Bilateral Ecclesiologists announce discovery of Messianic who gives a turd

(With apologies to Yegge.)

The worldwide Bilateral Ecclesiology community met up over wine coolers today to celebrate their unprecedented discovery of a Messianic who gives a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology.

On Tuesday, chief Bilateral Ecclesiologists issued a press release blog post revealing that 28-year-old Seth Tritte, a Messianic gentile at Congregation Beth Shalom in North Carolina, actually gives a turd about bilateral ecclesiology.

"Mr. Tritte has followed every single one of our blog posts for years," the press release stated. "Probably even this one."

Prominent Bilateral Ecclesiologist Lee Derek explained how they had stumbled on the theoretical possibility of Seth Tritte and his persistent interest in Bilateral Ecclesiology. "We knew that there are precisely 38 people who give a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology," said Derek, "because every Bilateral Ecclesiology-related post gets exactly 38 “Likes” on Facebook. But there are only 37 of us on our mailing list, so we figured there was a lurker somewhere."

"That, or it was a miscount of the No Gentile section at our congregation," Derek added. "But we don't, uh, like to dwell on, I mean with gentiles in our congregations, we can, um... sorry, I need to get some water."

As Derek stumbled off in a coughing fit, his fellow theology inventor Jean F. Kraine outlined their basic dilemma: "Finding a person who gives a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology is an inherently difficult problem. It's similar in scope and complexity to the problem of trying to find a tenured rabbi who didn't have the bulk of his work done before ignorant One Law laypeople. So even though we suspected Tritte existed, we needed a strategy to smoke him out."

He explained the trap they set for Tritte: "We crafted a fake satirical blog post lampooning Bilateral Ecclesiology as a harmful, wall-building, divisive theology -- a writing task that was emotionally difficult but conceptually trivial. Then we laced the post with deeper social subtext decrying the endemic superficiality of One-Law Messianics, to make ourselves feel better. Finally, each of us “thumbed-up” the post, which was unexpectedly contentious because nobody could agree on what the “thumb-up” button actually meant in a communal expression which has no way to affirm the unique calling of Jewish people in the broader Jewish, Christian, and Messianic worlds."

"And then we waited to see who, if anyone, would give a turd," he said.

Kraine concluded, "Our elegant approach didn't work, so we hired some brute Messianic gentile to go dig up the personal details on all 38 accounts that had ever “thumbed up” a Bilateral Ecclesiology post, and the only one we didn't know was Tritte. So we reached out to him, and thankfully so far he hasn't started his own One Law congregation."

Tritte says he is pleased to have been recognized for his apparently unique turd-giving about Bilateral Ecclesiology. "I've been giving a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology for as long as I can remember. I follow all their blogs and teachings and podcasts closely, just in case I ever get the urge to practice Bilateral Ecclesiology for something someday."

"It's a beautiful, elegant theology," Tritte observed as he busied himself cleaning a fingernail. "You'd be hard-pressed to find a more identity-preserving, racially-distinct core set of beliefs. And they've made astounding advances over the years in extending clear boundaries upon their peripheral, already-marginalized gentile congregants, may their numbers ever decrease.”

"I'm kind of surprised I'm the only person on earth who gives a turd about it," Tritte continued. "I'd have thought there would be more people following the blogs closely and then not practicing Bilateral Ecclesiology. But they all just skip the blogs and go straight to the not practicing it part." Tritte shuddered at the possibility of a gentile uttering a blessing intended only for Jacob’s children.

"People see words like exclusive identity marker and clear ethnic boundaries," Tritte continued, swatting invisible flies around his head for emphasis, "and their Giving a Turd gene shuts down faster than a Bilateral Ecclesiology synagogue with a Messianic gentile at the door. I'm really disappointed that more Messianics don't get actively involved in reading endless threads about how to preserve identity markers and subvert gentile inclusion to accomplish basic crap you can already do in regular Messianic congregations. But I guess that's the lazy, ignorant, immature world we live in: the so-called 'real' world."

Bilateral Ecclesiologist Oliver Antoine remains hopeful that one day they may be able to double or even triple the number of Messianics who give a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology. "I believe the root cause of the popularity problem is Bilateral Ecclesiology’s lack of support for a well-thought-out liturgical service. If we can create bilateral liturgy that is perceived as sufficiently sexy by Messianics, then I think we will see an uptick in giving a turd, possibly as much as a full extra person."

Bilateral Ecclesiologist aficionado Sasha Runembach is not quite as sanguine as his colleague Antoine. "I doubt Bilateral Ecclesiology will ever be appreciated by the uneducated natives of the Messianic world. As exciting as it is, the discovery of Tritte should be considered an anomaly, and not as a sign that more people will ever give a turd. Messianics only seem to pay attention to things when there is humor involved."

"We do have experimental humorous piyyutim," added Antoine. "But it doesn't seem to be getting much adoption. Bilateral Ecclesiology fans just don't see the need for it."