Bones of Dead Man's Bluff by Robb Grindstaff

Author:Robb Grindstaff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ghosts, politics, religion, missing child, Ozarks, Missouri, election
Publisher: Evolved Publishing LLC
Published: 2024-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

New violence had erupted in Seattle and Kansas City, which the media gleefully reported. Good for ratings.

Worth flew to New York the morning of July 4 for his appearance that evening on Throwing Stones.

He thought faith and religion would be an odd discussion for an Independence Day when cities were erupting in blood and ashes again, but perhaps not inappropriate.

The segment began with a recap of today’s violence, including a car bomb at a protest in Cleveland that killed six, and the burning of a black church in Alabama, in the middle of the night so no injuries, thankfully.

The news report Stone Bollinger had promised followed: interest in religion and spirituality overall had shown a slight increase—very slight—over the past five years, in stark contrast to the declining church attendance every year for the past half a century.

Stone discussed the data with the reporter and a rep from the polling company that conducted the survey.

Mainstream Protestant denominations had continued to see a decline, but Roman Catholic, evangelical denominations, and even more rigid fundamentalist groups had seen marked increases. In addition, there was resurging interest and growing conversions to Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, among others.

The pollster noted that respondents who felt like the country was in a death spiral, too late to bring it back from the precipice, were more likely to turn to faith and religion in a time of despair and hopelessness. Those who believed the government still had a chance to put things back on the right track, a shrinking minority, were less likely to embrace organized religion. But even that group showed a slight uptick in interest in general spirituality and what some might call fringe religions.

And, of course, there was the fringe of the fringe: those doomsday cults that prophesied the end is near and only a remnant—them, of course—would be saved. These cults had exploded in the past five years. One literally. A commune of nearly two hundred men, women, and children were decimated when a natural gas leak in their shared living quarters, an abandoned ski lodge in the California mountains, blew up in the middle of the night, killing more than a hundred and injuring dozens more.

Their doomsday prophecy of the world ending in God’s fiery wrath came true for them, Worth thought, as he adjusted the microphone pinned to his collar and waited for the news report to end and the interview to begin. Just not in the manner they’d imagined.

Stone sat in the middle of a large, curved desk, the reporter and the pollster to his right. On the other side, Worth sat next to Stone, a Catholic priest next to Worth, and a young, scruffy man at the end next to the priest. Worth wondered if the guy represented a doomsday cult or possibly Wiccans.

Stone finally closed out that segment by turning to the camera. “After this commercial break, we’ll discuss with some religious thought leaders what might be behind all of this interest in religion, and how faith can help heal America.

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