KAGIN’S COLUMN

Edwin F. Kagin is a lawyer-poet.  He believes that, through grace and faith, this will be a regular column, and, if events are predestined, whatever he believes makes no difference whatsoever.  He can be reached in care of this publication, or through e-mail at:  [email protected]

ON THE GOSPEL OF THADDAEUS

“But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:

And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”

Saul of Tarsus, a.k.a., The Apostle Paul.

For the protection of persons yet living, the circumstances of the discovery and translation of the following cannot now be revealed.  The authenticity of  this document, and its accurate rendering into English from first century common era Greek, is assured.  It is presented now, and with some urgency, for fear that it might otherwise be lost through the efforts of persons who are aggressively attempting to suppress  forever any evidence of its existence. The very zeal of those who seek to prevent this work from becoming known, when considered together with the tone and content of the writing itself, indicates this is something far different, and perhaps more reliable, than the pseudepigraphical writings of the Canon pronounced holy at Nicaea. efk.

Thaddaeus, a Jew by birth, a Greek by temperament, and a scholar of Alexandria by circumstance and the Peace of Rome, to  Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, conqueror of Dacia and Mesopotamia, to the Emperor Trajan, in Rome, greetings. Long life and good health most noble Caesar, and thanks to the gods you worship for keeping you and making you victorious in  battle and bringing you safe to your throne as the worthy successor and heir of our late good and just Emperor Marcus Cocceius Nerva.

I write, great sir, as a man who has lived well beyond the four score years that, by reason of strength, are allotted to some men. It therefore comes as no surprise that the most able physicians of Alexandria, and therefore of the world, have assured me I am on my deathbed,  and that I will soon be gathered to my fathers by virtue of maladies that, while perhaps not beyond the skills of Aesculapius, cannot be cured by mortal means.  This assurance of imminent and certain death has provided a surprising sense of tranquility.  I now fear neither the wrath of men nor the whims of gods.  Neither have I the slightest concern for  debates  touching on any aspect of  this world or on the hoped for world to come, in that I will soon vacate the former forever, and learn first hand what truths,  if any, are to be learned  in the latter.  Socrates  was surely right when he observed that death is either the most peaceful of all sleeps or the opportunity to meet souls who have gone before. Neither option should cause a dying man any concern, and neither concerns me.  I can truly say that I am at peace, or, more correctly, I will be at peace when this testament to you is completed.  Please forgive me the digressions permitted, and expected, from old men, be assured that my mind is sound and my memory good, and I will explain why my final hours  are spent in writing the Emperor of the Romans, the oppressors of my people.

It is said that all manner of shameful things wind up in Rome.  In the same wise, all subjects of intellectual curiosity, no matter how obscure, wind up somehow, eventually, in Alexandria.  Thus I came to learn that you had inquired, through Pliny the Younger and others, for information on a religious sect that has come to be known of late as Christians.  I will not reveal my sources for  this information, but assure you that Pliny did not violate your confidence.  There are things known to curious scholars that are denied even to kings. I also know that you do not believe the Christians are a serious threat to the security of the state.  From my deathbed, great Caesar, I write to tell you that you are wrong.  This superstition, if  left unchecked, will become a fire upon the earth that will destroy your empire. This irrational movement, that you perceive  as a religion of slaves, has the potential to infect even the imperial throne in Rome,  to reduce learning to a barbarism that will cause longing for the erudition of the Celts and the logic of Gaul, and to make men wish for the return of the murdered despot Domitian.  How do I know these things?  Permit me to reveal something of my personal and, until now, secret history.

 I was born two years before the death of Caesar Augustus, in the village of Nazareth, in the country of Galilee, north of Judea, north of Samaria.  This land is, or rather was, part of the region you Romans called the province of Palestine before it was destroyed, and its people dispersed, during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, by the authority of his son, that compassionate idol of the Romans, Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus, later your predecessor, the Emperor Titus. My given name was Judas.  My father was Joseph, a carpenter.  My mother was Miriam.  My older brother was named Joshua, in full Yehoshuah, or in Greek, Jesus, whom some now call Christus,  or the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one, the son of god.  In consequence of his tragic life, and of certain beliefs that arose concerning his final end, the cult of Christianity was born. As your historian Tacitus is no better informed concerning the history of this belief than he is on the history of the Jewish people, and as our own historian  Joseph Ben Matthias, better known to you as Flavius Josephus, understood the true history of the Jews too well to give any credence at all to my brother’s life and death, and in that widely circulated anonymous tracts have built  fantasies around Jesus that many, to the detriment of themselves and the state, believe to be true, so it has fallen to me, an eyewitness to the events of his life, to tell the truth of that life, my reliability and my safety both being assured by the comforting and certain knowledge of my pending death.

My brother was over twice my age when he began his, for want of a better word, ministry.  This  ministry lasted about three years. I, at his urging, became one of his apostles, whereupon I was given the surname of Thaddaeus.  I, who had barely become  a man under Jewish law, was the youngest of the apostles, and not on good terms of friendship with any of them, all also relatively young men, save for my best friend, another Judas, given the surname of Iscariot when, out of friendship, he joined me as an apostle. I did not know Jesus well.  I do not believe anyone did.  He was a man by law when I was born.  I admired him, respected him, and loved him. He was my older and wiser brother.  But he was a stranger, even to his own family. He kept his distance, and brooded often.  He was frequently disrespectful to our mother, did not obey our father, and later even maintained that his followers should leave their families and responsibilities to follow him to live in poverty, without giving any thought to how they might be housed, fed, or  clothed. I realize now that my brother Jesus was mad.    It is hard to believe that an illiterate peasant from the despised Nazareth, together with twelve equally illiterate peasants as followers, could start a movement, a religion, that could change the world.  To appreciate how this could happen, you must understand something of our people and our times.

 There was no shortage of pretenders.  The ill-fated John the Baptist was one.  There was also Judas of Galilee, and Theudas the magician, and many other rivals for the office of Messiah.  Some, in the manner of Elijah, were said to be able to raise the dead, walk on water, cure the sick, and perform other miracles, and all had their followers.  My brother’s message was so unusual, so ill-defined, so incoherent, and so incapable of being articulated or understood, that a few  thought he must be the promised one.  These shepherdless sheep seemed to believe the more obscure the speech, the more holy the speaker.  An analogy might be found among those who find meaning in the unintelligible utterances of the Delphic Oracle.  Jesus said such things as his followers were the salt of the earth, and that salt could not be salty if it lost it’s saltiness. Some found this a brilliant parable.  If  anyone could explain or demonstrate just how salt could ever cease to be salty,  there might be some justification for taking the statements of Jesus seriously.  But all religions have their mysteries.  This is how priests control fools.

My brother was a harmless madman.  He didn’t view himself as the Messiah.  To my observations, he had no clear definition of himself, or of anything else, at all.  Our little band wandered about for three years, attracting attention to ourselves, creating some followers and more enemies.  Our mother and father had given up on Jesus long ago, but still held hope that I would eventually come to my senses.  From the time we left Nazareth, we never saw our parents, those rather good people, again.

But I digress, and grow tired.  Death waits for no man.  I must hasten to finish this narrative so you may understand what happened, and appreciate the threat of the irrationality I fear will overcome the world.

Eventually we made our way to Jerusalem.  Jesus rode into the city of David on an ass, and was mocked by some who threw palms in his path.  I have never been so embarrassed.  Few in Jerusalem had heard of Jesus, and, because our religion prohibits the making of images, even fewer knew how he looked.  Nevertheless, his activities and small following had managed to attract the attention of the Sanhedrin, the supreme national tribunal of the Jews.  One night as we slept, outdoor as usual, agents of the Sanhedrin came upon us with torches and weapons looking for Jesus, who freely identified himself to them.  The band of apostles, weary of our way of life, missing their families, uncertain of Jesus and his mission, and unwilling to confront the intruders, fled into the night, never to be reunited again. They were ignored by those who wanted Jesus.  Only I, loyal to the safety of my brother, remained, together with Iscariot, who remained from loyalty to me. We asked to be permitted to accompany Jesus, who appeared unaware of all that was happening.  This was granted, and we were taken to the meeting chambers of the feared Sanhedrin.

The officials who questioned us were surprisingly reasonable.  They attempted to interview Jesus, but when he responded to questions with incoherent answers, for example saying that faith in the kingdom of heaven is a mustard seed, the authorities realized their problem was not political as they had feared.  Nevertheless, Jesus had proved an embarrassment to them, and Roman authorities had been disturbed upon learning that Simon, one of the apostles, was a Zealot. The last thing the Sanhedrin wanted was a Jewish movement in revolt against Rome.  They had worked with Pontius Pilate, the procurator placed in Jerusalem by Tiberius Caesar, in an effort to maintain safety through an uneasy peace.

Iscariot’s talents had been wasted in the wilderness, as he proved a master of sensible compromise. By morning it was agreed that we would remove Jesus from the country forever, and  word would be circulated that he had been crucified for treason.  This would both explain his sudden disappearance and warn off other potential troublemakers.  Judas was provided with thirty pieces of silver to finance our relocation. To make the ruse more effective, the authorities agreed to use their influence to have  a wreath of thorns placed on the head of one of three anonymous persons who had been hanging on stakes of execution on Golgotha for several days, and to place a sign above the poor victim’s unrecognizable head announcing that this was the King of the Jews. Officials would be instructed to keep the curious at a distance.  Finally, the unclaimed body would be placed in a new tomb that could be bought from one Nicodemus, who was suffering financial difficulties. The timing was perfect, as the Sabbath started that evening, and all elements of our departure and the burial of the surrogate could be accomplished while potentially interested parties were in their homes obeying ritual Jewish laws.  We were provided a room where Iscariot could wait with Jesus until sunset, the beginning of the Sabbath, while I spent the day in Jerusalem spreading the word of Jesse’s death.

I was successful in locating several friends of my brother’s and wept with them over the story.  As a final assurance that everyone would soon learn of the tragedy, I went to the lodgings of Mary Magdalene.  Mary was a woman of loose virtue who seemed to know everyone in Judea.  She had a face of angelic stupidity, and a body that could have tempted a castrated stoic.  Properly bathed and attired, she might have been a courtesan in Rome, were she not so hopelessly ignorant and so subject to fits of dementia.  It was said that Mary Magdalene wanted only two mites and a mattress and the wit to fall backwards.  I couldn’t say.  She had a great fondness for Jesus, perhaps because he had no carnal interest in her.  Indeed, he seemed to have no carnal interests at all, unless credence be given to a work that has been falsely attributed to the apostle Thomas.  The less said of it the better for both  their memories.  Mary was, in a word, insane, but pleasingly so.  She believed Jesus had freed her from seven demons.  She was overcome by grief at the story of his death, and feared the demons would now return.   I left her just in time to return, before sunset, to the upper room where Jesus and Iscariot waited.  Under cover of darkness, we hired passage with a caravan bound for Alexandria.

It is difficult enough to predict the actions of the sane.  Mary Magdalene was unpredictable at her best, but no one even wildly could have guessed what she, in her grief and delusions, would do next. What she did may well change the world.  The next morning, the first day of the week, by first light, she went to visit the tomb of Jesus.  And she went to the wrong tomb.  She had somehow gotten the idea, that is now part of the emerging mythology of Christianity, that Jesus had been laid in the tomb of a rich man called Joseph of Arimathea, and he, enjoying the attention, not knowing for sure and not really caring, never denied it. When Mary came to this newly finished unused tomb, she naturally found it open and empty. She immediately concluded Jesus had risen from the dead.  She told others who went to the tomb, and, seeing it empty, believed her.  Her illness was such that the story changed in every telling, and thus grew stories of angelic visitations, and even visions of Jesus.  Those who believed her added their own embellishments, until many accepted the story as too complex and fantastic not to be true.  The three of us were with the caravan and learned nothing of these events until it was much too late to attempt a correction, had we had any desire to do so.  The story was a more perfect cover for our disappearance than we could have hoped.  People either believed Jesus was dead, or that he had ascended to his Heaven.  In either case we would not be missed.  After some days we arrived in Alexandria.

 Words cannot convey how overwhelmed we three from a small village felt in that great city.  It would be error to say we were out of place, for nothing ever seems out of place in Alexandria.  It is the crossroads of the world and gives meaning to the very ideas of city and civilization. But we saw ourselves as out of place, and dislocated from all certainties we had ever known. We rented a room with the silver of the Sanhedrin.  After refreshing ourselves with sleep and foreign food, we set out to explore the wonders of this new world.  In one of the many markets run by persons of  strange race and tongue, Jesus wandered away.   At length we found him at the booth of a trader in exotic reptiles. He was gesturing and talking wildly, to people who did not understand Aramaic, about how those with faith in his idea of god could handle poisonous serpents and not be hurt.  Before we or any of the shocked onlookers could stop him, he somehow grasped an asp from a closed basket and held it to his bare chest.  He was bitten repeatedly in the neck and face before the reptile could be safely removed.  My brother Jesus died before our eyes, in the manner of Cleopatra, in her city, in the dust of a foreign market, before horrified gentiles he had hoped to win to his vision of the kingdom of god. He had preached his belief in the virtue of remaining ignorant of the things of this world.  In his death he demonstrated the folly of that belief.  Iscariot and I had my brother buried privately, in a manner and place I will not even now reveal.  This information must die with me.  We grieved for Jesus and for a life wasted and ruined by destructive beliefs and religious madness.

Iscariot and I changed our names.  I have not used the name by which I now write since we left Jerusalem.  We knew our money would soon be gone, and we agreed to part ways.  We were grown men who had to claim our own lives.  My friend, who had helped save Jesus, had a great love of the sea, and he found employment on a Roman ship going to the seaside resort of Pompeii.

 In the many years that have followed our great deception in Judea, I have had occasion to read diverse and contradictory tracts purporting to give  truthful accounts of my brother.  I am mentioned by name in some of them, but, perhaps because of my unexplained disappearance, nothing else concerning me is reported.  I am almost disappointed at this absence of myths about  myself when they are so liberally bestowed upon my associates.  The stories tell preposterous lies.  They usually even start out as lies, with the unknown author falsely claiming to be one of the named apostles of Jesus. This was no doubt done to give credibility to their reports, either invented in whole or borrowed from other fictitious accounts.  I will not attempt to recount all of the nonsense, as unhappily it is all too easily available for you, if you are so disposed,  to read and believe, or reject, as you choose.   To mention but a few of the lies, you will find reports that Jesus was born in Bethlehem where he was worshiped by goatherds and astrologers, that our mother was a virgin, that he was taken as a child to Egypt while Herod the Great killed all the little boys, that angels announced his birth, that the dead came from their graves when he died, and that he was taken to heaven after his promise to return shortly.  If any of these things had happened, there would be no doubts, no excuse for disbelief,  and no reason for faith.  If they had happened, Josephus, you can be assured, would have reported them, as would your own correspondents.  You may also note that the promise of my brother’s quick return has not been fulfilled.  I believe, great Caesar, that this superstition would never have taken root and flowered if it were not for the work of another madman, a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus.  His bizarre life and work are known to you through his writings under the name of Paul, assumed after he saw, in a fit that temporarily blinded him, Jesus arisen from the dead.

I tire, my Emperor, and must end this writing even as the gods end my hours of life.  Much more could be told, but I lack the strength, and hopefully I have given you enough to cause you to consider my warnings.  Much mischief has been spawned by these Christians, and many evils lie ahead, the nature of which can only be seen in dreams. What can be predicted of men whose main religious ceremony involves the belief that they, by consuming bread and wine, are eating the flesh and drinking the blood of my dead brother?  One might wonder if they would do this as eagerly if they knew he had died from snake venom.  I have informed you as best I can, have cleansed my conscience, and can die in peace.  I will never know if you receive this, so there is no need for a reply, even if you knew to whom to write.  I have charged my beloved daughter, who I know by our secret name of Kather, with making three copies of this writing.  One will be sent to you personally, under seal, through the usual channels.  One will be hidden in a safe place known only to ourselves in the Museum, the great library of Alexandria, for if anything of our time and culture survives the intellectual destruction I fear from the Christians it will be the library’s priceless repository of the collected knowledge of the world that has survived even the onslaughts of the great Julius Caesar. The third copy will be taken for concealment and protection to a Greek island of Ionia, where knowledge and science will  surely continue to exist and flourish despite the mischief of this new superstition.  There, my daughter and a fellow scholar will see that these words of mine become known in  proper season.

                                      ON THE CASE OF THE FROZEN EMBRYO

Jesus loves the little children

                     All the children of the world    

                    Red and yellow, black and white

                    They are precious in his sight.

                    Jesus loves the little children of the world.

From song sung by Christian children

Ever seen an icon of a pregnant Virgin Mary?  How about a mosaic of the divine vaginal delivery?

Human beings, like other mammals, reproduce themselves by sexual contact.  This fact bothers religious people who believe sex is sinful.  They may not know they think this way, but they do.  Sex is perceived by Christian mythology as the original sin or the result of, or punishment for, disobedience to the deity.  Sex  is discouraged, hence celibate nuns and priests.  The Catholic church, per edicts of aged male celibates, proclaims the only purpose and only morally acceptable use for sex is the production of children, each a unique gift from the deity.  The use of sex for pleasure, joy, fun, or celebration with no intent to reproduce is a sin, a minority view shared by other diverse Christian sects, and rejected by the majority of the world’s historic religions.

Since the belief is divinely correct, sex that results in conception has fulfilled its only acceptable purpose.  The products of conception are considered human life, supernaturally created. To treat a zygote otherwise would legitimize sex for play, not procreation.  If a child is unwanted or a fetus defective, or if you can’t take care of yourself, much less a child, too bad.  If you want to play, you’ve got to pay.  And, this belief system, coming from the deity, justifies itself forcing the belief on those who think the system stupid.

If all that’s not bizarre enough, the view extends to the non-sexual union of human male and female reproductive material in a laboratory.  Join a fertile egg and sperm and, bingo, you’ve got a human being with legal rights.

A while back, a married couple achieved laboratory fertilization of some of her eggs with his sperm.  The resulting embryos were frozen, presumably awaiting fetus transplant to a rent-a-womb.  When the couple divorced, the products of conception became a disputed asset of the marriage.  What happened inspired the following:

KAGIN’S COLUMN

ON RESTORING TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES

Come, my friends,`Tis not too late to seek a newer world.  Tennyson

Say you wanted to destroy civilization.  Create a mythology whereby all products of human conception must be born.  Punish indiscriminate breeding by insuring that every pregnancy produces a baby.  Run slick T.V. ads showing a neurotic woman lamenting an earlier choice to have an abortion, a lament created by the mythmakers.  Show tidy, nicely dressed, scrubbed, well fed little children and convince people their unwanted kid will be that way.  Base all of this on the will of God, and decree the authority of scripture over absolutely everything, including evidence and common sense.  Ban all sex education, contraception and pregnancy interruption.  Deny public funds for abortion, but rather give women free state money for every baby produced.  This method will insure that the most useless and uneducated will have the most children.  Then those little gifts of God, unwanted, unloved and unparented, can grow up to kill and rob you, and make more kids who will, if the Mother Theresas prevail, accumulate to be seen starving or murdering on the nightly news.

One should then, with civilization in chaos, decide that the most Christian nation on earth is in trouble for drifting from the myths that created the problem.  Confident that the myth must win no matter what, create a movement to return to “Tradition Family Values,” i.e., a comprehensive mythical control system, based on the Bible, a prescientific bronze and iron age  document. If a Trojan horse wrecks your civilization, haul in another one to fix the problem.  Our restoration of Traditional Family Values won’t be the first time religion has destroyed a culture.  Just watch the news.  Better yet, read a history book.

To restore these Traditional Family Values, we should have some notion of what they are.  What type values?  What kind of family?  What is traditional?  That kind of thing.  “Traditional Family Values” means those beliefs held and customs practiced by a white Anglo-Saxon protestant church going married with children unit in a small American town between 1946 and 1956.  If we live exactly as they did, everything will be fine.  That’s the goal.  Any other vision is a highway to Hell.  Now that we’ve defined them, how do we restore them.

Basic to the restoration of Traditional Family Values is the abolition of democracy.  Democracy really has no place in Christian thought, is not found anywhere in the Bible, and is a troublesome holdover from pagan systems Christianity destroyed.  Democracy permits diversity and invention for individuals and cultures.  Expansion of ideas is forbidden by Traditional Family Values, for all we need know is in the Bible.  School boards must be controlled so wrong ideas like birth control, evolution, and the solving of problems without supernatural intervention do not get into students heads or text books.  Democracy prohibits this control.  Democracy encourages independence of thought and seeking of new ways for believing and doing.  New ideas and different  ways are bad — democracy must go.  Despite attempts by the righteous to establish a government controlled by their religion, our founders gave us a democracy.  Democracy has tolerated thoughts and actions that are properly forbidden, and the sooner we get rid of it the faster everyone will get back to right thinking.

In our efforts to restore Traditional Family Values, we should be able to learn from the examples of those who advocate them.  Regrettably, some of our finest models are flawed by over-exposure to democracy.  His soon to be Most Christian Majesty, King of England, Charles, heir apparent, has separated from his wife and children to sport in adultery with a married woman.  Our own Ronald and Nancy Reagan married following divorce and after conceiving their daughter Patti.  Patti, appears buff naked in Playboy  (July, 1994).  She is also on the periodical’s cover sky clad with a Negro standing behind her with his arms about her and his black paws cupping her exposed white breasts.  If not for that democracy business, she would be in prison for this pornographic display.  And this Reagan daughter was raised by parents who practiced astrology and who want everyone to return to Traditional Family Values.

The example of one Rush Limbaugh, an outspoken, if boorish, advocate  for the religious right and Traditional Family Values, may help.  He was recently united in holy matrimony with a woman by a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas.  Perfect?  Hardly.  Brother Limbaugh had been twice married and divorced before the wedding, as had been his bride.  Further, he and the female had cohabited, and, presumably, fornicated (a crime under Traditional Family Values) by engaging in sex before the church said they could.  This behavior deserves the Traditional Family Values Hall of Shame, not emulation.  And the marrying judge was civil authority, not church certified.  The judge was also a Negro.  Under proper Traditional Family Values, he would have been known as a nigger.  He could not have sat on a jury, much less the Supreme Court.  Indeed, he would have been in jail, for he has a white wife.  Othello, on the Supreme Court, would have been unthinkable, and Traditional Family Values prohibited interracial marriage.  The crime was called miscegenation.  So Traditional Family Values are simply not satisfied by persons married to four other people being married civilly by a nigger who couples lustfully with white women.  The evolution of constitutional freedoms has changed all that, but we are seeking Traditional Family Values as they are properly, and undemocratically, understood.

Failing to find, among the powerful and outspoken, proper role modeling for Traditional Family Values, let us attempt to construct a composite of what can be, and must be, if we are to restore what was and live by biblical truths.  Consider the ideal, in Francis and Felicity Fundangelical.  We meet them on their wedding day, in their bridal suite, alone at last, where Francis says, “Felicity, my darling, do you know what we are going to do tonight?”  “No, my beloved husband” she says, “what?”

Felicity knew from her Traditional Family Values training that her duty as a woman and wife was to obey her husband Francis as she had obeyed her father.  Men had received the right from God the Father to control women, daughters of Eve who had caused the fall of man from the Garden of Eden.  She was Mrs. Felicity Fundangelical and it was her wedding night.  Her Norman Rockwell world of Traditional Family Values was fulfilled.  She had her MRS degree and would devote her life to God, church, husband and children, in that order.  It was 1954, in Sperm Bank, Georgia, and all was right with the world.

The marriage of Francis and Felicity Fundangelical had made them one flesh.  Divorce was unthinkable–they were mystically joined for life.  Neither partner had any idea whatsoever of sexual union, for this nasty little subject was not discussed by anyone, inside or outside of marriage.  The couple generally knew that married people had babies (only married people!), but had been told they were gifts of God, and, for all they knew, occurred through spontaneous generation.  Francis had heard boys giggling about naughty things in shop class, but had averted his ears, and Felicity had wondered what her Home Economics teacher meant by the remark that a girl on her wedding night was well advised to think of canning apricots.

The Fundangelicals brought their collective life experiences to their wedding night.  They knew they lived, and would live, in a relatively secure world, with little crime, most people employed, and everyone doing and believing much the same, so long as they were just like the Fundangelicals.  And everyone they knew was.  Life would proceed as it presumably always had.  We are studying them as a model of Traditional Family Values to better learn how to restore the Traditional Family Values we’ve lost because of participatory democracy.  Prince Charles, Rush Limbaugh, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan all proved wanting as proper role models.

(Here it must be confessed that an error was made earlier in this treatise, wherein the human male standing naked behind the Reagan’s naked daughter Patti, and handling her breasts on the cover of the July 1994 Playboy, was incorrectly identified as a Negro.  Careful reading of the accompanying text, by Mrs. Lisa Mohnsam, has revealed he was not a Negro but a darkly tanned white dude.  However, he does simulate a Negro, mocking the Traditional Family Values we want to restore, mirroring similar pornography offered by Rolling Stone and Janet Jackson).

Our goal is to restore Traditional Family Values and to enjoy, in all its fullness, the world of the Fundangelicals.  To this end, Mr. and Mrs. Fundangelical provide a microcosm for explication of an America that tragically recedes before the assaults of godless humanism and democracy.  This world was not politically correct; it was religiously correct and grounded on the certainty that everything in contradiction was wrong.  There was prayer and Bible reading in schools, and everyone attended religious school plays.  There were church camps, potluck dinners, revivals, patriotic parades and minstrel shows.  Everybody smoked, even in hospital rooms and the minister’s study.  All men wore short hair and hats; women wore long dresses and girdles.  Library books were censored for right thought.  Divorce was illegal, abortion was illegal, birth control was illegal, strips bars and pornography were illegal.  Sex education was not taught in school, and certainly not in the home.  The Sears catalogue and National Geographic were the best sources for that information.  Science classes Francis attended were taught by the football coach, who knew evolution wasn’t true because it didn’t fit the Bible stories of God’s interactions with Adam and Noah.  There were no color televisions and no computers, two more things that have destroyed Traditional Family Values.  At least television and movies were moral.  Married couples were shown sleeping in separate beds, and while murder was okay, physical love was not.  It was no more discussed in polite society than cancer, or Uncle Herman passing out in his turkey and cranberries from alcoholism.

When one is right and good he naturally wants to keep himself and his children from people and ideas that are wrong and bad.  Traditional Family Values had erected for Francis and Felicity numerous barriers against wrong thinking and interaction.  Negroes (known as niggers) went to different schools, and had their own restaurants, restrooms, drinking fountains, waiting rooms, and places on public transportation.  They could go to the Fundangelicals’ church, but they sat apart in the balcony, while whites sat on the main level, fanning themselves with funeral home fans.  Interracial dating was unthinkable, and interracial marriages unlawful, except perhaps for Moses and Captain John Smith.  If we had restored Traditional Family Values in time, O.J. Simpson would not now be in trouble.  Of course he wouldn’t have played football either, at least not with whites.  No decent person interacted with the children of slaves as anything other than master to servant.  Some debated whether they possessed souls.

All foreigners, their countries, cultures, languages and histories were seen as vastly inferior to those values taught Francis and Felicity, who believed white Christians had “discovered” America.  The savages they discovered led to the maxim that the only good Injun was a dead one.  The Fundangelicals had learned cute xenophobic slurs for members of other races and of most foreign nations, and would teach them to their children.

Other religions were wrong, and were studied, if at all, only to refute them.  Jews were Christ killers, greedy, and universally damned; no Traditional Family Values person would have anything to do with this hated race unless absolutely necessary, like borrowing money to finance war.  The modern idea of a Judeo-Christian tradition was unknown.  Jews were bad people who refused to accept Christ’s offer of salvation and were to be shunned.  Catholics were little better.  They were Papist pawns and idol worshipers.  Francis and Felicity’s ancestors had killed many of them in holy wars.  A fish sandwich was known as a Catholic hamburger, and Catholics were called mackerel snappers.  Such religions as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam were understood as heathen beliefs having something to do with flying carpets.  All that was known of them was that they needed missionaries, or better yet, the killing of their followers.

Dirty minded readers probably think that when Felicity asked Francis what they were going to do on their wedding night that something sexual was afoot.  Repent!  We’ll get to it.  First, we must consider how to restore the Traditional Family Values of the Fundangelicals and destroy civilization and democracy.

If you want a taste of what those good old days were like, turn off the air conditioner

Those committed to an early and full restoration of Traditional Family Values should be heartened by recent events.  In Florida a religious crazy, named Paul Hill, shot and killed two gentlemen, a retired doctor who performed abortions and a retired U.S. Air Force Officer volunteering to help women exercise civilized democratic rights.  The Colonel’s wife, a retired nurse, was wounded.

In Rome, another religious crazy, his Holiness the Pope, John Paul II (J2P2) denounced a United Nations attempt to control the horror of humans destroying their species by over breeding.  J2P2 said abortion and artificial contraception deny couples the right to determine the size of their families.  And they could, if they didn’t want to populate, restrict sex to those days the female is not fertile.  This game is called Vatican Roulette and the players are called parents.  J2P2 believes limiting population any other way is unethical and immoral.

So we are well on our way to restoring the world of Francis and Felicity Fundangelical, the glorious world of Traditional Family Values.  Some who may find murder a bit extreme so early in the restoration process cannot argue with the results.  If civilization and democracy are to be destroyed by too many people overrunning a planet under dogmatic religious authority, no means of accomplishment is too extreme.

ON THE PRIESTHOOD

Fight the real enemy.  Sinead O’Conner, while  ripping up, on national television, a color photo of His Holiness the  Pope, an as yet unprohibited splendid example of the exercise of both protected speech and symbolic speech, an act roughly  analogous, in public outrage, to flag burning.

Someone (who, I can’t remember and apologize), observed that the priesthood originated when the first con artist met the first fool.  Con artist, Priest, tells Fool what to do because Fool believes the world is run by gods, and Priest says he speaks to one or more gods who tell him what to communicate to Fool.  All Fool has to do is obey the gods, i.e. Priest, and Fool will have better fortune, go to a pleasant immortality or indulge whatever fantasies  Fool thinks can only be satisfied by Priest, acting in loco deus. Fool is happy, and Priest has the roast sheep, wine, treasure or whatever Fool offers to the gods through Priest.

When this senerio first began is uncertain, both in religion involved and location.  It doesn’t really matter.  All Priesthoods work roughly the same.  Certain absolutist views are held by a group of people.  The Priests teach, spread, and reinforce the given myth.  Every religion has its priesthood, persons learned in the often highly complex system of belief and practice that, long repeated, become the creed and ritual of the faith.  Priests acquire specialized knowledge in the secrets or “mysteries” of their religion, and in manipulation of the believers through cultic magic presented and accepted as coming from the gods.

Understandably, this power is enormous and the priesthood knows it.  “Priesthood” means a collection of priests, the females sometimes called “priestesses.”  No matter how humble a priest may be, the ability to instruct on the thoughts of gods and deliver the will of the supernatural carries a lot of clout.

In some societies, religions have been, and still are, one with the civil government of nations.  That means the priesthood runs the country and controls people’s lives.  The law is the religious law, revealed to, and enforced by the priesthood.  Disbelief is a crime that can get one jailed or killed.  Such a government is called a theocracy.  That’s what some religious nuts want established in our country, and that’s why we have the First Amendment in our Bill of Rights to stop them.

       The family that prays together stays together. Religious putdown of the families of non-believers.

Prayer is the means whereby humans communicate with the supernatural deity or deities in whom they believe.  Most religions accept uncritically the reality of beings who exist outside the laws of nature and who can, upon appropriate application, alter those laws for the benefit of the believer.  One makes supplication to the god of choice by silent or vocal praise and the lodging of requests for divine intervention.  This practice is known as “prayer.”

Christianity is the dominant religion of the United States.  It is mythically based on the life and teaching of Jesus, the deity made man.  Fundamentalists believe every word of the Bible (the sacred texts) to be the word of God.  Here’s what God, through Jesus (also God), said about prayer: “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.  Verily I say unto you they have their reward.  But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”  Jesus Christ, Matthew 6:5-6 King James Version in a stolen Gideon Bible.  We need not bother with the more recent translations.  If the King James Version was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it’s good enough for us.

What we have here is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the World, God Incarnate, the Light of the World giving definitive, authoritative, and unimpeachable information on how to pray if the person praying wants God to pay attention.  Preempting all contrary mandates, the one God has given his orders on prayer to all people for all times until the end of the world.  The instructions are strict and inflexible.  There are no exceptions.  When one prays he should go into his closet and shut the door.