An Army for Every Church

Two completely different articles in the local paper caught my eye this morning and combined in bizarre flights of dark fancy.

The first was a question put by a local yokel in response to the recent city audit report. Why, this person wanted to know, would the city of Springfield ever send someone to “Vegas” or, as s/he put it SIN CITY? The writer just couldn’t justify sending someone from our pristine, sinless Bible belt into the teeth of Gomorrah. What could they possibly learn out there that we need to know here in the land of Gawd?!

The second was a story about Muqtada al-Sadr and his quest to become an Ayatollah. One of the little nuggets this story revealed was that as an Ayatollah, Sadr would be allowed to raise a much larger army than his present Sadr brigade – now famous for its resistance to U.S. troops in Fallujah. His studies have concentrated on clerical rule. Any doubts about his ambitions?

What tied these two seemingly disparate tales together in my mind was a question: What would it be like in this country if we had clerical rule and each cleric was allowed his own army?

Can’t you just picture Jerry Falwell with a couple of battalions?! I expect he’d have gone with tanks and air power and maybe ruled the Tennessee, Kentucky, Carolinas belt. Would his factions have been able to keep Jimmy Swaggert’s crew in their place, or would Swaggert have won out? Would they have burned Georgia in the process? What if they allied and tried to take over Oklahoma? Would Oral Roberts be able to heal the wounds inflicted on his troops fast enough to win the war and carry his version of Gawd’s word to capitol hill?

The Assembly of God national headquarters being here, I suppose we would all fall under their control. Would Central Bible College and Baptist Bible College join forces and raise an army sufficient to garner a little power to themselves? And what would happen to the poor Catholics, Jews, Muslims and other non-fundamentalists that call Springfield home? We’d probably have barbeques featuring burning atheists at the stake.

Thinking of it in that way, it is not hard to understand what a buzz saw we have walked into in Iraq where, now that there is no strong man to keep them under his thumb, every cleric who can talk the right talk can gather a big enough following to raise an army and go to war to protect his turf.

Here in the U.S. – and especially in Springfield – that could mean religion based turf guarding every couple of blocks. Why it would make gang warfare look like a tea party.

Just think about it friends, and gird yourselves to continue fighting against the nutsy notion that we ought to bring Gawd into government.


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle