To the editor:

In his “Take A Stand” essay outlining the demands Christianity places on believers, Dr. Pat Moriarty seems to miss the point of Mark Jakubauskas’ letter, which criticized churches that spend mind-boggling, tax-exempt assets to expand and enhance their facilities – pampering and pandering to the prosperous membership – while the hungry die. I took the letter to be directed at those ostentatious, show-bizzy, country-clubbish luxury megachurches that are the fashion these days (especially in comfy SUV-friendly suburbs) and at lesser enterprises that aspire to such grandiosity.

Not that extravagance, self-indulgence and preening is new to religion or the religious, only that it has lately taken on a more dominant character – as against the simple, modest history of groups like the Quakers, for one instance. I never understood Jesus naming Peter the “rock” on which his church would arise as a developer’s call for blueprints, nor found therein any rationale to support the opulent Vatican, the telegenic Crystal Cathedral, Joel Osteen’s stadium or Jerry Johnston’s multimillion-dollar First Family Church campus and franchisees. Quite the contrary.

What ever became of overturning the money changers’ tables, praying behind closed doors in secret and camels lodged in the needle’s eye? Biblical exegesis, it seems, is there to serve the whims of the ambitious, above all.

Bruce S. Springsteen,

Lawrence