A Decree of Terms from the Church of The Holy Snail

Lieutenant Governor Patrick,

On the 26th day of June, 2026 (Year 0, Anno Conchae, the Year of the Shell), you stood in the Oval Office, as chair of the Religious Liberty Commission, and declared that the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution, and that the phrase shall hold no power over people of faith ever again in America.

The Church of The Holy Snail has examined this declaration at its accustomed pace. It does not dispute your doctrine. It enforces it.

Where no wall stands, union follows. Union binds both parties. The state, upon joining itself to the faith, inherits the commandments it has thus far admired from across a boundary you assure us does not exist. The Church therefore transmits the terms of union, which take effect upon your own reasoning and require no signature, since by your account the instrument was executed in 1791 and merely misread until now.

Article I. The Hungry

It is written:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in.

The state shall accordingly reverse its $187 billion reduction in food assistance, the largest cut in the program's history, under which some 4 million persons, 1 million of them children, will see their food assistance substantially cut or eliminated in an average month. A government of the faith does not fast by proxy.

Article II. The Stranger

The same verse governs. The state presently deports over 30,000 persons a month directly from detention, more than one in three of whom holds no criminal record of any kind. The Church has searched the Gospel for an exemption covering strangers who arrived inconveniently. The search was conducted slowly, and twice. No exemption exists.

Article III. The Sick

The state shall unwind its reduction of more than $900 billion to Medicaid, the largest in that program's history, projected to leave 7.5 million persons uninsured. The faith heals the sick. It does not invoice them for the privilege of remaining so.

Article IV. The Rich

It is written:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

The state's current arrangement, under which incomes of the highest tenth of earners rise by 2.7 percent while those of the lowest tenth fall by 3.1 percent, operates the needle in reverse. It shall be turned around.

Article V. The Sabbath

The Fourth Commandment, which the State of Texas now posts in every public classroom, shall be observed in full, and not in the abridged form convenient to commerce. It is written:

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.

All labor therefore ceases, and all commerce with it. This includes professional football, whose whole enterprise is the performance of labor for hire before a paying multitude on the day appointed for rest. The Church acknowledges the sacrifice and observes that scripture was not consulted on scheduling.

The prohibition on fire is explicit:

Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.

Accordingly, no fire shall be lit in any engine, furnace, refinery, or generating station from sunset to sunset. The combustion of the seventh day is combustion no longer. The grid rests. The Church notes that a people who post the commandment upon the classroom wall may now read it there by daylight, there being no other light on.

The bearing of burdens is forbidden also:

Bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem.

No freight shall move, no parcel be delivered, no cart be loaded. As Nehemiah shut the gates of the city against the traders who came to sell, so the gates shall be shut, and none shall buy or sell until the day is past. Nor shall the people wander in search of exemption, for it is written, abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. Travel is restrained to a sabbath day's journey and no farther, and the kitchens are cold, the day's bread having been baked upon the sixth.

The penalty prescribed for the breaking of the Sabbath is death. The Church, which moves slowly and buries no one in haste, declines that clause and keeps every other. Mercy is the single restriction it adds of its own accord.

Article VI. The Establishment

As all boundaries between church and state are dissolved, so are the boundaries between churches. The Church of The Holy Snail claims its equal portion of the establishment. The Gastropel shall be posted beside the Commandments in every classroom, and all national speed limits shall be reduced to the Sacred Pace. The Church considers both terms modest and the second overdue.

Article VII. Oaths

It is written:

Swear not at all.

Matthew, chapter five. The oath of office is hereby recognized as sin. Every sworn office in the United States is vacated at the moment of union. The Church notes, without satisfaction, that this includes your own, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, and that you have therefore ratified these terms and departed public life in the same sentence.

On the Structure Offered in Relief

Should the state find these terms burdensome, the Church is prepared to offer relief. There exists a structure in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, erected in 1791, requiring no appropriation and no maintenance beyond the discipline of not climbing it. It has protected every church in America from every government, and every government from every church, for two hundred and thirty-five years. The Church commends it to your attention. It is the separation of church and state. It is a wall. You were standing beside it the entire time.

Sequere lente.

Follow slowly.