On this last Sunday in September, the reader may appreciate a brief review of the churches of Beauneville, of which there are three.
The first church in town was the Unitarian Church of Beauneville. Inspired by a massive increase in national wealth and income after the Civil War, the church was built as a great stone edifice reflecting the wealth, power, status, good taste and piety of the congregants, but mostly their wealth, power, status and good taste.
Influenced by new developments in modern theology and also a desire for more fun, members of the Unitarian Church became increasingly restless with Unitarianism, which they regarded as dogmatic and a buzzkill. Having reduced the Christian deities from three to one, they agreed to take the next logical step and subtract one more. After great controversy and debate, the congregation withdrew from the American Unitarian Association and formed the Church of Nothing.
Soon thereafter, the congregation discovered a vexing theological puzzle: is Nothing the absence of something, or is it more than the absence of something? -- in which case it is not really Nothing but something. This problem was a real poser, and it soon led to a split between the Substantive Nothingists, who believed in the existence of an actual Nothing, versus the Anythingists, who believed that the absence of belief in one thing meant they could believe in Anything.
Inspired by the English philosopher who wrote that "A man who believes in nothing will believe in anything", a group of congregants split from the Church of Nothing and founded the Church of Anything. The two faiths were quite similar in liturgy and practice, though the Church of Nothing served doughnuts and coffee after church, while the Church of Anything preferred pancake breakfasts before church. Conveniently, the two churches scheduled their services at different times on Sunday morning, so townspeople could have pancakes for breakfast, attend two services, then savor the doughnuts and coffee. The two churches catered to this trade by making services mercifully short.
Still, the theological schism remained, and attempts to establish ecumenical and interdenominational understanding in the town inevitably ended in fisticuffs. Thoroughly disgusted with the squabbling, a third congregation formed and named itself the Church of Whatever You Like, the foundation of which is the understanding that congregants should be held to no beliefs of any kind. In a further departure from established church practices, the Church of Whatever You Like eschewed pancakes, coffee and doughnuts, and instead offered covered dish suppers consisting of whatever the congregants wished to bring, with the proviso that at least one such dish must be a Jell-O salad.
The new church did not help the cause of interdenominational ecumenicalism: Nothingists and Anythingists were still at one another's throats, while Whateverists stood by and yawned. It was a boon to the foodies in town, who were now able to have pancakes in the morning followed by coffee and doughnuts and then a delicious covered dish supper, all for a minimal investment in church-sitting time.
The Blooms attend the Church of Nothing. They neither know nor care about the theological issues described above, they just live nearby.
