The open militarism of the RA website header might be just silly, but for the prominent logo of the Army of God, which posts pictures of beheaded fetuses on its home page, and praises Scott Roeder and Paul Hill as heros for killing abortion doctors. That’s scary. I passed this along to my circle of friends, and then thought, am I over-reacting? Maybe Amarillo is just so far gone that this is normal behavior out there. A few pictures on a web site, after all, do not necessarily make a dangerous, armed cult. Maybe their web designer is just some stupid Modern Warfare addict, and Grisham and his fans get a kick out of looking scarier than they really are.

Relatively saner citizens of Amarillo, rather than react negatively to this psuedo-religious abberration, please spend your time tell the rest of world the good news of what the rest of Amarillo is really like. Michael Moore is probably already headed there with cameras to document the effect of Pantex on your culture, like he did with Lockheed Martin at Columbine. Or maybe he’ll wait until some real tragedy has occurred.

I hope your saner Amarillo preachers are pointing out that when Peter took up the sword to fight the guards who were taking Jesus in Gethsemane, the Prince of Peace told him, “Put up your sword. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.” Tori is right – the true religious message is “Love thy neighbor.” What poor, disturbed Grisham is doing is nothing at all like true Christianity or true religion of any kind. What he needs is a good fall off his high horse, like Simon Peter, another righteous persecutor, that will bring him to his senses and wake him up to the beauty of God’s nature. If I were his friend, I’d advise him to take a long vacation, get as far away from Pantex as he possibly can, and find a less stressful line of work. God grant that grace and peace will soon befall him.