ABSTRACT
The story goes like this: Marge and Homer take some time for themselves and leave Bart, Lisa, and Maggie with Grandpa. Agents from child welfare discover the children running amok and place them into foster care with the neighbors. The new foster father, Ned Flanders, faints upon hearing that the children have never been baptized, so he packs up the children and his own family and heads for the Springfield River. Homer, missing the point, panics because “in the eyes of God they’ll be Flanderseses.” At the river, Homer pushes Bart out of “harm’s way,” and the baptismal water falls on his own head. When Bart asks him how he feels, Homer responds, in an uncharacteristically pious voice, “Oh, Bartholomew, I feel like St Augustine of Hippo after his conversion by Ambrose of Milan.” When Ned Flanders gasps, “Homer, what did you just say?” Homer replies nonchalantly, “I said shut your ugly face, Flanders!” The moment of spiritual inspiration has passed, and the children are back with their parents, unbaptized and safe (“Home Sweet Home-Diddily-Dum-Doodily”).1
