indirectly by my sons and church elders about joining a study group for personal

indirectly by my sons and church elders about joining a study group for personal conversion. | was surprised to learn that discussions of current political topics were a regular part of these discussions as well as the Sunday and Wednesday night services. We received a weekly political action committee report. Their issues involved abortion, school vouchers, sex education in schools, family planning, school prayer and carefully chosen Christian elected officials for school boards and the Congress. As a congregation, we frequently held hands in small circles and prayed for the electoral success of our issues and candidates. Twenty years later, this movement has evolved into the public political morality play of the Republican base of George W. Bush. Laying on of hands, dying in the Lord, speaking in tongues, dancing in the aisles and praying with up stretched arms were routine in the hymn dense services. The goal for all was the spiritual transformation of mind as in Romans, “...be not fashioned according to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is the good and well-pleasing and perfect will of God...” The pastor told us that the world ruled mind could not grasp spiritual things as in Corinthians “...they are foolishness unto him and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually understood.” My research took me to a collaborative project at a European mathematics institute for three months. | returned to our town very late on a Saturday night. | planned to surprise my sons by appearing at their usual choice of the middle service the next day. | drove up to the warehouse church fifteen minutes before the service was scheduled and found that the parking lot of the strip mall was nearly empty. There was no Cadillac parked at the front door. | banged on the double door when | found it locked. More then a little surprised, | called my eldest. He told me that four weeks before, the pastor disappeared, | later found that his disappearance accompanied that of the congregation’s bank account, and no one knew where he had gone. He had not warned or informed anyone in the congregation about his plans. Calmly and without apparent awareness of my surprise and distress, my 141 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013641