My Dear Wormwood,
Good to hear from you!
Papagena and I were watching an "oater" starring Glenn Ford as the marshal and Angie Dickinson as the saloon girl. Looks like they're sleeping together, and I don't think they're married, so this movie obviously postdates the strict censorship days. I recall the barkeep* from a movie by the National Council on Alcoholism, in which he played the chief of a detox-rehab place. Shows versatility. I used to show it when I was the "alcoholic coordinator" for the Athens City Court in the seventies. But enough of the nostalgia and chit-chat.
[*Lin Lesser. The movie was The Last Challenge (1967). Shucks, come to find out he was on Seinfeld!]
Our experiences with church (i.e. yours and mine) seem to parallel each other. You said your new pastor is "superficial and a Republican" and that wouldn't matter if he didn't come across as a "neoconservative evangelical." And what is worse, you said that he ignores, doesn't attend, and doesn't even mention the existence of your church study group to the congregation. You are the bastard group.
Welcome to bastardy.
Our experiences are strikingly similar, it seems. Perhaps I'm masochistic for doing it, but Papagena and I have been attending the Avis Megachurch in Forlorn River, and the pastor is a native Hoosier who spent twenty years in Oregon before coming to this church.
I see that he went to a conservative Bible college out there, and he said that his son attends an "evangelical" college in the Midwest. (By the way, I'd think that from the name of the college it would be a mainline church affiliation and would be notoriously liberal, like my alma mater, Cragmont College, used to be. Actually I think Cragmont is now pretty conservative politically, but they're more "liberal" than they were in the sixties on drinking, now selling beer on campus to 21-year-olds, and the gay students -- of whom there were "none" in the days of Animal House (Cragmont had the dweebs, jocks, and frat rats just like "Faber College", but of course "no" queers) -- have formed an out-of-the-closet, gay pride organization! The place is well endowed by country club Republicans (rather than religious right ones), who are very much well and alive. Cragmont, and, as far as that goes, the Republican Party, is a concoction of contradictions. My, that was a long digression. We call that circumstantiality, don't we?)
Anyhow, back to this pastor, Theophilus Tory, by name. I like him. He's a likable guy and a "people-person," I think. I believe I told you my aunt is a lifelong member of that church and pastors love her. She'll be 80 next year and she has been the volunteer Sunday school superintendent for decades now. After my uncle Chap died, leaving only Lula and me, I started attending the church with her. I regard myself as a sojourner there and in just about any church in Forlorn River.
Knowing what little I do about theology and the society of this town, my best fit is probably in St. Andrew's Episcopal, or Cragmont Presbyterian. But for some cussed reason, I keep going back to the church where my aunt who baby-sat me goes, where my father was a deacon, where I had the hell scared out of me by those brow-mopping, bible-wielding, hell-foretelling fire-insurance salesman called evangelists, and where my entire nine-year-old body was immersed in the baptistery one Sunday night when I "accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior."
Soon after I started back there, I got involved with Sojourners and God's Politics and I thought that, one of the objectives being to build a bridge across this chasm we have today, it would be logical to ask Theophilus if we could have a study group at the church.
Ixnay. He thought it was "too risky." He told me about a near-dustup between two deacons at a board meeting, one a Bushie, one a Kerryite, before the 2004 election. Besides that, I observed his deer-in-the-headlights reaction when I told him that I was "extremely liberal, certainly by Forlorn River "standards," and his flinch when I said that you-know-who "thinks he's the Messiah."
I secured the community center as our meeting place and went to several churches asking the pastors to announce the group or make a post in their bulletins. Twice more I went to Theophilus and asked him merely to get the word to his congregation. The second time, two days before the group began, he said he'd have to OK it with the deacons. I said I couldn't see anything "risky" in simply telling the members that such a group existed. (God's Politics isn't exactly a manual on Satan worship.) I sparred with him a little bit about it and then he said he didn't trust me. At last, the truth.
Papagena said she didn't want to go to the church any more and she didn't like the denomination. I continued to go to the damn church because I wasn't going to let a Bushie (I have no doubt he is) drive me off. Papagena stopped going for several Sundays and I missed a couple myself. But I went back last Sunday and this, and for some perverse reason I enjoy the place. Theophilus's sermons are not too bad. He uses Power Point for his outlines of his main points and does a good job, like a Sunday school teacher. Lula and I sit there and write his main points on the bulletin insert (Skinnerian programmed learning!). He refers to some books I like. He exhorts personal piety and assures people of salvation and peace of mind if they practice the principles.
Hell, I don't know. I just keep going there.
But no more has been said about the God's Politics group. Having the paranoid proclivities that I do, it occurred to me that he could have not only not informed anyone, but passed the word that it was a "subversive" group. If he did, however, he would be more two-faced than he seems to me. I have more faith in him than that.
We ended up getting one person (who got his info from the newspaper ad) who was to the right of our politics and religion. He is a good man and I had great hope for that "bridge" while he was there --which ended up being once.
I have become disheartened about building that bridge. I read an article in the New Yorker magazine by Hanna Rosin about Patrick Henry College in Virginia. A good many of the kids there were home-schooled, and they are not only taught that you can't be a Christian without being a Republican, all of them campaign for Republicans, and some of them do internships in D.C., where they conclude that Karl Rove is a "political genius" -- rather than a character assassin. He couldn't be the latter, they reason, because Turd Blossom is the right-hand man for that Godly man in the oval office. These kids learn debate -- but not critical thinking.
This morning we went to church to a youth-led worship. Some kids gave testimonies that because of "knowing Jesus" they (1) don't swear, (2) read the Bible and pray, and (3) stay away from "the wrong kind" of people. A young seminarian (in Bible camp T-shirt and shorts) gave a sermon reinforcing those behaviors -- none of them, by the way, having anything to do with the "social gospel." And there you have it -- stay away from the wrong kind.
I think that a lot of Paul's letters to the fledgling churches contain language about cloistering themselves in a like-minded community and avoiding worldly people, whereas Jesus encouraged his disciples by both precept and example to go out into the community at large and teach and heal and comfort, etc. Jesus was an activist, Paul a pietist, I'd say.
The pietists of today choose the message of insularity, with their own TV and radio, their own music, their own schools, their own book stores, and of course their own churches. I suspect Theophilus learned when he was a kid at his church to stay away from the wrong kind of people, and when I walked into his pastor's office his radar went blip! when I used "the L-word." If I try to build a bridge, they will blow it up for sure every time. Or so it seems right now. And that's why I'm just a little disheartened. So I'm ready for a good sermon from one of my kind too.
Reckon our main man Phil will be back from sabbatical after Labor Day, huh?
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
Good to hear from you!
Papagena and I were watching an "oater" starring Glenn Ford as the marshal and Angie Dickinson as the saloon girl. Looks like they're sleeping together, and I don't think they're married, so this movie obviously postdates the strict censorship days. I recall the barkeep* from a movie by the National Council on Alcoholism, in which he played the chief of a detox-rehab place. Shows versatility. I used to show it when I was the "alcoholic coordinator" for the Athens City Court in the seventies. But enough of the nostalgia and chit-chat.
[*Lin Lesser. The movie was The Last Challenge (1967). Shucks, come to find out he was on Seinfeld!]
Our experiences with church (i.e. yours and mine) seem to parallel each other. You said your new pastor is "superficial and a Republican" and that wouldn't matter if he didn't come across as a "neoconservative evangelical." And what is worse, you said that he ignores, doesn't attend, and doesn't even mention the existence of your church study group to the congregation. You are the bastard group.
Welcome to bastardy.
Our experiences are strikingly similar, it seems. Perhaps I'm masochistic for doing it, but Papagena and I have been attending the Avis Megachurch in Forlorn River, and the pastor is a native Hoosier who spent twenty years in Oregon before coming to this church.
I see that he went to a conservative Bible college out there, and he said that his son attends an "evangelical" college in the Midwest. (By the way, I'd think that from the name of the college it would be a mainline church affiliation and would be notoriously liberal, like my alma mater, Cragmont College, used to be. Actually I think Cragmont is now pretty conservative politically, but they're more "liberal" than they were in the sixties on drinking, now selling beer on campus to 21-year-olds, and the gay students -- of whom there were "none" in the days of Animal House (Cragmont had the dweebs, jocks, and frat rats just like "Faber College", but of course "no" queers) -- have formed an out-of-the-closet, gay pride organization! The place is well endowed by country club Republicans (rather than religious right ones), who are very much well and alive. Cragmont, and, as far as that goes, the Republican Party, is a concoction of contradictions. My, that was a long digression. We call that circumstantiality, don't we?)
Anyhow, back to this pastor, Theophilus Tory, by name. I like him. He's a likable guy and a "people-person," I think. I believe I told you my aunt is a lifelong member of that church and pastors love her. She'll be 80 next year and she has been the volunteer Sunday school superintendent for decades now. After my uncle Chap died, leaving only Lula and me, I started attending the church with her. I regard myself as a sojourner there and in just about any church in Forlorn River.
Knowing what little I do about theology and the society of this town, my best fit is probably in St. Andrew's Episcopal, or Cragmont Presbyterian. But for some cussed reason, I keep going back to the church where my aunt who baby-sat me goes, where my father was a deacon, where I had the hell scared out of me by those brow-mopping, bible-wielding, hell-foretelling fire-insurance salesman called evangelists, and where my entire nine-year-old body was immersed in the baptistery one Sunday night when I "accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior."
Soon after I started back there, I got involved with Sojourners and God's Politics and I thought that, one of the objectives being to build a bridge across this chasm we have today, it would be logical to ask Theophilus if we could have a study group at the church.
Ixnay. He thought it was "too risky." He told me about a near-dustup between two deacons at a board meeting, one a Bushie, one a Kerryite, before the 2004 election. Besides that, I observed his deer-in-the-headlights reaction when I told him that I was "extremely liberal, certainly by Forlorn River "standards," and his flinch when I said that you-know-who "thinks he's the Messiah."
I secured the community center as our meeting place and went to several churches asking the pastors to announce the group or make a post in their bulletins. Twice more I went to Theophilus and asked him merely to get the word to his congregation. The second time, two days before the group began, he said he'd have to OK it with the deacons. I said I couldn't see anything "risky" in simply telling the members that such a group existed. (God's Politics isn't exactly a manual on Satan worship.) I sparred with him a little bit about it and then he said he didn't trust me. At last, the truth.
Papagena said she didn't want to go to the church any more and she didn't like the denomination. I continued to go to the damn church because I wasn't going to let a Bushie (I have no doubt he is) drive me off. Papagena stopped going for several Sundays and I missed a couple myself. But I went back last Sunday and this, and for some perverse reason I enjoy the place. Theophilus's sermons are not too bad. He uses Power Point for his outlines of his main points and does a good job, like a Sunday school teacher. Lula and I sit there and write his main points on the bulletin insert (Skinnerian programmed learning!). He refers to some books I like. He exhorts personal piety and assures people of salvation and peace of mind if they practice the principles.
Hell, I don't know. I just keep going there.
But no more has been said about the God's Politics group. Having the paranoid proclivities that I do, it occurred to me that he could have not only not informed anyone, but passed the word that it was a "subversive" group. If he did, however, he would be more two-faced than he seems to me. I have more faith in him than that.
We ended up getting one person (who got his info from the newspaper ad) who was to the right of our politics and religion. He is a good man and I had great hope for that "bridge" while he was there --which ended up being once.
I have become disheartened about building that bridge. I read an article in the New Yorker magazine by Hanna Rosin about Patrick Henry College in Virginia. A good many of the kids there were home-schooled, and they are not only taught that you can't be a Christian without being a Republican, all of them campaign for Republicans, and some of them do internships in D.C., where they conclude that Karl Rove is a "political genius" -- rather than a character assassin. He couldn't be the latter, they reason, because Turd Blossom is the right-hand man for that Godly man in the oval office. These kids learn debate -- but not critical thinking.
This morning we went to church to a youth-led worship. Some kids gave testimonies that because of "knowing Jesus" they (1) don't swear, (2) read the Bible and pray, and (3) stay away from "the wrong kind" of people. A young seminarian (in Bible camp T-shirt and shorts) gave a sermon reinforcing those behaviors -- none of them, by the way, having anything to do with the "social gospel." And there you have it -- stay away from the wrong kind.
I think that a lot of Paul's letters to the fledgling churches contain language about cloistering themselves in a like-minded community and avoiding worldly people, whereas Jesus encouraged his disciples by both precept and example to go out into the community at large and teach and heal and comfort, etc. Jesus was an activist, Paul a pietist, I'd say.
The pietists of today choose the message of insularity, with their own TV and radio, their own music, their own schools, their own book stores, and of course their own churches. I suspect Theophilus learned when he was a kid at his church to stay away from the wrong kind of people, and when I walked into his pastor's office his radar went blip! when I used "the L-word." If I try to build a bridge, they will blow it up for sure every time. Or so it seems right now. And that's why I'm just a little disheartened. So I'm ready for a good sermon from one of my kind too.
Reckon our main man Phil will be back from sabbatical after Labor Day, huh?
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
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