The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [50]
“Did you sign in?” she whispered.
“And so God said that homosexuality is an abomination,” Sorensen droned. “He didn’t say it was not quite right. He said it was an abomination.”
“Uh, no,” I said.
“Well, you’ve gotta sign in!” she whispered, more loudly now. “You’re in the tribe of Ephraim! That’s our group, honey, that’s our group!”
“Right, well, I’ll do it after,” I whispered, eyes still facing forward.
“But where did you sign in when you came in?” she nudged me.
“On the ‘no tribe’ sheet,” I said firmly. “I’ll do it in the right place later.”
Sorensen continued about gays: “And so God doesn’t change his mind when society changes its mind…”
“But the sign-in sheet…,” Laurie continued.
Heads started to turn. Meanwhile, Janine showed up and sat down on the other side of Laurie, and soon Laurie was doing the same thing with Janine. Janine and I exchanged glances. Sorensen continued his lecture, and soon Laurie was raising her hand when he mentioned the church elders. Laurie wanted to know how many elders there were. But she totally misunderstood the meeting; there was no place here for questions and answers. This was a we-shut-up-and-listen, they-tell-us-what-we-need-to-know type of deal. But Laurie kept wagging her hand. Sorensen ignored her.
“Laurie, honey, I don’t think this is really question-and-answer time,” Janine whispered finally. “Just remember your question and ask him later.”
“I just want to know how many elders there are,” Laurie whispered.
“Okay, well…”
We broke for lunch. On our way out of the church, we spotted a couple, Murray and Miriam, whom we’d met at the Encounter Weekend and eaten with there. We all decided to go to the nearby cheap-ass Chinese buffet. There were five of us, and Laurie kept wanting all of us to go in her car. We eventually settled on two cars, but it took a while; Laurie and Miriam disagreed pointlessly about the travel issue, then glared at each other in the parking lot. I smelled a needlessly megacomplicated experience coming.
When we got to the restaurant, I wanted to sit next to Janine, who I thought was a very nice, very sad young woman—I liked her enough, in fact, that I made it a point to stay away from her, not wanting to infect her with my evil journalistic tentacles. But when we got to the round table, Laurie maneuvered in such a way that there was no way for me to sit near Janine; she plopped right between us. We prayed, thanked the Lord for the food, then started eating.
Miriam and Laurie, both heavyset and both older blond women, one conspicuously married and one conspicuously widowed, sat opposite each other, feverishly spooning mounds of shitty Chinese food into their mouths. I sensed some kind of preternatural antagonism between the two and immediately grew nervous.
“The thing about Luther,” opined Miriam, “is that what he did back then is different. I’m just saying, modern-day Lutheranism is almost indistinguishable from Catholicism.”
“Hmm, right,” said Murray, her heavyset, affable, yes-man husband.
“In what way?” said Laurie.
“Well, Lutheranism is different than your basic liturgical faith…”
“Aturdical?” said Laurie. “What’s that?”
“Liturgical. In a liturgical faith,” said Miriam, “you’d have this whole schedule planned out. They’d do a sermon on January first, and then the next January first you’d do the very same sermon.”
“Oh, well, we don’t do that in our church,” said Laurie. “In our church…”
Miriam was a quietly triumphant mom who’d laudably made it to a comfortable place in life with a good husband after rougher times in her youth—she told me she’d lived off food stamps in a ratty house with seven people in it when she was younger. She was happy with who she was, and seemed pleased to