When Religion Goes Soap Opera - Pomp, Circumstance, And The Dramatic Stage Entrance Of Jesus

Joseph Smith founder of the Mormon Church was given the Book of Mormon by the Angel Moroni, but then misplaced it, lost it amidst the halters, bridles, bits, and saddles in his barn, spent years looking for it - lapses of memory, he said, were not uncommon in people, especially simple folk unaccustomed to complex, consequential things.  

One would have thought that the arrival of an angel in his bunkhouse that day in May would have sharpened him and prepared him for the long, spiritual journey ahead; but the unexpected and unfortunate happens in life more frequently than not.  

Part of the challenge of evangelism - this was exactly what Moroni had asked of this humble farmer - was keeping track of things.  St. Paul, confidant and colleague of the apostles Luke and Matthew, and the first evangelist to preach the good news, had to keep track of his many new churches as far afield as Ephesus and Rome. Without his constant supervision, they might well fall into heretical snares.

Not only that, Paul had his own agenda.  If you must get married, he said, beware; and went on to chronicle the many impossibly prickly and troublesome sides to conjugal life.  Better to remain celibate, he advised, pure in the sight of the Lord and out of the  chokehold of demanding women. 

He was more forgiving and understanding in more clerical and theological matters, but still remained a tough taskmaster overseeing the early church.  Not only did he have to keep doctrinal purity, but to keep the new congregants from dispute and dissension.  

The many heresies in the land, Gnosticism among them, were legitimate challenges to the new Christian orthodoxy.  Was Jesus sometimes a man, sometimes God, a fluid combination of the two; or sometimes one and sometimes the other?  Conclusions would provide the foundation for the future church.

Paul had his hands full, so the fate of Joseph Smith, losing the Mormon Bible and floundering about until he found it, was relatively inconsequential.  When he finally found the book beneath an inadvertently tossed bale of hay, and read it, digested it, and interpreted it, he understood its existential importance  His cattle, chickens, and barley would have to take a back seat. 

As is well known, the aggressive evangelism of Joseph Smith and his disciples has paid dividends, and although Mormonism has not flourished much outside of Utah, it is acknowledged as America's only indigenous religion and respected as such. 

When Half-Moon Rising, Chief of the Lakota people, took exception to this claim - indigenous peoples in the Americas had long practiced sophisticated religions long before Joseph Smith. and theirs were the true American faiths - the descendants of Joseph Smith took umbrage.

In any case, the fantastical theological precepts of Mormonism (e.g. Jesus had visited Guatemala and converted the Mayan peoples of the region, the famous Biblical lost tribe of Israel) joined tree worship and shamanism in the pantheon of American spiritual beliefs. 

As coincidental as it may sound Muslims, who far outnumber Mormons, cite similar origins of their religion.  Apparently the Angel Gabriel gave Mohammed the Koran, written for his benefit in Arabic and designed for easy evangelism.  The suras of the holy book are written in vernacular simplicity so that his disciples could easily understand them and preach their universal truths. 

Mohammed took literally the words of the angel, or rather the word of Allah, and used them as the foundation of his crusade west across North Africa and north to Palestine where in Jerusalem he established the first Islamic outpost.  Only when Pope Urban II had had enough of the infidel in the Holy Land did he send out his crusading legions to cleanse it and return it to the safe haven of Christianity. 

 

Many millennia before, Moses was also visited by a divine presence and given the word of God, this time in simplified, easy-to-understand form, and the Ten Commandments, the essential moral warp and weave of every social fabric became Judaic law. 

That, of course was only the beginning. Sects and subsects fought over doctrine, interpretation, and applications. Pious Muslims read the Koran as a book of peace and spiritual harmony; militant Muslims read every line about the infidel and the need to exterminate him as legitimacy for their desire for a world Islamic caliphate. Sunnis and Shiites, convinced of the divine sanction of their sect, fought civil wars for centuries.

Christianity splintered not only into Orthodox and Roman halves but thanks to Martin Luther into a staggering variety of offspring.  Every sect from Holy Rollers to originalist Episcopalians filled the dance card.  On any given Sunday a Christian could walk into one church and expect to find Jesus, into another to hear the Reverend Bacon on 'Was Jesus Queer?', and into a third with familiar Catholic liturgy and consecrations.

 

Jews don't go in for drama - yes, there's the blowing of the shofar, abasement on The Day of Atonement, and the millennia-old rituals of Shabbat but nothing compared to the blood running on the streets of Id-al-Fitr or solemn high mass.   Once the Great Myth of The Sermon on the Mount and the Ten Commandments is over and done with, Judaism is very conservative, modest religion. 

Few people convert to Judaism - far too severe a religion and one without the frills, bells, and flowers that make religion appealing.  Islam gets all the converts these days with its low entrance bar - it is enough to subject your will to Allah, pray five times a day, and fight the infidel. 

The Catholic Church used to be the go-to place for converts - Italian operatic pageantry, priests in silk and fine linen, Bach's music, and plenty of mystery; but in recent years it has, thanks to liberal popes, taken up secular cudgels - the black man, the immigrant, the lesbian.  Mass has been streamlined to assure early golf times, sins downsized, and the whole affair turned into a congenial Sunday morning hour. 

The new Pope, an American, has vowed to put mystery, miracles, and authority back into the Catholic Church - the good old days of hellfire, brimstone, penance, and salvation. A lid on secularism, more Sturm und Drang, more melodramatic soap opera, and a return of pageantry.  

It helps to have a political conservative in America's highest office. 'Go go church', Donald Trump has said. 'The lamb of God should be revered, not eaten', a snarky comment dismissing the bloody primitivism of Islamic animal sacrifice. 

Meanwhile radical Islam gets thousands of new converts every day.  It appeals to the poor who have nothing. The stark simplicity of the religion and guarantee of a celestial home is very appealing indeed. 

So the Vatican is giving priests the room to dress in silk and paten leather, to return pomp and circumstance to the mass, and to give every parishioner the time of his life every Sunday. 

The Protestant sects already have a lock on 'abundant' services, ecstatic visions and immediate salvation, but they too are upping the ante. 'Jesus in a Cadillac showroom' had been a recent Sunday sermon at the Westmoreland Church of Christ, a progressive, secular congregation, but such topics are no longer on the program as the church is joining its Southern Baptist brethren in ecstatic ecclesiastical joy. 

'It's like the good old days', said a parishioner at St. Maurice's Church in New Brighton, Connecticut after a mass that invoked the medieval ceremonies at Notre Dame and St. Sulpice.  He was not yet moved to contrition, redemption, and the company of Our Lord, but it was a start.

The Very Reverend Aloysius Barnum, elegant in purple silk chasuble, red patent leather shoes, and a magnificent gold surplice, walked ceremoniously down the aisle to the sound of clanking censers and the fragrance of frankincense, and rejoiced in the spirit of the Lord.