Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Comparison shopping for the priesthood

As you may or may not know, I use Gmail for all of my real-life and blog-related correspondence (VivaNedFlanders at gmail.com, if you want to contact me). It's easy, it's free, and it's anonymous. It's perfect.

Well, it's not perfect, but it's worth the money. Some people refuse to use Gmail because Google scans your messages and provides targeted advertisements on the side of your messages. Most of the time I don't even notice the ads, so I can't imagine Google is making too much money off of me.

Mostly, the ads serve as a source of unintentional comedy. Recently, the topic of vegetarianism came up with a vegetarian friend of mine. Google's robots helpfully provided this link: Amazon's Exotic Meat Store.


Delicious.

Anyway, I don't know what kind of heresy I've been emailing out, but when I logged on to my Flanders email account yesterday, this was my featured link: Get Ordained by the International Church of Atheism.

How could I resist clicking on that? Now, before you dismiss them, please note that they have a very similar priesthood policy to that of Mormonism. "We aim to ordain as many Ministers in our Church as we can." Well, I guess except for the whole woman thing. The point is that it is a very democratic not-religion that tries to de-mystify and de-privilege traditional notions of clergy by ordaining everyone.

That's the pro column. The $9.95 it costs to get ordained definitely goes in the con column. This might smack of simony at first, but it's probably cheaper than the Mormon equivalent. It's kind of like buying the lifetime Tivo service instead of paying installments each month.

Also, the International Church of Atheism encourages its "ministers" to get the title of Reverend added to their drivers licenses and passports, etc. In Mormonism, you only get to rent the title of Elder for two years. And you definitely don't get the cool clothing:


vs.


No contest there.

Actually, never mind; I found a place that will ordain you for free. God bless the Internet.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, when are you going to start calling yourself Reverend Flanders and start performing marriages and passing the plate?

Anonymous said...

Tivo has a lifetime service?

NFlanders said...

It's very tempting, Mark. I'm pretty sure this is how Lovejoy got his collar anyway.

Susan-- Yes, but it's the lifetime of the machine, not you. Basically you are betting that the machine won't conk out before you save some money. I've never done it; I'm too chicken.

Anonymous said...

Were do you find that awful missionary pic? Poor fat guys. Surprised they passed thier mission physicals.

Anonymous said...

lololol. that picture PERFECTLY embodies the suckiness of a mission.

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