Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
I’ve always been intrigued by other religions. Being raised Southern Baptist, I grew up well assured that “we” were totally normal and “they” were, let’s just say, different (and, for that matter, going straight to hell). “We” got all dressed up to get dunked in a big bathtub embedded in the church wall above the alter. We drank Welch’s grape juice out of skinny little jiggers and called it the blood of Christ. We donned long cotton skirts in the summer and took bus treks into the interior of Mexico to entice the local muchachos to escuela de la Biblica, spreading the gospel according to Jesus (Hey Sous).
“They” were the Moonies and Hare Krishnas I encountered at various airports and sporting events, foisting their pamphlets and top-knots and hand-twisted flowers in my face. The Hasidic Jews I gawked at with their yamakas and long dark beards and old world jackets. They were my buddies, the Catholics, rhythmically counting rosary beads, purging their sins to men behind screens, praying to statues (and sometimes potato chips and water stains) and relying on the concept of God’s waiting room, purgatory. They were the red door Episcopalians and those Jews. Shhh. It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned that “Jew” wasn’t an insult. Imagine my surprise when someone broke the news to me that Jesus was a Jew.
I’ve held my breath around Muslims bent to the ground on their knees, the original compass. Then I was greeted with Tom Cruise shrieking like a banshee on Oprah because he was in love with a girl and a lucrative religion called Scientology. Certainly can’t leave out those Mormons with their door-to-door missionaries dressed like dinner waiters, the off-shoot of the LDS with their multiple wives (some of whom have actually reached puberty). And the Church of Christ has acted as such a universal repellent to the thinking man that most of my favorite atheists got their formal training within their walls.
All in the name of God. Or Allah, Jesus, Jehovah, Buddha – the list is infinite. Each worshiper feeling divinely inspired and righteous in finding the one true path and each one looking askant at other worshipers who have yet to see the light of their personal god. And in these parts, it’s Jesus. So prevalent is Christianity that newspapers print unintelligible religious tirades on their opinion pages and politicians wrap themselves in the Bible and refuse to honor the separation of church and state – even though it was offered as religious protection to them.
And they don’t see the irony. Our crafty governor hosts exclusionary prayer rallies with religious hate groups and inserts his god into the Texas pledge of allegiance. Can you imagine the bedlam had the paper printed an opinion piece stating that we are all children of Allah, quoting the Quran, or if the government placed a menorah on our currency? It’s not going to happen. Nor should it. Religion has it’s place – in churches and temples and synagogues. In homes and hearts. But not in public and certainly not in politics.
Man is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.
– Mark Twain
