether folkways or mores, vices shift over time, such that an early 21st century equivalent preaching-vice seems to be homosexuality, and again: count on it, frothy-mouthed, a closeted preacher. And now against gay marriage and for “family values” based on Bible literal inerrancy in a society where over half of marriages end in divorce, split families, divided homes, absent parent and the missing child support check. When preachers get divorced, we simply change our preaching certainties to a new Bible verse, thank you Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Bakker. At last report, Fox News said that Bakker and his new wife were back on the air hawking End of the World Biscuits, Time of Trouble Beans and other survival gear for the Eschaton. Time of Trouble Beans? Again the mind wanders and I'm thinking of a boyhood poem I learned from my nextdoor neighbor Bill Guy, "Beans, Beans, Good for the Heart." It airs well with Bakker, eh.
Count on it: the thus vehement preacher invariably preaches against himself, too obtuse to realize the depth of self-revelation in his obsession. And vices, whether folkways or mores, vices shift over time, such that an early 21st century equivalent preaching-vice seems to be homosexuality, and again: count on it, frothy-mouthed, a closeted preacher. And now against gay marriage and for “family values” based on Bible literal inerrancy in a society where over half of marriages end in divorce, split families, divided homes, absent parent and the missing child support check. When preachers get divorced, we simply change our preaching certainties to a new Bible verse, thank you Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Bakker. At last report, Fox News said that Bakker and his new wife were back on the air hawking End of the World Biscuits, Time of Trouble Beans and other survival gear for the Eschaton. Time of Trouble Beans? Again the mind wanders and I'm thinking of a boyhood poem I learned from my nextdoor neighbor Bill Guy, "Beans, Beans, Good for the Heart." It airs well with Bakker, eh.
In a backward domain where instead of live and let live everyone is certain that their certainties are the only and correct ones and everyone must fall in line, he who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool: shun him. And ponder why fools masquerading as Christ, instead of clutching and grasping at nonevents, are not preaching against a culture of poverty, homeless hungry children, and the perverted selfish greed of stingy medical care for the children for whom they sanctimoniously forbade abortion.
Once, I heard a Canadian say he always thought of America as backward. Frustrated and finishing eight decades of life here, I don’t wonder. Another, a Unitarian, said there is nothing more ominous than a fundamentalist Christian rising from his knees and going forth to carry out the will of God. Notwithstanding the First Amendment, several of them are running for president.
A list of vices for the next president, doubtless a Christian ruler, to punish: NA beer, unmuted TV, smoking on the balcony next to mine, video games, furtively thumbing through Playboy magazine at the newsstand, missing church on Sunday, peeping in bedroom windows, and minding other people’s business.
T