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# Almost Religion
- URL: https://www.smoothpebbles.org/almost-religion/
- Published: 2026-03-08T02:14:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-04T02:14:26.000Z
- Author: Richard Flanders

Observing the many bizarre protests in Marienplatz Munich today...  
  
The secular faith  
imitates religion  
and stops there.  
  
Faux beliefs.  
Pretend concerns.  
Causes without roots.  
Ritual without truth.  
Concern without care.  
  
Protest is confession:  
“I stand for something.  
I am a good person.”  
  
Professing selflessness  
is public penance  
for private selfishness.  
  
Redemption supposed  
comes by hating evil loudly,  
not real evil,  
but the kind imagined.  
  
Righteous anger  
without righteousness  
is only anger.  
  
Signs raised high,  
chants rehearsed,  
doctrinal drama,  
a theater of thespian virtue.  
  
I hear it in German  
but this religion  
has no borders.

> (Das Kreischen und Jammern,  
> das Schreien und Klirren.  
> Das Trommeln und Klingeln,  
> das Tanzen und Singen,  
> alles umsonst,  
> nutzloser Dampf.)

The screeching and wailing,  
the shouting and clanging,  
the drumming and ringing,  
the dancing and singing,  
all noise,  
all vapor.  
  
Gays for Palestine  
shout at gays for Israel.  
“Trans for women,”  
shout at women,  
yet unable to say  
what a woman is.  
  
Atonement by agitation.  
Logic dissolves.  
Reason drifts away.  
The cause achieves nothing.  
  
The devil’s creed is simple:  
do what feels right,  
not what is right.  
Invert every standard  
God has set.  
  
Yet for all the discord  
on one doctrine  
there is agreement:  
  
Eliminate the Jews.  
Defile Jesus.  
Ban His book.  
Cancel His people.  
  
Welcome  
to the worldly church,  
preaching heaven on earth,  
while stealthily  
delivering hell.