If It Looks Like an Inquisition and it Walks Like...

All aboard! The trains are leaving the station!

The theocracy of today gaining speed and fervor all brought to you by "Christians" is a slippery slope, my friends. Missouri has a bill, an actual bill in the state house of republicans...I mean representatives... that would render christianity the state religion. This bill should not come as a surprise, if you've driven through there in the last few years and seen the large-white-text-on-ominous-black-background billboards poxing the farmland with statements of old testament wrath and ruin.

But Christianity is not a religion. Not as they are thinking of it. When you ask Protestants if Catholics are Christian they will firmly say they are not. And when talking of a Christian religion they are not including United Church of Christ folks, nor Unitarian Universalists >gasp< ...certainly not those folks either. And they are not including Free Presbyterians, Locked Up Presbyterians, or even United Presbys.
And heaven forfend, certainly not Catholic-light Episcopalians even when cloaked as Anglicans.

Nope those are not deemed true Christians when there is talk of Christianity as a state religion.

So if this bill passes, and actually it is possible, as it broadly states Christianity as a religion, there will be the need for a bill which defines what Christianity is. And believe me, the above mentioned practitioners will not be in the short list.

I suppose we should parse what religion actually is. If you use the definition including "use of recognized practices and observances" that is where the denominations declare distinctions intransgressable.

Distinctions from sprinkling to dunking; personal revelation versus membership from moment of conception; intercessory prayer and forgiveness versus personal relationship; wine versus grape juice; high holy days or any day; Sabbath honor or shopping sales; speaking in tongues or just merely wagging them in gossip; robes or suits; men and/or women pastors; stoles or lapel pins; these will be the wedges of discrimination.

This is not about a big tent for all to come together. This is not about gathering in the fellowship hall for casseroles ad nauseum, this is about the cutting out of a large place for only those who know the secret handshake and then it will be only for those who have power to change the secret handshake.

This is not about rights but restriction. This is not about helping but harming. This is not about agape but animosity. This is not about Christianity but Corruption.

Call your friends in Missouri, encourage them to stop this and as a back-up give them refuge if they are excommunicated from their home state.

Update:

And doncha know I just got the weekly call from my mother who said, in her sweet way, that for Mother's Day this year we are all off to Branson...yes Missouri...for a weekend of Protestant-styled frolicking. I was told I could go fishing...If word comes about that they had to dredge the lake for me, you'll know that a baptism went bad.

I tried to say that the talibangelists were making Missouri a Christian state, but her retort was

Mom: "we're being legislated against. Do you know that 'they' had to remove a picture of George Washington praying beside the Potomac?"
Me: "where?"
Mom: "I dunno, in the south somewhere."
Me: But Mom, if its in a public school and public school is mandated...and besides, are there not other pictures of George?"
Mom: "What's wrong with a Christian State?"

wow...

There is a genetic disconnect or some anomolous occurance. I am a missing zygote. And I was having such a good day.