The statesman reported on my parent’s church this morning. You can read the article here. Seems they’re suing the City of Austin claiming that the city’s rules that keep them from building a new parking lot over our water supply is infringing their right to worship. Because part of your right to worship includes a free parking space.

Austin’s chief of litigation, Anne Morgan, says the church has other options: build a parking garage or ask its members to take the bus.

So in other words, these Christians won’t take a bus. Even though if you look at the route for the 331 it drops off practically in their parking lot. I know this because after much prompting my mother took the bus a few times. It also happens to cross bus routes with the 3, the 10, and the 1, which means pretty much everyone in Austin can get there by bus. Well except West Austinites. Who won’t pay for public transport. And from what I hear are pretty well represented at this church. At some point we should cut those moochers off. Especially since they can’t even be bothered to drive around a parking garage.

And people wonder why I want nothing to do with these “caring” churches. How about giving a damn about the water I drink? How many more missionaries could you send over seas for the cost of this lawsuit? How many people could you feed for the cost of your state-of-the-art sound system? Why couldn’t you build a parking garage on your current land? Or is this just about serving rich people their weekly singing and dancing catharsis so they can endure living one more week with the spouse they hate, at the job they hate, without pulling the plug completely?

I know a lot of people dislike organized religion. Personally I like it much more than this “dis-organized religion” of the evangelicals. Organized religion has shown historically that it’s pretty corrupt. Not having the checks and balances that organized religion has I think can only end badly. Which probably explains why most of these churches are essentially prosperity-preaching country clubs.