Religious ramblings

The vicar was most irate when he arrived for dinner last night. After mumbling through starters and letting fly with some most unvicarly epithets during the main course....although one did put that down to the sprout terrine lovingly prepared in the Fortescue Towers kitchen, one finally managed to get him to tell all over a post prandial port and cigar.

Seems some chaps and chapesses have been busily re-writing the good book to make it more accessible to the common man, removing all the 'archaic' language and good bits and now the vicar is quite disgusted.

"Fortescue," he says "before you know it they will have done away with the Old Testament and the New Testament will be 'Bloke born in a shed becomes chippie, wanders around a bit, does some miracles, has lunch with some other chaps, gets betrayed by an oily tick, killed by the state, comes back to life, the end'. Where will it stop ? Modernisation ? 'Chap born in council house, grows up, does some magic, gets a few mates involved' might as well call it Harry Potter and the gang from Gallilee. Absolutely bloody disgusted I am. At this rate there won't be enough to fill a side of A4. Fire and brimstone, that's what puts bums on pews. Bit of patricide, fratricide and matricide, a few fights, the wrath of God and lots of begating in between. Got to be better than Eastenders to get them off their lardy backsides and praying for deliverance. The place is almost empty as it is. What happens if they can memorise the whole damn thing in two minutes flat ? I'll tell you what, bugger all in the collection plate and me having to justify why the vicarage needs a new roof to the archbishop. It's just not on. Going to write a stiff letter to the Church Times I am."

Must admit one has mixed feelings about all this. Old Testament, it's what made empire great, all those missionaries fired up on tales of Gods wrath and a bit of begating, faces glowing with religious zeal setting off to convert the heathens, turning the map of the world pink as they went, putting the fear of God into all and sundry. Kept 'em from cluttering up street corners too, can't be making the place look untidy and scaring the citizenry whilst you're pootling around darkest Africa with a pith helmet and a chest of religious tracts. However, one remembers ones days as a choirboy, believe me a King James Bible hurt a lot more than a ball of paper when it was hurled at one by an irate minister after he caught one having a crafty forty winks at the back of the altar.