SINNERS UNITE
If Jesus Were a Furry, I’d Believe
Fighting evil is so much easier with a costume
I was looking forward to my pew-sitting routine, which begins around 9:30 most Sundays. I had no reason to expect emotional upheaval.
What could possibly go wrong?
It’s a 2-minute drive, I know almost everyone’s name, and I just had my hair colored so I look ten years younger.
The sky was blue as a robin’s egg, the clouds white as a penguin’s belly, the coffee black as the heart of Nosferatu.
Sure, a horde of militia, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and incel rage, might descend on our congregation. We are known far and wide as homo-loving libtards, accepting of atheists and tolerant of witches. We might even invite a Furry to share our space.
In today’s America — and especially here in the South — we have a target on our backs.
Our crack security team, consisting of five 83-year-olds jacked up on fair-trade coffee, might slow the Proud Boys down but I fear all we’d get is a warning.
“Duck! Run! Grab a portrait of Jesus to use as a shield!”
The head coffee honcho is the only person with a chance of fighting back. I can see her slinging scorching hot coffee at invaders. Some days, I can imagine her slinging it at fellow parishioners.
And today, she and I agreed some boiling coffee shoulda been slung at our guest speaker.
The Paid Writer-Unicorn
Every other week we skip the sermon and invite a speaker and today’s was a journalist, so I was vaguely interested. After all, I like to call myself a writer and I was once a sleazy tabloid journalist.
When she was introduced as having her own column in our state’s premier newspaper, my soul shriveled up like the Wicked Witch of the East’s feet after she lost her ruby slippers.
I immediately turned a puke shade of green, inside. Soon, envy began to spill onto the pew, which wasn’t only inconvenient but embarrassing. I resembled a non-fidgeting, well-behaved, leaking Incredible Hulk.
Nobody seemed to notice I was oozing slime, but I knew.
Who is SHE, my innards howled, to have a decent-paying, staff job as a professional writer?!
How dare she flaunt her legitimate writing career in my face!
Statistics show that only 457 people in the whole world still have paid writing jobs with benefits, and desks at newspapers and magazines where they express their opinions using oversized vocabulary words.
There are more tigers in the wild than journalists getting regular paychecks.
Remembering I was in church, I cultivated a more positive outlook.
Perhaps she has striven since the age of 15 when, as a cub reporter she broke the sex scandal of the century in her small Texas town. You know, when the High School Principal and Wrestling Coach were having a steamy extra-curricular tryst down at the No-Tel Motel?
She might’ve dodged bullets in central America, or maybe she got into the biz after writing 10,000 obits while being sexually harassed.
It’s safe to say Writer-Unicorn made her fair share of sacrifices, yet this didn’t make me like her.
As I observed myself turn into a puddle of slime, I gave her the benefit of the doubt because I was sitting in church and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about religion, its primary purpose is to make you feel guilty AF.
My Parakeet Died Last Month
This speaker gave a lecture about losing her faithful bird two months ago and her grief and, eventually, about negative thought loops and how to avoid them.
Nobody wants to hear about anyone else’s pet unless you own a talking pig or a sugar glider. Her talk made me consider how I should behave if I am ever graced with a regular newspaper column, then asked to give a talk.
Just because you can write, doesn’t mean you know anything about the topics you tackle or are uniquely qualified to inform others on said topics.
Most of us wanted to hear about current events, or what it’s like to be one of the remaining 457 humans who get a regular paycheck for writing.
If I ever get famous, I shall never, ever give a talk about, or in proximity to, my pets, my grandkids (bullet dodged — don’t have any!), or advice on how to convert your gas grill into a smoker, although today I would’ve appreciated some barbecuing advice.
As Churches Decline, Furries Rise
Yesterday, I went to the local ComicCon. The spectacle was pure fun and I forgot I’m a sinner. It helped that one in our party was looking awesome in her cosplay glory, and we went somewhere with another couple.
The contrast between having a photo-op with Chewbacca and sitting in church isn’t lost on me.
We need pop culture to infiltrate churches. I’m sure every single Furry I saw yesterday would raise their fists — er, paws — into the air and agree!
Many people feel about Jesus the way I do about Chewbacca.
This idea of hero worship works so much better, for many of us, when the chosen higher power is a superhero rather than a supernatural being. Our modern superheroes have much in common with the Greek gods, who were also more approachable — they were sinners, too.
Successful churches have figured out how to provide a shared emotional experience to keep folks coming back, but superhero movies already do that!
We Unitarians are even worse than your average church because we lack unity. Unitarianism is a misnomer. We are in a constant state of mild disarray, a motley collection of lapsed Catholics and Jews, atheists, cat lovers, and pagans.
I mean, Catholicism is fairly nutty but they’ve got the rituals down pat. It’s comforting to genuflect and take communion and watch the priest in his spiffy outfit. They’ve retained the old gods like Zeus and Hera as saints.
Our church is never going to achieve a shared emotional experience, which is fine —as long as we don’t get dud speakers.
Jesus vs. Chewy
Once again, a disappointing church experience raises the same important religious question: why can’t Jesus be more like Chewbacca?
Unlike Jesus, Chewy doesn’t speak in parables. You are free to interpret whatever Chewy growls however you want.
Chewy is a comforting presence, whereas Jesus seems to be nothing more than an imaginary character in a made-up universe from long ago, in which good and evil are constantly at odds.
Plus, all that crucifixion blood. Ew.
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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Journey published.
