MODERN AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANITY
Blog by Lucy Maness Warner
October 18, 2015



There are three new Fundamentalist ideas that, according to the RationalWiki article below on Dispensationalism, are not based on the Bible at all. That article states, “Some other concepts also not found anywhere in the Bible, which have nonetheless become core beliefs of today's evangelical Christianity: "Pro-life", Accepting Jesus as your "personal savior", and Dominionism.” The following article on Dispensationalism is written by an Evangelical source and gives more specific information on the movement. See “DISPENSATIONALISM” at http://www.endtimes.org/dispens.html, from which the following is an excerpt:

“Since the positions and conclusions in Endtimes.org are in line with the Dispensational System of Theology, or point of view, the terms need to be explained. There is no need to fear these terms. They describe some simple concepts related to our understanding of the Old Testament Covenants and how God will develop His kingdom program. Even if you have negative feelings about the term Dispensationalism, please go through the following brief explanation of what it is. It could be that it has never been clearly explained. Dispensationalism has influenced the doctrinal beliefs of many churches, including the Baptist church, the Bible churches, the Pentecostal churches, and many other non-denominational Evangelical churches. You may even be Dispensational in your thinking although not be calling yourself a Dispensationalist. Christian is always a better term, but terms like Dispensationalist helps to define where we are coming from when it comes to our views on Endtimes and the present and future Kingdom of God.

Definition

•A Dispensation - The system by which anything is administered. In Christian terms, looking back, it refers to a period in history whereby God dealt with man in a specific way. (Conscience, Law, Grace)
•Dispensationalism - A system of theology that sees God working with man in different ways during different dispensations. While 'Dispensations' are not ages, but stewardships, or administrations, we tend to see them now as ages since we look back on specific time periods when they were in force.
•Dispensationalism is distinguished by three key principles.
1 - A clear distinction between God's program for Israel and God's program for the Church.
2 - A consistent and regular use of a literal principle of interpretation
3 - The understanding of the purpose of God as His own glory rather than the salvation of mankind.

Ok, what does this mean in layman's terms. Read on. ….

Dispensationalists will define three key dispensations, (1) The Mosaic Law, (2) The present age of Grace, and (3) the future Millennial Kingdom. Most will agree about the first two, and Covenant theology will disagree about the third, seeing this as the 'eternal state'. (Since they don't see a literal Millennial Kingdom - the future literal fulfillment of the Davidic Kingdom.)

A greater breakdown of specific dispensations is possible, giving most traditional Dispensationalists seven recognizable dispensations.

1.Innocence - Adam
2.Conscience - After man sinned, up to the flood
3.Government - After the flood, man allowed to eat meat, death penalty instituted
4.Promise - Abraham up to Moses and the giving of the Law
5.Law - Moses to the cross
6.Grace - The cross to the Millennial Kingdom
7.Millennial Kingdom - A 1000 year reign of Christ on earth centered in Jerusalem”

. . . .

So what is the key to Dispensationalism?

The literal method of interpretation is the key. Using the literal method of interpreting the biblical covenants and prophecy leads to a specific set of core beliefs about God's kingdom program, and what the future will hold for ethnic Israel and for the Church. We therefore recognize a distinction between Israel and the Church, and a promised future earthly reign of Christ on the throne of David. (The Davidic Kingdom.) This leads a person to some very specific conclusions about the Endtimes.

•Israel must be re-gathered to their land as promised by God.
•Daniel's seventieth week prophecy specifically refers to the purging of the nation Israel, and not the Church. These were the clear words spoken to Daniel. The church doesn't need purging from sin. It is already clean.
•Some of the warnings in Matthew 24 are directed at the Jews, and not the Church (since God will be finishing His plan with national Israel)
•A Pretribulation rapture - Israel is seen in Daniel as the key player during the tribulation, not the Church. God removes the elect when he brings judgment on the world. i.e. Noah, John 14, 1 Thess 4:16.
•Premillennialism - A literal 1000 year Millennial Kingdom, where Christ returns before the Millennium starts. Revelation 20 doesn't give us a reason to interpret the 1000 years as symbolic. Also, Dispensationalists see the promised literal reign of Christ in the OT. Note the chronological order of events between Revelation 19-21.”



MORE ABOUT ZOMBIES, AND THE ORIGIN OF THAT BELIEF. Please pardon the spelling errors. I did not make them. You can insert a “sic” after every one of them if you want to. I didn’t bother. The writer is not a believer in dispensationalism, and thus has some refreshing things to say about modern Fundamentalist Christianity. See below:


http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread264114/pg1

Zombies in the end times? A new twist on the Rapture
posted on Jan, 30 2007

[edit on 23-1-2007 by leira7]

page: 1

I know this might sound crazy but if you here me out, it might make you re-think some things. I have done my research on the Christian perspective of the ends times. Now as some may know, in the past there have been instances where priests or common men have avidly proclaimed that they themselves were able to interpret and shed light on prophetic sections of the bible. I believe that these types of men's interpretations on the book of Revelation to be one of the biggest misconceptions in the Bible. I want to put my focus on one single issue that has been modernized and 'sold', so to speak, to people. There are so many movies, books, and talk about how the supposed "end times" is to take place. One of the main events that many Christians await is called "The Rapture". And again this may be old news for some of you, but for the ones who haven't heard, the word "rapture" is not mentioned at all in any of the books of the bible. Instead the translation of the original Latin word, "rapturo" translates to the Greek verb meaning "Caught up". It was the Jesuit Priest Ribera who coined the term "rapture". When the mid-1800's came about an anglican minister, John Nelso Darbey, began to speak of "dispensationalism" that is a sort of 'secret rapture'. Anyways, the point I'm getting at is that rapture and caught up can mean two different things. The idea of rapture in the minds of fundamentalist Christians consist of a vanishing of some sort in which one minute a person will be there and no more than "a blinking of an eye" they will be gone. As an outsider looking in, it may be difficult to grasp such a concept, unless that is if you have an open mind about UFO's and higher beings of intelligence (but that's another discussion). Christians also back this belief in the rapture up by qouting what can be found in the book of Matthew when the apostles ask Jesus about the ends times . He responds, "Two men will be in the field, one will be taken and the other one left.."(if you want to read the whole paragraph it's Matthew 24:37-42).
If you listen to the evangelists, preachers, authors, and such, you'll begin to notice that all follow a sort of cronological path all including the rise of the anti-christ (which this word is also not mentioned in the Bible instead it says "the beast" but again this is another argument) and either before/after the powershift the rapture takes place, the great battle at megiddo and then finally the glorious "second coming" of Christ. My question to you is, could it possibly be that neatly put? Is it not obvious that the second these things begin to fall into place that the people will not say, "hey I saw this in a movie" or "hey that's what my neighbor was talking about" or "hey, those damn Christians were right" (no offense mind you). Perhaps I'm just a complex person but I really sat back and thought about in. I asked myself what would draw massess of people to one man and almost immediately (within or around the period of seven years) transform them and bring about global peace. That alone sounds impossible, not to mention having one government, one religion, one currency, and so on. How could one man truly do this?

I concluded that something far worse than what has already been witnessed in the history of man must occur and I tied this to the concept of a rapture. I am not shutting down the rapture I do believe that something is happening but I think it's been interpreted wrong. I believe that being caught up means spritually leaving the body. Now a perfectly healthy body without a soul makes that person brain dead right? Now on a grand scale picture millions of people being "caught up" leaving perfectly good bodies behind. If demons truly do exist, would they not take advantage of this moment by possessing these bodies? If you think this is a stupid idea then I ask you this, why does it say that "the dead in christ shall rise first" if their souls are already in paradise? Sounds like zombies to me.”



This is the first mention I have seen after searching the Net of zombies, or something like them, being related to the Apocalyptic view of Christianity, i.e. “The End Times.” It makes sense to me as an origin of this Zombie craze that we are in. Coming from the South I have heard people (not in my Methodist Church, I mean) speak of “The Rapture” at all. I first heard it in the 1970s. Lots of screwball stuff was coming out then. So many people in the world, not just in the US, are highly illogical in the way they think. To rational people a belief system like this simply wouldn’t be believed at all. It would be scorned. My Methodist minister once told me that he didn’t recommend that people read the book called “Revelation,” -- not “Revelations” as so many pronounce it -- because he considered it to be “confusing.” I’ll say it is. In fact most of the Bible is “confusing” in that rather than following a given subject until some light is shed upon it, there will usually be no more than three verses on the matter at hand and then a totally different subject will be taken up.

That lack of explanation combined with the rapid shifts to new material makes it totally inscrutable to me. It reminds me of the James Joyce novel, “Ulysses.” On the subject of Ulysses, Wikipedia quotes critics: “According to Declan Kiberd, ‘Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking.’[3] However, even such a proponent of Ulysses as Anthony Burgess described the book as "inimitable, and also possibly mad".[4]

I agree with him thoroughly. It is unreadable, and from my viewpoint, a big waste of the reader’s time, in that it has 265,000 words (it was almost three inches thick in paperback). I will patiently and painstakingly unravel poetry such as “Four Quartets” by T S Eliot. I would probably put him above all the other poets who were given to me to read in my English classes, including Shakespeare (which is, of course, pure heresy to most English lit scholars). What I consider to be “good” poetry is often a puzzle to be solved, but it’s worth the effort because its’ impact is almost always emotional/spiritual/insightful rather than an elaborate and artificial attempt to do something purely academic and ever so “clever,” in a piece of literature that is “modern or new” above all other things. Dadaism is another example. It’s like winning a place in Ripley's Believe It or Not! It’s not art.

Unfortunately those things often fall apart into a pile of minutiae with no logical central theme as I read them. The only thing of that type I’ve ever enjoyed or respected very much is the poetry of E E Cummings. He is like Emily Dickinson; both of them can come at a subject from such a bizarre but refreshing angle that you suddenly realize he has stimulated a really new thought. Now, I enjoy that.

Back to the Bible, though. I have mainly read the King James Version because even with what it lacked in logical thought trains, it was beautiful and eloquent. By examining individual verses I could find wisdom and beauty there. The modern language versions were frowned upon by many Southerners, because of the fact that they were clearly interpretations rather than “the Word of God.” (How can holy literature be believed literally if the words have actually been changed, for whatever reason?) Such sacrilege!

However, having read one of the modern language versions later, I found that the Word, when translated into the Modern tongue does make considerably more sense and therefore is more instructive. That’s one of the primary changes that Martin Luther made on the public mind. It was less magical than was saying some half-understood Latin over and over, but it was much more informational. If you want to get picky about whether it is a true translation, get one of those Bibles with a Concordance and some scholarly statements about each phrase.

Aesthetically, however, it is a loss that there are no more of those things like “The voice of the turtle was heard throughout the land.” One rationalist interpretation of that verse that I read states that “the turtle” in question is the fearsome Roman battle formation in which their soldiers walked into heavy combat in small groups, each of whom was protected from arrows or stones by the simple tactic of each man holding his shield above his head to form something like the hard outer shell of a turtle. The fact that the Romans called it the “testudo,” or “the tortoise” lends real credibility to that interpretation of the verse. The Romans were hated in Palestine and Israel as they destroyed local authority and tried to force the Jews and later the Christians to worship the Roman Emperor of the time as a God. Needless to say, they rebelled against it in the kind of constant warfare that we see now between Israel and Palestine, for much the same reasons. Middle Easterners of all stripes are very hard-headed people.

The following article is about a painful modern result of those who take the Bible language literally. A cartoon book called The Walking Dead about apocalyptic times, which supposedly is nigh upon us, has become a cult favorite. It, with its hideous graphic imagery, is very popular, like those books from the 1990s, the Left Behind series. I was working in the Thomasville library when they were popular, and Boy, were they popular! Those who came to get them were believers, and actually compared them to the Bible for extra insight, held reading groups to discuss them, etc., while the authors made a huge amount of money on them. Some people are looking for anything to take them away from real life. No more stress on loving our neighbor as ourselves, after all, when it’s so much more fun to separate off into religious, racial and ethnic groups and fight it out. That’s one of the main parts to the Walking Dead television show – guns and fights, with filthy-looking skeletons that move around in a spasmodic, grotesque and completely unbelievably manner. In short, I don’t understand the appeal of the show at all, and “believing” things like that leads right to insanity (or is a sign of it).

Read the following articles, especially the real life horror story in which people who either believe in zombies literally, or see them as a source of enlightenment, which is simply sick to me have a big convention together and a fight starts with an armed lunatic. That kind of thing makes as much sense to me as "raves." Do you remember raves? Young people would agree on a time and place to meet and proceed to "party," often without permission. They would dance and generally act up stimulated by electronic music. See the following definition. A Rave is worth imagining. It did look to me like a lot of fun, and essentially harmless.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rave

Rave
1) n. any gathering of people centered around listening to and dancing to electronic music, as played by a set of live djs. Originated in 1989 in the UK as underground, often illegal gatherings in abandoned warehouses. Often characterized by the positive, psychedelic atmosphere, influnced often (but not always) by drugs and casual sex.

2) v. to dance in a style characteristic of dancers at raves, synonymous with fluid, liquid
1) There is this awesome rave tomorrow night in a warehouse downtown; all these famous djs will be playing

2) Some clubbers don't like it when I rave to hip-hop music ;-)
by hyperexcel June 17, 2003


Finally, on The Walking Dead and some of the bizarre modern religious beliefs, I hate to see good literature and sincere thought being abandoned for a substitution which is not even anything real at all. It is bunk. The last article below from the website “religionnerd.com,” which is clipped at the bottom of the blog is a very good description of what is going on among the relatively ignorant, possibly borderline psychotic, and probably mainly young audience which is keeping that horrible TV show “The Walking Dead” on the air. Oh, well, I will just “tune out” and follow my own drummer, as always.



IN THE REAL WORLD NEWS:


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/deadly-shooting-zombicon-fort-myers-florida/

Deadly shooting at ZombiCon in Florida
CBS/AP
October 18, 2015

Photograph -- Emergency medical workers and police work next to a person at the scene of shooting Saturday, Oct. 17, 2015, at ZombiCon in Fort Myers, Fla. Police say a shooting at the gathering killed one person and injured four others. MELISSA MONTOYA-OCAMPO/THE NEWS-PRESS VIA AP

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Police say a shooting at the ZombiCon gathering in Florida killed one person and injured four others.

Lt. Victor Medico of the Fort Myers Police Department said the shootings began at 11:45 p.m. Saturday, The News-Press reported. He said police were searching for a suspect, and the four people hurt had injuries that were not life-threatening.

No details were immediately available about the suspect or victims. Police told CBS affiliate WINK-TV in Fort Myers they don't know if they're searching for one or multiple suspects.

The annual festival had been expected to draw more than 20,000 fans dressed as zombies, the newspaper said. Medico said the scene was described as "shoulder to shoulder."

A statement on the ZombiCon Facebook page said organizers were saddened by the news and the group takes the safety of its patrons very seriously.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_(comic_book)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Walking Dead is an ongoing black-and-white American comic book series created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore.[1][2] It focuses on Rick Grimes, a sheriff who is shot in the line of duty and awakens from a coma in the zombie apocalypse. He finds his wife and son, and meets other survivors, gradually taking on the role of leader among a group and later a community.

First issued in 2003 by publisher Image Comics, the comic is written by Kirkman[3] with art by Moore (issues No. 1 - 6) and Charlie Adlard (issue No. 7 onward).[4] Moore continued to do the covers through issue No. 24.[5]

The Walking Dead received the 2007 and 2010 Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series at San Diego Comic-Con International. The series was adapted into the AMC television series The Walking Dead, which premiered in 2010. The television program loosely follows the storyline of the comic book. The franchise has also spawned multiple additional media properties, including video games (e.g., The Walking Dead video game), webisode series (The Walking Dead: Torn Apart, The Walking Dead: Cold Storage, and The Walking Dead: The Oath), and various additional publications, including books (e.g., The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor).




http://religionnerd.com/tag/robert-kirkman/

The World Ended: Didn’t You Get the Memo?: AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Allegorical Zombie, Part I
By Kate Daley-Bailey….
Dec, 01 2010

To my pleasant surprise, the series appears to be driven by character development, and, while still maintaining a decent amount of gore, highlights many social and moral concerns. While not explicitly stated, the series continues to investigate key issues which dominate the Postmodern American cultural consciousness such as: rapid globalization and economic anxiety, cultural and religious pluralism, moral relativism, the brutal reality of physical decay and mortality, and the ethics of war.

These words are spoken in sardonic jest by Amy, one of the few survivors, when another woman questions the division of labor in their “refugee” camp. AMC’s new blockbuster, The Walking Dead, is the latest embodiment of the apocalyptic zombie phenomena in American popular culture. This TV miniseries is based on a comic book series of the same name written by famed Robert Kirkman and illustrated by Charlie Aldard. Despite my popular culture preference for vampire fictions, my macabre fascination with the conceptions of “death” and “life,” and the liminal space between the two, led me to watch the first episode, along with the 3.6 million viewers in my demographic (adults 18-49), on Halloween of this year (stats from David Dreher at Akron Horror Movie Examiner).

To my pleasant surprise, the series appears to be driven by character development, and, while still maintaining a decent amount of gore, highlights many social and moral concerns. While not explicitly stated, the series continues to investigate key issues which dominate the Postmodern American cultural consciousness such as: rapid globalization and economic anxiety, cultural and religious pluralism, moral relativism, the brutal reality of physical decay and mortality, and the ethics of war.

Rapid Globalization and Economic Anxiety:

In Religion and Globalization: World Religions in Historical Perspective, John Esposito, Darrell Fasching, and Todd Lewis define globalization as:

the product of the growing interdependence of cultures through emerging global techno-economic and sociocultural network.(3)

These authors also note that because these networks “transcend national boundaries,” they often “challenge previous forms of authority.”(3) In Walking Dead, traditional hierarchical forms of authority such as hospitals, the military, the government (in particularly the CDC), and even local law enforcement have collapsed under the weight of the crisis. Rick Grimes, the show’s protagonist, is a small town police deputy who gets shot in the line of duty. When he awakens from a coma in an abandoned hospital and learns about the outbreak, he sets out to find his wife and son. Although Rick still dons his police uniform which seems strangely outdated and reminiscent of the old West, he insists that he is no longer a “cop” and is just a man “looking for his wife and kid.” When he does act he does so, not as an agent of the state, but as an individual. But despite his protestations, Rick still acts with a strong commitment to human society (i.e. his return to Atlanta to save Merle and warn Morgan and his son).

When he is guarding the doors to the department store with a woman named Andrea, she admires a necklace on display: he asks her why she doesn’t just take the necklace. She smiles and says it is because there is a cop looking over her shoulder and she wonders if taking it would be considered looting. They both look back to the doors where a mass of zombies are crushing themselves against the glass to break down the department store doors and he states that he doesn’t think the old rules apply anymore. Although Rick no longer represents man’s “law,” his actions and words point to a sense of moral agency even in the face of desperate “survival” conditions. He will not condemn others (Andrea) for “looting” but he also feels an obligation to assist other survivors, even a violent racist (Merle), simply because he is still human.

Rick encountered firsthand the radical breakdown of traditional images of American power, when he confidently rides a horse directly into the epicenter of the zombie outbreak. Rapidly the situation deteriorates, swarms of zombies surround him, and he barely escapes, finding shelter in an abandoned military tank, while the mass outside disembowels his horse. The iconic Western vision of a lone cowboy riding into town to regulate and distribute justice dissolves in seconds when it is faced with the complex nature of new global realities. The zombie outbreak requires more than brutal force and intimidation, it requires a new model of being in the world, one that requires not just “guts” but also “brains.”

The zombie virus spreads through contact with those infected (bites, scratches), thereby putting the whole population (network) at risk of contamination. With increased connectivity and communication comes a greater risk of exposure. Cities, microcosms of a globalized world, and bastions of the cosmopolitan world, are abandoned and those who do survive do so in small social groups in makeshift rural camps. Isolationism is championed by some in these small groups as a tactic for self-preservation (i.e. Shane). The short episode of “normalcy” in the show’s beginning puts into stark relief the war-torn images of desolate towns and ravaged cityscapes (burned out buses, lines of abandoned cars littering Atlanta’s highways). The breakdown in authority and lack of enforcement of said authority leads to economic devastation. Clean water, gas, energy, food, guns and ammunition, are all limited commodities. There is no standard unit of currency and the small group seems to negotiate using a bartering system.

In The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture, Bernice M. Murphy explores Gothic culture, linking the modern American Zombie genre to anxieties regarding consumerism, mass production, and loss of individuality. In chapter three, entitled “Aliens, Androids, and Zombies: Dehumanization and the Suburban Gothic” Murphy explores the zombie phenomena.

George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) took a supernatural threat which had previously been located in the Caribbean and associated with black magic and instead depicted zombies roaming around the American countryside, shambling parodies of their former selves.” (85)

Murphy continues,

by making his zombies cannibals (a characteristic otherwise largely absent from previous zombie movies) Romero facilitated his desire to pass comment on what he saw as the mindless consumerism and materialism of late twentieth-century American life. (86)

Some of this critique of American “mindless” consumerism may also be reflected in AMC’s Walking Dead series. The department store scene, mentioned previously, in which hordes of vacant-eyed animated corpses press their flesh up against the glass doors, all blank faces and clawing hands, is eerily suggestive of the masses of crazed American shoppers who anxiously wait outside stores on Black Friday.

Cultural and Religious Pluralism: Fear of Moral Relativism

Postmodernity, to turn again to Religion and Globalization, is presented as a term that describes how globalization has transformed society into a pluralistic, multicentered reality subject to global influences that raise difficult questions about public norms and public order- questions that can easily lead to conflict.(6)

Accordingly, Postmodernity, is marked by the loss of a normative center or, put another way, its multiplicity of centers allows for a corresponding multiplicity of normative moralities (each beholden to its own center). In a pluralistic society, in which more than one center claims supremacy, cultures and/or religions compete, and as is the case in Postmodern, pluralistic societies, many overarching meta–narratives (religious or otherwise) are viewed with skepticism. These Postmodern, pluralistic societies often appear “normless” or “without common shared meaning.” (Religion and Globalization 5)

In Philosophy of Horror, Philip Tallon notes (in a chapter entitled, “Through a Mirror, Darkly: Art-Horror as a Medium for Moral Reflection”) that horror, as a genre, challenges the hubris of Modernity:

Where the Enlightenment placed great confidence in our ability to understand and organize the world according to over-arching ‘meta-narrative’ (big stories), postmodern thinkers like Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) have described our current condition as defined by ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives.’ For Lyotard, postmodernism represented a failure of all large-scale systems to adequately explain the world… Often this incredulity toward meta-narratives shows itself in our casual attitude toward moral objectivity.(38)

Tallon later reflects on horror’s ability to challenge both Modernity’s hubris and Postmodernity’s skepticism: “In criticizing postmodern relativism, horror pushes us to takes seriously our deepest moral convictions, but in criticizing lofty Enlightenment values, it also casts doubt on our highest moral intentions.”(40)

How might a TV series about flesh-eating ghouls challenge a viewer’s preconceived notions of social, political, and religious “givens”? As a genre, horror depends on meta-narratives (religious or not) to frame the world, but horror is also contingent on the failure of said meta-narratives to categorize all phenomena (i.e. zombies). Zombies are dead and yet alive, they are monsters but they are also victims, they are completely Other and yet were once just like us. If zombies are categorically uncontainable (if there are fractures in the meta-narrative), then there can be no proscribed action. And yet, as Tallon so potently remarks: “… there seems to be, despite the widespread trend towards relativism in morality and aesthetics, a deep human desire for bedrock order.”(39)

Rick’s initial reluctance to destroy the zombies (the wandering man, the little girl collecting toys at the gas station, and even the mutilated half corpse woman) displays his skepticism towards the new meta-narrative dominating his world which says all zombies are monsters, merely reanimated corpses. However, when Rick embraces the moral ambiguity of the situation, that these monsters have some semblance of humanity still in them, he is able to face them. Before he shoots the half corpse, he tells her he is sorry this happened to her. Before he initiates the dismemberment of another zombie, Rick reads out the man’s name from his driver’s license, notes that it is a Georgia license, that he had a picture of a pretty girl and $28 in his wallet when he died. Rick also notes that this zombie had once been just like them, human.

*** Religion Nerd will feature Part II of Kate’s exploration of the Zombie phenomena and AMC’s Walking Dead on December 6, 2010.


As a final statement, I just want to say that when our individually preferred religion, among those groups such as the Baptists, has degenerated into a "philosophy" that is producing such ugliness and violence, I don't believe it is helpful to individuals in their search for higher values, and is too often the cause of hatred and violence against other religious groups. The need for the religion of ones choice to be protected, unless some violent, insane thing is the result of its' influence, such as the New York cult that was in the news last week for killing a boy in an effort to make him "repent," remains one of my most important values championed under the constitution. I do however, feel that violence of that kind should be forbidden under the law, and the participants tried for the crimes that they commit. Luckily, that is occurring now.