Riverside Baptist, Halleluah!

I was stunned by the sheer size of it. Oh sure, the Catholic cathedral was immense, too, but it had the good grace to stand empty. The Baptists still fill their church; nearly every seat was occupied. The balconies ringing the ground floor seating weren't open today, but after seeing how full it was on this ordinary Sunday, when the minister was preaching about that most alienating concept of tithing, I am absolutely certain the balconies, come Easter, would be sagging under the weight of so many exalting believers.

In this church, they get right down to it. The congregation is instructed to meet and greet each other before the preaching even begins, ensuring I would feel fully uncomfortable for the rest of the service. Touch is a big part of this church. They lay their hands on. The penitent, the holy, the seeker and the sought approach the stage humbly and place their hands on each other as with bowed heads they praise Jesus. I could not help but reflect how much my own Dad would like this, as it is only with the blessing of the church he feels free to transcend the cold teachings of his stolid Germanic nature.

This Baptist church service is very much "I'm a Believer: The Musical." They have no liturgy but song. The lyrics roll by on teleprompters to each side of the stage, and no one needs to worry about reading music; the choir is intended to lead the congregation's voices. The choir is right up on stage. The choir master is also the cantor is also the acolyte. He is apparently getting some sort of cosmic revenge on the Lord and his individual fate for not letting him win the audition for a role in "Rent" when he was young and attempting to achieve stardom on Broadway. Now he contents himself with reaching for the stars of a bright, lovely, and altogether certain Heaven. The choir, incidentally, was horrible, off-key and incoherent. No amount of hand waving or occasionally strewn "Amens!" can make up for a choir that sings off-key. And that brings us around to the hand waving.

A fluttering of hands here, another there. Apparently, the spirit of white Baptists has been taught moderation. I was disappointed, I have to admit, at the lack of spirit, along with the lack of African Americans. For this was not lily-white Boulder, after all; this was the center of Denver. Apparently, the African Americans have another Baptist church. I would rather have been there. I distrust the friendliness of any church in the middle of a poor neighborhood whose residents are mostly minorities if those minorities are not evident in the congregation. The only Hispanic we notice has a whole different posture and demeanor than that of the straight and holy white worshippers. He and his wife shuffle to the altar, their shoulders bowed with sorrow and/or hard labor, looking for all the world like they are not so much part of this well-heeled congregation as perhaps its custodians, looking to keep their jobs secure. Is it only me who thinks it significant that he is called to the front in recognition of his work with men incarcerated in Colorado prisons?

Here, as in every other residence of American Protestantism I've known, money's the thing. Tithing. Giving the Lord the (minimum) ten percent of one's gross income not because the Church needs it, but because "God deserves it." In this church, where every Sunday an average of over 1,000 souls and a few well-placed heathens gather, money is the issue. The pastor was sure to point out that tithing, while mandated only in the Old Testament along with discarded notions like shunning pork or working on the Sabbath, was certainly not intended to be repudiated by the fulfillment of the Law, with Jesus's birth and death and resurrection, although somehow all the other admonitions of the Old Testament were nicely discarded. And that brings me to something I find far more interesting--the recent discovery of bones in a cave that are purportedly those of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and some small boy: their only begotten son, to be sure. Bones are effectively the end of the resurrection myth. No wonder we haven't been reading much about this discovery since the first stories. Hush hush sweet Charlotte; Charlotte, don't you cry...

In this Baptist church, there is no ornamentation on the stage, nor even an altar. There are no thrones for the priests, no robes or neck stoles, either. There are no servants or small boys for the priest. He wears a simple gray suit. His haircut is as plain and all-American as his square-ish jawline. He quotes himself as an authority to back up the "facts" of what he posits as the truth about tithing, and to make his words more authoritative, has them broadcast on the enormous AV screens mounted high to the left and right of the staging area, like a rock n roll concert. I am struck by the amount of preparation and staging that must go into each Sunday's production. A cameraman sits high above the congregation in the centermost aisle, filming it all on a camera a network news crew would envy. These people need to tithe. Not be cause the church needs it, but because Jesus deserves it. Wow.

I recognize only one of the many songs of their service, so I sing it extra loudly. Ben is with us this week, and the three of us enter into the spirit of the service with far more energy than the small contingent of Jews in the back row, made obvious only in part by the yamulka on the man's head. We do our best not to gawk or giggle, and that is the best we can do. What are these people doing here? What ecstatic union are they seeking? Why don't they just go home and have really good sex with the person they love instead of wasting it on the plain, pasty, square jawed man with the bad haircut who reminds them that Jesus is the one who deserves it.

After the service, the minister hopes to lure the misbegotten to the path of righteousness by the sugary path of doughnuts--"Take the doors to the right and be saved"--and Mady and Ben insist we must have our share, so we go the path of the godly, but the minister is waiting there, right beside the doughnuts, all carefully roped off lest the undeserving apply. Will you choose the lion or the lady and, really, which side ARE you on?

We are clearly the undeserving and the markedly unholy, so we leave it all to Jesus and run for our sweet lives. Out in the parking lot, we feel like we've escaped, and we grin like the fools that we are happy and grateful to be.