Religion and Prejudice

Over at Skippy's, Pudentilla reads about the homobigot Anglican separatists and gets biblical on their asses.

I'm not a believer and never have been. I was, however, raised seeing the positive potential of faith. My parents are both deeply religious, and over the years their faith has motivated them to do things like move us all to Mississippi in 1965 to work for civil rights.

I've also seen the other kind. The Fred Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson kind. The kind that refuses to sit down and eat with somebody who thinks differently than they do.

My parents believe in something bigger than all of us; so do the radical reactionaries in the Anglican church. And what I figure is the difference comes down to this: for some people, belief in something bigger is a way to transcend petty human prejudices, and for some it's a way to rationalize them.

It's not 100% one way or the other--I'd be lying if I claimed my folks didn't have their blind spots around religion, and some seriously crazy fundamentalists are also motivated to genuinely decent and selfless acts. Read the gospels and you can see Jesus being all about the former while still in some ways tied down to the latter. Most people who genuinely believe probably have some of both.

Still: the difference is there.

It's something to keep in mind whenever somebody talks about reaching out to communities of faith. There's one kind of faith we can cut a deal with, and there's one kind we can't, and it's important to be able to tell the difference.

[That's all, folks]