The Wages of Sin, Adjusted for Inflation

“Those of us who are Republicans have as much fun as anyone. Let’s rock the house.”

-Mike Huckabee

"The only really respectable Protestants are the Fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots."

- H.L. Mencken

Some years ago, my stepmom went as a chaperone on a youth retreat for the church's teenagers and one night during the trip the adults staged a rave for the kids, complete with techno music, lights and maybe even glow sticks. But no drugs, of course. No, the purpose of this event was to praise Jesus and - on this count at least - maybe they succeeded, though I have my doubts. Still, someone should have informed the organizers that, without the illicit substances, a rave is little more than a night of lost sleep. The drugs are about the only thing raves ever had going for them - hell, even a lot of kandi kids eventually got wise to that idea. Keep the drugs, drop the irritating music.

I've always marveled at the lengths to which religious folk will go to recreate the experiences forbidden by church doctrine. One look at the Worthington Loma Linda website, for instance, will show you just how badly Adventist vegetarians want to shake hands with beef, or any real meat at all. The R&D department at Loma Linda has clearly outdone itself in creating Skallops that look like scallops; Chik-nuggets that could pass for chicken nuggets; and Smoked Beef that looks like, well, you get the point. I know, I know: it's this soy crap that gives the world all those uber-perfect Adventist kids, so don't write and lecture me on the health benefits of Stripples. But it's a big world out there, so please, would someone just give these people a hamburger and save them the misery of eating another Fri-Pat, whatever the hell that is.

The Adventists really are an exceptional piece of work when it comes to sublimated desire. Back in the day, my grandmother met my grandfather at a Saturday night event called a 'march,' or as my grandmother referred to it, 'vegetarian dancing.' This grandmother of mine, she doesn't traffic in bullshit: when she sees people shuffling about a hardwood floor to a musical beat - even if the song is "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne" - she calls it for what it is, dancing. The thing is, she and and my grandfather love to cut a rug. Swing, hop, waltz, fox trot - you name it, they'll do it, but damned if their fellow church members didn't start frothing at the mouth when they discovered that my grandparents frequently went square dancing on Wednesday evenings in Boise. Call it marching and the lord be praised, but do a two step and you're just that much closer to perdition.

It wasn't so long ago, then, that dancing was, for most religious types, yet another base worldly pleasure, right up there with the cowgirl position, Led Zeppelin, and electricity. Problem is, what's sinful for these folks in one decade tends over a generation or so to be accepted and then embraced, which led Alan Wolfe to remark that "in every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture - and American culture has triumphed."¹ And not only has culture generally triumphed, it has also set the standard, such that religious entertainment is always grasping for the tail-end of the latest pop culture trend, thus leaving us with religious grunge music and godly raves. But c'mon - while it's great that any church has relaxed enough to stage a rave for its kids, don't you think God would prefer something a little less derivative?

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Notes
¹ Alan Wolfe, The Transformation of American Religion