In Reply to: My response to Allan (and the other fundamentalists on this chat board posted by Eva St John on January 02, 2004 at 17:47:20:
Hi Eva. Well, you've said some very interesting things, much of which I actually agree with & other of which I do not find myself in agreement. Many of the issues you've raised have been discussed on this board before, of course, but reminders against of narrow-mindedness & intolerance (e.g. Martin Luther vs. the Jews), the church killing heretics, attitudes toward women, etc. are well worth repeating.
I do clearly understand that when you're knocking dogma, dogmatism & organized religion that you're not singling out Christianity, but are including all religions in that definition. I don't feel threatened by your beliefs & find them quite interesting actually.
But I do have a bit of a problem. It seems that by your definition, if I believe in the Bible as a historically reliable document & have faith in Jesus as the way, the truth and the life (a faith I had before meeting the Family & have studied in quite some depth since leaving the Family) that that automatically categorizes me as a narrow-minded fundamentalist, someone who would see things differently if only I would read the Bible with an open heart. It seems that if I maintain my present faith that I cannot escape that label. Maybe this is not what you intended, but it's hard to escape the feeling. Can you clarify?
Observer