(Satire Alert) Invitation To Join My New Church

I'm hoping this building will hold everyone!

Splitting off and creating new churches seems to be very popular these days. In my denomination alone we've gone from having one united conference for Mennonites in Rockingham County to having over a dozen different varieties to choose from--all in just the past century.

But since there's always room for one more spin-off, I figured I should come up with my own brand of church, one I might call the "United Harvyterian Church Of The Completely Pure And Altogether Right", or UHCCPAR for short.

I used to think there were just two kinds of Christians, the liberal ones and the conservative ones, two kinds of folks who, like oil and water, must regularly separate from each other in order to stay pure and right. But I've since realized that members are at many different places along a progressive/traditionalist continuum, and depending on the issue, each individual may be at different points between these two poles. This means that at any time there are nearly an infinite number of interesting possibilities for forming pure and separate coalitions of like-minded and right thinking people, not just two.

In the interest of maintaining absolute truth and utmost purity in my new church I'm considering coming up with a written application everyone who wants to join. Here are some sample items, each to be ranked on a scale of 0-10.

Choose a number between 0 (totally left) and 10 (altogether right) for each of the following:

___ 1. The earth as we know it, created in six 24-hour days, came into being in the year 6004 BC.

___ 2. Since every word in the King James Bible is directly inspired by God, each text is to be interpreted literally (which means exactly the way I, the founder of UHCCPAR, interpret it).

___ 3. Since there are scriptural examples of Gentiles, women and slaves being considered inferior and unequal to others, we maintain the right and duty to continue such discrimination.

___ 4. Churches should divide whenever differences and disagreements occur, the exception being the UHCCPAR, which will finally have gotten it right.

This is just the start of a list that would include many more. In order to qualify for membership (and to create true purity), applicants would need to have a score indicating at least a 95% agreement with my views (or on second thought, maybe 100%).

Let me know if you want to apply for charter membership. Otherwise, without the indisputable truths of Harvyterianism, you may need to start some new churches of your own to accommodate your own changing views over time.

Here's a link to some non-satirical posts on church unity.