The Rev. Blow Gives a Sermon on the Mouse
by Steve Blow

Hallelujah! Thank you Sister Jones for singing that wonderful special. Wasn’t that a joyful noise?

I’m telling you, those high notes sent the Holy Spirit shooting through me like a bug zapper on a June bug.

Well, dear friends, welcome to another Wednesday prayer meeting here at the First Southern-Fried Self-Satisfied Babatist Church. I’m so fired up I just can’t wait to start preachin.’

But before I get down to business, I just have to give you a little report from our annual Babatist convention. I’m so proud to be a Babatist today I could just bust.

We have finally got this denomination on the right track. And it’s a wonderful thing to see the precious foot of Jesus mashin’ down the necks of sorry sinners.

As you know, I wasn’t so happy last year. Our mighty denomination veered off the road and got in to such silliness as apologizing for past racial sins.

Apologizing! Wallowing around like a bunch of sob sisters. Makin’ us look plum silly!

We got nothing to apologize for. God made us the largest Protestant denomination in the world! Or, to put it another way, we’re the largest religious group in the world actually going to heaven!

Well, this year we didn’t get sidetracked by none of that meek-and-mind nonsense. No sir-ree, we was a bunch of bird dogs on point, flushing out coveys of sinners left and right.

Take that Disney bunch. Oh, they had us fooled for a long time with their little mouse ears and cartoons. But if you get to analyzing things, you can see that they were up to no good right from the start.

How come Donald Duck never wore no pants? Think about that. Had all those little “nephews” running around and him naked as a jaybird from the waist down!

And what about that Annette Funnicello and her tight little Mouseketeer sweater? Weren’t no boys looking at them big mouse ears, I can tell you that.

And don't even get me started on Snow White. Shacked up with a bunch of midgets! I hate to think what kinds of kinkiness went on there.

Hi-ho, indeed!

Now Disney has really gone off the deep end. Welcoming homosexshuls into their parks just like they was normal!

Well, you won’t find any more good Babatists goin’ to their little fairyland.

And then there’s that other group we got singled out for salvation. Them Jews.

I’ll tell you, there’ nothing that makes my blood boil quicker than to hear some smart-aleck say “But Jesus was a Jew.”

My eye!

Well sure, he may have been born into a Jewish family on his mama’s side, But we can read plain as day in our Bibles that before Jesus started preachin’, he stopped by to see his cousin John and git his credentials in order.

And that’s cousin John the What? John the Babatist, of course.

John dunked him good. So Jesus may have gone under that water as a halfbreed Jew boy, but we all know that he came up a bonafide Southern Babatist.

Weren’t no Lutheran. Weren’t no Roamin’ Catholic or Bicycling Mormon. Weren’t no New Age Hippie-Dippie Crystal- Wearing Nut, neither.

Oh, dear brothers and sisters, we almost let the forces of evil overtake our precious Babatist Convention. And you know who I’m talking about: The “deep thinker” crowd. The “Love-one-another” crowd. The “put-that-Scripture-in-context” crowd.

Some people call them “moderates.” But I say we go ahead and call ‘em by their real name—Methodists!

That’s right. They’re not Babatists a’tall. They’re a bunch of misguided souls on that slippery slope of introspection and contemplation. Oh, dear friends, it’s a path that ultimately leads down into the very depths of Presbyterianism.

It just breaks my heart to think about all those lost-as-a-goose sinners out there, wandering around in synagogues and Disney stores. Keep ‘em in your prayers, dear brethren and sisterns.

OK, beloved Babatists, enough about that. It’s sermon time. Let’s all open our Bibles and close our minds…

Steve Blow is a member of Shiloh Terrace Baptist Church in Dallas. This article is reprinted with permission of the Dallas Morning News.

August 1996