“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” H.L. Mencken

“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”  H.L. Mencken How much of the world’s unhappiness is driven by religious belief? The more I study, the more I understand that the corruption of the gospel began early, with the first generation after the death of Jesus.  There was fear that the movement would die – that Jesus would die – unless his followers got organized and took control.  In my view, at some point not long after the crucifixion, this lack of faith in the power of God and of the gospel got a grip on a frightened and insecure bunch of people.  For them survival became the goal instead of trust in God.  Survival included the tactic “the best defense is a good offense.”  This attitude won, politically, and in doing so lost the soul of the gospel. Christians, now identified as a group of people rather than as a belief, got used to being the powers-that-be.  They governed, taxed, waged war, and took steps to manage the thinking of the masses, steps that did not exclude imprisonment, torture and death. If evil has intelligence, this was brilliant.  It took the persecuted and powerless minority and morphed them into modeling the very persecutors from whom they had previously been hiding and fleeing.  The church dropped the ball and ran from the playing field. Now in the twenty-first century the church, claiming authority over science and human rights, is gaining political power in the promotion of ignorance and placing people at different levels of value.  Judgment is made, based on race, culture, sexuality, gender, and economic status. The gospel needs to be re-established.  Personal conviction and the gathering of communities based on this conviction needs to be nurtured.  Governance and authoritarianism should be shunned, for to subvert evil the gospel needs to stand on its own and not be institutionalized.  That requires trust in God.  Do we have it?