> Isn't this a comfy stereotype for lefties? Apart from the brimstone
> crowd --
> always delirious -- I've noticed in my travels extended tolerance
> toward
> Muslims, Buddhists, What-Have-You-ists from Christians and Jews (and
> most
> Buddhists I've known were/are Jewish).
(This one was a Quaker. Nevertheless...)
> The country is a bit more fluid and
> complicated than is sometimes represented here, where, if you took some
> posters' words seriously, you'd think we were under a Christian Nazi
> boot
> with barely enough room to breathe much less speak. For every
> knuckle-dragger, I'm willing to wager that there are 10 sensible
> people of
> faith.
I am somehow reminded of the public service ad I used to hear on the radio when I was a kid -- it went something like, "You go to your church and I'll go to mine, but we'll all walk along together."
I'm not sure the average (Christian) American's religious tolerance has advanced all that much since then. Granted that, in a short ad like that, it wasn't possible to say "You go to your church, synagogue, temple, mosque, etc., etc.", but still, it was pretty much assumed back then, at least in the "heartland," that any sensible person in this country was probably a Christian, and preferably a Protestant -- Kennedy got a pretty rough treatment in 1960 for his Catholicism, and of course there was not a little anti-Semitism.
As you say, the situation is rather fluid and complicated, and is certainly quite different in rural Alabama or North Dakota from New York City or San Francisco. But one thing is still pretty clear -- you can't be an atheist or agnostic, or even probably a Buddhist, and run for office successfully, especially offices above the very local ones. It's interesting to watch Dean twisting and turning these days (poor guy, slipping up to the extent of calling Job a book of the New Testament).
I am also reminded of the incident Bertrand Russell experienced when he was being incarcerated for one of his CD activities; the jailer (or "gaoler," I guess it should be in his case) asked him his religion, he replied "Atheist" or "Agnostic" (I can't remember which), and the reply was, "Well, we all worship God in our own way, sir."
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)