Not everyone should be Methodist,
or so said a Methodist Bishop once
quoted in a local church bulletin.
Yet the same bulletin advertised this,
Become a contagious Christian.
Spread your faith to people you know.
Bring them to the point of trusting in Christ.
So ought everyone be a Christian?
You need not be born in Methodism
or be raised by Christian community
to notice, any faith that depends on
contagion bears the brunt of Faithism,
the claim to command holy absolutes.�
Is that not a sign of sick stunted faith,
a symptom of spirit retardation,
a faith drowning, clinging to some anchor?
The anchors are various - scripture, myth,
ritual, ethic, doctrine, primping pomp -
any fix of obedience will do.
By the time the fix is objectified,
creed starts looking like greed.� If believers
get bound by belief, that addiction can
succumb in the end to cult-indulgence,�
embrace of belief�s very contrary.
At the bottom of pious bigotry
lies shaky foundations, contagious faith:
care for lost souls who might fail to be whole
spiritually; capital to claim
superior knowledge of the holy;
concern that other people might follow
different inspirations; ignorance
of a trust deeper than some allegiance.
Faithism's afoot extending beyond
the charter of fundamentalist sects.�
It beats in the breast of the upright beast,
when the beast forsakes its high calling:
Be Humane In A World Of Human Beings.
Is there a better test of faithfulness?�
Must people of all the earth be of one
faith? What might Jesus say? Or Gautama?
Apply this if you please to politics
or economics, where principles of
every manner get touted as Gods
while rights of the many get trampled by
high priests of the very privileged few.