I’ve decided to ride out Hurricane Rita in Houston, so I don’t know when I will be able to post again.
Accordingly, I thought I’d sign off this week with a bang.
There is a new book called, “Why Business People Speak Like Idiots.” If I survive the hurricane, you may expect me to comment on this book in future postings.
For now, I would like to ask another question: Why do certain members of the clergy speak like idiots? I have in mind Rev. Dwight McKissic, pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.
Rev. McKissic is a member of the Texas Restoration Project, a group of clerical vigilantes. The group was organized last May with the avowed object of restoring “Bible-based morality” to America. Members of the group are currently registering their flocks to secure ratification of Proposition 2, a state constitutional amendment that Texans will be voting on in November.
The amendment would define marriage as a union of one man with one woman, and would outlaw gay unions. Texas law already prohibits gay marriage, but the members of the Texas Restoration Project are clearly leaving nothing to chance.
Judging from a speech Rev. McKissic gave in Houston on September 8, Proposition 2 is apparently just the beginning of the effort to restore “Bible-based morality” in America.
The Houston Chronicle quoted Rev. McKissic as follows: “Could it be God sent [Hurricane] Katrina to purify the sins of New Orleans? Not just New Orleans. That week there was no gambling, no prostitution, no sins [sic] in New Orleans. It became one of the purest cities in America during that time.”
Maybe Rev. McKissic thinks that another Great Flood would solve all the world's problems.
Right now, with furious wind and rain just hours away from me, I have a question of my own: Could it be that God sent Hurricane Rita to wash Houston clean of the poison that dripped from Rev. McKissic's mouth on September 8? If so, even a hurricane scarcely seems enough.
As he so often did, Oscar Wilde said it best: “I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts. I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue.”
Amen to that.
Comments (1)
Well, if you went down, Hal, I'm glad you went down swinging. But the news reports I've been watching anxiously make me hope you are all right.
I hope to hear from you soon, so I can finally turn off CNN and Anderson what's-his-name.
Meanwhile, a God in America story of my own: A visit last week to my Taiwanese dentist--a Christian, but not a man I associate in any way with Bible-based moralists like the reverend of whom you speak--opened my eyes to a more sincere and less vindictive desire to keep God in the law.
I was visiting Dr. Cho to get a root-canal finished off, but 45 minutes into our conversation--inspired by my recent trip to China--he pushed the tray out of the way and said, "Well, forget about dentistry."
In an hour and a half, we talked about the future of the U.S.--first in context of China's economic advance, then in context of America's social and economic problems and just about everything else.
At one point, Dr. Cho became emotional and he grabbed my leg and his eyes filled with tears and he begged me (as if it was up to me, as a native-born American) not to let them take God out of the constitution.
"Please!" he said through streaming tears. "Don't DO that!"
He said he feared that stripping God from a constitution written by forefathers who believed in God would ruin everything. What exactly, he didn't say. And I didn't ask. I do still have to get the root canal finished, after all.
Separated from the usual trappings of Wilde's ignorant moralists, the passionate feeling of my highly educated, impossibly hardworking, really gentle and slightly kooky Taiwanese dentist made me understand the desperation some feel that U.S. policy may be separated from religious principles and spiritual inspiration from which they believe it sprang.
Driving home, I thought of the bottom line for secular liberal agnostic me: I'll give Dr. Cho God in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" if he gives me gay marriage and legal medical marijuana and leaves Roe v. Wade alone.
But first things first, God: Let us hear from Hal.
Posted by David Murray | September 25, 2005 9:49 AM
Posted on September 25, 2005 09:49