Area Church Board Votes To Return To Simpler, More Honest Approach To That Whole Church Thing

In a unanimous 5-0 vote, an area church board voted to drop all pretense of so-called Christian love and piety and all of that rigmarole and to return to the refreshing, fun, easy to understand ‘Good Old Days” where a few self-appointed “elect” can pretty much do whatever they want to whoever they want – all in the name of religion or faith or spiritual purity or whatever. “Well, this is a way for this church in particular to get back to our real roots and to be honest to our actual world view” said Gomer Snopes, 54, an area rancher, fire fighter and church board member. “I mean, we have used this here church to further our less-than-godly agenda for decades, but we were always hampered by having to maintain the perception of following that outdated bible and all that ‘love thy neighbor’ nonsense. Those unwashed heathen were forever throwing that fact up in our faces, for crying out loud! What is the purpose of getting a strangle-hold on a small rural church if you cannot use it to exact pain on anyone who doesn’t do what you say and/or admit how great you are? Forget that whole silly “Lord’s Vineyard” thing, we want to control everyone and enrich ourselves in the process, and that is less than efficient when you have some old book and the truly inhibiting words of the True Jesus chained to your ankle! We just thought it would be more honest and truthful to our real natures if we just came out in favor of returning to an earlier and more glorious, to say nothing of fun, period of Christian history where everyone knew where they stood and where people like us were at the top of the heap dispensing cruel and disproportional justice as the fickle whim struck us - all for the greater good, of course! And I am sure there will be no shortage of new, eager, devoted converts, neither! Heck, half the ranchers in these parts have been waiting for something like this - to say nothing of the criminal classes - thus we cannot help but fill our coffers with even more mammon or filthy lucre or whatever! How can that be a bad thing?” he concluded piously with an eerie red glint in his watery, beady, little eyes! (eyes made watery by the sulfur stench that seems to follow him everywhere, for some reason!)

“Heck, if that there church gets back to that “Old Time” religion that I have always secretly longed for late at night while thinking my dark, disturbing thoughts, wild horses will not be able to keep me from attending that dern church, no sir!!” said John Crudmeyer, 53, an area home-churcher but a man who can grasp the obvious benefits of instilling organized discipline amongst his heathen, unwashed neighbors who are actually representative of 98% of modern Americans, the poor things. “I mean, who doesn’t like to see a good old witch burning, even if the wretch is not a witch but just some poor old grandmother who didn’t wave at you when you drove by her house or whatever because she didn't have her glasses on!!” said Crudmeyer. “And who among us doesn’t like to drag some poor, squealing, sniveling wretch into a dank root cellar and strap them to some disgusting, demonic device that is certain to make them about 10 inches taller with a few simple twists of a crank! Oh yeah, and which one of us does not like to heat branding irons to a white-hot intensity and wave them around in some poor guy's face as he hangs suspended 4 inches above the filthy, straw-covered floor by jagged rusty manacles! It is all a matter of being honest to one’s true motivations – so if that there church does what they say they are going to, whoa, they have a new member, doggone it! I even got a bunch of hefty old timbers in my storage unit that would be perfect to make one of those public stock things out of! You know, those things you force someone’s hands and head into so they bake in the hot sun while people throw rotten vegetables at them and call them filthy names! Now that is a project I could devote my true latent energies to – not all that sissy “help the poor and feed the orphans” nonsense that most churches only give meager lip service to. Finally there is a church in these parts that knows what it is all about - just like in the Dark Ages, before all at 'Age of Enlightenment' nonsense that ruined the whole world!!!! I just hope they let me be one of the top guys who decide people’s fate and not some lower level functionary that might, at any given moment, be dragged down into some dank dungeon on some trumped up charge or whatever. That would really stink!!” he concluded with his usual smug, condescending, contrived modesty and outrageous, cheeky, insincere understatement.