Unless you're tithing with the Pentecostals, you aren't a main stream contributor. A recent undocumented documentary showed that the fastest growing faith on the planet is Pentecostalism with Evangelicals in second place. I lean toward the Pentecostals for more vivid TV—remember when Jimmy Swaggart slobbered his debut as a big-time sinner? Jimmy S. looks stone-faced alongside a newly minted Pentecostal.
The weeks leading up to Terri Schiavo's merciful release were weeks in which nary a TV network summoned the grace to not endlessly feature that face in all its throes. And even if you weren't among the mesmerized, you must have noticed how it mobilized the troops—there's such intense pressure now to join the lock-step march toward national baptism.
But there's still a smattering of us who are neither Evangelical nor Pentecostal and whose only tongue is imperfect English. But that doesn't mean we're soul-dead, that our consciences are in a persistent vegetative state. What are we to do?
I don't claim to have been called, but certainly what came to me as I lay sleeping was revelatory. The alternative to current national zealotry lies where our faith has always showed its greatest strength, back to our roots, back to what made us the biggest gorilla on the planet: The market...the market...the market. Let us gather our eggs and put them back in our market basket. And what could be more market oriented than The Church of the Hummer.
Yea, verily, The Church of the Hummer. Count its instant plusses. Our church won't be founded on a Good Book but on The Manual, and it's already in the glove compartment of every Hummer. Since it goes back only a few years we'll never fight a Holy War over interpretation. What you read is what you get. Not fire-and-brimstone, fellow Hummerites, but tire-and-rim tone—see Chapter III, paragraph 2.
You won't have to own a Hummer to join our church—ours is an all-inclusive congregation. Every neighborhood Hummer shall become the diocesan church—the portable diocese. What kid won't look forward to Sunday service when his church is parked out in the boonies where he can toss a worm on a hook in a babbling brook while his parents talk manual. The Hummer won't be too far out in the boonies though—Hummerites keep their Hummers shinier than St. Luke's O.R.
Take a minute to ponder this. Sure, it takes some getting used to, but if we ever needed a non-warlike faith that's also ultra-patriotic, it's now.
Christianity has its cross, Judaism its Star of David, and Islam its crescent moon and star. But the Church of the Hummer's sign shall be the elephant. An elephant is big and bulky and not to be trifled with. But an elephant minds its own business, it doesn't eat meat, and given half a chance it opts for peace. Elephants-R-Us.
There's still stuff to figure out—hierarchical mores, for instance. What shall we call our church proprietors, our Hummer owners? Reverend, Rabbi and Ayatollah are out—but how about "Ahnold"? As in Ahnold Schwartzenwhatever. Ahnold has eight Hummers, and surely that makes Ahnold a no-contest winner for top hierarchical billing. You may not realize that our local rock, the rock on which our church is founded here in the valley, our first-ever Ahnold, is Sherry Daech. It's an extra blessing that we're such a young church our original rock is alive and well and still dwelling among us.
Give "Ahnold" a test, try it out: Say "Ahnold Daech." Isn't it reverential in a low-key way?
We have to figure out what to do about tithing too. Even though we don't need money to build our churches, tithing will give us that sense of ownership that'll make our President proud. How about every Hummerite tithing a five-gallon can of gas a week? We'll stockpile it, and one day soon—probably in September—when gas is $9.53 a gallon with a discount card at Albertsons, and all up and down the road friends and neighbors are stranded at the side, then shall we Hummerites de-cache our gas and set forth and gather up the unfortunate and deliver them to their hearths and homes.
Humerites may not belong to the Order of Perpetual Do-Gooders, but you can bet your blue chip stocks we'll be ready to pitch-in when the need is dire.
Betty Bell
