OK… so I’m listening to Carribean Gospel Radio on iTunes and this song comes on with a chorus of “Shake that Booty in the Name of the Lord.” This is the way that religion, if it has any value at all, should exist. To free up the inner soul, the inner emotion – not to constrain.
Note that religion to me has little, if anything, to do with actual social mores. I, for one, am a reasonably good person (with a few faults, but greed and avarace aren’t part of it). My family are all good people, too. We do it without religion (yes, my children are being brought up without religious structure). My spouse is a believer, but I am not.
But then again, I don’t identify with biblical suffering. My bush never burned. I never hung on any cross. I didn’t have to slay my firstborn. This stuff has little relevance, in my mind, to the modern world.
What does have relevance is the possibility of waking up long-sleeping parts of me, the parts that do respond to group emotions, the parts that do want to feel a sense of community, the parts that want to “Shake My Booty” – maybe not in the name of the lord, but shake it anyhow.
That is, if my back goes back in 
