AMERICA'S CHRISTIANS LOST THEIR WAY

HAVE AMERICA CHRISTIANS LOST THEIR WAY?






America's Christianity lost its way when Christians failed to live the true heart of Christianity: "Love one another...love your enemy...treat others as you wish to be treated..." Even in pre-Civil Rights days, the 1950's and back, the element of pure hatred in Christianity was only in the South in America which was called “The Bible Belt”.

During the 1960's when America was divided over rights for all Black Americans, Martin Luther King, a minister, led the way but white Christians, especially in "The Bible Belt" joined those with hate signs and the KKK.  Some carried signs like "Protect Our Christian Schools."  The hate continued when The Equal Rights Amendment for women entered the scene.  That hate grew very bitter when discussions linked "women's rights to their own body to the possibility of even having abortions". 

Church leaders led the war of hate and it grew totally out of sync with reason and violated Jesus’ example of Christian love.  It became the hate from hell when the word “homosexual’ was spoken in the same breath as “human rights, civil rights, right to marry”.  That hate used to be on the fringes of American society and culture; now, statistically, it is in mainstream America.  Yes, the hate screams from the center of “mainstream America’; that is, it screams its ugliness from the churches across America.

As a child in a Baptist and a Methodist church during the 1940's,  I thought I heard teachings about the Love of Jesus and his commandment that we should all love one another as we love ourselves and as God loves us.  In the 1960's the messages from the pulpit and teachings became angry and critical of other people.  Judgmental attitudes by both church members and outsiders became more and more hostile.

Christians and Catholics in the South turned Republican and the South was no longer called The Bible Belt after the Civil Rights Act was signed.  Bigotry with its judgmentalism, anger and hatred exploded with the Roe V Wade issue and led to murders and assaults while none of the churches chastised those who spread the hatred and bigotry.  When Americans whose romantic hearts chose to love specific persons of the same gender, began to ask for civil rights, the hatred and bigotry, like volcanoes. Covered the whole country and young homosexual men and women are still dying because of it. 

I keep hoping somewhere in America that there are churches and individual Christians who will stand up and speak and take actions to show abhorrence against the Christians who continue to spew hate.  The bigots must be stopped from spreading their hate against beautiful straight people like Elizabeth Edwards and every homosexual man and woman.

Now, in 2011, some conservative Christian organizations are so filled with hate toward homosexuals that they are stupid enough to NOT attend the Conservative Political  Action Conference to voice their views and have a chance to cast straw votes for the next Republican conservative presidential candidate.  Such hatred of a minority of American citizens, the homosexuals, is officially shown by the Christian's Family Research Council, the American Family Foundation and the Heritage Foundation.  Such Christians in America have profoundly lost the way of Christian love demanded of their God, Jesus the Christ.  He accepted all persons and never taught His followers to hate.

Denominations, churches and individuals with Christian integrity acting with Christian love have the power to stop the hate and bigotry.  If they will speak with one voice from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from the borders at Canada and Mexico, they can halt the ugliness of hate and bigotry.  That was proven when their voices stopped the Florida church pastor from burning the Koran, Muslim’s Holy Book, on September 11, 2010.  America so needs the powerful, loving words of God to be spoken as one great voice to stop the horror of hate and bigotry.

Will any ever take a stand?  Or, am I correct:  Christians have lost their way.

(Thankfully, 300 indivuduals from facebook appeared there to block the ugly hate-filled signs of Westboro Baptist church at Mrs. Edwards' funeral. So few, when there are supposedly millions of Christians in America.  But, where are they?)