Jimbo has never been good at standing before a crowd and talking to them, but I remember once when I was a mere child, my Sunday School class made a presentation to the congregation at the church I attended. Somehow, I was the one who stood at the pulpit and did most of the talking. My memory is pretty vague about the whole thing, except I remember I stood on a wooden box to be able to reach the height necessary to stand at the podium and I believe the audience numbered in the hundreds. I remember it felt kind of special to be up their in front of the congregation. It made you feel like you could do things; I don’t remember being nervous at all, and afterward people told me they knew I was going to become a minister.
My message that day was not fire and brimstone and I don’t believe there was any political content. Somehow, between then and now, the parties, the wild women and mammon and maybe Satan himself led me down a different career path. After all, on Sunday morning, it’s easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle that it is to get up after an all-night party and go preach.
The minister we had at our church back then occasionally discussed a social or political point as ministers have for years. Guys like Dwight Moody, Martin Luther, his namesake Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others had social themes to their ministries.
But, today we find out that in North Carolina, a minister who may well not fit into the same classification as the ones just mentioned, encouraged his congregation to vote out nine members who voted against Bush in the last election. That minister probably is not familiar with the New Testament, but in that part of the bible there was this guy named Jesus whose theme was that we should all get along and that we should not exclude those with other ideas.
The preacher is probably also not familiar with the constitution, which urges the separation of church and state. Somewhere between these two documents, this minister is treading on some dangerous ground, but he is not in virgin territory. It seems since November that someone, “with good Christian intentions,” is telling us how to walk, how to talk, how to think and how to act. I’m concerned, but I’m not afraid. Because when you start dictating to Americans how they are going to behave, you have crossed the line. As with Saul on the road to Damascus they will see the light, although they will probably not hear Jesus’ voice tell them, as he told Saul in Acts, Chapter 9, verse 5, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” And when that happens, that desire of the majority of Americans to press their lips against Dubya’s ass will go away.
At this point some of you are probably sipping your Sunday morning coffee (with just a hint of Wild Turkey) and asking, “If the religious right is going to be minimalized by their own excesses, then why are you railing on and on about it?”
Well, we don’t just want to leave it up to fate. And, would you please pass that Wild Turkey? Also, we just felt about talking about it on a fine spring morning. And we figured we wanted you on our side, if you weren’t already.
Because we like company here in Jimbo’s world.
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