ATHEISTS

I have read recently that the number of atheists in America is increasing. I am not surprised. I believe that this is a reaction to the Fundamentalist Christian movement. Even fifteen years ago I was embarrassed to admit that I was a Christian. I was baptized in infancy and grew up in the Christian Church. That church was what was called a mainline Christian Church. Over the years various preachers began using television and radio as a means of increasing their congregations and increasing their income. Unfortunately, these were not the most highly educated ministers. Some of them had no education at all. They felt that they could read the Bible and tell us what was what. In the last twenty years the fundamentalists have taken over the airwaves totally and most people have come to believe that this is Christianity or that this is religion. World-wide, fundamentalism is in ascendancy. The fundamentalist Muslims have been terrorizing the world. The fundamentalist Jews are very rigid. The Israeli people seem to believe that Judaism is Orthodox Judaism. They do not understand Conservative Judaism or Reform Judaism. Everyone today equates religion with fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism is hard for reasoning people to accept. I never grew up learning fundamentalism and I never believed in those views. My husband did grow up with it and he said that he had to unlearn and relearn what Christianity was all about. Now many people are totally fed up with the various rantings of fundamentalists who are trying to save us all from ourselves. I am also very turned off by the fundamentalists. Some of the problem is due to the fact that pastors of the mainline churches have never tried until recent years to actually educate their congregation about their religious faith. They have been afraid they would lose many of the faithful if they tried to truly educate them. As it is, the mainline churches are in great decline. They are losing their members anyway to the fundamentalists. Education might have prevented some of this. The world is become very complicated and it is upsetting and even terrifying to people. Everyone longs for certainty. Fundamentalism has certainty. But forcing this certainty on everyone is driving many people out of the churches altogether.