Just a few bean fields and a corn patch or two from Dayton, Ohio a battle has been forming for some time now. This battle is squaring up as a struggle between good and evil, between the righteous congregants and pastors of two large Columbus area churches and the “hordes of hell” according to one of the pastors.

“Pastor” Russell Johnson leader of his flock of 3000 faithful at Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, Ohio is a fundamentalist preacher, right wing activist and one of the founders of the “Ohio Restoration Project,” a group founded for the stated purpose of registering 300,000 voters under the direction of “Patriot Pastors” who will commit themselves to registering 300 “values voters” apiece for the 2006 election.

I’m not sure what a “patriot pastor” is but I think I know what a “values voter” is and I believe we can be certain that when the two are combined they will not be stumping for a slate of liberal or progressive candidates, in fact I believe that the liberals and progressives just might be the aforementioned “hordes of hell” in their lexicon. I made a note to check into that.

Johnson is in league Christian fellowship with another well known telethumpalist preacher in these parts named “Pastor” Rod Parsley who has his own flock of righteous true believers in the World Harvest Church near Columbus. This one’s a biggie, try to imagine12,000 holy political crusaders under one steeple. The thought of this much outright, unabashed holiness would intimidate Christ Himself. Just for that reason I doubt that he attends services there.

Parsley wields a lot of clout in Ohio conservative republican circles. He has hobnobbed with James Dobson and Chuck Colson and many other luminaries of the religious far right. At the kickoff of a book tour last year he was joined by Alan Keyes and the Paris Hilton of conservative politics, faux news starlet Ann Coulter. How Ms. Coulter who “lives on cigarettes and Chardonay” and her mini skirt, played to the “Born Again” crowd I don’t know.

The current crusade is focused on electing Ken Blackwell as Ohio’s Governor replacing the ineffectual and scandal ridden Bob Taft. Currently Ohio’s Secretary of State, Blackwell is the wet dream of the religious right around here and has traveled extensively and appeared often with both Parsley and Johnson, notably in his efforts to pass Ohio’s ban on gay marriage. He was with Parsley on one occasion when he said of gay marriage “That notion even defies barnyard logic, even the barnyard knows better.” Blackwell never met my ex dog Spike.

These three agape amigos are determined to put Jesus back in the schools, back in the government and back into everything except their own churches. They intend to have the entire populace marching in goose step to “Onward Christian Soldiers” as they move to create the great “American Kingdom Of Corporate Theocracy And Jesus Go Lightly.”

I have spent my life after childhood trying to ignore organized religion and it’s adherents as much as possible. I have no interest in Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Hindus, Scientologists or any of the dozens of isms, sects, and cults that have cluttered history with their madness and wars, with their ignorance and intolerance, and with their distrust and hatred since the dawn of human thought and superstition.

For myself the concept of God or Creator is self evident and inescapable. Oddly enough it was a layman’s study of science that led me to a belief in God. The more I read in physics and cosmology and the farther I got from anything that resembled a church the more comfortable I became in some innate and personal awareness of God.

My beliefs are also private, I don’t care to display, package, sell, or ram my beliefs down the throats of anyone. I would rather that the facts of my beliefs be ignored, perhaps treated as an amusing oddity of my character which poses no threat to anyone and which is the business of no one else.

Somehow I became convinced that I had the right to be so ignored and to ignore in return the somewhat quaint and amusing beliefs of others. The reason that I refuse to be disabused of the notion that I have a right to ignore and be ignored in religious matters is that I also believe that the law of the United States of America guarantees me that right.

Apparently I was wrong. The same people who have had so much success interpreting the “Word of God” to their advantage, now intend to rewrite “The laws of Man.”

The “Patriot pastors” are coming and they mean to reestablish the Inquisition, the rack and the darkest times in the history of man. A group of people who would surely make Christ vomit, or send Siddhartha into cardiac arrest is going to establish a Jolly Jonestown here in Ohio.

Actually they will need a great number of them because there are such deep disagreements over the correct way to worship whichever version of the creator is approved by their particular sect. Churches are forever growing and dividing, splitting up the spoils and moving on down the road to attract another collection of people desperate for a belief to lean on.

In actual fact these three amigos are flimflam men, throwbacks to some cheap carny ancestors who have cashed in on the potential of the information age and have become very adroit at putting on a light and sound show, creating a bit of mass hysteria and fleecing the flock of hundreds of millions of dollars. They are no closer to God than Billy Sunday or Elmer Gantry.

I hate to get involved with this religious war thing but if they won’t leave me alone I say, “OK. Bring it on.” I can’t explain it, I can’t prove it but I really believe that God is on my side. And I don’t even have a steeple.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust
http://sawdust.eponym.com