Reply #26: I'm one [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Raised Lutheran, became Episcopalian for cultural reasons.

Today I picked up a copy of the quarterly Episcopal newspaper for the state and learned that our bishop and other clergy and clergy from the other mainline denominations, as well as some of the Jewish and Islamic groups, spend a day at the state capitol every year lobbying for justice.

As one of them remarked when a fundamentalist legislator said that the poor should be helped exclusively through voluntary charity, "Charity is all well and good, but God demands a just society."

I wish this article were online, because it's a side of the church hierarchy that you don't hear about often. It sure didn't make the newspapers, and if it did, it didn't get the coverage that every poisonous word of Pat Robertson gets.

So don't think that the mainstream religions aren't out there fighting for good causes. That article is just one example that I know of.

By the way, I hate the way that the fundamentalists have hijacked the term "Christian." Yes, Catholics ARE Christians, as are Episcopalians, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, United Methodists, Presbyterians, and a host of others.

If a fundamentalist argues with you, just tell him/her that fundamentalism is a late nineteenth century American invention and that the majority of Christians in the world take a different approach.

If a fundamentalist asks me if I'm "Christian," I say "yes," because that's the truth, and if they want to assume that I'm their kind, that's their problem. It keeps them from hassling me.

If a secular person asks me, I say, "Yes, I'm a liberal Episcopalian." This usually keeps them from running screaming in the other direction.