In my circles of childhood friends – be they from school, church, or in the neighborhood - there were a few who stood out as being either goody-two-shoes (boys) or prim and proper scolds (girls). There was no better Sunday School student - or tattletale - than these momma’s boys and junior church ladies. Yet the ones I’ve kept up with have long since abandoned religion, or to be more specific, they’ve abandoned Christianity. Instead, they have religiously embraced the eco-leftist agenda and all its various tentacles, or what I refer to as “The Sustainable Organic Church of the Carbon Apocalypse.” Here they have found an outlet to continue evangelizing for a form of grim puritanism.

For simplicity’s sake, I am going to refer to all of these humorless people in their adult form as “Church Ladies of the Left,” whether they are male, female, or one of their many other genders.

Society would be much better off if these Church Ladies of the Left participated in an actual local church congregation as an outlet for their judgment and scolding, rather than seeking to re-organize society in a way that ensures everyone lives an equally joyless life.

Senator Marco Rubio wrote an interesting piece that was published in Compact magazine a few days ago, titled “Against Progressive Pseudo-Religion”.

Last December, The Washington Post ran an article about “spiritual collectives” emerging across America. These progressive, post-Christian alternatives to church sing Beatles and Bono tracks, rather than hymns. They welcome “people of all faiths and no faiths.” Most important, they preach questions instead of answers. According to the Post, “spiritual collectives” are defined—and distinguished from churches—by their resistance to dogma.

But are they really? A closer read makes it abundantly clear that these communities are united by articles of faith. They just happen to be articles of progressive politics, rather than of traditional religion.

Correct. Humans are hard-wired to be religious. Just because there are some among us who have repudiated Christianity and other established religions, they still cannot escape the innate religiosity that is part of our existence. The left-wing belief that bad weather and natural disasters are caused by sinners in our midst is the most primitive of religious beliefs.

In a recent post of mine, I noted that “People are inherently religious. It was almost certainly a factor in our evolution and survival as a species, helping to create family units, parenting structures, agricultural practices, forbidden destructive behaviors, etc. which allowed humans to flourish. But being inherently religious, we’ll rapidly adopt evil religious practices where there is a void from good religions. Anti-humanity death cults (the Church of Climate, radical Islam) have filled the void where Judeo-Christianity has retreated.”

In that piece, I discussed Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion to Christianity and how she makes the persuasive case that a Christian revival is necessary. Ms. Hirsi Ali wrote that, “We can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” She added, “We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilisation that it is determined to destroy. And we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools.”

While Christianity is needed to fight global evil, it can also help civilization by providing a venue for moral busybodies to do their thing locally rather than globally.

Like traditional protestant church ladies, the typical Church Lady of the Left is obsessed with regulating the behavior of others. For those who engage in behaviors that violate her strict moral compass, she will seek to inflict her moral guidance upon them, shaming and canceling them as necessary, while also striving to establish rules that forbid such transgressions.

It is an unfortunate burden on clergy when they have a particularly assertive church lady in their flock, but providing an outlet for these zealots is a service unto all society. It is better for us all if “Bertha-Better-Than-You” (see Ray Stevens video below) is all worked up about Deacon Johnson spending too much time assisting the widow Harris, than Bertha obsessing that there are climate sinners among us driving SUVs, and demanding obedience to the gospel of Net Zero.

When churches are strong and prominent in our culture, they provide so much more than just a place to worship. They also provide fellowship, music, art, structure, the fulfillment of volunteerism, a (semi-)controlled environment for adolescence, grief counseling, missionary work, and so much more.

But churches can also serve as a pressure relief valve for the fervor of those who are born to be moral busybodies.

I pray for a religious revival in this country, in part so that Bertha-Better-Than-You might abandon the Sustainable Organic Church of the Carbon Apocalypse and find an outlet instead in a local house of worship.

Almost obligatory for the subject of today’s post, here is Dana Carvey doing his legendary Church Lady routine.

Ray Stevens also had a hilarious take on Church Lady in his classic song “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival”

All the way down to the amen pew
Where sat Sister Bertha Better-Than-You
Who'd been watchin' all the commotion with sadistic glee
You should've seen that look in her eyes
When that squirrel jumped her garters and crossed her thighs
She jumped to her feet and said, "Lord! Have mercy on me!"

Have a blessed week. As for me, I plan to do some carbon sinning and otherwise behave in ways that offend the Church Ladies of the Left.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]