Sunday morning at nine o'clock and the day begins. For some this is the
Lord's Day. Like calves on a day trip to France or Belgium they make their
weary ways in ever-decreasing numbers to the Houses of Ignorance where
they close their eyes, fall to their knees and heave the impotent sigh of
the oppressed in the face of a heartless world. Having sacrificed Saturday
night to the brewers' profits ("And before the Lord's Day it was the
landlord's day") my head was in no state for spiritual interference.
But what was this? Thump! Thump! Thump! It felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger
had entered my cerebral cortex for a quick round of training: my head had
been invaded by the Shit hitting the fan. Boing! Clash! Thud! Help—I've
become trapped in a “Batman” movie with sound effects provided by the
Ministry of Love . . . But wait a minute, speaking of love . . .
"Jesus Loves You!" The awful, invasive, torturous, untuneful thumping
"music" has stopped and now a man is shouting in the street about sin,
love and the Big Man beyond the clouds. Not content to wake up an entire
street with his boring bawling, he then proceeds to sing (solo) about how
Jesus wants us for sunbeams.
He has a voice which is not quite heavenly, but certainly like nothing on
earth. By now — several of us are staring out of our windows, rubbing our
eyes and cursing the bassoon player who is rubbing his mouthpiece in
preparation for eternal damnation, otherwise known as the next tune.
The head nutter has finished his harangue and deposited a pile of “War
Cry” newspapers into the hands of little children who run up and down the
street stuffing them through letterboxes. I contemplate the parole
conditions for justifiable homicide: "What are you in for, mate?" "I
impulsively slaughtered an entire Salvation Army band by battering them
with their own instruments." At least the Krays only tortured their own.
There is something depressingly ugly about hymns. The men who wrote these
dirges to god must have been possessed by a degree of melodic dysfunction
unequalled until Bros went on their first world tour. There is nothing
intrinsically bad about religious music (Mozart's Mass is the best work he
composed and cantorial tenors can put Pavarotti through his paces), but
hymns are relentlessly miserable in their transparent propagandism.
In the early part of this century militant American workers (known as
Wobblies) were refused the right to advocate socialism from street
platforms while the Salvation Army (referred to by them as the Starvation
Army) were left alone by the cops. So the Wobblies took on the Army at
their own game (Why should the bosses have all the bad tunes?) and Joe
Hill, their greatest songsmith, wrote some of the most joyful workers'
songs ever sung.
Only the barmiest socialist would favour standing in residential areas on
Sunday mornings with loud wind instruments and a megaphone singing Wobbly
songs. So what gives these Christian manic street preachers the right to
try and drive us all mad?
And come to think of it, who needs the nauseating tintinnabulation of
their wretched Sunday bells? Why must our children having morning
assemblies were holy hogwash is forced upon their innocent minds? And why
can't you switch on the TV on Sundays and national holidays without choirs
recruited from “The Addams Family” imposing their lousy liturgies upon us?
These thoughts were passing through my throbbing head when the rat-tap-tap
of an unwelcome visitor propelled me to the cave door with a club in my
hand (a rolled-up “War Cry” was the only weapon available in the frenzy of
eagerness to settle scores with the salvationists.)
"Do you believe in a world where there will be no more wars and everyone
will live as one like brothers and sisters?" The question was posed in
unison by two young women (possibly sisters, possibly from the planet
Belch) who both held tracts in their hands.
"Yes, I do." I said. This was not the answer for which they had been
pre-programmed. They looked at each other and prayed as they panicked.
"So you're a Christian?" said the first one, divinely guided in her
quickwittedness. I responded by giving them a lengthy lecture on why
religion is a reflection of humanity's former ignorance of causation, how
the world we live in is unmistakably material and why my head was by now
severely aching from the Salvationists' cacophony.
"But we're nothing to do with ‘them’." they asserted in once voice, as if
they had just been invited to associate themselves with the British
Natiomal Party's Satanic Section. "They're not ‘real’ Christians," they
reliably informed me, "although we respect them for what they do and hope
that one day they will come to see . . . "
Go forth and multiply, I proposed, as the door accidentally slammed on
their noses. Let them fight their sectarian disputes in the afterlife
while we of mortal flesh provide useful nourishment for worms.
I went back to my bed, but sleep eluded me. It's hard to sleep after the
brain has wakened. The thought was sobering and unintendedly
inspirational.
"And is came to pass that the brains of the religious did awaken and they
did deliver their minds from the delusions of god . . . " Meanwhile, back
in Afghanistan, the mullahs' torturers attach electrodes to the genitals
of those who deny the faith and the evangelical fascists of the US Bible
Belt plan which book to ban or burn next.
Jt
www.worldsocialism.org
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