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What I Know Now About Christian Fundamentalism
�I�ve never been to a Bible study like this!� Dorothy Jones burst out�Sister Jones, she was called at Tabernacle Baptist, the church where her husband Reverend Loren Jones was the minister. Silence fell on the small room at the back of the tiny, rundown church. �I�ve never heard anyone ask these kinds of questions like you�re asking. If the Bible says it, I believe it, and that�s all I need to know!� She spit the words at me, her eyes glittering with hatred and suspicion. �I don�t think you are of God, that�s all I have to say. I think you�re of the devil, and I�m not having anything more to do with you!� The church matriarch, called Mother Louis Parker, nodded emphatically in agreement and said �Amen!� This was one of my first encounters with the phenomenon called Christian fundamentalism. It left me stunned and bewildered. It took me fourteen more years of living in Oklahoma, in the midst of pervasive right-wing Christianity, to understand why Dorothy reacted as she did, and what the wider implications of her reaction might be for this country.
Enid, Oklahoma My husband Roy and I, and our then one-year-old daughter Phoebe, moved from Chicago, where I grew up, to Enid, Oklahoma, a town of about 40,000, in 1986. We were Christian, and Roy had taken a position at a seminary as an Assistant Professor. Phillips Theological Seminary, on the campus of Phillips University, with a second branch in Tulsa, was the only mainline Protestant seminary within hundreds of miles. All the others were conservative and evangelical. Roy and I had been members of a socially active, liberal church in the neighborhood surrounding the University of Chicago. Shortly before we moved, I developed the notion that when Jesus said, �Feed the hungry, visit the sick, clothe the naked, visit those in prison,� he didn�t just mean �Drop checks into the offering plate.� I began to think he meant that the poor�marginalized people, people oppressed by an unjust society�and the non-poor, should know one another as fellow members of communities. I began to want to somehow meet as friends with the sorts of people who were the invisible recipients of the funds the church collected for various beneficent causes. This impulse of mine led us in many directions, including to Tabernacle Baptist Church. Enid, the fourth-largest city in largely rural Oklahoma, rises like an outpost from the plains in the middle of the state. Wheat is its only industry, and poverty and its attendant ills are widespread. At the time we lived there, Enid was sharply segregated racially�it probably still is. African Americans lived in a section of the town people referred to as Southern Heights, which was separated from the rest of the town by a wide road. Its inhabitants rarely ventured outside its borders. The area was a desolate landscape of tiny, run-down clapboard houses, dirt streets, vacant lots, and humble churches with names like First Missionary Baptist (one of many African American churches mysteriously set on fire in the region in 1996) and Tabernacle Baptist. Soon after we moved to the town, my family and I began attending University Place Christian Church, or UP, the white, liberal church associated with Phillips University. I was surprised at how much emphasis UP gave to �evangelism,� or telling people about Christianity and asking them to join the church�much more than liberal churches we knew of in Chicago. Even so, it was not unusual to hear UP members express contempt for Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists. I remember feeling that such comments seemed harsh and unfair. Sometimes I asked people why they felt such antipathy. I suggested maybe we should build bridges with these fellow Christians. I found that my responses led people to assume I was fundamentalist, and to be suspicious of me. I found this funny at the time. Me, a fundamentalist! What a thought! I�d grown up in the liberal neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago. I didn�t even really know what fundamentalism was. In our adult Sunday school class, I talked about my impulse to get to know those we usually only clucked our tongues over and sent charity to. Partly because of my input, the class decided to address the issue of segregation in the town. We decided to invite African Americans to visit our class and join our discussion. The delegates who came were Dorothy Jones and Louise Parker. When, after discussing the problem, we asked Mrs. Jones what, in her opinion, we should do about Enid�s racial segregation, her answer was swift and direct: �Come to our church,� she said. So Roy and I did. Tabernacle Baptist�s members greeted us at first with an enthusiasm so great that it bordered on adulation. Reverend and Mrs. Jones praised us to the congregation for the courage we showed in taking Mrs. Jones up on her invitation, and the congregation responded with shouted �Amen�s. Reverend Jones�s sermon that day was typical of African American preaching, building to a fever pitch and eliciting shouts of �Hallelujah,� �Amen,� and �Thank you, Jesus!� from the tiny congregation. Frankly, the fervor of the congregation�s welcome and style of worship embarrassed us. We came to them out of our liberal guilt, feeling our visit was a woefully inadequate attempt to address the vast wrong of racism, yet it seemed they were deferring to us because we were white. We really didn�t feel we were doing anything impressive, by simply attending a service at their church. I also sensed dimly then what I have since come to know with painful clarity, that the flip side of idealization is hatred and rejection. I sensed that what underlay the �over-the-top� adulation for us by these poor (as in low-income) African Americans was fear and loathing for us as whites in a racist culture. I couldn�t help believing that they felt we expected them to treat us the way they did, that they feared that if they did not, there would be repercussions. Their embrace, literal and figurative, perplexed us, but at the same time, I couldn�t help soaking it in. It assuaged the alienation I felt out on the Oklahoma plains in general, and it was so different�so much warmer�than the reception I received at University Place. When I took baby Phoebe to the UP nursery for the first time, another mother stared at me coldly without answering when I introduced myself to her. I later learned that she was one of the church�s most right-wing members. I guess she recognized my liberal stripes by instinct on first sight. So Roy and I put aside our discomfort at the loud intensity of the Tabernacle congregation�s services, and their strange and disproportionate admiration for us, and began dividing our attendance between there and University Place. I was perplexed when Mrs. Jones and others spoke, as they often did, of their admiration for such people as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Dorothy expressed outrage about the accusations against the Bakkers, founders of the PTL (Praise the Lord) Club and the Heritage USA Christian theme park. When Jim and Tammi Faye were indicted for stealing $3,700,000 in offerings and using the money to pay for sexual services, private jets and other personal extravagances, Dorothy (whose money was probably included in the Bakker�s illegal nest egg) said it was one more example of how our nation unjustly persecuted Christians. At the time, I saw her anger as well-intentioned, even poignant, naivete. I felt our friendship gave me the chance to satisfy my curiosity about fundamentalism, a worldview so mysterious to me, so different from my own. As Roy and I became more involved at Tabernacle, we discussed with Dorothy and others ways we could continue to address the problem of racial segregation in Enid. We agreed we should encourage more white people to visit. We formed a Bible study on Wednesday evenings, to which we invited members of our UP Sunday school class. A few actually came. One Wednesday, we were discussing the Psalm that says God has laid out our future for us before we are conceived. One of the UP member said it seemed to him the Psalm contradicted the message of free will he saw at the heart of Jesus� sayings. How could we choose whether to love or not love our neighbor, and be judged for our decision, if our life was already laid out for us? This was when we received the response from Dorothy Jones that begins this account. By this time, Roy and I had been attending Tabernacle Baptist for more than a year. We were actively involved in the church, and considered Dorothy and Loren Jones to be close friends. Reverend Jones had even appointed Roy as an Associate Pastor, in keeping with the church�s informal, ad hoc style. Even so, after this Bible study, Dorothy Jones never spoke to us again. We understood that, if the minister�s wife and the matriarch agreed that we were �of the devil,� we were effectively barred from services. When I phoned Dorothy, she hung up on me. I sent her several letters and cards asking if we could discuss the matter, but she did not answer them. During the year or so we attended Tabernacle, we met and got to know other African American ministers and church members. A conversation I had with one minister sticks in my mind. It was imperative, he said, that we (Christians) convert as many people (�sinners�) as possible. He said that was the only task that was important in our lives. I responded that, for me as a Christian, the most important task was to love one another, as Jesus stated. �Yes, exactly,� the minister answered. �We must reach out to Jews, Buddhists, Catholics, and all heathens, to bring them to Christ. How can I say I love them, if I don�t try to save them from hell?� I protested that I didn�t think it was legitimate to call Buddhists, Jews and Catholics heathens, that it was important to respect other people�s different beliefs. �I respect them, and it�s my job as a Christian to do all I can to bring them to the Lord,� he answered.
The Liberal Response Roy and I kept feeling our longings to meet and get to know marginalized people. In addition to our forays into South Enid and Tabernacle Baptist, we formed a community at UP that met weekly for a potluck evening meal in a seldom-used dining room. We invited UP members, as well as people we had met in South Enid. It was a chance for poor and middle-class people to eat and pray together, and to pool our resources�of knowledge, money, skills, insights, our presence�toward meeting one another�s needs�for friendship, the support of a community, and materials. The community made what seemed like miraculous differences in the lives of many of its members, including ours. Roy and I were invigorated and enlivened by our participation in ways we had never known before. Acceptance by the community meant that one man, who was schizophrenic, and homeless, found the symptoms of his illness diminished. This meant he was able to apply for and receive Social Security disability benefits, and move off the street into his own apartment. The father of a family of four had become disabled and could not work. The community provided support for the two children and purchased a washer and dryer for the family. The community helped an older member who was blind and alcoholic, who lived in an abandoned chicken coop, to stop drinking and move into a nursing home, where he worked in the laundry room. The community, while it was enlivening to its members, caused suspicion and discomfort in the UP congregation. One deacon�deacons are laypeople who contribute money, perform rituals, and exert influence�told me I was �a crazy dreamer� for thinking poor and nonpoor people could be friends. Another prominent member complained to us that we were enabling laziness on the part of the family for whom we bought the washer and dryer. The minister did not talk about the community in services or any other church forums, so it remained more or less invisible. Only one middle-class UP member, besides Roy and me, attended the weekly meetings on a regular basis. The man who was blind and had been alcoholic, Bobby Ray Peterson, decided to join the church. He was standing with the minister after the service in which he became a member, as was the custom, so congregants could file by and welcome him. I was in line behind one of the deacons, who was white. When the deacon reached Bobby Ray, instead of shaking his hand, he said to him angrily, �Why did you join this church? You have your own churches over there! Why don�t you stay on your own side of town?� A hushed silence came and went. The minister said nothing. Others filed by and greeted Bobby Ray, who now looked crushed and terrified. Later, I asked the minister if she was going to say anything to the deacon about his comment. �What would I say?� she asked me. �Maybe that such racist comments are offensive, and that he should apologize to Mr. Peterson,� I suggested. The minister said that the deacon was entitled to his opinion, even if we disagreed with him. Mr. Peterson never attended another service at UP. I am no longer Christian, or religious, and I don�t consider myself liberal. Many I know, however, who are liberal Christians today, express negative sentiments about fundamentalists similar to those I heard at University Place Church years ago. Liberals claim that fundamentalists and evangelicals distort Christianity by focusing only on Jesus� crucifixion, and on heaven and hell, sinners and the saved. Many liberals claim, as I once did, that they believe in and practice what they call �the social gospel,� which focuses on Jesus� love for the poor, and that this sharply divides them from fundamentalists. But the longer I lived in Oklahoma, the more overlaps I saw between these two seemingly separate versions of Christianity.
Tulsa After five years, Phillips Theological Seminary moved its center from Enid to Tulsa, and we moved with it. As for fundamentalism, we left the town of Tabernacle Baptist for the city of Oral Roberts University and Rhema Bible Institute, one of the largest of numerous evangelical institutions there. Fundamentalism and extreme conservatism were alive and well in that city of 400,000. In a city of highways, with no sidewalks and virtually no public transportation, every other car had some visible homage to Jesus on it. If it wasn�t the ubiquitous fish symbol, it was a bumper sticker. These slogans said things like, �Caution: When the Rapture Comes, This Car Will Have No Driver,� �Got Jesus? It�s Hell Without Him,� �Atheists are Beyond Belief,� �For All You Do�His Blood�s For You,� and �God Says It�I Believe It�That Settles It,� (echoes of Sister Jones!). Billboards along the highways exhibited crudely drawn, bloody images of Jesus on the cross and called for sinners� repentance, advertised numerous fundamentalist megachurches and Christian groups, and inveighed against abortion. At first, the bumper stickers and even the billboards seemed benign to me. People have a right to believe as they wish, I felt. Fundamentalism may have had caused the painful rift between Roy and me, and our former friends at Tabernacle Baptist, but otherwise, I and my family had no personal involvement with it, no reason to view it as negative. After all, weren�t we free to believe and practice as we wished? My own version of faith even caused me to continue to look for aspects of belief I could share with these fellow Christians. I continued to encounter people, though, who agreed with Sister Jones�s assessment of me, that I somehow represented evil. When, for example, I reported a co-worker in a childcare center where I worked, because she threw a child against a shelf, she told me she had seen right away on meeting me that I was of the devil. When I taught poetry as a writer-in-residence in a class at an �alternative� high school (for students with difficulties such as drug addiction), the teacher supported students in their constant harassment of a girl they considered a Satan-worshipper. (She wore long skirts, and earrings shaped like pentagrams, which fundamentalists consider a symbol of the devil, I later learned, and she wrote in runic script in her journal.) During class, in the teacher�s presence, students including some boys with shaved heads, who wore spiked dog collars, metal-studded leather, and skull tattoos, taunted her every day with statements such as �What are you writing, messages to Satan?� or �You don�t like us? Why don�t you get your buddy Satan to beat us up?� The teacher smiled at these taunts and said nothing. I asked the teacher what she thought about the situation, and she said she felt the girl provoked the treatment she received by the way she dressed. I once asked the girl what her religious beliefs were. �I have my own religion,� she answered. �I take some ideas from old Celtic beliefs, and some from Christianity. I�m studying this ancient runic script that comes from Ireland,� she said, showing me her journal. I asked her why the other students taunted her. �They make my life miserable,� she answered. �They hate me because of how I dress. I�m going crazy here, it�s just unbearable. They just think everyone is either Christian or a Satan-worshipper. Those are the only categories they understand,� she said. The teacher told me the girl had attempted suicide. One day the teacher brought a copy of People Magazine, the cover of which featured a photo of a popular singer who had come out as a lesbian. She held up the magazine in front of the class, and said in a disgusted tone, �This is what our culture is coming to, boys and girls.� A chorus of hostile remarks and jeers rose from the class, at which the teacher smiled. The students also ridiculed me, and the teacher supported them in this as she did in their taunting of the girl, by smiling and remaining silent. Beyond these personal encounters, right-wing politics merged with fundamentalist Christianity pervaded everything. When I shopped at Tulsa�s only health food store, before the Wild Oats chain found its way there, the voice of Rush Limbaugh blared from the radio, and there were often petitions opposing abortion available for signing. (Organics and health food, along with home schooling, were mainly the province of the Christian right in Tulsa, since they provided refuge from what adherents viewed as a fallen, secular society.) At WalMart, Newt Gingrich played over the sound system. A controversy at an elementary school became public and was widely written about and discussed. A teacher used a New-Age-oriented book, which included poems from Native American culture about earth and wind spirits. Opponents viewed the book as Satanic, and demanded that the teacher be fired. A friend of ours, a musician, taught at the right-wing Christian Oral Roberts University, or ORU, though she was not a fundamentalist. She also taught piano lessons privately. When parents of her students learned that she had moved in with her fianc�, they withdrew their children from lessons and wrote letters of complaint about her to the ORU newsletter, saying she shouldn�t be allowed to teach at the school because she was �unChristian.� Needless to say, this hurt her career. At my younger daughter Chloe�s Suzuki violin group, several parents objected to the fiddle tune �Devil�s Dream� because of its title, and to the theme song from Pocahontas, because the Walt Disney company that made the movie employed gays. Not only would these parents not allow their children to play the songs, they were also vocal in their insistence that the teacher eliminate them from the group�s repertoire. The teacher privately disagreed with them, but kept her feelings to herself and acquiesced to their demands, to avoid a conflict. When Chloe wanted to attend a Christian summer camp with one of her friends, I had to fill out a form asking if I was saved, if Chloe was saved, and what we would like the camp to pray for while Chloe was there. I wrote, �Pray that people�s right to believe as they wish, or not to believe, will be respected, and that no one will pressure my daughter or anyone in any way to accept religious beliefs or practices.�
We Don�t Want Those People Here Some who viewed me as suspicious or even evil were fundamentalist; some were not. Roy and I began attending Fellowship Congregational, the most liberal Protestant church in Tulsa. We chose the church because we were still committed to our quest for a class-diverse community, and the minister allowed us to organize a weekly meeting with a meal similar to the one we were part of in Enid. Most of its members were homeless men, and many were gay. These men told us of many instances of discrimination they encountered. From time to time, they said, groups of young people approached them in public parks, saying, �We�re asking you to leave this park. This is a Christian park, and you�re not allowed here.� An article about this in a local paper explained that ministers of fundamentalist churches organized the groups as missionary projects for youth. Two friends were severely beaten, under a bridge where they were sleeping, by skinheads who called them �f�ing faggots� as they stamped on their heads with their heavy, cleated boots. The attack was reported on, but was not prosecuted as a hate crime. Tulsa was a center for gay people in Oklahoma, and it held a yearly gay pride parade. Every year, protesters would line the parade route, holding signs saying, �God Hates Fags,� �Sodomy is a Sin,� �Burn in Hell, Sodomites,� �AIDS is Your Punishment from God,� and other slogans of hate. The reception our friends received at Fellowship was less warm even than that UP members gave the poor in Enid. Everyone who wanted to helped prepare the food, set tables, and clean up. Some Fellowship members provided some support, most notably by lending a van we used to give people rides to the church. Other prominent members complained, however, at the presence of �those people� in �our� kitchen and at church events. Finally some prominent members met with Roy and me. They told us the meals had to end. The men were bringing down the quality of the church, they asserted. We protested, but they were adamant. �We don�t want those people here,� they told us emphatically. When we asked the minister about this, he supported them. I felt that, if they didn�t want �those people� there, they didn�t want me either. In fact, this event was one of the experiences that most strongly influenced my decision ultimately to withdraw from Christianity, and religion, altogether. Our last try at Christianity was with a small Society of Friends�Quaker meeting. (Quakers often call their communities �meetings� rather than �churches.�) In that community, a controversy erupted when a group from the East Coast, called Friends of African Descent, presented a complaint to the meetings of the Oklahoma-Louisiana-Texas-Arkansas region. The African American Quakers said they were offended that, when local meetings in the region met together yearly, they played a capture-the-flag type of family game called �The Underground Railroad Game.� Meeting members ran around outside, some pretending to be slaves, some slave-catchers, and some abolitionists. The African Americans considered the game racist, feeling it trivialized the injustice and immense suffering slavery represented. �Would you play a game called �The Holocaust Game�?� they asked. In formal discussions of the African Americans� complaint, Roy and I supported them, and agreed that the regional meeting should stop playing the game. Members of our local Tulsa meeting, like the others in the region, wanted to continue with the game. The African Americans� complaint angered them, and they were furious with us for supporting it. They felt we were unjustly accusing them of being racist. They were so angry at us that they decided to formally eject us from their meeting.
Fundamentalist Culture These experiences with liberal Christianity in a fundamentalist milieu radically altered my perceptions. What I came to believe, by the end of our fifteen years in Oklahoma, was that right-wing Christian fundamentalism promotes a culture that supports extremism, hate and violence. We heard and saw many people in Tulsa express their belief in the nearness of the rapture, or end-time, as had Dorothy and Loren Jones, Tabernacle members, and most others in South Enid. This is the belief that Jesus will return and God will lift him and the saved (ie. fundamentalists and evangelicals) to heaven and throw all others into the eternal fire of hell. Ironically, though African Americans in Enid embraced all who espoused beliefs like their own, racism was closely connected to the fundamentalist mindset. We heard on local radio stations, and read articles, about the phenomenon called the Christian Identity movement. The movement held that God long ago formed people of color, especially African Americans, of different material than whites. Whites, they believed, were formed of flesh, while Africans were formed of mud. This meant, they believed, that God wanted white Christians to dominate all other races. The Ku Klux Klan, who identify themselves as Christian, were known to be active in Tulsa, and at least once held a rally downtown. In fact, when we checked with the police station about the crime rate in an area we were thinking of moving into, they told us the Klan was the main problem in the neighborhood. The Ku Klux Klan overlapped with the Christian Identity movement, and I believe that the absolutist, dualistic exclusivity central to fundamentalism, which worships a God who gave his son to be tortured and executed, and who throws unbelievers into eternal torture, is of a piece with the absolute racial divisions the Klan pursues. When I first heard of fundamentalism in Oklahoma, I looked for commonalities among the different versions of Christianity. Now that I�ve found them, I believe they are there, but they are pernicious, not positive as I had assumed they would be. I have come to believe that, not only does liberal Christianity fail to counteract fundamentalism, it ends up playing into its problems, for two reasons. One is that it shares a characteristic central to all brands of Christianity. Exclusivism�based on important statements in the Bible, such as the one attributed to Jesus, that �no man can come to the Father except through me,� and John 3:16, the verse fundamentalists often repeat, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life��is central in Christian doctrine. The central Christian doctrine of evangelism, based on these and many other passages, supports an assumption almost all Christians share in one way or another, that the Christian group with which they identify is superior to all other people and groups. Fundamentalists and evangelicals simply believe non-believers are evil and deserve God�s punishment. Even when particular liberal Christian congregations eschew fundamentalist tenets such as a belief in the rapture, the cultural climate pervasive fundamentalism creates makes exclusivism the norm. The more a culture is dominated by fundamentalism, the less room there is in it for wide-ranging variances in beliefs and points of view. Fundamentalism in inherently dualistic and exclusive, and it exerts pressure on culture, including on other strains of Christianity, to also emphasize exclusivism. Once fundamentalism sets up and spreads an absolute dualism between saved and unsaved, it becomes difficult for anyone not to see the world in terms of simple divisions, whether the categories are saved/unsaved, open-minded/closed-minded, fundamentalist/liberal, red/blue, rich/poor, or black/white. The three liberal Christian churches we were part of unquestioningly embraced the pervasive class- and race-based exclusivism of the national culture in which they were embedded. Many other liberal congregations across the nation struggle with whether to include gay people, as members or as ministers. The second reason liberal Christianity does not make much of a dent is that even those who do maintain and live out a commitment to inclusivism face an equal and opposite reaction in a culture pervaded with fundamentalism. When an inclusive approach meets an exclusive one, the inclusive approach cannot prevail. An inclusive person or group cannot engage in dialogue with a group who believes the inclusive people are evil. Inclusivism simply provides the exclusive with an opening by which they can dominate those who are inclusive. As Roy and I found out, the exclusive group will inevitably judge the inclusive group negatively. The exclusive group unifies around designating outsiders as evil, and so its members feel justified, indeed righteous, in inflicting whatever punishment they see fit on the outsiders. While believers in inclusivity are celebrating the differences of those who practice exclusive religions, exclusive religions are planning the ejection and ultimate demise of the evil Others. The wider the perception of differences as evil and threatening, the harsher and more brutal the society becomes. Living in New York as I do now, I feel as though I carry around secret knowledge of a ticking bomb, and that I can�t figure out how to tell the people around me about it. Those who are fundamentalist know about the bomb, but they support its detonation. In their view, its detonation will mean a world converted to their brand of Christianity, ultimately expressed in the rapture. In my view, it will mean the explosion of our constitutional democracy. What I came to understand was that Dorothy Jones�s defensiveness about the Bakkers was of a piece with her hostility towards us, and her banishment of us, because of our questions about the Bible. I came to understand that the conviction that it is evil to question or criticize fellow fundamentalists is essential to fundamentalism. The way fundamentalists recognize one another is not through discussions about tenets of the faith, it is by attitude, language, and style of life and worship. If a person prays right, says the right words about Jesus and God, and has the right manner and voice, that�s all that matters. One does not need to know the Bible, one does not need to obey the law. One does not need to be honest, just, compassionate, kind, or even display common decency. I now understand that fundamentalist belief trumps all other beliefs and values. It trumps customs, friendship and reason. It trumps the United States Constitution and the laws of our land. What it demands of its adherents is loyalty, and that is all. It eschews differences, however subtle, in beliefs, interpretations, practice and language people use to talk about their faith. As such, it is inherently incompatible with democracy. In fact many fundamentalists openly express contempt for democracy, advocating instead for a �Christian republic,� as at http://groups.msn.com/TheChristianRepublic. Ironically, fundamentalism can flourish in our nation because we support freedom of religion. Fundamentalism takes advantage of this bedrock of our Constitution to encourage contempt for the Constitution. Fundamentalism takes advantage of those who believe in tolerance, to aggressively promote its agenda of non-tolerance. Non-tolerance is also a strong strain in American culture, expressing itself in myriad ways. Exclusivist feelings and assumptions make many Americans readily able to live with fundamentalism, even if they don�t explicitly embrace it. Exclusivist feelings and practices in those who explicitly repudiate fundamentalism, such as liberal Christians, also make America fertile ground for the growth of right-wing Christian fundamentalism. It is crucial that Americans first learn about and face the realities of what the Christian fundamentalist worldview entails, and then that we examine our hearts and minds, to locate the exclusivism that resides in us and commit ourselves to letting it go. Otherwise, fundamentalist extremism will continue to spread through our culture and society at every level. This is not good news for our nation, and, because of the influence we exert across the globe, it is not good news for the world. � Mukto-Mona ==================== The author is a distinguished member of Mukto-Mona who writes from NY.
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