God's Country

Part Forty-Three

'The book of Psalms, which is the primary devotional literature of the whole Bible, is full of complaints.'

David Augsburger

Samantha Fitzgerald sat rather awkwardly on the soft sofa, finding it really hard to get comfortable. Her mother was being so totally impossible and unreasonable. She could just about understand that they had to make an effort for Church, and she knew that she had to wear the new school uniform just like everyone else, but mittens and muzzles were not compulsory. Just because the Church had given them some did not mean she had to wear them, and certainly not at home. But arguing with her mother at the top of her voice had ended up with her trying everything on, just for practise.

"Someone is going to have to learn to do as she is told." Her brother suggested, grinning at her as she tried to find a position that did not make her new corset dig into her side.

"You don't have to wear it, do you?" Rebecca, Samantha's younger sister, pointed out angrily, sitting beside Samantha and putting a comforting hand on her knee. Rebecca had worked out that she was staring at her own future. She was still a child, with puberty yet to come, and other than wearing a new dress as a uniform for school, and another modest thing for Church, she had several years, hopefully, before she would be considered a maiden and treated accordingly. Her brother had no such concerns, and seemed to think that it was funny to see Samantha suffer.

Samantha glared at them both but she still knew that she was not the only one. Hardly anyone had decided to change schools and all of her friends had received the new uniforms ready for the big change after Christmas. Her parents were not really fanatics but they did not want to buck the trend either, and they were obsessed about keeping her at her school. It did not seem to matter what they had to do. Not if everyone else was doing it too. It was almost as if they were suddenly competing with their friends and neighbours to see who could fit in best at Church, as if it was a stupid competition, and every single word from the school or the Church prompted them to go just a little bit further, whatever Samantha said. In fact, if she did say anything she was starting to understand that it made things worse, because her parents were being told to stamp on her sins. She had seen the last letter from the school and it still made her heart sink just thinking about the contents. Prefects were to be chosen on piety and obedience. All pupils in year's seven to eleven could not wear mittens, but they had to wear gloves to and from school. In year twelve, mittens and mantles would be compulsory. It was like a nightmare. The world seemed to be closing in around her and arguing with them just made it all harder. Everyone else was doing it so they would too because not to do so would be to reject their friends, to reject the community they felt so much a part of. And they were not prepared to do that, they were not prepared to be the odd ones out or to fall behind anyone else, so they tried even harder to conform. Samantha could not believe it was happening to her, but it was, and she did not see how she could stop it getting even worse.

'Now the Bible tells us that we all by nature sinners, that we are slaves to sin and Satan, and that unless we are converted, or born again, we must be miserable forever.'

Jupiter Hammon

Peter Munroe had attended a local church in what he hoped would be his new constituency in just a few days time. Not a Reformist one. He followed that by speaking at a retirement home where he ate lunch and spent a further hour talking to people. By the time he got back to his hotel he was so tired; all he wanted to do was lie on the bed and sleep. He did not know if he would win, but it would be close. The policy debate Charles Buckingham said that people were voting for had captured the public imagination as far as he could tell, and the inability of the other parties to counter Reformism with new ideas of their own seemed to be counting against them, but they were still only fighting twenty five seats. So a level of broad support would not necessarily deliver victory in the first past the post system. But it still felt as if he was in at the start of something worthwhile.