Sermonette

Down in Windham County yesterday, the guys with their big honking 4WD pickups were out plowing snow. One of them had carefully lettered on his tailgate, in bright red paint: "Hell -- the final separation of church and state."

I'm still trying to figure out what the, well, the hell, that is supposed to mean. Does he think that Hell has a first amendment -- that Satan allows people freedom to worship as they please, or not at all? If so, more power to The Evil One, and Hell is sounding better than ever. If separation of church and state causes people to go to hell, who does it cause to be damned? Presumably not the truck guy, or the people who believe what he believes and worship God in precisely the way he does; and presumably everybody else is going to hell anyway, separation of church and state or not.

What I find most odd about Christian dominionism -- or any other theocratic ideology -- is that one of the essential underlying premises is that God can't take care of himself. If God is omnipotent, he doesn't need the assistance of a guy from Willimantic who does odd jobs. If God can't see his will done unless his mortal followers seize state power, he's a pretty damn pathetic deity.

Anyhow, where this is all going is that I'm wondering how the Christonazis are feeling right now, after two consecutive elections featuring Justice Sunday and the re-election of God's Other Son, finding out that The Anointed and Consecrated George W. Bush didn't bring about the Kingdom on Earth after all, sodomites and blasphemers remain unstoned, the invasion of Iraq didn't lead to Armageddon and the rapture but to a stinking mess, and God lost the 2006 midterm election. Are any of them rethinking their notions? Just asking.