Church of the Holy Speculators

"Church of the Holy Speculators"

was Mark Twain's description of church on Sunday morning

Critical of conventional religious fanaticism yet molded by his Presbyterian youth it has been said of Samuel Clemens that he was too orthodox on the doctrine of human depravity.  He is quoted as saying, "It's not what I don't understand about the Bible that bothers me; its what I do understand."

His pen name, Mark Twain (Two Fathoms), came from his experience in his early days of piloting a riverboat on the Mississippi River.  It seems he spent most of his life taking soundings on the human condition.  Mesmerized by the preaching of Henry Ward Beecher he took a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1867 with a boat load of preachers.  In this journey he experience the awe of Catholicism and some of the bizarre traditions and relics that people worshiped which caused him to question even further church tradition.  He saw with his own eyes the mess that Israel had become because of Muslim occupation.

Later he said that he predestinely stumbled into literature without intending it simply because he had failed at everything else.  He struggled with the bible his whole life though considered by many merely a Deist.  His sometimes irreverent satire brought both laughter and scorn because he would often address things that no one else had the courage to speak about publicly.  After his death several revealing manuscripts were found and later published in which he told the story of No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Satan) and his visits to earth.

One unsavory comment he made was regarding the scripture that addressed rebels in the Old Testament who marked out their territory against authority like a dog urinating on a bush he said,  "A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches, and get off, but he must not piss against the wall -- that would be going quite too far. The origin of the divine prejudice against this humble crime is not stated; but we know that the prejudice was very strong -- so strong that nothing but a wholesale massacre of the people inhabiting the region where the wall was defiled could satisfy the Deity." -- Mark Twain

This urination passage can be found six times and obviously caused Mark Twain a bit of consternation. (1 Sam. 25:22,34, 1 Kgs 14:10-12, 1 Kgs 21:19-21, 2 Kgs 9:8 etc.)  It is in reference to a basic pissing contest against those in authority.  But this is language most church folks avoid.