Sundering the Faith, Again

THERE IS A SCHISM within the holy kingdom of God, trouble in paradise. Or rather, there is a schism within one of God's apparently many diverse kingdoms. Since there are thousands of religions on Earth as it perhaps is in heaven, and roughly four thousand Christian denominations, including about thirteen hundred and fifty organized religions registered with the federal government for pusposes of tax evasion, one must conclude one or more of the following: 1) there are thousands of different Gods in, out of, or thoughout the universe. 2) God has many separate religions, and either desires to be worshipped in many diverse ways, or is discontent with all but one, whichever one that might possibly be. Everyone has an opinon, like rectums; yours is a good as any, but no better. Now, consider a venn diagram, one representing the Christian community, the other Donald Trump's conservative base of support. The two intersect, deeply. The intersection section is the Christian conservative Trump movement, comprising about eighty percent of evangelical Christians in America. It includes tens of millions of Americans. Politically far right fundamentalist evangelical Christians, Trump's people. Perhaps not too suprisingly, there is a growing number of them beholding belatedly a wolf in sheep's clothing, a big elephant in the room, as it were, almost as if, like Saul of Tarsus experiencing an epiphamy, the blatant contradiction between Trump's life and behavior, and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Welcome to the club. What took y'all so long to get here remains inexplicable, but, hey, there are many pathways to the mountain top, they say. In truth, the Christian religion has been one "hot mess", as folks say nowadays, of divisions since its very, inception, since the disciples walked away from the master's convuluted, arcane, metaphorical parables utterly confused, disagreeing about their possible meaning. When they became apostles, they scattered in every direction, to all four courners of their flat Earth, teaching diverse doctrines, founding diverse varieties of the church of "the truth", as they all called what much later became widely known as "Christianity". A veritable hodge podge of small local churches emerged, precipitating the frustrated but newly devout Reoman Emporer Constantine to summon everybody together, to bring everybody together, to get everyone "on the same page" as we like to say today, into one...true..religion....as only emporers can do. Problem is, it didn't work, at least not for long. Within a few short centuries we had the Roman church, the Eastern Orthodox church in Constantinople, and then..more and more. At one point there were three different Popes ruling simultaneously, one of whom ruled from Avignon, France, of all places. All this, even before Martin Luther's Lutheran revolt in 1517, which of course eventually resulted in the thousands of denominations we have today. In the United States, over the past two hundred years or so, dozens of "made in America" denominations have been invented: Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and on and on, many of them familair to all, and quite popular. There is no end in sight. Stay tuned. More will follow. As Goethe said: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine." Now we have "Christian natioanlism", a mixed denominational marriage of fervant American patriotism and conservative Christianity, a mix which has been with us since, really, the country's founding, but has become expecially virulent in the age of Trump. The shining city on the hill, the greatst nation on Earth, and the one true faith, joined at the hip. This is a toxic mix, made in hell. Why? Because of what it embraces. A majority of the conservative christian Trump community denies climate change, a disastrious attitude, embraces neo-liberal economics, contray to the teachings of Christ and common sense, and cares not a whit about curtainling fossil fuel use. This toxic mix, with a few other malignancies thrown in, is a recipe for societal collapse, about whcih they care nothing, since they anticipate being reptured into heaven within their lifetimes, as the world ends, according to prophcey. Never mind that the founders, including Madison and Jefferson, spoke of and wrote into the constitution what they called "an impermeable wall" between church and state. The founders actually created a nation of religious freedom and tolerance within a secular governmental framework, but..never mind that. Never mind that about half of today's living American have no religious affiliation. Onward march the Christian soldiers, with Trump their temporal leader, ordained by Christ, lies, extra-marital affairs, big election lie, Capitol insurrection, and all. And yes, they believe Trump's big election lie, and they consider the violent mobsters who stormed the Capitol to be patriots, all presumably sanctioned by our lord Jesus Christ. In a word, these people are fervant, deluded, crazy, violent, and they believe all the rest of us, especially Biden and the Democrats, are evil. They have it backwards. Hell, they have everything backwards. Our one hope, considering their current political strength, might be that they are all raptured into heaven poste haste, leaving the rest of us to muddle in a suffering world, though content, if only becuase of their sudden absence. With regard to the schism endengered by their newly sane expatriots, more power to them, and, if they don't win the battle, maybe the two sides will consume each other in the great schismatic struggle to come. One can only hope.