These days, creationists and right wing retards have a new ace up their sleeve. Piggybacking. Despite the Church’s open disdain for inquiry and exploration (over the last few thousand years), they seem oddly content using art and science to explain God and his mysterious ways. A few years ago, I was told that the God of the Old Testament asked for circumcision not merely as a sacrifice but (also) because of health reasons. Sadly, Mr Yahweh forgot to list out naturally occuring carcinogens and deadly viruses.

Now, the Anglicans are looking to appropriate the Doctor Who mythos to ‘explain’ to young people facts about the Bible that would otherwise seem ‘difficult’ to understand. Brilliant. So then, Jesus was a Time Lord right?

One day you distance yourself from Harry Potter and The Golden Compass because they’re well, satanic and the next day you embrace a character (immensely awesome as he is) who espouses the need for questioning and rejecting dogma. All this is probably a sign of the Curch’s waning influence. But then again, we live in a country where almost 70 percent believe in reincarnation and another sizeable number hope to get it on with 72 virgins in the afterlife. Bah.

Realizing that the last time I visited a church was over a year back, I dragged myself to the Good Friday service at an Anglican cathedral here in the city and was amazed at how low the attendance was. Back home, Good Friday was the time of the year when the church burst at the seams, when people gathered to make that obligatory once-in-a-year appearance. Far from repentance, I suspect the masses did it more out of an odd sense of social responsibility.

Being a Syrian Orthodox Christian from Kerala and growing up in the middle east is a cliché of sorts, perhaps akin to being a Catholic from Boston or a Buddhist from Tibet. In hindsight, it does bring back a lot of memories. The Good Friday service for example stretched on for hours; the hymns and prayers accompanied by cymbals and frequent bells, the church covered in a thick pall of incense smoke and throngs of people pressed against each other reciting verses at the top of their lungs, more for the benefit of their friends than the invisible man upstairs. And the two years I spent in Kerala, the service was followed by the serving of choruka (a concoction made from bitter gourd and vinegar), kanji (rice gruel), payar thoran (green gram) and a pickle. Secretly, having the kanji in earthen pots was something I looked forward to, the one thing that kept me from feigning a head ache.

Here, the service turned out to be far less eventful. The choir sang a rousing piece followed by tediously monotonous recitals of a few prayers and then, nothing. Despite having no religious convictions whatsoever, I find myself longing for that controlled chaos of a small church packed with people excited about actually being able to belong to a group that would have them, in spite of themselves.