The One True

I have the luck to live near a Kingdom Hall, better known as where the Jehovah’s Witnesses meet. When I lived across the street, they’d come by all the time trying to save this poor, lost Roman Catholic. Some years back, I received a letter from a branch of the Orthodox Christian church and the letterhead included the statement: “Unquestioned Apostolic Succession.” Which meant, I suppose, that ours was open to doubt.

My family included several branches of Protestantism, plus a few founding Mormons in the back somewhere. Each was convinced that their brand of religion was the only true. Recently, the R.C.’s have entered the club with a formal statement that it is the only true church and everyone is sadly deficient and will they, please, stop referring to themselves as “churches,” since there is only one and they’re not it.

I think the definition of An Established Religion is: “We hold it marvelously self-evident, at least to us, that there is only One True Church and we are it; furthermore, if you abandon us for any of the others, you have forfeited eternal life.”

Sounds pretty arrogant. I guess it really is pretty arrogant. Each collection of believers enters the room, sets itself up as the ultimate authority and lays down the rules, rules which automatically cut off, cut up and toss into Eternal Garbage all the others. Each says, “We can talk about unifying, as long as it is under *our* rules.”

And God says, “Who died and left them boss?”