New altar call song for MAGAt congregations, "I have decided to follow Donald"

In my growing up years, many low-church music congregations favored an altar call song: "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus." MAGAts have replaced it with, "I Have Decided to Follow Donald."

Many or most evangelical churches have at the end of a service, after the sermon, what is typically called "the invitation" or "an altar call." This gives worshippers an opportunity to come forward to share with the pastor and perhaps the whole congregation news of a decision they have made--everything from a decision to become a follower of Jesus to an awkward full-congregation confession of some wrongdoing.

In my growing up years, many low-church music congregations (no Bach!) favored an altar call song: "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, No Turning Back." (Rude but clever country kids in the balcony as their parents downstairs sang the printed words, sang over them, "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, No Singing Bach.") MAGAts have replaced it with, "I Have Decided to Follow Donald, No Turning Back."

I fully believe that in MAGAt churches this coming Sunday morning there will be people celebrating the passage of the big bill that will take tax money and healthcare money from most of them so that the grotesquely wealthy won't have to pay taxes on their billions. The prospect makes me vomit like the big fish in the book of Jonah who upchucked the confused and suicidal prophet, who was giving the big fish a whale of a stomach ache.

More seriously, many of those people in the rise of Trump to the pinacles of power have confused God with Trump (who is delighted with their confusion) and Trump with the primary catalyst of God as Christians claim--namely, Jesus himself. Again, this delights the Taco who himself likes the roles of divinity as much as any early Roman Emperor enjoyed god-ness--Nero and Domitian in particular.

God will weep when many of these MAGAts are told: "No more Meals on Wheels for you," or, “You will soon die without your chemo, but today's treatment was the last you can get. And after all as that paragon of faith and theological brilliance, Phoni Ernst, said, 'We're all going to die anyway.'" The politicians have taken charge of how long their constituents will be allowed to live.

But sing your damn hearts out, godless MAGAts. Some day when you expect to meet God in person, you will have forfeited that privilege. You'll be in line for seat assignments in the hot and searing place of eternal separation from God, and the Trump family and Stephen Miller will literally step all over you to get a little further ahead in line. Then, surely you'll be prompted again to sing, "I Have Decided to Follow Donald. No Turning Back...Ever."