ONE, TWO, MANY TRUE CHURCHES

I just read a lovely news item in the Florida Sun-Sentinal today (7/17) about how a Christian adoption agency in Mississippi will not accept adoption applications from Catholic families because the Catholic church does not square with the agency's particular Christian mission statement or parochial interpretations or, I don't know, choice of priestly garb, perhaps. The point is, the Church of Rome is not sufficiently Christian for the Christian adoption agency.

To my way of thinking, there should be a very important message in this for all those people who would love to make this "a more Christian nation," especially among the GOP's hard right theological base. The message: There's always going to be someone "more Christian" than you. Someone whose definition of "true Christian" excludes you. Someone whose Christianity is purer or more literal or more doctrinaire or excessive than yours is. And--here's the point--they will never be satisfied with half measures. Those at the far extremes never are.

Hamas may be ready to sit at the table with Israel, but that just marks them as apostates and weaklings in the eyes of Islamic Jihad, who simply will not settle for anything less than every Jew, Christian and Hindu dead as a carp. The Utah desert is alive with wild-eyed ravers who will never forgive the Latter Day Saints for their satanic abandonment of polygamy. Leninism always degrades into Stalinism.
Whoever you are, in a contest of ideological/canonical purity, there will always be someone for whom you are a perfect candidate for the fires of hell. Especially because you are the serpent inside the tent.

The Catholics seem particularly steamed that the Christian adoption agency is funded in part by proceeds from the state's Choose Life license plates, many of which are purchased by anti-abortion Catholics. I would suggest they be far more concerned that some of their protestant allies in the crusade toward an America run by, of, and for Christians do not in fact consider them legitimately as such.
Personally, nothing would make me happier than to see a nice internecine theological and ideological turf war rending the Christian right. It's time we were handed a few red-meat wedge issues for a change.