Hot Cross Fun

Let us assume for a moment that Big JC did not arrive 2043-odd years ago, but he arrives today, to find us (not all of us, mind you...) happy to kill sheep, build arks and sacrifice our own sons for his Dad, yet not entirely convinced he is the son of his dad. More a hippy troublemaker, revoltionary, political dissident or itinerant carpenter. Our new JC gathers a rag-tag band of followers, pulls a few neat tricks like turning chip-fat into bourbon, healing some fatties and sex addicts and making promises of new holidays aligned eerily closely to pagan celebrations. The authorities catch up with him, there is a bit of rendition, they lock him up and then send him to death row (the actual death row, not the record label of that name.)

Fast forward a few hundred years to 2510 and a grass roots movement of JC2 followers has managed to drum up a load of support for the new boy. Christianity breaks out, heralding the start of a few more centuries of fighting before an uneasy truce begins. Christianity takes its place alongside competing religions, science, the druids and pagans and sundry atheistic fantasies. Oh yes, and Scientology, though that, of course, is a religion - silly me.

Still with me? Good. Churches love their imagery, and our future iChristianity2.0 will be no different to Christainity as we know it. We'll assume JC2 landed in the US and not in the Middle East, and that future US is not big on crucifixtion (with the possible exeption of some klan activity in the south, but we'll ignore that and stick to state sanctioned killing.) Future-US will still prefer lethal injection and the electric chair.

Will our future Christians hang little electric chairs around their necks? Will their easter bread products be adorned with little syringes? If not, why not? We love our crosses and our hot cross buns, representations of the thing used to kill JC1. It is all rather goulish, and as Bill Hicks once said: These people want JC to come back - the last thing he's gonna want to see is another fucking cross. Or something like that.

Happy Easter dear reader.