I believe: but not in a God of Screaming Mimis;Ideas

Julie Burchill
24 January 2004
The Times, Weekend Review

One day towards the end of the 20th century, I had an epiphany; a stone-cold sober revelation, coming at that weary time of the day when it is too late for luncheon and too early for cocktails and when the only activity which seems appropriately prosaic is picking up one's dry-cleaning. One moment I was sitting there on my Bloomsbury sofa, flicking through Time Out, idly wondering whose life to ruin next, and the next moment it was as if a mighty hand had broken -painlessly, patiently, purposefully -a huge jar of ointment over my head.

And then I was blessed, saved, born again -except all those words sound wrong.

There isn't a word I know which describes properly how I felt, but I do remember looking up from my magazine and saying eagerly, but calmly: "Oh! I see!" I didn't actually see anything, of course, or hear voices (now that
would be mental) but I understood, in a split second, that there was, above and beyond all else, God.

Coincidentally, two of my friends, without my describing this to them, have said exactly the same about the way they too escaped from the killjoy straitjacket of atheism.

I kept my salvation to myself and jogged along for years, "believing" but not subscribing to any organised religion. It was enough for me to express my ahem - "Christianity" (Oh nooo! Cliff Richard and sweet sherry and
Kumbayah!), that thing which made living truly life, rather than mere existence, through the simple expression of faith, hope and -the all-important Beyonce of the shimmering trio - charity. I cast around money
like a sailor on shore leave, to the needy and greedy alike, and became almost pathologically generous.

Beggars would chase after me in alarm, yelling that I'd made a mistake and given them too much money! Guests at my house had only to express admiration for this jewel, that painting, and I would thrust it upon them.
People thought it was a side effect of too much drink and drugs, and I was happy to let them go on thinking that.

Then a couple of years ago, I began to feel that something was missing from my life. I was amazed; surely what I'd been given should have been enough for anyone, for ever. But it wasn't, as it hadn't been for all those before
me who'd been given it. What I wanted was to belong to a proper, organised religion.

And what I wanted more than anything was to be able to call myself a Christian without anyone mistaking me for a Roman Catholic.

Even before the current plague of Papist paedophilia became public knowledge, I was instinctively repelled by the idea of Catholicism -usually the religion of choice for over-worldly writers who have come to believe
that too much knowledge is a bitter thing. It has always struck me as an incredibly dirty-minded religion, seeing sex everywhere instead of in just the few places where sex created by God, of course, actually is. All that
harping on about celibacy, virginity, fornication, original sin; it was bound to end in tears, and in the dreadful reality of a whole generation of Catholic priests so decimated by Aids and child molesting that recruitment
to the Catholic priesthood in the West has all but ceased to exist.

I would never presume to claim knowledge of what God is, but I do know one thing for sure; God is great. And this being so, God is not Mrs Grundy, twitching at His celestial net curtains and tut-tutting about that there Whore of Babylon. God does not peep, pry or perve; to say that He does, that He is interested in our private, consensual sex lives, is to tragically, albeit comically, misunderstand both the majesty of the Creator and the whole point of religion.

It is a fact that religions which display an unhealthy fascination with policing the sexual conduct of their flocks -particularly the females -seem to have very little energy or interest left in fighting real evil; witness the Catholic Church's indulgence of monsters, from the Borgias through the Nazis to the IRA.

So to me, being a Christian is completely bound up with being a Protestant; with rejecting the cruel, corrupt, filthy-rich travesty of what was meant to be the most humble and unmaterialistic of belief systems. And also with
being cool.

That's not cool as in stylish, but cool as in being so sure of one's beliefs, so certain of God's greatness that one would never dream of reacting angrily to any perceived disrespecting of Him.

In the past, "progressive" types proclaimed that all religions were bad; now you find them claiming that all religions are good, and making every Mixed Infant celebrate so many festivals that their tiny heads must be swimming -if it's Wednesday, it must be Eid! But this is as silly as saying that all politics is good or bad. Obviously democracy is good; Fascism is bad. And the same is true of religions. Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that some religions are good, and some are not, and I am offended by the idea that all religions automatically deserve my "respect", any more than all political schools of thought do. I am not called upon by the State to respect Fascism; why, then, must I respect Catholicism, or Islam, under whose regimes women, socialists, homosexuals or just plain
rebels are treated as less than human?

You don't even need to check the hum an rights records of countries in which various religions hold sway to work out which faiths are worthy of respect and which are not; just ask yourself, are they Screaming Mimis? Are they
Ab-Dab Absolutists? Will they shriek, squawk and march en masse, burn books or run to the police claiming incitement to racial hatred the instant that their version of the Greatest Story Ever Told is challenged? Or will they,
when their faith is mocked or reviled, even in the lowest or smuttiest of terms, smile secretly and cast their eyes down, secure, as I do?

"God is not mocked." It's such a beautiful, awesome sentence that it makes me shiver just to type it. And I believe that I can tell a good religion from a bad one by the way its believers interpret these words. To a Protestant, to a Jew, to a Hindu, and to others, it is a simple statement of faith; God is never, ever mocked. Because He is God, and above such rubbish as name-calling.

But to the assorted flocks of the Screaming Mimis, it is a bellow, a threat, an Achilles' heel: don't mock my God! What to them is passion, though, appears to the non-Screamer believer as simply protesting too much;
it is to reduce God to the level of an Essex girl in a karaoke pub who needs defending from all dissing, real or imagined, by some Neanderthal boyfriend: "Oi! 'Oo you lookin' at? You screwin' my deity?" God is not
mocked. And just because my God is the strong, silent type and yours is a Screaming Mimi Supreme doesn't mean that yours is bigger or cleverer than mine, or that he can beat mine up whenever he feels like it. For in our own
louche, lazy way, we stoics are every bit as devout as you hysterics; we are the armies of the meek, who have not spoken yet. But if you think you're hard enough, come and have a go, because the meek have turned the
cheek once too often, and now we're ready to rumble. Oh, and by the way, those 70 virgins waiting for you in Paradise? Been there, done that, had 'em. And they were rubbish!

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2004