The Limericist's Almanac

Christian Century, Dec 20, 2000

With highlights and lowlifes galore,
The limericist takes as his chore
Readers' mem'ries to jog
With this rhymed catalog
Of stories we've touched on before.

UMC thought gay rights their invention
'Til other mainliners felt the tension.
Soulforce's Mel White
Expanded the fight--
He knows how to rock all conventions.

Southern Baptists were back to their tricks.
Was their statement of faith too prolix?
With Carter self-expelled
And Texans half-rebelled,
Will Baptists reconsider genders' shticks?

Like sex, faith can prove sticky wicket,
But Gore found a way through the thicket:
Put a lip lock on Tipper,
Lip-serviced Yom Kippur,
Put Lieberman, right, on the ticket.

And speaking of things almost gored,
The Lutheran-Episcopal accord
Got nearly kaput
When the Episcopate
Made Luth'rans unsheathe Petrine swords.

Peter's True Heir saw rank importunities
In Protestants fighting toward unities.
He chose to besmirch
Each non-Roman church:
He called them "ecclesial communities."

He dissed Ecumenification,
Deflating non-Catholic elation.
All good works aside,
He felt justified
By virtue of rank and vocation.

Now speaking of interfaith wars
Transports us to Middle East shores.
With each holy site
The scene for a fight,
Can peace reign with faith so hard-core?

Each tenet is res judicata,
Each tenant's race, persona non grata.
Each stone that is thrown
The sine qua non
Portending renewed intifada.

And now on that dissonant note
We'll cease rhyming faith anecdotes.
If that's what they are
When faith seems so far
From the hearts of the stories we quote.

For as is so wont with the news,
It seems that the stories we choose
Must be rife with strife
To yield them print life.
Strife animates editors' muse.

So often in modern society
The road to enhanced notoriety
Leads into the fray
Away and astray
From the blessing of quieter piety.