Prayer Without Works Is A Dead Thing.

There seem to be so many Republican members of Congress announcing that they're not running next year-- and some in districts that Democrats can win. Yesterday Kenny Marchant, a conservative Republican who represents a district north of Dallas, said he's had enough. He's the 4th Republican from Texas to tell the NRCC that he's not running again. Candace Valenzuela, his progressive opponent, said that "Marchant, who coasted to victory eight straight times before 2018, is calling it quits because he knows he can’t win again... Beto O’Rourke won this district when he ran for Senate in 2018. It’s a suburban district, like many of the seats Democrats won last cycle. It’s also a majority-minority district." Who'll be next? Yesterday, the NY Times said they expect it will be Michigan's Fred Upton. Others expect to see John Katko bail from his Syracuse-based seat. His opponent, progressive Democrat Dana Balter, is too busy campaigning for the issues that motivate her run, to pay much attention to what Katko is doing. "Enough with medical bankruptcies," she told me today. "Enough with parents not taking their children to the doctor because they are uninsured. Enough with people dying because they have to ration their insulin. No one should have to choose between buying food and buying medicine. Yet many of our neighbors are forced to make that choice every day. We know how to fix this problem and it's long past time. Let's transition from our very broken healthcare system to Medicare-for-all."

So what's holding that up? What hold everything up? Conservatives. Conservatives-- of both parties-- held up Medicare from being enacted from 1915 'til 1965 (after the LBJ/Goldwater Democratic landslide wiped out the conservatives' grip on Congress). Today the same evil shit-eating conservatives-- whether Mitch McConnell or Status Quo Joe Biden-- are preventing Medicare-For-All from moving forward. We may be too late to save much of the worse from the ravages of Climate Change. Why? Conservatives? Again, not just McConnell, but Biden and the Blue Dogs as well. Look at the U.S. senators who have endorsed Biden-- Doug Jones (AL), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Tom Carper (DE), Chris Coons (DE) and Bob Casey (PA), 5 conservative Democrats who oppose Medicare-For-All and the Green New Deal. Sure, Republicans are worse, or, better put, even worse. Conservatives are screwing up the world. The French had the right idea of how to deal with them as part of their Revolution... until it got out of hand. Be honest-- how angry would you be if you saw Trump and his family-- not Barron-- marched up to the guillotine? Would you watch it on TV? Would you cry tears of joy? Many would not... to put it mildly. And not just GOP base fascists and racists.

One of the foremost thought-leaders among non-commercial American evangelicals, Samir Selmanović, wrote "American Evangelical leaders are making an indelible impact on Christian history. They are also affecting countless individual lives, especially those who have been a part of Evangelical churches. The movement is now redefining Jesus from a symbol of love, wisdom, and humility into a dramatically different symbol which stands for gun rights, prosperity theology, anti-science, defunding/diminishing/blaming of the government, a hysterical sense of victimhood while being in charge, and fierce nationalism-- all of that in this life-- and then sending everyone else to hell in the next.

The good part of Good News (Evangelion) is gone. The news part of Good News is gone. Evangelicalism is now offering to the world something that is neither good nor new.

Something, deep inside, is shifting. I know, I entered it at the expense of estranging my Muslim father, Roman Catholic mother, and atheist friends, ending up living without a home for two years in my late teens. I had also become an ordained pastor within it and have baptized hundreds.

This moment in church history will be in future textbooks. It is a turning point for many who have been following Jesus and are now dumbfounded with the apparent Evangelical inability to love all people, believe in God, and serve something larger their own tribes.

Tribe members are awakening and opting to take their faith further and leave behind what used to be good and new, but no longer is. Evangelical political dogmas, isolated and ingrown communities, and cultures of churches (tiny or mega), fundraising-driven theologies and moral outrages, and exhausting (never spoken but always nurtured) guilt and fear.

The New Exodus is beginning, quietly and unstoppably, like tectonic plates deep below. People are still coming to sit at worship, be with friends at church baseball games or Christian badass youth concerts, look for a date, or simply hang out in the church's lobby cafes away from the too complicated world.

But something broke and is now dying. First to leave are people's discerning hearts, almost imperceptibly, quietly. Minds then follow hearts. New thoughts begin to open the doors at the edges. And soon, people will be ready to follow Jesus further and leave with their feet. Reality will win. Jesus never invited them saying "Here is Christianity, join it." He said, "Here is the Kingdom/Commonwealth of God (Reality), enter it.

And as they step into the world, a joyous surprise is awaiting them. They are finding Jesus there, in the world that God loves so much, alive and well, Jesus everywhere, and busy! Among all people!

I need a cleansing experience and a celebration of a new beginning. I wish we could set up baptismal pools on the streets and baptize people out of Christianity. I would like to go first.

When you baptize me, you can say "I baptize you out of Christianity. Welcome to the world!" Then you immerse me and wash me, give me dry and colorful clothes, and then we dance together on the public square along with all the loving people there.

Whaddya think? Please, somebody, baptize me!