Scary Religion
Was glad to hear this morning that Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) Church has been found guilty of being an accomplice to rape. If you’re not up on this case, you can read about it here.
I became aware of the FLDS, a renegade sect of Mormons who continue to practice polygamy and are a law unto themselves in remote parts of Utah and Arizona, when I reviewed the book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith for Pop Matters. You can read the review (and some of my thoughts on religion) here.
I’ve had some personal experience with Christian sects, not the FLDS, but others. You can hardly be a bona fide Southerner and not have rubbed elbows with snake handlers, faith healers, self-proclaimed prophets, miracle workers and people who profess to have private audiences with God, visited heaven, seen angels and possess extraordinary powers and insights. They’re very interesting to talk to, believe me.
But listen to the ordinary folk in these church circles and you hear a very different story. A 13-year-old girl who was raped by her father and bore the child because abortion was forbidden under any circumstances. A man who refused to get his malignant melanoma treated because he was waiting for God to heal him. An unmarried 30-ish woman who was publicly denounced by her pastor in a packed-house Sunday morning service as a harlot. Her crime? She was sleeping with her boyfriend. A perfectly sane, well-educated woman of 40-something who will look you straight in the eye and tell you, “If my husband put a gun in my hand and told me to go kill a particular person, I’d do it — and just pray God somehow intervenes before I pull the trigger.”
Poor old God. His friends and supporters do Him so much more harm than all the atheists, secular humanists, scoffers and religion-bashers put together.
–phoebe kate