The war against slovenliness

The church sitting catty-corner from the former sushi place was the tallest building in Rosslyn, Virginia, not so long ago. It bears the cross and flame logo the Methodists adopted in 1968, the same year a local lumber yard donated the plot in the heart of Southern Baptist territory. Locals affixed a Catholic nickname to the brutalist structure perched above a filling station, “Our Lady of Exxon.” The tongue of fire engulfing the cross is the same hue as the neon informing passersby that Regular Gas is $3.399 per gallon ($3.949 if you pay by card).

Things have changed in what was once a sleepy outpost of Georgetown. The gas station is now a Sunoco, and the Arlington Temple United Methodist Church may be the most perfect symbol of the GOP that was. Its five-story spire is now dwarfed by the Nestlé building, the twin towers hosting Politico, the numerous tinted-window offices occupied by State Department and CIA contractors, and the high-rise apartments built to house their employees. The Bush family once owned a condo across the street from the church-cum-filling station, though it’s unclear if our nation’s third Methodist president attended services there. In January, the county received an application to demolish it to make way for more architectural mistakes.

Methodist founder John Wesley preached universalism — the idea that everyone will go to heaven, even me — and somehow, that is only the second most heretical doctrine he espoused. He once delivered a sermon condemning fanciful attire and pearls, but the only thing anyone remembers from it is “cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.” And since then, at least, parents have found themselves drafted into the war against slovenliness.

The order will be delivered from high command when the hampers and wastebaskets have overflowed with items that do not belong in either place. There is generally a precipitating event — the discovery of ants in the closet and the attendant candy wrappers, say, or the crash of a chandelier mid-afternoon baseball nap as a bunk-bed bungee-jumping experiment goes awry. The sleeping giant’s bark will be greeted with indifference. For the next fifteen minutes, the house will fill with the sounds of laughter, bedtime and cleaning being the only two time periods when bickering siblings play nicely. Do not be fooled: this diversionary tactic is not unlike the peace that precedes a prison riot.

As a father you are part prison guard, three parts beat cop. During first inspection, it is crucial to flip over the mattress to find all the contraband. There you will unearth every AAA battery, the research report that was due last month and every library book that was due last decade, your lighter, keys and Social Security card, and no fewer than three permanent markers and two half-eaten string cheeses. The older children know the mattress trick and will opt for either the desk or underwear drawer.

With hide-and-seek finished, phase two commences. For the next half hour there will be a rush of pitter-patter and whispered oaths and threats. The chandelier will quake but not crash. You will return upstairs after the laughter resumes. All that industry has transformed each bedroom floor into a California city sidewalk. The debris is piled without regard to good sense or taste, and has migrated into the hallway as well. This is progress. You are no longer a prison guard but a beat cop. “You got anything in here that’s going to stick me?” you ask. Sure enough, there are scissors and a knife still covered in peanut butter that looks fresh from the jar even though you saw its residue on those missing library books. You make a mental note that the seed-oil skeptics may be on to something and return to the ballgame.

Phase three is where the payoff comes. Having put everything in a pile, your children can concentrate on separating clean clothes from dirty ones, keepsakes from garbage, and bedsheets from books. The whispered oaths and threats remain, but there will be no laughter. This phase can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and is not complete until your boldest child enters the den and says, “Can we go play outside?” You will grant this request for the sake of your chandelier. With the urchins outdoors you are ready to retrieve the wastebaskets, bring down the laundry, and assess the blood and seed-oil splatter on the walls if you forgot to confiscate the scissors or knife. Everything is back under the mattress or in the underwear drawer. Cleanliness is not next to godliness, for God is in control.

You are back in Arlington now, outside that sushi restaurant. Even with demolition looming, Wesley’s successors have taken his message to heart. There is a bit of rust on the spire, but the concrete pillars and coarse white bricks look as if they were powerwashed yesterday. That is to be expected. Arlington’s population increased 57 percent between 1980 and 2020; the number of Methodists declined by 61 percent. The Bush family sold its condo a few years back. It’s easy to keep things clean when there are no children around.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 2024 World edition.