[Here is an article as it originally appeared in Phoenix which is still valid today, yet never has been classified.] All of us, to one degree or another, have an engram or a mental picture that we associate with the words, "The King". Be that memory one of Babe Ruth, the King of Swat, or just Martin Luther King, the responses to a questioner asking what each of us associate with that phrase could possibly be as numerous as the number of people answering, depending upon where and who you ask. The results given to the questioner might change were one to alter the word association to where it read "King of the World". Suddenly, where before, everyone in the test would smile slightly, perhaps reflect momentarily in a private place inside themselves, when you alter the question to where it encompasses the entire world, the pauses grow longer, the answers perhaps will become more personally meaningful. At least, until today, I believed that was true, placed a great deal of faith in that. For, as strange as it might seem, I grew up in a stern, unyielding belief in the God that _personally_ dwelled in the First Christian Church. This wasn't just ANY ordinary half-assed God, either. The wishy-washy God that hid behind Mary's skirts in the Catholic church couldn't even hold a candle to the CHRISTIAN god that came down and dwelled among us each Sunday morning between 10:15 when Helen Jones started playing the Doxology for all she was worth. Nor could our God EVER be the half-hearted intellectually superior hoity-toity hot shot god of the Unitarians, either, for they spent entirely too much time trying to explain God away. The Presbyterian and Lutheran God--well, everyone in my home town held them pretty much suspect, no matter how you looked at it, since they were held by most of our parishioners to be half-baked Catholics to begin with, and Martin Luther be damned. Ours was a kick-ass, King of the World, take control kind of God, which is probably why under the pressures of growing up in such a small town, in the presence of such a heavy duty albeit weekly God, you either joined the church pretty damned quick after your 15th birthday or else waited, rejoicing in your sin and deprivation, until you could totter quietly off to The Roadside Inn, a notorious liquor bar up the street and over two blocks, where you fell into the gin and were never heard from again. To this day, that early, pre-adolescent, pre-pubescent vision of the Divine as a hoary, all-powerful but strangely loving deity that came down, hand over hand, from atop the 60 foot steeple of the First Christian Church each Sunday to personally take charge of our collective souls still persists. No doubt, the belief persists to this day, that our all-avenging, all-seeing God of love not only came down after the Doxology was played on Sunday morning to listen to our sniveling, but tiptoed back by on Wednesday night for Prayer Meeting, just to make certain that we weren't already halfway down the street to The Roadside Inn, for despite his eternal love, if nothing else, God HATED backsliders. Although back in those days, neither God nor the Church Elders ever conceived of talk radio, or at least it never trickled down through channels to where I sat, huddled in the back row with the snoring old men. In fact, other than a those cherished times when old Wally Brewster started farting up a storm in his sleep, things were pretty mundane in the back row of the church. One didn't want to press their luck with such a fearsome God, after all. Back then, WMAQ radio was good for the morning crop reports, hog and beef prices and a few tunes to start your clod-hopping, god-fearing day off with a bang. Today, in Chicago, if you mention WMAQ-Radio, you are talking about one of the top talk-show radio stations in the entire nation. Every morning, during the commute rush hour, a series of topics chosen by Al Dunbar, the host of the morning show, are discussed as people wend and weave their way into the Loop for yet another workday while, downstate, the farmers go out to greet yet another day on the land. Although the farm reports still can be heard at 5:00 AM each morning, there are no more jazzy tunes, nor Don McNeil's Breakfast Club to set righteous farmers' toes to tapping. Judging by the fare, only the unrighteous and godless need apply. Perhaps that is why Al Dunbar chose "Is Michael Jordan the King of the World?" for his show's theme yesterday morning, as the fitful springtime sunshine tried to peer through the rush hour smog at the City of Chicago. Or was it that the day before, Dunbar had met with his show's producers and discovered that they had slipped a few points on the popularity meter while they were otherwise distracted? After all, the entire City of Chicago must be really buzzing with the incredible feats of Jordan on the comeback trail, leading the Bulls basketball team into victory after victory, breaking his own record for the most points scored in one game after a two year hiatus from the sport that involves throwing a piece of pigskin through a hoop. The question of the day on Monday must have startled even Dunbar, for instead of a torrid load of properly god-fearing righteous wrath, the responses promoted Michael Jordan from his real-life status as a gifted, high-visibility professional athlete to the King of the World in less than the two hours it took most commuters to travel from the suburbs into Chicago, by whatever means. When the percentages were counted, Michael Jordan was King of the World by 53% to a paltry 21% for that god-fearing multitude of people who had ever met the fearsome, all-powerful Deity that I once knew at the First Christian Church, with Michael Jackson, Latoya Jackson and Richard Simmons bringing up the rear. Had the phones stopped ringing right then and there, somewhere between the Damned Ryan Expressway turnoff for the Loop and the Tri-State Tollway turnoff for Gary, Indiana and points east of the smog, perhaps this tale would never be told. The phones didn't stop ringing. At two o'clock this afternoon, WMAQ radio finally had to plead with the hordes of downstate farmland listeners who, upon hearing of the morning show's impromptu ballot, took it upon themselves to call long-distance, even after the Dunbar show had left the air. Each person sought to express their opinion of the show, to express their concern about a world gone crazy or just, perhaps, to talk of the god they knew, that once lived in an old church steeple and came down each Sunday morning to sit with common farming folk and listen to their fears. Tomorrow's topic for the Dunbar Road Show? How Religion Changed your Life. One cannot help but wonder if the all-fearful Deity didn't climb down off the church steeple and prod somebody where they were most vulnerable. Comments, anyone?