St Helens, OR
Special report to StHelensUpdate
by TOCS   4-11-05

The bold and charismatic Reverend Dewey Dickerson delivered another one of his unique visions in church this past Sunday morning to the delight of those in attendance.
"Let us join together, brothers and sisters, and give generously to the funding and the building of a new St Helens Library," Dickerson slowly began to his transfixed congregation as he built into a fervent crescendo, "and let us join together to fight for the enactment and enforcement of higher, moral censorship laws as symbolized by our very construction of such a library!"

Instantly, his enrapt congregation erupted into several minutes of appreciation in an unscripted standing ovation featuring various teary-eyed expressions of moral and emotional support. 

Dickerson continued quickly as people began to sit back down, "Just as our federal tax dollars are being spent successfully defeating the evil Muslim Hun in the Middle East, we can now join together and fight for our local tax dollars to pay for the erection of a new and greater St Helens Library of family values!"

Each of Dickerson's continuing statements were followed by several minutes of thunderous applause. Dickerson's Sunday sermon seemed to be delivered in the zeal of Spanish conquerors from long ago.

"We all know that Libraries are the spring-source to a torrid river of internet pornography."
"Amen," several people added in response.

"And we must protect our children's future by constructing a fundamental conceptual approach to our new library by exclusively stocking only those good books containing the Holy words of God and his son Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Dickerson could barely be heard in finishing over an even louder raucus ovation: "My friends, we need to aid and abet our children in becoming God-fearing, productive Christian citizens of St Helen's glorious future."

A bit later, Dickerson was eventually challenged by one gentleman--a seemingly unpopular member of the congregation--on tax money being spent in what he deemed, "wiser and a more forethought manner".

"God himself has told me that if my plan is enacted, we wouldn't need to spend anymore money building hospitals, funding our schools or fighting the Meth Problem," Dickerson responded. "With the words of God in our children's hearts, these kinds of problems will become ancillary and eventually will go away!"

The rest of the congregation seemed to take particular delight in seeing the man sit back down in his pew.

"Imagine our new magnificent Library! It could be a model to our New American Century," Dickerson concluded, in an agitated vocal manner somewhat reminiscent of Adolph Hitler. "And once it has been erected, we must then enact laws to ban all possession of "obscene" materials!"

If enacted under this kind of law, adults reading The Diary of Anne Frank, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, To Kill a Mockingbird or even the children's book In the Night Kitchen can be charged with a crime for reading them in their own homes.

I asked Dickerson this after church and he told me as he smiled and shook my hand, "Son, these books have already been labeled obscene in several moral Southern states with God-fearing laws that we don't have here in Oregon. Our challenge is to change all of these liberal laws here in Oregon and to be in partnership with the word of God and his covenant."

As I left the parking lot, I began to think that I may have just shook hands with the Devil.