Bob Gersztyn, who describes himself as an acid-dropping hippie from the sixties, is the winner of the February Indulgence Awards, the coveted document from the Doorkeeper granting 7,777 days off your Purgatory sentence for the Best Freelance Article of the Month. (Only freelancers are eligible. Everyone working in the office has to do their time until liberated by Luther, and Luther is dead.)
Gersztyn wrote “Jesus and Larry and Me [1],” the heartfelt essay on his 37-year experience with the late Christian rocker Larry Norman, first as a devoted fan and then as a member of his entourage and finally as a friend who could never be sure of his place in Larry’s heart. In the course of working on the piece, Bob read for the first time the 1976 Door interview with Larry Norman [2], and he decided to clear up a common myth about the Jesus Movement:
“In that interview Larry says the same thing believed by Barry McGuire another singer, originally with the New Christy Minstrels, later the first anti-war singer, since 1971 a gospel artist [3]. About four years ago I pissed off Barry so much that he broke off our interview, before it ever got started, and it was when I started to talk about drugs. I was an acid-dropping Hippie in the 60's, and I know that the Jesus Movement [4] happened because of this, because it's what led me and everyone I knew to religion. LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and marijuana created the Jesus Movement. Larry says in his interview that it didn't. He's wrong. 
I was part of it, and so was everyone that I knew in LA, and Calvary Chapel, including all the groups from Maranatha. Chuck Girard dropped acid over 500 times, he told me in an interview that will never get published. Keith Green accepted Jesus on acid. Odin Fong of Mustard Seed Faith took 100 doses of LSD and saw Jesus in the desert. Mike MacIntosh, one of the key ministers from Calvary Chapel, became a Christian as a result of a bad LSD trip.”
And now that we’ve straightened that out, we can name the Lesser Indulgences for February:
First runner-up: John Green receives three weeks of not having to go to confession for his inspired revelation that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is actually Yusuf Islam [5], the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, in disguise. John also unearthed Ted Haggard’s letter from rehab [6] in Arizona, confessing his weak yet heterosexual spiritual state.
Second runner-up: Jennifer Morrow receives a lifetime exemption from Hail Marys, which she won’t really need because her article, “You Know You’re Too Jewish [7],” was made possible only by the fact of her being the token Door Jew.
Third runner-up: Dave Werther’s “Praying at Burger King [8],” an expert parody on the pop-culture spiritualism of Richard Mouw, has been deemed the equivalent of three pilgrimages to Lourdes, which he is now free to replace with three pilgrimages to Las Vegas.
Fourth runner-up: Al Speegle Jr. gets automatic forgiveness for any sin involving a topless bar in return for his two articles, one revealing Benny Hinn’s email investment prospects [9], and another announcing the new Mo Willems children’s book, Don’t Let the Pigeon Girl Preach! [10]
Fifth runner-up: Door veteran Dale Dobson is granted beachfront property in the afterlife as a result of his take on faith-based sales pitches, “God Doesn’t Suck But His Vacuum Sure Does [11].”
If you want to ensure your place in Satire Heaven, you should send those articles to Bob Darden [12], who compiles an impressive spiral notebook that is periodically submitted to the Door Sanhedrin, which deliberates and pontificates and plays Pin The Tail on the Freelancer in order to create that special Literary Frito Pie that we call The Wittenburg Door.