09–11.06.2026
Taking a break from the news and the eternal doomscroll really does a mind and body good. If it wasn’t for the mysterious bug that had cut down myself and my co-workers like summer wheat, I would have had a better chance to feel rejuvenated by our road trip. At least being stuck in low gear helped ensure that I wasn’t running from pillar to post with the missus like a rainforest version of The Amazing Race. I love her to death, but the woman doesn’t not know how to sit still.
One thing I did have time for, and have been meaning to do for a long time, was to sign up for a course with ULC, the “non-denominational religious organization,” that ordained me back in the ’90s. All of the recent talk about Christian Nationalism, and the Dominionism preached by our Secretary of Defense’s pastor Doug Wilson, has found my thoughts toward faith and the teachings of Jesus become better defined in my mind. Maybe that’s these clowns’ purpose all along, but I am positive that they don’t think it is.
Rushing down the Embarcadero to catch my boat home one evening a couple of months ago, I was confronted by a young, overeager evangelical who fell in quickstep with me, asking if I was a Christian. I was stopped in my tracks by the question, which is not conducive to making the ferry. I had to admit, that, “No, I do not consider myself a “Christian.” He proceeded to tell me that Christ died for my sins, and the usual litany of, well… litany.
I had to stop him, and said, “Hold on, don’t get me wrong, I dig the rabbi. I try to follow his advice on the daily. It is these people that call themselves Christians and do not listen to a single thing the dude said that piss me off.”
My candor stopped the young man, as suddenly as his question had stooped me. I continued on my desperate attempt to catch the ferry, but upon settling in my seat, I was kind of surprised by my own declaration. I was raised Catholic, your grandma’s weird, old country version of Christianity, which, don’t get me wrong, is one of the things I think it has going for it. I always loved the statues and the pageantry, which I strangely feel protective toward all of a sudden.
Later that week, my sister and I were at a planning meeting at the Portuguese Hall, an old school immigrant society function if there ever was. If it wasn’t for half of the group Zooming in from parts unknown, it could have been a scene from 50 or 100 years ago. After bimonthly business was finished, the conversation drifted to whatever crazy thing the administration had said or done that day. As a joke, I asked, “What are we going to do when they make carrying the flag of Portugal in our procession illegal?” Ha ha.
Wilson has called for one better. In his vision of a Christian nation, he would outlaw “public displays of idolatry,” meaning the very Catholic statues and parades that fascinated me as a youngster. This is the same pastor that was invited to preach at Hegseth’s Pentagon.
One of the reasons the founders of this nation inserted an Establishment Clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was to avoid the type of religious infighting that tore Europe apart for generations. We now have a fundamentalist preacher, close to the levers of power, champing at the bit to start some shit.
At the same time, TFG* has been beefing with the first American pope for doing what popes are supposed to do, i.e., advocating for the downtrodden, the immigrant, the peace makers. I admit that it had been years since I really paid much attention to what the various popes were up to, now all of a sudden, I’m seriously rooting for Chicago’s own Leo XIV.
We unlikely theologians have got to stick together.
*This Fucking Guy
Román Leão 
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