The American Dream and the "Religion Gene"

People have often speculated on the idea of a "religion gene" or "God gene", which predisposes towards belief in a deity. The specific idea in the link here appears to be twaddle, but I am intrigued by the idea that a bunch of genes code for religious inclinations. I'm assuming that in the same way white cats are predisposed to congenital deafness, so a bunch of religion genes would also go along with physical attractiveness and general charisma. And a religion gene makes good evolutionary sense to me - a belief in meaning, purpose, and Someone to watch over you is going to make you stick it out, and maybe even propagate the old genestock, in trying times when your average atheist might decide it's not really worth it.

And I wonder - and it's only a wonder - whether this gives us a clue as to why America has remained a much more religious place than Europe, even though they rigidly separate Church and State. Whereas in Scandinavia, the link between Lutheranism and State means it's compulsory for everybody to be gloomy.

See, what do we know about the early settlers of the US of A? Along with a number of what are called economic migrants, there was a stonking number of people who moved over there for religious purposes.  The Pilgrim Fathers (who swiftly had to organise another ship for the Pilgrim Mothers after they realised the awful mistake they'd made if they were to form a viable ongoing colony) were mostly Dissenters. Then alongside the Puritans, there were Quakers looking for a quiet life, and assorted other people who hoped they could either avoid persecution, or impose persecution on others, in the New World.

So by the 19th Century, Europe had accidentally shipped its most religious people (because they were prepared to embrace their unpopular faiths to the point of persecution and emigration) and left behind the people who were happy with the status quo.

Which means, if the theory is right, that it's no wonder America is more religious than Europe. They're coded that way.

Now all we have to do is work out which genes they are, compare descendants of 18th Century English and Dutch immigrants in the US to descendants of people who just stayed where they were - and my theory will be complete.

Who needs sociology of religion when you've got wild theories and no way of testing them?

The New Druidic Training College Takes Shape......

....or it does on paper, at any event. It's a response to the need to come up with so many more druids to satisfy all needs.

Currently we're running at a druid each for:

• People who only want male druids
• People who only want female druids
• People who only want male druids who've been druided (technical term there) by a male archdruid
• People who want druids who are certifiably Martian
• People who only want female druids who've been druided by male archdruids (and vice versa)
• People who only want druids who are married to other druids
• People who want druids who believe they're totally in control due to their chromosomes
• People who only want druids who finish every sermon with "but what do I know?"
• People who want gay druids who keep quiet about it
• People who want druids who aren't gay but pretend to be
• One druid to rule them all, one druid to bind them.

Naturally, I just reckon the last one is all that's needed. But everyone else is insistent that they have to have their own particular focus of unity. So I've given up, and agreed to go for it. But that's a lot of training requirements. So we've got the architect to knock up some sketches for our proposed new institution, St Stylites'. We've chosen St Simon as our patron because, as he spent all his time sitting on a column, he clearly never sat on the fence. Except in a very real sense.

As you pull up the Fast Track towards St Stylites', you will see the Ivory Tower reaching up to the heavens. Here our student druids will dream great dreams about how they will revolutionise the world of evangelism, by strict adherence to a bunch of anecdotes from Holy Trinity.

It's a carbon-neutral institution, of course. You have to park your objections - sorry, car - outside the grounds. As you walk down the Primrose Path into the college, you will have to be careful - every afternoon, many of the trainees will be engaged in the college sport of kicking cans down the road.

Artist's Impression of the New Druidic Training College

Once within the grounds, you will be able to hear the peaceful sounds of the Fountain of Youth, plashing into the blue waters of the Talent Pool. If you're lucky, over the sounds of the bees working the white flowers in the Harvest Field, you may be able to hear the sound of Structured Conversations going on in the Delaying Chamber. Sorry, Debating Chamber.

The Leadership sessions will take place in the Green Room. We've come up with a special design for the furniture in the Green Room whereby, whichever chair you sit in, it kind of sinks in just after you chose it and you wish you'd not been quite so keen to choose that chair after all. We got them from the Ikea in Denbigh - lovely new range called Bötcht.

Still, the whole of St Stylites' will focus around the Chapel. In all the hurly-burly of training, leading, facilitating, energising, focussing, heading, administering and managing, it is good for everybody to remember every now and then why they're there.

We won't bother fitting any doors.

The Election Pledge-Stones of the Beaker Monarchs

As is well known the early Beaker Folk were a bunch of utter democrats. Election of their kings and queens was on a strictly first-past-the-post system. Basically they lined up the people who wanted to be rulers, and then set the wolves on them. The fastest runners got to rule. The slowest got to make a real-terms increase in wolf nutrition.

But what is less-known is that they used, like Ed Miliband, to carve their election pledges onto megaliths, just before the wolves went for them. This was their way, should they make it to the post (and climb up it before the wolves got there) of ensuring they were held to their promises.

Obviously they're hard to read - they're thousands of years old, after all. And rain wears them down. But I'm glad to show you a few of their stones, and the pledges they made.

Action on flint-knapping jobs

A Wise Woman in every village

A career-defining attempt to see Long Compton 

A Referendum on Leaving the Roman Empire

Controls on Celtic Immigration

A massive increase in yurt-building in North Oxforshire

Non-Partisan Prayers for the General Election

Oh great unelected Ruler of the universe
Whose omnipotence is matched only by Your firm belief in laissez-faire economics - in the theological sense of economics - and whose legal policy appears to be the offer of free pardon to all who accept it, or alternatively a long, sharp fork instead of a short, sharp shock - and who always favours the underdog - even when it's us -
Hear us, the floating voters as we flounder in the waters of Jordan
And wonder which way is the Promised Land.

When we are in the secrecy of a plywood booth, with only You to see the decisions we make in the darkness of our hearts and the bluntness of our pencils - guide us in the right paths.

Let us not vote the way we vote because that's the way we've always voted.
Let us not vote the way we vote because that's how we've been told to vote.
And let us not vote the way we vote because that's the way Dad did - or didn't - vote.

And let us not vote for our own self-interest
or because the party leader had the best hair.
Don't let us vote from fear, or from greed.
Don't let us vote to teach someone a lesson.
Let us weigh the appeals, consider the economics, and vote for justice, mercy, prosperity and liberty - or the best balance between them.

[By the way, for those of us who've voted by post, please disregard the above. If we've got it wrong, then it's all too late.
We don't expect you to turn back time.
You're not Superman.]

And when we have voted, let us not think people who voted another way are stupid
or evil
or unchristian
or just plain contrary.

Let us assume that whatever they were up to (and You alone know what some of them were up to) they went through much the same process that we did.
But just with a different answer.
And that's OK. It's complicated.
And the candidates are not conveniently equipped with haloes or horns and pointy tails
that we might readily tell your choice.
After all, Samuel kept getting it wrong, and he was a prophet.
So what chance have we got?

And after the dust has settled
Let's realise that the winners aren't perfect.
Because You know we'll work that out at some point over the next five years.
And, as Your will is always done,
In a free-will, free-Universe, free-form kind of way.
So we'll just have to accept that whoever we put in will need Your help
Even when they don't know it
or ask for it
or get it.

And we will pray that, whoever we get, you're there beside them
and us.
As we voyage through this Vale of Tears for another five years.
Just don't let us go through it all again in 3 months.
Twitter might explode if it gets any more snark.

Amen.

A Meaningful, Non-egocentric Election Message from Russell Brand

Hello everyone and gentleproles! I've just realised it's a really good idea to vote. And you should vote Labour! Show sympatico with the proletariat and give the money of rich people, like myself, to poor people. Whatever they are. Radio 2 listeners, probably.

I realise that, if you have been paying any attention to what old Russy-Wussy says over the last couple of Gaiaphical rotations of the solar orblet, you won't have wasted your time registering to vote. Because I previously told you voting is a waste of time.

And thusly, if you have been listening to me all along, you will be frustrated. For my previous advice that voting is a bad thing, now it is too late to register to vote, has made my advice to vote Labour both null and voidy-woidy. Thus proving that you shouldn't listen to bearded lotharios whose egos have their own gravitational fields.

I can put a suit on to please the capitalist complex,
if I'm getting paid.

But think. I may be a prat, but I'm a prat with good hair.

I bet that Steve Coogan has registered to vote. He's a grown-up.

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Russell Brand Arthur Premier by Eva Rinaldi from Sydney Australia - Russell Brand Arthur PremierUploaded by Kafuffle. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

I talk to the Trees

I don't know. Yes, we at the Beaker Folk love the natural world. We see the divine in all things - and there's nothing like hugging a nice tree.

But Facebook has just taken it too far.

I don't know. I can't remember which tree this was. Though I'm sure it wasn't Ash.

Athanasian Just a Minute

Archdruid: And the subject for the next round is "The Trinity." Hnaef, what can you tell us about the Trinity in two minutes?

Hnaef: In considering the Trinity, we ask ourselves - how can we describe three persons and yet one God? Let us consider - what was that clovery thing St Patrick used..... erm...

BUZZ

Keith: Hesitation!

Archdruid: OK Keith.

Keith: So when I wonder how to explain the majesty of the Trinity, I like to think of the cliffs at West Bay in Dorset. You may remember it from Broadchurch although, when I was small, there was a programme called Harbour Lights which was set there, starring Nick Berry and...

BUZZ

Burton: Deviation.

Archdruid: What from?

Burton: Good television, if you're thinking of Harbour Lights.

Archdruid: Good point. Take it away.

Burton: In talking about the Trinity on this day of Saint Athanasius, what could be more fitting than to use the words of the Anathanasian Creed, which although named after the eponymous holy man is not itself thought to be from his pen. But as it says, "The Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Spirit is God....

BUZZ

Keith: Repetition.

Archdruid: Repetition?

Keith:  There were 3 Gods.

Archdruid:  And Athanasius really wouldn't approve of that. Carry on.

Keith: And so the faces of the rocky slopes at the harbour near Bridport, as featured in those aforementioned TV series, consists of silica. Which in terms of its molecular composition has three atoms - one of Silicon and two of Oxygen. Rather like the Trinity, in that there's a trio of members, but the one in the middle is bigger than the others, which hang off it at angles.....

BUZZ

Archdruid: What's the challenge, Drayton?

Drayton: Heresy!

Archdruid: Yes!  And very bad Chemistry....

Quick Very Bad Smiths Pun

Not many people know about the great romantic episode of Morrissey's life (except with himself). It was brought to a sad conclusion when he discovered that the actress he was dating had appeared - horror of horrors - in a short entertaining film with an evangelical message.

Girlfriend in a Nooma. I know, I know. It's serious.

Diminished Marriage Recovery

Do you feel like your marriage has been diminished since the Government legalised people of the same sex getting married?

Do you feel it's just not the same, now that some other people that you probably don't know are also married?

Has the spark gone from your relationship, because other people are also in relationships you didn't approve of?

The Beaker Folk are proud to offer our new venture, "Living in a Bubble." For just £2,300 per person, we will let you live in our special, bubble-enclosed house for a week. There you can focus on getting your relationship back to where it was, safe in the knowledge that all that nastiness is outside, where it can't have any effect on your own marriage.

Gentlemen! For an extra £40 we will deliver a lovely bunch of flowers that you can give to you lovely wife, safe in the knowledge that, within your bubble, there are no married couples who will be giving flowers to each other.

Ladies! Why not splash out £50 on a bottle of rose champagne, which you will be able to drink, safe in the knowledge that nobody in the bubble will be drinking a bottle of similar champagne while listening to a Bronski Beat song or something by Donna Summer?

Within a week, your marriage will be as undiminished as it was before the law that dare not speak its name was passed. And you'll be ready, thanks to our take-home self-assembly bubble, to stay that way.

Please note that, for legal reasons, "Living in a Bubble" is also available to gay people. 

Election Sermon Bingo

Expecting a worthy sermon on Sunday? 

Or maybe you're wondering what worthy sermon to preach on Sunday.

Either way, this is for you. If you're preaching, just pick any three themes from below and call them sermon points.

If you're one of the punters come Sunday, just print off this convenient bingo card and get ready. First line, column or all four corners wins a tenner!*

And of course, if you get a full house, you're probably at the Brompton Oratory. 

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* Not from me. Ask the pastor.

White Rabbits