(Written by Feral Jesus while in hiding from the local authorities)
What is a Feral Jesus conventicle?
Without ceremony. Unceremonious. Unprogrammed (to borrow an idea from my Quaker Friends). Often spontaneous.
Members are not allowed.
A muster of free persons (known as “rebels” by the State) who convenire (Latin: come together) to foster freedom and lubricate liberty.
Not cultivated, not wild. Feral. Like a New England farmer or a Vaudeville dancer.
Feral Conventiclers look to Feral Jesus – the sauntering, gleaning, open-air admirer of field lilies and ridiculer of religious hypocrites and mealy-mouthed bureaucrats and politicians – as a model for living the abundant life.
Within the conventicle you’ll find gentleness, freedom, forgiveness, simplicity, humility, love, tobacco juice, empty ale mugs and an assortment of insurrectionist pamphlets lying around. (How did those get here?)
I’ll let you know in advance that Conventiclers get a little hot under the collar when you start talking like a conservative or a liberal, those interchangeable euphemisms for enslavers of humanity and despoilers of creation. Be aware that you will quickly become a target of derision if you use academic slang, such as intersectionality and fragility, or if you make a “reasonable” case for another foreign war.
Conventiclers prefer to sit in silence. They might throw a blanket down in a meadow and call it the Temple of God. Forgive them if they cuss out the biting mosquitoes as they whisper The Jesus Prayer.
They have been known to walk into a Sunday morning church service and ask for donations to the “Society for the Liberation of Churches from Fascism, Socialism, Political Correctness, and Perpetual Wars against Terrorism, Drugs and Rednecks.” And they might make three trips to the Communion rail before they realize it’s only grape juice in those cups.
Conventiclers don’t tarry too long at conventicling. They move on down the road, lest their idleness lead to a sedentary mindset from which all evil ideologies spring. Besides, the State might catch up with them.
Have you encountered a Feral Jesus Conventicle? I don’t think there has been once since those furtive ale house meetings in Western Massachusetts just before Shays’ Rebellion. (God bless Daniel Shays.) If you find a Feral Jesus Conventicle, let me know. I’ve been looking for one.