While reading through Towleroad yesterday, I ran across a link that gave me hope that not all religious folks are solely small-minded bigots persecuting everyone who is different from them: http://www.clergyformarriage.com/read.html. After scanning the site, I was reminded that surely these were the values that religion claimed to have been about: Love. Forgiveness. Freely Giving. And Peaceful actions. Surely, it's these people that I would hope to meet, if I were so inclined to seek more information about my own spirituality(which I'm certainly not), inside the four walls of a church, synagogue or mosque. After all, I grew up in crappy small-town American full of white(trash) Christians and remember most of their religious teachings (on the surface) being about kindness towards one another, peace, love and (at least) a little tolerant of others (I'm not implying the people actually lived by these teachings, not by any means, but from what I vaguely recall, the instructions weren't overtly politically charged and certainly never ventured outside the pews). What's happened in the past 20 years that has made the average American Christian and their institutions so biased and hate-filled? Ah, of course, political power and the threat of the loss of control, as specifically experienced by the Catholic Church.
Oh, and somewhat of a tangent, but for your radar screen, Bobby Jindal. Apparently, besides being the newly elected Republican Governor of Louisiana, he's one of the next Christian Conservative Southern stars. Poor guy's parents were Indian immigrants who moved to Louisiana, where he was born, grew up, and obviously, endlessly ridiculed for being different. He became a stanch (convert) conservative Catholic, likely to be accepted, and definitely, to become a political hopeful.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment