Not everyone should be Methodist,
or so said a Methodist Bishop once
quoted in a local church bulletin.
Yet the same bulletin broadcast this ,
Become a contagious Christian.
Spread your faith to people you know.
Bring them to the point of trusting in Christ.
So should everyone be a Christian,
for Christ's sake?
You need not be born into Methodism
or be bred in a Christian community
to notice, any faith that depends on
contagion, incurs the risk of Faithism,
the claim to command absolutes.
Is that not a sign of sick faith,
a symptom of retarded spirit,
a faith destined to drown, clinging
to some anchor?
The anchors are legion: Scripture,
Myth, Ritual, Ethic, Doctrine.
Any fix of undying obedience will do.
By the time the fix is in, objectified,
creed can look like greed. If believers
get bound by belief, that addiction can
succumb in the end to cult-indulgence.
Does cultism not lead to conceit of spirit
and to fear of beliefs contrary?
What's at the bottom of pious bigotry,
the shaky foundation of contagious faith?
The care for lost souls who might fail to be
whole in the spirit? The capital to claim
superior knowledge of what counts as whole?
Perhaps the concern that other people
might exercise different inspirations?
Or could it be ignorance of a trust
that runs deeper than any allegiance?
Faithism's afoot and extends beyond
the roles of fundamentalist sects.
It beats in the breast of the beast
called human and surfaces when the beast
forsakes the call of authenticity,
Be Humane In A World Of Human Beings.
Could there be a better test of faithfulness?
Should everyone be a Christian?
What would He-Who-Is-Not-One say?
More on Faithism Here
