You’d think that the religion that had survived the Roman Empire, the Inquisition, and all the Crusades would have a little more backbone. But maybe it’s a denominational thing. The US Southern Baptist Convention is apparently working up an “exit strategy” to extract their children from the crippling influence of the American public education system. Normally, I would oppose any group withdrawing from the public arena based on opposing viewpoints, but in this case I can make a huge hypocritical exception. Christians, begone!
If you are so upset and frothing at the mouth at the very idea that people live in ways you don’t approve of and raise kids in those lifestyles and don’t adhere to your idiotic belief that a Guy In The Sky is watching you and testing you and waiting for your soul at the end of your life, I say you AND your spawn should feel free to separate yourselves from the American community as much as you want. I’m disappointedly reminded too often that there are a large number of Americans that believe (and I mean BELIEVE) what’s written in a 2,000+ year old book instead of scientifically proven studies and empirical data that disproves almost all of the content of that book with hard evidence and neutral logic.
There is no data to suggest that home-schooled children are worse off than those children in the public school system. In fact, studies show that home-schooled children are slightly better test-takers, have a stronger concept of self, and are just as likely to socialize with their peers in after-school settings. What bothers me is this Christian mindset of us-against-them. This is, to me, the major cause of much of the conflict in American society, as the Christian majority attempts to impose their faith and their values and their rules upon a culture that is supposed to be all-inclusive and religion-neutral. Atheists and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and Zoroastrians shouldn’t have to fight against their Christian neighbors for the rights enshrined in the Consitution that guarantee freedom.
If these Baptists want to remove their children from the pit of despair that is the public school system, I really have no problem with that. But it speaks of their larger failure to be a group of people that is willing to take part in the American experience, which is to know your neighbor who is different from you. And that’s not just supposed to be an American value, it is supposed to be a Christian value as well. I guess members of those other faiths will have to learn their Christianity from those Christians who aren’t afraid to send their kids to school with Jews and Muslims and even, God forbid, atheists.
Someone dropped the ball at the AP recently. And I mean REALLY dropped the ball. This venerable organization that I have, until now, respected very much has gone ahead and played spokesperson/cheerleader/sympathizer with the soldier funeral protesters who are constantly marring the burials of American GIs killed in action. While I’m focusing on this group as part of the unfortunately vocal and publicized true face of Christianity, don’t think that my disgust for this group and the AP for supporting them is unfounded. Here is a quote from Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, the founder of this “church”:
[quote]”We’ve got a job to do. Our job is to cause America to know her abomination. We’ve got to put the cup of the fury and wrath of God to the lips of this nation and make them drink it.”[/quote]
“The cup of the fury and wrath of God” Hilarity like that can’t just be made up on the spot. Someone worked on that gem for a good while before finding the comedic sweet spot. Because when I think of God, not only am I dumb enough to think that the all-powerful deity of legend actually spends time hating on individual humans for things like sex, I’m also gullible enough to believe that God is so lacking for a reliable spokesperson that he calls an ignorant redneck conservative pool of santorum like Fred Phelps to duty.
On the plus side, Congress hasn’t been totally inept like it has been on so many other important issues. Phelps and Friends will soon be running headlong into state and federal laws prohibiting his little parties. I’m just disappointed that it took so long, and that organizations like the AP decided that instead of reporting on the events that they would basically gift a hateful group like this with an “article” like they did.
That piece was written so strongly pro-Phelps that I can’t help but wonder if some editor wasn’t on vacation while a reporter took advantage and published a forbidden piece that otherwise would have been refused. That’s the only explanation I can think of for the Associate Press to be running that article. It’s so full of opinion and lacking anything that even looks like an opposing viewpoint. Hate like that deserves no platform like the one the AP generously donated to “the cause”. But who knows, maybe the reporter is a member of the church who can’t really make it to all the chanting and sign-waving in front of the memorials for fallen soldiers, so he decided that his mandatory donation could be encapsulated in this ass-kissing “expose” of Fred Phelps and his family/church/mobile-mental-hospital.
Maybe I am over-reacting, but if that piece outraged you like it did me, be sure to let the Associated Press know how you feel by writing a letter to the editor and expressing your thoughts.