Over the course of my life's first two decades, my family gradually changed from regular church-going Catholics to the kind who put in token appearances around Easter and Christmas, and then on to the kind who root through their basement once every spring for a battered VHS copy of Jesus Christ Superstar,"" a work that may not be officially endorsed by the Vatican, but is at least canonical in the same sense as ""Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"" and ""Cats.""
Though I would now identify myself first and foremost as a disciple of Andrew Lloyd Weber, the preceding years have left me with a pretty clear memory of the average sermon. The preacher (""priests,"" we called them) would read a passage of varying length from the Bible and soberly reflect on its relevance to our daily lives until it was time for the collection plate to make its rounds. As a child, I found the solemnity of these proceedings to be excruciatingly boring. Ever since then, I've been fascinated by other approaches to divine revelation.
""A healthy, solid bowel movement can be pleasurable"" explained a street preacher to our congregation of around 30, which had spontaneously convened around his folding chair last Tuesday to hear the good word. The day's sermon, which had apparently been drawn from the late night, 18-plus version of the Sermon on the Mount, was on the dangers of anal sex.
Exhaustive in his attention to detail, the man's vast knowledge of the topic at hand could only be described as ""suspicious.""
Homophobia is such a common theme among the preachers who come to harangue God's collegiate multitudes that it's gone from offensive to amusing to clichéd. No longer able to muster the anger necessary to protest, the small number of passersby who do still gather for these events seem more bored than indignant: ""Yes, Brother Josiah, we've heard all about the Sodomites. What new hatreds do you bring us?""
Last week's speaker distinguished himself not only through the laser-like focus of his message but also its graphic explicitness, cataloging at least half a dozen hell-worthy trespasses that could be committed between a man and an oblong piece of fruit.
""Do you know what a rim job is?"" he shouted at two women who happened to be passing by on the way to class, holding aloft his Bible as he did so, as if the answer to the question lay somewhere inside, between Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
While our preacher began to elaborate further with help from the bucket of props he'd brought along for the occasion, I thought back to eighth grade when our school's priest stopped by to distribute copies of a reference manual that we came to call the ""1,001 Reasons You're Going to Hell.""
Beginning with the original 10 Commandments and tacking on an additional seven or eight hundred, the book covered all the usual sins like murder and covetry, as well as several that had only come to attention since puberty. This new take on God struck me as entirely too negative, but I respected
His great diversity of interests, specifically condemning not only such evils as laziness and arson, but also sorcery and nipple piercings.
The deity we were presently being lectured about seemed otherwise preoccupied, as if Moses had come down from Mount Sinai, set down his two tablets and said, ""People of Israel, these are just the first ten. If a few of you wouldn't mind helping out, there are, like, 75 more about fisting alone.""
As the small crowd around me began to loosen up, some shouting out suggestions of additional sins for today's minister to denounce, I wondered if there were people in another part of the world who'd sat through this same presentation every week for years and years. Like my own, would these families sit in the back rows sneaking glances at their watches, waiting impatiently for that moment when they'd be free to run home, sit down together in the living room and throw a good rock opera in the VCR? And, if so, why had neither of us thought to buy it on DVD yet?
What's the buzz? E-mail Matt at hunziker@wisc.edu.
