Friday, November 05, 2004
Running From the Religious Right
By Elaine Cassel
Many years ago, I ran away from home — Jacksonville, Florida — to Washington, D.C. I had just graduated from high school and had been awarded a full music scholarship to a prestigious Florida performing arts institution.
My departure was unplanned. It was an instinctive gesture that later proved to be my salvation from the religious cult that masqueraded as a Baptist Church. I asked my mother, a convert to the cult, to take me to the airport. She was glad to get rid of me. Years of brainwashing efforts by her, other members of my family, the evil preacher that she worshipped, and the intimidating churchgoers that formed her circle of friends, had not converted me. She reminded me every chance she could that I would burn in hell. Well, it won’t be as bad as living here, I would retort.
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I experienced an immediate sense of physical revulsion. Yes, I had been up late Tuesday night, sitting with friends quietly in front of the television as it became increasingly clear that what we feared would come to pass. Yes, I had had a little too much wine to dull the pain. Yes, I had slept fitfully, if at all, fearful of the future.
The fact that the right-wing bigots who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ but who worship only their own power were going to be a big factor in the election came as a surprise to me — and I, a political junkie, thought I knew a good bit about the campaign. I knew that churches, who ought to lose their tax-exempt status for doing so, were telling their members how to vote. I occasionally listened to the religious Rush Limbaugh’s of religious talk radio. I had read that Bush believed that God chose him to run for office in 2000 (I believe it was James Baker and George Schultz who did so, but I guess the God story tells better). My sisters and their families are still enmeshed in the religion, they and my cousins educated in the Christian madrasas-church schools and universities like Bob Jones that teach hatred and bigotry like other schools teach reading and writing.
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http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/cassel11052004/Being a Born-again Pagan I have much to fear from my fundie relatives too. Hunker down folks and began the resistance from the fundie fascist!