A matter of faith...

This bitch caught some morning television today.

Now, I know that some of y’all don’t believe in watching morning network sorta-news but this bitch thinks it’s important to know what the masses are mentally consuming. Suffice it to say it’s the mental equivalent of eating two honey buns, a side of bacon and a 20 oz Mountain Dew twice daily (wince).

Anyhoo, it seems that Senator Brownback of the fiendish occupants of a rancid corner in hell Brownbacks did what he does best and said something nasty about someone rather than articulating something positive…like an agenda applicable to this century or mayhap a smidge of viable public policy.

Cough.

Brownback’s minions sent forth an e-mail slamming Mormons. Specifically, the e-mail challenged whether Mormons worship the same Jesus as…well, Brownbackians.

Mercy.

Brownback apologized…Romney accepted…and trust that the ultra sanitized network news left it at that and moved on to discuss whether Prince William is really the “good brother” to prince Harry’s “bad boy ‘bout town”.

Blink.

But a bitch is intrigued.

For years conservatives have benefited from a ‘it’s us against the heathens philosophy’…Catholics have joined with Protestants to fight the grand holy fight against everyone and anyone not willing to join in and fight the grand holy fight.

These partnerships have always given me pause…for example, when folks join together to support a return of organized school prayer. Sounds easy enough…until one goes beyond the rhetoric into the world of reality where Catholics don’t pray like Evangelicals and neither faith prays like Southern Baptists and the possibility of getting one prayer approved is right up there with the perfect mouse trap.

Fast-forward to the attempt to distinguish a Brownbackian Jesus from a Mormon Jesus and this bitch can’t help but consider this a fucking predictable mess. “Faith” as a defining statement was never going to hold, people! Faith begs multiple questions…like what faith, when and how does this faith apply, why this faith and not that faith and so forth and so on.

All of the sudden it’s not as simple as Brownbackian Jesuses versus ...umm...other Jesuses!

And then you’ve got school chil’ren beating up other school chil’ren because they “pray funny” or don’t pray at all…Brownbackians insulting Mormons in a freakish attempt to revive the anti-Mormon era of American history…threats to deny Giuliani communion or make him sign a promise to support insert policy position in order to get communion…and generally an increase in the kind discussion about religion that can only give religion a bad name.

Whew.

But an individual’s religious faith does matter. If they take it seriously then it is a serious part of them. If they are bullshitting about it…well, I happen to think that says a lot about them too.

It occurs to me that the question isn’t whether faith matters, but rather how faith matters.

It is more about faith in application and less about what comes out of a candidate’s mouth.

Does your faith inspire you to work to end poverty…to protect the environment…to encourage peace instead of war?

Or does your faith require that you reject a person who is gay or that they truly can be gay...that you equate wealth with holiness and poverty with sin…that you disregard environmentalism as a devilish distraction?

Oh my!

Well, that is an awful lot to fit into a 5 minute mini-segment leading into a 15 minute teaser of the five part docu-series on those Princes all grows up...