Spilt Religion Poem by gershon hepner

Religion, when it’s being spilt,
creates a dreadful mess called guilt;
it can’t be cleaned up with a mop,
but may be by a Yiddish kop.
It may be messier than Jesus,
and that’s why wise men hold their noses,
confusing faith with smelly feces,
quite wrongly often blaming Moses.


Theo Hobson, in the TLS, February 6,2009, reviews Michael A. Gillespie’s The Theological Origins of Modernity and James Q. Whitman’s The Origin of Reasonable Doubt (“In the Beginning”) . He writes:

When David Cameron promises to repair Britain’s broken society, he is, in a sense, dressing up as Jesus. When Barack Obama presents his nation as the world’s hope, he is echoing the Old Testament prophets. When novelists hold forth on the liberating power of their craft, they are recycling a protestant form of their enthusiasm….When we admire Francis Bacon’s paintings we are imaging hell. “Spilt religion” is still so thick on the ground that it is possible to question whether there is any ground beneath it. The theological origin of modernity is no small topic.



2/2/09