When CNN called Virginia for Sen. Barak Obama at 11:55 p.m. on Nov. 4, Rev. Smith remembers exactly where he was.
“I was praying on my living room floor with some members of my Bible study,” he said. “We were asking God to guide the voters to make the right decision.Our prayers were not answered.”
The true significance of an Obama victory was not entirely apparent to Smith (whose name was changed to protect his identity, as were all others in this series), or any other members of his congregation. The following Sunday, he toned down the incendiary anti-liberal rhetoric and instead implored his flock to take the setback in stride, reminding them of the divine plan and their place in it.
“I even hinted that the end times might be nearer now,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t have any idea how right I was.”
After Obama was elected, it wasn’t six months before his stacked constitutional convention revoked the free worship clause in the First Amendment and Smith’s chapel was seized on trumped-up tax charges and transformed into a mosque. Smith now meets in the dusty basement of his vacation cabin near Cascade Lake in central Idaho, in secret, with his much-diminished congregation.
When I arrived and knocked three times on the storm door as per instructions, there were about 10 people sitting in a circle on the floor, cross-legged, discussing the first chapter of the book of Luke.
Mary, who remembers that first post-election sermon of her pastor’s as if it were “a million years ago,” was the first to offer me her story. It was the first of many I heard from these people during the next few months.
Mary was a single mother of two in January of last year, living in a small town in northern Nevada and working as a grade school teacher.
“I wasn’t terribly happy, but I had my children and the house and everything,” she said. “Things were just kind of ho-hum.”
Soon after Obama’s inauguration and his now-famous speech revealing his long-suspected ties to radical black supremacy groups and faith in Islam, Mary found herself under investigation for child abuse, on the grounds that she took her children with her to church each week.
“In the end, I fought and fought but they were taken from me and given to some turban in Kansas or something,” she said. “I never found out where they went.”
She struggled to compose herself to continue the story, and just as she started to talk again, the muzzein’s call echoed across the lake from the town of Donnelly, calling the faithful to prayer. The entire room fell silent until it passed, and it was several moments before Smith told me, in a voice barely above a whisper, “Now you know how we live.”
Editor’s note: The above article is a satire and should in no way be taken seriously.