Church & State

My good friend Lynn in New York sent me an editorial from The New York Times about the fact that evangelical thrillers, ones that portray the Christian God as vindictive, vengeful against non-believers, have become best-sellers in the United States. She is a High Priestess in the Wiccah religion. From what I have seen from knowing her and other Wiccah practitioners here, it is a contemplative religion focusing on understanding and helping oneself and others. (You can’t complain about that!) I’ve always been a part of some minority, in religion and in career choice: born into a Jewish family, practicing Buddhism now, full-time painter. It feels normal not to “fit in” to a majority rule.

The article she sent me was written by Nicholas D. Kristof, entitled Jesus and the Jihad, parts of which I have quoted below. Kristof says

If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire……..These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide…….. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit.......................People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don't think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels.

That's not what America stands for, and I doubt that it's what God stands for.

Canada was not founded on religious need as was the United States. Although there are pockets of intolerance which are scary, there is not the overall Christian-religious dominance here in politics. Physical survival is more a basis of the government contract. That gives us a “free” medical service (we pay, in taxes) and gay marriage rights and a growing depth of literary achievement. Not a bad state of affairs, for the most part.

Posted by leya at August 24, 2004 08:23 PM