The Messiah of Morris Avenue - First Chapter

It wasn't a nice smile. The term Mysterious Stranger had a derogatory, derisive overtone. It could even be code, indicating to those who moved in the antifundamentalist samizdat that you did too; you too resisted the dictatorship of the holytariat, worked for the overthrow of the Church-State.

* * *

The term was in vogue that year, thanks to a man I'm proud to say I loathed, one of the few men in terminally compromised, culturally homeless, morally destitute America who was evil enough to make the stump of my lefty conscience tingle.

The Reverend James Zebediah Sabbath embodied in every respect Christian America's long journey from the heathen wilderness of the mid-twentieth century into the Promised Land of the early twenty-first: a faith-based, morality-valuing, Bible-believing America, where theocracy and democracy were synonymous; where the executive, legislature, and judiciary were Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, distinct, omnipotent -- not to mention omniscient -- persons of the ruling triune God.

The Reverend had been Spiritual Adviser to three presidents, enjoyed the rank of two-star general as chaplain-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, and had twice been reappointed Spiritual Clerk of what he first dubbed the Supreme Court Under God. He was arguably one of the most powerful men in the nation -- certainly the CEO of fundamentalist Christianity, which by the second decade of Christ's Millennium was the only kind left standing.

Our paths had crossed twice. Once face-to-face -- for me, disastrously -- and once electronically, earlier that year, when the Reverend had achieved a decisive victory in a war he'd fought for decades: the conversion of that last nest of paganism in God's Chosen Land, Hollywood.

Hollywood had fought back. Hollywood had thrown everything it had at him, but finally, to use his favorite phrase, Hollywood had cried uncle. After a furious internal debate and scores of angry resignations, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had invited the Reverend to host the first faith-based Academy Awards in history.

Copyright © 2006 Tony Hendra