Paid Weapons Worship

        Paid Weapons Worship

          A Modest Proposal

          I was contemplating the spectacle of America’s gun culture, and I thought; why not cut out the middleman and just have a Weapons Church? With a rifle over the altar, other deadly holy relics on display, red-themed stain-glass, everyone armed, and every sermon about the  divinity of weaponry? It can claim protection under First and Second Amendments! 

          I don’t mean worship of Mars or any conventional war god; I mean worship of the weapons themselves. Of the godlike power of life and death. 

          There is precedent: the Japanese have been known to build shrines to their swords. Let the Weapons Church adopt this custom. One of the shrines will bear a katana; they’ll burn incense to it, and address prayers to it, “following ancient Japanese custom”. The Weapons Church will have other shrines. 

          This Modest Proposal combines well with another notion of mine; the paid-worship church. The devout walk in, punch their time card, then chant, dance, speak in tongues, etc.; then punch out their time card and go home; and every second week get paid. Attendance will be good, but where does the money come from? Ideally from the god; but short of divine intervention such a church would depend upon it being a tax writeoff, or a faith-based welfare program, or a monument to some rich sponsor’s ego, or sales of CDs of the singing, or laundering crooked money.

          Technically, all churches are paid-worship; but the innovation I propose is for the worshippers to be paid, rather than for them to pay. Technically, this makes the worshippers prostitutes; an accusation they embrace. “You sheep get shorn, but we bitches get paid.” In a sense, then, paid worship is a more honest system than the usual.

          But where does the money really come from? The paid-worship church will credit its god, of course. The check cleared; it’s a miracle! I have already noted the real sources; untaxed charity, plutocratic ego, tax-supported welfarism, song and art sales... and money laundering. The last is the big bux, of course, and hardest to prove.

          Which brings me to the weapons church. This fits shady dealings like jelly fits peanut butter. Paid weapon-worship; any combination of church, state and market this toxic is bound to be a huge success.

          Something tells me this could work. The same something tells me that you’d have to be like L. Ron Hubbard to make it work.