And so the covenant is as the Lord declares at Sinai: “I will dwell among the people of Israel and be their God. “Where,” I blurted out to my husband, “did these people go to Sunday school? He stared. “You are worried about Sunday school? My brother and I grew up in the same Methodist Sunday school. “Yes. Sunday school,” I insisted. As the chant died down, the rhetoric of division went on with new words from the President’s speech. These numbers demonstrate the strength of white Christian base, but they also suggest something else: America’s white churches are roiled by political division. White Christianity right now is a dumpster of discord; internecine warfare has not been this bad since the 1920s when controversy ripped American churches apart on whether human beings evolved from monkeys. Tibetan Buddhism evolved as a form of Mahayana Buddhism stemming from the later stages of Buddhism (which included many Vajrayana elements).

All the Holy Days have a three-fold meaning revolving around the past, present and future. Mine is the mysterious Word, present before the beginning of creation, calling all to compassion, and who welcomes little ones. It is also the expression of a certain view of God, one that has slowly shifted the priorities and teaching in far too many American churches, and made it possible for those who would have once sung Jesus Loves the Little Children to join this hostile liturgy. Peter was a simple fisherman, one who had difficulty with his temper and impulse control. A much more massive expansion of Islam after the 12th century was inaugurated by the Sufis (Muslim mystics), who were mainly responsible for the spread of Islam in India, Central Asia, Turkey, and sub-Saharan Africa (see below). And after 9/11, this militaristic God became more real. In 1865, Abraham Lincoln ruminated on how Americans had read the same Bible and prayed to the same God.

My brother and I read the same Bible and wound up praying to different gods. We were confirmed together in the same Methodist church. Same parents, same school, same church. I sang it in Methodist kindergarten, the teacher displaying a picture of children of every color holding hands. We sang how Jesus loved all children. Our Wonder, Our Worship, When Jesus We See. There are excellent books on how white supremacy shaped American Christianity; and equally solid work regarding misogyny in churches, particularly around abortion politics. The media publishes stories about Christian Democrats pushing back against Trump with liberal renderings of faith and politics. Supreme Court rolled back restrictions that it had imposed twelve years earlier on federal aid to religious schools. William James in his essay “The Will to Believe” argues for a pragmatic conception of religious belief. We don’t really know whether it’s already too late to stop it rising four degrees, with the devastation that will involve. But you must first acknowledge your sin and commit to Jesus, then you can have perfect peace and know its meaning.

And should we double our wealth and conquer the stars and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. Saturnius Mons, and a row of columns from the last rebuilding of the temple still stands. The churches that still preached a God of Love declined; those seminaries closed. In the political age bookended by Ronald Reagan’s culture wars and a devastating terrorist attack, the God of Love began to look like a loser, one fit for liberation theologians, do-gooders, and feminists. Slowly, perhaps imperceptibly, hymn-by-hymn and sermon-by-sermon, one theological step at a time. Perricone, M.D., Cosmeceuticals, I decided it was time to investigate my fondness for cosmetics and the excitement I get from pursuing them. “Jesus said we are all equal,” she instructed, “God loves everybody and you should, too.” It would take me awhile to figure out that the Declaration of Independence was not in the Bible, but it sounded right at the time. They were in turn replaced by the Pashtun rulers of the Suri dynasty, who first acted as regional governors before restoring Bengali independence. In the last three years, Donald Trump has replaced Charles Darwin as troublemaker-in-chief in many white American churches.