The religious people at Mudcat are more-or-less the same as the non-religious people. For the most part, we're intelligent, independent souls who think for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. We don't take orders from anyone, not even from those who claim religious authority. We reject intolerance and injustice, and we strongly support the rights of the downtrodden. Most of us spend our lives asking questions, rather than claiming to have control of the answers. Some of us are pacifists. Yes, we know that there are religious people who use their faith as rationalization for hatred and violence and all sorts of horrible things - but we aren't like that, and we think that such people desecrate the very essence of religious faith.

We're very much like other Mudcatters, but we come from various religious traditions, and those traditions are part of who we are. We belong to religious organizations/communities, and we fully acknowledge that people often have done wrong in the name of those organizations - and we abhor and reject that wrongdoing. Nonetheless, our roots are in those communities, and they are part of who we are.

It's a puzzle to me why a traditional music community should have such a hard time accepting religious communities, which are also rooted in tradition - but such seems to be the case.

There were two comments that distressed me particularly, maybe because they came from a person I like very much. The first comment I quoted above: Religion is really not good for children, of which this is just another example.
When I questioned that, I got this response: Joe, I think it's wrong to tolerate rather than correct the wrong. It does a disservice to the world. I've gotten the similar responses from right-wing fundamentalists.
Isn't it disturbing that tolerance could be thought of as wrong?
And what makes her so certain that religion is so harmful to children? It didn't hurt ME none.
This person isn't the only one - most of the anti-religious posts here at Mudcat, come from people I like and admire and think of as friends.

I grew up in the U.S. peace and civil rights movements of the 1960s. I thought that mine would be the generation that would end intolerance.

Guess I was wrong.

-Joe-