I shall suggest that we have, basically, two options about which organizations to join. They already exist, but we must reclaim, and in the process of re-claiming, re-invent them. Those options are:
(a) re-claimed churches, and
(b) re-invented labor unions.
Later I shall outline why I believe other options (purely partisan vehicles and lifestyle/affinity/recreational groups) are second-best.

First, the re-claimed church. This is the easy one – trust me.

I am not suggesting that everyone go out any join a church/synagoguge/temple because it will necessarily turn them into good people of the Book. Though, if I were an evangelist of a Pascalian turn of mind, that would be nice side effect.

No, I am suggesting that everyone go out and join a church or synagogue for three reasons:

1.) Come election time, there has got to be a way to find you. As I posted before, churches are the only real face-to-face network left in our society. We have lost a coherent public discourse, we no longer have that relatively unified coalition of interest groups that was the Madisonian/Dahlian dream, and as Kerry discovered to his chagrin, the Democratic Party’s list of phone numbers and addresses – as well as the base of people to make use of them – simply ain’t up to the task. So without those means of finding you, there must be a way of tying people to the political system. If churches are the only block available to recruit, then for heaven’s sake join a church so that we can mobilize your ass when the time comes. Otherwise we are reduced to the dangerous absurdities of rank demagoguery.

2.) Joining a church will radicalize us. If you’ve been reading my posts with even a modicum of regularity, you might have noticed an increase in the righteousness quotient. Maybe it’s living in Texas as being surrounded by a bunch of fucking brownshirts, or maybe two years of being a pedagogue has caused me to be too much in love with my own opinions. But I think it is not accidental that my indignation has taken on a peculiarly religious tone, and in doing so, has become even more radical. This, I think, is a function of two things:
a. The systematic and repeated engagement with moral questions does – guess what? – cause you to think more seriously about morality. I don’t know about you, but when I read the paper every day, I get angry, but it’s a constantly re-directed anger (The war! Corporate corruption! The assault on democracy! More sniveling gutless Democrats! Gay-baiting! Etc.). But when I sit down every week in church and think – even for just an hour – about how to contribute to the reconstruction and defense of our New City, well, then tends to center me a bit and put it all into perspective. Far from being some kind of narcotizing pabulum, I find that attending church has prompted me to link formerly separate issues, and to think of them in terms of right and wrong (and not just, for instance, ignorance vs. knowledge). In sum, church is radicalizing because it asks us to be serious – and that is no mean task when the media and our government are daily conspiring to make us dumbly cynical.
b. But it is also worthwhile remembering, people: Jesus acted up (thanks, Robert Goss). And while the Bible may not exactly be the Communist Manifesto, there is a lot in the text – not just in the Gospels, but also in the Prophets – that should trouble the mighty and afflict the comfortable. The Bible calls us to seek justice and resist evil – it is there in the Book and when you start reading it, it is hard not to be moved to action (well, once you get past all the begats, I mean).

3.) Joining a church will also moderate them. One of the great things about churches is that members are committed to each other’s welfare (if they are run by reasonable people, that is, and not by the quasi-cult conformitrons spitting out the weekly dumbotainment at your average suburban mega-church). Now, because people are committed to one another’s welfare, they are bound to listen to their fellow-members. Which means they have to take you seriously. This is obviously not a “stop-the presses!” kind of insight, but it is always worth remembering. To use the language: when we witness to the truth, even the hard-hearted are bound to listen. It may not reach everyone, and it may take awhile, but every blessed one of us is called to proclaim the Word – and if you do it when people have a connection to you, they will listen.
– Let me give you an example of what I mean from my own life. Now, it’s not like the church my partner and I go to is some bastion of conservatism – it is Congregational, after all, a denomination that’s been ordaining gays for like 30 years now. But it is also in the South, and that means that there’s more than a few former Baptists in the crowd. When we joined, the “reception of new members” ritual calls for the pastor to read a kind of responsive catechism, in response to which the neophyte says “I do” after every sentence. My partner and I were the only ones received into membership that Sunday, so picture it: two guys standing up in front of the whole congregation, repeating the words “I do” to the pastor. The message was loud, and it was clear.

If we going to bring people around to our point of view, it has to be done face-to-face. If we are going to convince others that a war based on lies and corruption is a corporate sin, we must do it in person. If we are to turn back the privatizing, individuating tide, we must personally tell our friends and neighbors that to shirk from paying taxes is to turn away from our God-commanded duty to build the New Jerusalem. It you want to counter the filthy heresies spewed forth by the henchmen of our new Emperor, you must say, out loud, that global warming is an act of deliberate and colossal evil, and that if you want to protect marriage then for heaven’s sake work on your own.

And because church is the only real network left, it is the only place where these conversations can happen.

As for which congregation you go to, that’s your business. Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Judaism all have their good points. Mainline Protestants do a decent, if variable, job – so, Episcopal, ELCA, PCUSA, UMC, Disciples of Christ, Quakers, ABC, UCC, Unitarians – they’re all basically fine. And the Catholics? Well, that depends on the parish priest and bishop. Knowing nothing about the state of local Muslim congregations, I won’t hazard a guess. The point is (a) to get involved with something translocal (so that you are findable come election time. This means no “nondenominational” crap — even when they’re not just lying, as in “oh, we’re a non-denominational church.” “No you’re not, asshole. You’re fucking Assemblies of God”); (b) get involved with something that takes the true and lively word seriously in all its liberating glory (so none of this apologist/collaborationist bullshit from places like Calvary out on Highway 50); and (c) get involved with something where you feel at home. If the church doesn’t welcome you – and if you don’t welcome the church – go someplace else, where you’ll actually be able to talk to people.

Next week: so, not up for talking ‘bout God? Fine. Let’s talk about money, then.

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Since my fellow pimpgnostics were on the subject:

My love of literature came from another member of of the same department as Rex’s teacher. While not requiring the same amount of writing as the much-admired father of a certain friend, she maintained an equally irreverent attitude in the classroom.

Two anecdotes to illustrate the brilliant pedagogy of someone I always thought of as “famous-artist’s-second-cousin”:

a.) This teacher required that we read the entire text – unabridged, mind you – of Les Miserables. This, the same year it was taking the country by storm in that godawful stage version by Lord Lloyd-Webber (say that five times fast, Sonya M.!). Thus, more than some treacly song about unrequited love, I remember best a chillingly gothic description of the hero carrying the young lover on his back, wading through a river of shit in the Paris sewers. Honestly, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

b.) This teacher asked us to read Beowulf – who says we weren’t getting a good education? Please. Beowulf at 15 is an awesome education, fuck you very much. And not only that, she then positively guffawed when I and another student interpreted the poem as a commentary on the pariah of growing up the child of a single mother – i.e., that the real hero was Grendel, and Beowulf was merely the instrument of a coldly uncaring society, hidebound by patriarchal social norms. (oh, and for the record, I may not have used the words “hidebound” and “patriarchal” at fifteen, but I distinctly remember calling the text “sexist.”)

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Join!

You have heard me say it before, and I will say it again until my hearers either get with the program, or walk away from listening.

Each of us has got to join an organization. Hell, join two while you’re at it. You have got to participate – that is the only way this system works. And I don’t mean the ACLU, though heavan knows they’re doing the Lord’s work every day.

You must join a group where you have to talk to someone else, face to face.

And once you have joined, you have got to spread the news. Take a friend. Where two or three are gathered, there will be the spirit of Democracy.

Each of us must speak and speak again, to our friends, our family, our neighbors, our co-workers. To speak is liberation, and to join is to act in concert with other free people, to put our liberation to the purposes for which we were set free in the beginning. This is your personal contribution to stemming the crimson tide, the choking algae bloom that will cut off all oxygen, all light and peace and life. JOIN, or you will be silenced.

Contributing money is not enough. You cannot buy democracy, my friends. When all you do is donate, politics has become a stage-show, a burlesque, a $1000/shot strip-tease where you are the john and democracy your whore.

I do not care that you do not have time. Make time. If you do not, the Enemy will win.

I do not care that you do not know where to begin. Take my suggestions (see next week) or for heaven’s sake do it yourself. If you do not, the Enemy will win.

I do not care if the people you find at first are crazy, or confused, or weak. We are all mad, frightened, and tired – each of us exhausted by all the demands upon our time and talents, all of us enervated by the heroin of consumer capitalism, every blessed one of us driven berserk by beating back the lies and ignorance spewed forth every day from our leaders and their media rent-boys. I do not care: the load may be heavy, but it is yours to carry. It will not go away if you drop it. The only way to lighten it is to ask for help.

And to do that you have got to join.

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What was I talking about again?

Oh, yes, now I remember. Outlining a strategy to revivify what is left of our dessicated democracy.

Task #1:

Start talking.

Because silence equals death.

Because there will come a time — too soon, too soon — when our mouths will be stopped up forever.

Because there may come a time — perhaps sooner than you think — when we who would criticize, we who would stand up and calmly speak truth to power, are cast out of fellowship and constrained from speaking.

Because to live in the world — even such a cacaphonic one as ours — is to speak, and to speak is to live.

Now is the time to talk — in communication there is communion, and in communion we commit ourselves to a new covenant. In speech there is always, already, the yeast of meaning; pulp and pip, juice and seed of change and action. Because to cease from speaking is to quit, to concede, to collaborate, and ultimately to die.

SO START TALKING.

Of what should we speak? George Lakoff has some suggestions. Obviously, I have my own ideas. I should hope to God you have some. In any case, let us be about our business of spreading the good news. If you want to speak of “nurturing families” rather than “strong fathers,” then so be it: buy a copy of Don’t Think of an Elephant and put it to good use.

For the moment I prefer an older text, a wellspring of living water with which to slake my thirst for truth amidst this desert of commercial mirages and poisonous political lies. I prefer to speak in terms of sin and righteousness. Because unless we call it evil, those who do that which is wrong will never learn to be ashamed of what they do.

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1886 – Coca-Cola developed
1898 – Pepsi Cola ripped off
1963 – Tab introduced
1964 – Diet Pepsi ripped off
1982 – Diet Coke introduced (eventually replacing Tab)
1985 – Cherry Coke introduced
1988 – Wild Cherry Pepsi ripped off
2002 – Vanilla Coke introduced
2003 – Pepsi Vanilla ripped off
2005 – Lime Coke introduced
2005 – Pepsi with lime ripped off

So Pepsi, you cheap-ass second-class bitch, come up with any good ideas recently? How about ever?

Pepsi got it’s consumers by being a cheaper version of a known product. Drink it if you must, but know that you are made into a more of a lower tier citizen with every sip.

What did they get first? What? Mountain Dew? True, but they didn’t even come up with that, they just bought the company.

Such a cheap knock off sickens me.

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