I read the Religion Page of the Daily Dunklin Democrat, but not always with the best of results, irritated-bowel-wise. That's why I save Pastor Jocelyn Vanbuskirk's column for last. It's always thoughtful, to the point, and reassuring. She always brings context to the Gospels. Her observations form a tidy background for each of her ever relevant and uplifting, and thus reassuring, biblical quotations. And, she never tries to sell us a tape, CD, or "prayer rag," in her weekly column. By the way, I've never met the lady, and I'm not a Presbyterian, at least I don't think so? I figure if I am a Calvinist, it was preordained, and whether or not I know it is inconsequential. I will say this, for most of my life I've had more than enough money to be a Presbyterian, but I'm afraid that, at age 70, I've about spent myself down to the point that I'm thinking about becoming a monk. You see, I'd planned my finances thinking I would "go on" before age 64, the average age for Kinchen men to drop dead, so here I am contemplating monasticism. But, I hear that's a lot of trouble, and besides, I wouldn't want to give up my very accommodating book-overloaded penthouse apartment/sanctuary/roost above downtown Kennett for some hut in Nairobi. Anyway, I'm already sort of monastic, and I have a certain "Friar Tuck" rotundity. But, one drifts from the, yet to be revealed, thrust of this column, a review of the entire "Religion" section of Fri.-Sat., July 15-16, page 6, of the Daily Dunklin Democrat.

Let's start with the article, "IRS investigating Benny Hinn (AP)." If you live on another planet, you may not know that Benny Hinn is a TV evangelist on a mission for your money. According to the "Dallas Morning News," the IRS has said that Hinn's ministry doesn't meet the definition of a church. According to the article, Hinn's organization is estimated to raise more than $100 million a year. Hinn's annual earnings are alleged to be $1,325,000. The IRS apparently wants its share from his World Healing Center Church, and from Mr. Benny Hinn himself.

Hinn founded the Orlando Christian Center in 1983. At first he had only a few hundred members, but now that church is said to have an average weekly attendance of more than 10,000. Hinn now lives in California, and his church has offices in a suburb of Dallas, Grapevine, Texas.

Benny's popularity keeps on keeping on. His TV program is enormously successful, and the sales of his, "Good Morning, Holy Spirit," has had a huge success. However, mainline theologians don't seem to think that the Holy Spirit will be anywhere near Benny anytime soon. Why? Well, they don't like his claim that he actually "channels," or more precisely is a channel for God, that is, God enters him and takes over his body and causes him to say things that don't always work out, but Benny says he didn't know he said those things in the first place, so don't hold him responsible for what he says in a trance. For example, Benny said, "You're going to have people raised from the dead watching this network (TBN)." "You're going to have people raised from the dead watching TBN . . . people around the world . . . will lose loved ones, and will say to undertakers, 'Not yet. I want to take my dead loved one and place him in front of that TV set for 24 hours' "(Trinity Broadcasting Network, October 19, 1999). So far, no one has been raised from the dead by becoming bosomed up to the TV set.

The first time I heard Benny, I thought I had channeled surfed onto the Comedy Channel or Mad TV. I watch him now deliberately. Somehow it makes my routine raving at the TV set more reasonable. Benny has been preceded by a long list of pretty outrageous sellers of religion for fun and profit. Take Oral Roberts, the "faith healer," who somehow saw a need for building a hospital and medical school, as a good example of shameless tactics. He once suggested in a solicitation letter to his followers that Jesus had told him face to face: "Tell them this is not Oral Roberts asking [for $240.00 from each wealthy listener] but their Lord." It was never clear to me how a "faith healer" came to need a doctor. That's like a fortune teller watching a TV weather forecaster.

Benny also has the "Reverend Ike" Eikerenkoetter's scam as a teaching tool. He offered "prayer cloths" for sale as healing devices. When questioned about those type self-enrichment tactics, "Money," he said, "is God in action." ("Religion in American Society," by John Wilson, Prentice-Hall, 1978) Rev. Ike's little act was a takeoff scam from that old guy from Del Rio, Texas, fifty years ago, who sold "prayer rags," for redemption and riches.

My "Pike" fraternity brothers and I once sent away for that five-dollar Del Rio "prayer rag," sin being rampant at Ole Miss's Fraternity Row at the time. I don't know what happened to it. Perhaps we used up all its power in one frenzied football weekend? Or is the rumor true that the magical "Rag" is in the Washington office of a Senator from the South, who is waiting to use it prophylactically for the completely imagined moment when a crazed Senator Hillary Clinton might run off to the African slave state of Sudan with the Irreverent Al Sharpton?

The last item from the Religion page is about the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (no connection at all with the Southern Baptist Convention) removing the mention of Jesus in its new constitution. The new language says the purpose is "to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission." Does that mean that the wonderfully plain statement of faith in the first religious song that many of us learned to sing will be banned? How does one translate, "Jesus loves me for I know," into "Churches that discover and fulfill their God-given mission love me for I know?"

Finally, we have on the Religion page the IRS trying to tax Benny Hinn, who has claimed to be God while "channeling"for personal financial gain, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship on the road to becoming secular humanists, by "demoting" Jesus, while calling themselves Baptists. I think I'll read Pastor Vanbuskirk's column, again, for some soothing sanity.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.