Archbishop of Can’tremarry: The English prelate who categorically forbids royal remarriages and then sits back and enjoys watching the breakdown of practically everyone else’s unions.
Belt with a bible: To wield a copy of the ostensibly good Good Book upside the heads of unrepentant nonbelievers.
Chim and Panzee: The primordial couple whose remains would surely roll over at the sheer number of their descendants who categorically reject the family connection.
Darwinism v. Darlingism: The all-out competition in which the cold, hard facts of evolution vie with the raw emotionality of creationism in explaining the origin of life.
Emissionary: The religious figure called to go forth and spread the word as to which sexual practices are permissible and which lead to hell if not scads of dark-skinned toddlers.
Faithlift: The process by which a church’s sagging membership is restored to its former fullness via spiritual botoxificaiton, i.e., tactical injection of ever more thou-shalt-nots.
Godorrhea: The chronic discharge of biblical talk that tends to make hapless listeners apprehensive that they too become similarly orally infected.
Haloism: The perpetual struggle to keep the external sign of saintliness up above the head rather than down around the ankles.
Homilyland Security: The U.S. federal office whose most-dialed recorded message advises callers to get out their prayers against an incoming enemy, given that Uncle Sam is probably not going to do a thing.
Holitosis: The offensive odor of sanctity that only atheists and other incorrigible sinners can detect with their keen noses for sniffing out hypocrisy.
Idollartry: The worship of the U.S. greenback to the exclusion of all other false gods.
Lepersentatives v. Sinators: The ongoing struggle between America’s two legislative bodies to have the last word.
Moral erectitude: The stance that makes the pope swell to a greater height, including extra inches from platform shoes and papal miter.
Onward, Christian Pollsters! The cry that heartens faith-based statisticians to keep up the good (and hard) work of religiously minimizing the number of atheists out and about in the land.
Pelf-help Religion: The faith, propounded by America’s prosperity ministries, that holds that the amassing of personal wealth taken from the pockets of the poor is unalloyed virtue.
Pledge of Religiance: The public promise to work assiduously to introduce religious totalism, 51% today and 100% tomorrow, thereby making a theocracy of a democracy.
Salivation Army: The charitable organization that gladly feeds famished folks who line up at its doors, but not before they first pray themselves into pools of their saliva at their knees.
Split Parsonality: The man of God who one day denounces women’s devilish ways and the next extols their angelic qualities.
Uncle Samta: The American philanthropic figure who once a year circles the globe distributing the choicest gifts to the haves and the dregs of his bag to the have-nots.
U.S. Priestident: The national leader who swears on the bible that he will answer to God before he answers any voter.
Votes for Fetuses! The rallying cry of the preborn in their fierce struggle for resources with the postborn.
Washing-by-the-Ton, D.C.: The federal headquarters that hands out hefty-sized boxes of detergent to newly sworn officials’ wives, complete with instructions on how to tackle the really tough stains.
Kate Musgrave writes: For most of my life, I’ve been creating meaning by playing with language, and I had the gratification of seeing my book, Womb with Views: A Contradictionary (Mother Courage, 1989), make the Library of Congress.
After I retired from teaching college English composition, I settled down in Ann Arbor, Mich., to devote myself to ever more word invention without concern for publishing. Then I discovered Freethought Today, and I am once more getting my material out to the world.