Mel Gibson should really make a prequel to The Passion, the heavenly film that elevated pornographic violence to theology. Mel's handiwork did so much for the Christian (a loose application of that word) right that a film employing the same creative license (aka "making things up," as in, do you recall any scripture saying the Roman soldiers heave-ho'd Jesus over a bridge?) could really get this Christianity thing in tune with our nation's imperial policies.

After all, either you're with us or against us, and that goes for the Lord as well as everyone else.

For Mel's prequel, I suggest a change in stars. I mean, James Caviezel is just too depressing, and besides, I can never remember how to spell his name. Who would I pick? There's only one choice: John Cleese, who, along with fellow Pythons, once made a film about a fellow named Brian that came much closer to the spirit of Christ's message than The Passion.

A new scriptwriting team -- how "bout Karl Rove, Jerry Falwell and Charlotte's own Franklin Graham? -- can update biblical translations so that we can all be fundamentalists and no longer have to worry about those inconvenient parts of holy writ that might be interpreted as implying that Christ preached peace, tolerance, brotherly love and the evil of greed.

I can see the opening scene, where Jesus is strolling about healing the sick. We'll make it clear that lepers are about the same as AIDS victims, and probably got the icky disease from homosexual sex. (No, no, no, don't worry about that silly thing called science. In our Bushized world, science says what we want. After all, scientists, too, are either with us or against us.)

So, here's the scene:

Blind Man: Oh, help me Lord. If I can just touch the hem of your garment, I know I will see again.

The Lord: Ah, Peter, do you think you can keep this fellow's grubby fingers off my robes? They're Dior, you know.

Peter: Sorry, Master.

The Lord: And, Peter, have you checked to see if this lout can afford healing?

Peter: He's a beggar, Master.

The Lord: Well, that is a little dicey. (To Blind Man.) My good sir, clearly your blindness is the result of bad choices you have made ...

Blind Man: ... but I was born blind. ...

The Lord: (To Peter, sotto voce.) Shut him up! (To Blind Man.) ... and if poor people get the idea that they're somehow entitled to medical care and healthy lives, well, I think you can see the problems that would cause with Judea's competitiveness in Rome's globalized economy.

(Christ and his followers hurry on and encounter a leper/AIDS victim.)

Rotted Man: Heal me, dear God, heal me!

The Lord: Ech, the stench. You lucky fellow, today is your day. I have a new supply of patented miracles from the Holy Transnational Pharmaceutical Conglomerate Ltd. That will be a mere 50,000 shekels, which you can give to my banker over there. Judas, collect this gentleman's fees, please.

Rotted Man: Lord, I have no money. Besides, generic miracles will do the same job and cost almost nothing. So many lives will be saved ...

The Lord: Whine, whine, whine. It's all these people do. Thank God, er, thank Me, they die off quickly. (To Rotted Man.) Well, that's it then. Sorry I can't help you. But, as you know, it is gospel that I hear the prayers of pious corporate executives and fat-cat campaign contributors before all others. Verily, I say unto you, what is it to My Father that a million diseased men and women pass away if the pharmaceutical companies are thereby blessed?

Rotted Man: Say what?

"Blasted are the peacemakers, for they shall be mauled by the children of God."

-- The Bible, King George II Standard Neoconservative Version.

There is so much distasteful about the Republicans nowadays that true patriots have a hard time figuring out what to get mad about most. For me, it's religion. I'm infuriated that George Bush and his entourage of theocratic mullahs have kidnapped Christianity and God.

For a start, there's the Christian Coalition's bleating about "activist judges" -- while at the same time seeking to impose a religious/political test on judicial candidates to ensure they are radically activist. It is, of course, in the hypocritical world of the Christian Coalition, entirely sanctified to elect fanatical right-wing activist judges. Didn't Jesus say something about getting the log out of your own eye before criticizing others for the speck in theirs?

The silver bullet for Republicans is gay marriage. It's juicier than abortion because gays are easy scapegoats. The difficulty with abortion is that assaulting distressed women who seek to terminate pregnancies just doesn't play well on TV. And you can murder only so many abortion doctors before the faithful start losing faith in the occasionally terrorist anti-abortion movement.

But gays, oh, gosh, golly, there are so many of them, and they often look, uh, well, gay. When the Bushies complete the 1984-ing of America, their version of Big Brother's archenemy, Immanuel Goldstein, will certainly sport one of those gay-ish hair trims (which will be a little hard to combine with Arabic facial features, but I'm sure that, with all of their experience at bending and distorting the truth, they'll manage).

And since the GOP long ago flushed logic down their mansions' commodes, it's so easy and delightful to slip in the bestiality suggestion. "Harrumph, if men start marrying men, what's to stop them from marrying iguanas?"

A little more than a decade ago, I interviewed John Boswell, who had been chairman of Yale's history department before his death at age 47 in 1994. Boswell had scoured mountains of medieval literature, and concluded that not only had the ancient church tolerated homosexual marriages, it had even celebrated them with sacraments.

Two of Christianity's earliest saints, Serge and Bacchus, were Roman soldiers who became martyrs. They're depicted in an icon in Kiev as being married -- with Christ acting as the best man. Elsewhere Serge is described as the "sweet companion and lover" of Bacchus. According to Boswell, there were ceremonies for homosexual marriage recorded in many church documents across Christendom, and there was apparently little opposition to the practice until the 14th century. It seems as though the early church understood what today's witch hunters don't: A person's holiness isn't determined by whom he or she loves.

"Blasted are the meek: for they shall be dispossessed from the land."

-- The Bible, King George II Standard Neoconservative Version

Part of the problem is that religious conservatism isn't synonymous with neoconservatism. Neoconservatism's intellectual founders are, and I'm not inventing this, a bunch of old water-carriers for Lenin's sidekick, Leon Trotsky, who wanted to keep expanding the revolution while Uncle Joe Stalin preached communism in one state.

The neo-con pundits traded Trotsky's vision of communist imperialism for multinational corporate imperialism; truth be told, there's not much difference. Elites dominating the world, replacing informed citizenry with media-manipulated masses, double-thinking the word "democracy" to mean no democracy, etc.

Most Christians, conservative and moderate, wouldn't buy into that agenda. So the neo-cons glommed onto conservative Christian issues. That doesn't mean the neo-cons share Christian values, they're simply using the churches for vote machines.

In exchange for electoral muscle -- and 79 percent of the voters who go to church weekly did cast their ballots for Bush in 2000 -- the Bushies are promising money to religious groups through faith-based initiatives, as well as ripping down the wall between church and state. Sort of a new version of the moneychangers setting up shop in the temple.

Consider this recent exchange on National Public Radio between Falwell and Jim Wallis, editor of the evangelical magazine Sojourners. When Falwell was asked what values he stands for, all he "could talk about was the gay marriage amendment," Wallis recounts, adding: "I pointed out that overcoming poverty was a values issue, as was protecting the environment, as was fighting unnecessary wars on false pretenses, as was the abuse of Iraqi prisoners."

Falwell -- whose theology boils down to believing Americans should have dominion over the world and that savaging Mother Earth is just fine because Armageddon is nigh -- retorted: "You voted for Al Gore? Admit it. Admit it. You didn't vote for George Bush or George Bush Sr., or even Ronald Reagan."

Wallis conceded after the debate he was "finally exposed ... a Christian who hadn't consistently voted for Republican candidates. How could I ever claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, who, as we all know, was pro-rich, pro-war and pro-American?"

Fortunately, the neo-cons' unholy strategy may have encountered some tribulations. The Bush campaign had asked that churches organize political rallies (a violation of law for tax-exempt religious groups) and had demanded rosters of parishioners. That prompted opposition and even outrage among some conservative Christian groups such as the Southern Baptists. After all, a real hallmark of the Baptists, Assembly of God and other conservative denominations is a fierce belief in keeping government and church apart. Last week it was revealed that they had asked Roman Catholic supporters for their parish rosters, also, with similar reactions from the Church.

"I'm appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "I suspect that this will rub a lot of pastors' fur the wrong way."

Amen, brother.

The Very, Very, Very Right Rev. John Sugg, whose day job is senior editor of Creative Loafing in Atlanta, can be reached at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com.