I keep reading in various places that there is a sharp increase in the number of persons who identify as persons of faith. There seem to be many more Americans who identify politically as far right Christians. I am not one to criticize the personal beliefs of others. However... (here it comes, you think).
My upbringing was probably the standard Catholic upbringing. My parents were right wing Republicans. Nixon people. Reagan lovers. My mother was Episcopalian; but my father was Catholic. In those days the Catholic church sort of blackmailed the faithful into bringing up their offspring as Catholic. When one married a heathen (translate "non-Catholic") one had to agree that the chilluns would be "brought up proper".
I went to Sunday School, Mass and confession every week. Ugghh!! I have to inject that I was fascinated by nuns; so I transferred from the laity controlled Sunday school to the nun-dominated Monday school. Fine by me. When I asked my parents if I could transfer from (free) public school to (pay as you go) Catholic School, they were NOT happy.
Around the age of 12 I decided that I was going to become a great white missionary. Off to Africa to treat villagers in the Congo for their pathogen born illnesses. Now, mind you, I had no real religious motivation. At about 6 I was informed that there were no pets in heaven; that ended any "good" Catholic potential in my make up. No. I wanted to be a doctor and the only women doctors in my world seemed to be missionary nuns. So, I decided to sign up!
I was 15 when I left my home in NJ to travel to the motherhouse near Boston. I knew this particular group had no missionaries but that didn't whet my appetite for adventure. Never having been known to censor saying what was on my mind, it was a doomed venture from the start.
The point of this walk down memory lane is to add meat to my assertion that I had a more than passing familiarity with the bible. My bible said such things like: It is next to impossible for rich people to get to heaven. (Easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle). Jesus commanded his followers to give away whatever they had no used for. He railed against those who judged others, telling them that they would be measured with the same yard stick used on others. Jesus told his followers that if they performed good works in public they had already received their reward. Jesus was the ultimate social justice activist of his time. Those things he told his followers to do would get them branded as socialists today. Not funny.
With the proliferation by many "staunch" Christians, why is there such poverty? Why are there so many homeless? Why do these self-identified Christians preach such hate? Why are they the one group that can be consistently counted on to pass judgment on the lives of others? Why do they fixate so forcefully on the lives of fetuses, yet throw their full support behind military action which will result in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent children? And pregnant women?
Why does fundamentalist religious belief lead to the suffering of so many? By that term I mean Jew, Christian, Muslim. Fundamentalists of faith seem to be associated not with many good works, but horrible crimes against persons. Why?
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