ppatt

You've touched on a favorite topic of mine. Carter had a lot to say about hierarchical, male dominated religious cults in his book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis. How could any thinking man with a daughter not be concerned?

There was not a single rebel or free thinker among my 3 sisters and they suffered for it with respect to self-confidence, career and self-esteem. The unspoken rule that firmly cemented the status quo was that you just don't question or discuss certain things, among them politics and religion (thus my elephant in the living room remarks). However, I never miss a chance to make up for lost time.

Much to the chagrin of my sisters, I recount a story of how I bought some black baby dolls and went around whitebread neighborhoods replacing baby Jesus in the manger scenes with black babies. I engaged 10-14 year old nephews in the Christmas parable of how Christian conservatives falsely claimed that the USPS was keeping the Madonna stamps behind the counter (like pornography !!!) so as not to offend the Muslims and the Jews, adding that a lie from Christians is still a lie. Moms cringed.

My mother got a self-image boost when she went back and finished college at 40. Then there was a short stint at selling real estate but my father freaked when he went out to a restaraunt in town and saw here there with other people.

Personally, I think that the taking of the role of spiritual leader, whether it be on the national scene or in the family always involves a certain element of not questioning the appointment and subsequent decisions in a way that intertiwnes the status quo with failth in such a way that those who question it are labeled heretics.

Within my family, I wear the label proudly.

On the other hand, I feel that there is often good done in the name of Christianity and it is just as wrong to attack them all and lump them into a single group as it is to be racist. I just know the Christians in my family. They all put their pants on one leg at a time and can sometimes be so full of their own BS that it can be a little hard to take. They start believing their own myths about themselves. There is always a fine line between "some" and "all" and an individual gives much away in the way their references to groups of people take shape.

My experience with churches is that groups of humans brought together in the name of Christ are no less susceptible to pettiness, being self-serving, hubris and bigotry than any other group. They can become even more intolerable when they go a long time believing their own BS and not being confronted with it.

Only two major religions recruit, Christianity and Islam. This whole thing about going to hell, not just if you reject Christ as your personal savior, but also if you were denied the opportunity to know him is too bitter a pill for me to swallow. In my last attempt at religion my wife and I were sequestered and shown a video by the associate minister that was freakishly cultish. An Egyptian airliner had mistakenly being shot down by US forces and a woman was lamenting that all those "poor people" were going to hell because they had never had the chance to know Jesus. I suppose that was the moder day equivalent of a Salem witch dunking. I don't think we passed.

Is there any doubt about why Christianity and Islam are now at war? The sad part is that they've done it in the name of America and the rest of us let them do it.

Having said that I can well understand what led Ghandi to make the following statement:

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.