LESS JESUS, PLEASE

Maybe we all need a little less Jesus here, or is it me? I'm afraid of losing the rest of the [imagined?] crowd. I had to say what I said, I guess; it's hard for me to get past a lot of the standard accusations against Christ without saying something, and the accusations are everywhere.

When I was in high school I read just about everything Mark Twain ever wrote [with the result that I could eventually figure out how he was going to finish a sentence, and developed something of an allergic reaction]. He had some pretty choice things to say about Christianity, and they are all true IF they are taken as accusations against American churches of his day; Christianity, however, has been around a lot longer and has a more varied history. So I guess I have a knee-jerk reaction to the equation of "the church" to the appalling stupidity of the people in it, through the ages.

Anglicans have this all engraved in their flesh because, at least in England, they really try to combine everything from evangelical Presbyterians to English-language Catholics in one institution... Well, one of my gurus called the church the "community of believing souls"; he was a Catholic, but he specifically meant an invisible community of ALL believing souls. And that remains "the church" to me. Anyone who is interested in where this is all going can find food for thought in Walter Nigg's "Heretics".

You have to be deaf, dumb, and blind [but especially dumb] not to realize that the history of the church includes the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Irish troubles, etcetera. But if the twentieth century teaches us ANYTHING, it is that secular religions have exacted at least a great a sacrifice from those who fell into their clutches. I think that all I really have to say is in my poem to John, Tom [and Piggo] below, and maybe I'll leave it at that. [I have been asked to post something about my conversion, and I would be happy to do that in a while -- but talk about removing the seven veils! well, for all of St. Oscar's help, that's a Bible story at heart...]