Don’t go. You’ll be uncomfortable, and the inevitable altar call will detract from something that should be a happy event for your cousin. Give him a call beforehand to wish him well and offer your sincere apologies for not being able to come. Don’t offer an explanation for your absence; if your cousin presses you for one, tell him you have something urgent in your immediate family; if he pushes further, remind him that Kim the Rhymer is in the hospital.
If it’s appropriate to send flowers, food, or other gifts, by all means do so.
I went because my stepdaughter wanted to go but feels uncomfortable in such venues all alone; my father wasn’t going, and the only one of my sisters who was going was going to be in the choir, so she’d have had to sit by herself. Also because there was a family dinner planned for afterwards and it gave me the excuse to cook, and I like cooking. I made chicken casserole, a chocolate cheesecake, and a couple of dozen home-made rolls.
I didn’t get called out as such during the altar call. However, my uncle did specifically pray for my soul during the pastoral prayer. He did the same to my young first-cousin-once-removed who got in trouble with her parents for refusing to say that she believed a point of doctrine she hasn’t made her made up about.
Oh, and during the after-service family dinner, my uncle shared with my stepdaughter his belief that a woman who has had sex with a man is forever spiritually bound to him. Apparently female bones can absorb semen or something.
But everyone complimented my cooking, and my aunt gave me a book of humorous poetry to give to Kim while she was in the hospital, and I did not in fact go into a murderous rage and kill everyone, and when I told my young cousin about having acquired the complete 12-volume set of History of Middle-Earth, she positively squealed in joy at the idea of being able to read it.
(At my house. She’s not allowed to have any fiction in the house.)
So we’ll call it six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I’m not sure that’s true. I mean, on the one hand I would not have had Batta executed just for being a gossip. On the other hand, I would have let Prince What’s-his-name be executed by his brother without a second thought, on account of being a pussy. Unless his brother pissed me off somehow, of course, in which case I might have just thrown down right there without any proper ceremony, or more likely shived him in the back.