James, Thank you for writing the comment and let me say I'm so very sorry that you have to even write the story you did. It sickens me and leaves almost speechless when people treat others with such cruelty. And as a pastor, it angers me that far too many people act cruel in the name of faith. As you all too well know, this is not anything new and has been going on for far too long. That's not an excuse for it of course. Religion can be a wonderful thing, offering a sense of community, meaning, purpose and service to others, especially those in poverty and those outcast from the rest of society. And religion can be abusive, cruel, oppressive and deadly too. History and even now show that over and over.
What I've been looking at lately is how belief systems end up coming to conclusions that justify cruelty. My simplistic explanation is that when there is more concern with being right and having "correct" belief than seeing the Image of God in others lending itself to a system of control and concern with order - meaning it becomes more authoritarian in outlook. It focuses on us vs. them. It seeks out purity of thought (and elsewhere). It becomes obsessed with moral codes to judge those deemed outsiders in order to make the insiders seem "holy" and pure. It takes on the creeds of every empire that ever existed - the ends justify the means, might makes right, and the strong survive. Maybe a fourth creedal belief could be added - the cruelty is the point.
From what I can tell, we can point to the Puritans for so much of this in the American context. Although they were just copying what others had done before them. The Puritans weren't interested in religious freedom. If they were, they would stayed in the Netherlands when they left England. But they didn't like religious freedom. They wanted the freedom to impose their religion on others, so they came to North America where they could do that, in economic partnership with trade companies who could make a profit off of them. Money and evil systems go hand in hand. They always have. What happens today is just the continuation of what the Puritans brought here with them. Again, that's not a justification of what people do. And like other cancers (such as racism), it has deep roots in American Christianity. Robert P Jones has written several excellent books on that topic. And I recommend "The Evangelicals" by Francis Fitzgerald as a great source on the history and formation of Evangelicalism in America. Combine this with America's natural bent towards conspiracy theories (which you can read about in "The United States of Paranoia" by Jesse Walker) and for me I started to see themes that help me understand why so much of this continues.
Keep up the good work James. Blessings to you.
