Recovering Religionists

Here's an interesting article that appeared in the Kansas City Star this morning. It's about a support group for people who have come out of the closet.

Not the same closet gays come out of, but one that can be equally destructive to a person's health and well being. Well, not equally destructive because people rarely get beat up or killed for saying they don't believe in the Christian God. Except in the case of the Christian terrorists who have killed doctors and bombed health care clinics.

What I find interesting about this support group is that there is a need for a support group. Only in America, right? Or in a fundamentalist Islamic country. The article said that 16% of Americans say they are not believers in a controlling supernatural force. That's a big increase. However, that's low when compared to European countries. I don't have any statistics at hand but have read in the recent past that even with the stronger influence of the Catholic Church in Europe, fewer people there are believers than here.

Declaring yourself to be a non-Christian can be difficult in the U.S. It can affect your job, and you will get obscene, anonymous phone calls, and depending on where you live, you may experience vandalism on your property. Most younger people who live in more progressive, urban areas of the U.S. probably are not aware of the strength of religious fundamentalism throughout the Bible Belt areas of the country. At the extreme, it can lead to terrorism and murder; on a milder level to social ostracism.

I think there is a human need to belong, and that's why organizations like this support group are in existence. There's even a humanist organization that has Sunday morning meetings in places that seem close to churches but without the dogma or beliefs. It's as if many non-believers are trying to say: Hey, we're just like you, we want a sense of community and we want to do good works...but we can't believe in things that seem weird to us.

There's one religious writer in KC, Vern Barnett, who writes a regular column for the newspaper about religious diversity. He founded the Interfaith Council, which urges respect for all beliefs. Barnett actually wrote a column treating non-belief with the same respect he gives to any set of beliefs. I haven't talked to him in awhile, but I think it's a safe bet he probably got lots of hate mail from the fundamentalists.

What is unfortunate about many brands of Christianity in the U.S. is the evangelical zeal they have. They want everybody to believe as they do. I'm not sure but I'm guessing they justify that by tracing it back to Jesus' time spent wandering around teaching his philosophy and his instructions to his followers to do the same--ie., spread the Word.

However, Buddha lived a longer life than Jesus supposedly lived, and he and his followers wandered around doing the same thing. And today you don't find Buddhists telling you you're going to hell if you don't believe what they believe. They're there and will be happy to tell you what they believe if you want to know. But they don't persecute you if you don't join them. It's a lot easier for me to respect a Buddhist than a fundamentalist Christian. I should add a disclaimer here: I'm talking about fundamentalist Christians, not normal people who try to follow the teachings of Jesus and have respect for all Americans, regardless of race, creed or color. Religion has enabled many people to do good works, but in the wrong hands it has enabled many people to do horrid, evil things. Our society would be better served with more skeptics of all faiths.