see, this is really the problem. i responded to chuck in the first place on this thread in its early incarnation (;-), and i should have let it go. i guess i thought that if you say stupid shit like, " If you believe in stupid shit like Santa Claus or Jesus, you ought to be confronted about it", you ought to be confronted about it. but in the end, it doesn't matter any more that i confront chuck than that chuck challenges every christian he meets to some pseudo-intellectual duel about the relative merits of belief in santa claus and belief in a christian god.
the truth is, as kelley and carrol rightly point out, many (if not most) people who do organizing in fact do work with religious people and often use churches for meeting places (we did when i was doing union organizing and miscellaneous social justice stuff around it in grad school). i can't even tell you how much stuff i used to get in new haven and chicago where groups were meeting in churches. so, in that respect, it belies chuck's question.
and i'm still trying to figure out exactly what chuck thinks "doing more to stop the fundamentalist extremists" means (or what giving "some soft christians a free pass" means, for that matter). but i'm not confronting him about it, since that clearly doesn't work. i'm just still trying to figure it out. he accepted yoshie's suggestion about education, except he said it's not enough, and that "direct action gets the goods". now, surely chuck shouldn't feel the need to convince me of anything. but i'd be happy to work on direct action in opposition to fundamentalist religion (or, let's say, in opposition to fundamentalist activity) if i had a better idea what the actions might look like and exactly what the goods might be.
j
-- I have come to the conclusion that revolutions aren't profitable.
- Kevin Kelly