Wednesday, 23 October 2013

Is St.Kitts A Christian Society?

I have lost favor with quite a number of fundamentalist believer because I no longer hold the fundamentalist traditional lines of  belief I was taught and held as an infant and teenager- even into my adult years- but losing the favor of such persons is by far the least of my concerns.
 Persons ask me repeatedly whether or not I am "still a Christian." I find it ironic that I live in a country that is recognized as a Christian Society, is steeped in all the regalia of the Christian faith, was christened as a child and donned with a Christian  name, and then people look at me and ask if I am still a Christian. After all, I did not adopt either the Muslim , Hindu or any of the myriads of faiths floating around, and as far as I am concerned when one encounters people of various faiths, one can hardly tell (if one looked beyond the various garbs and costumes these faiths wear) who is Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever else, as they all essentially believe in the need for humans to be good to each other, to pray, be helpful, self sacrificing and generous. If these faiths would simply live their beliefs and stop talking about the their differences in their various Holy Books, no one would be able to tell by their living, who among them is Christian and who is of any other faith. It is the fundamentalist who comes thumping on his Holy Book and flipping his Holy holy Pages, searching for his Holy Evidence that creates the largest division and related problems wherever faith exists. This is why when persons ( usually fundamentalist believers) ask me if I am "still a Christian", my response is usually, "Do not ask me any questions, simply take a look at how I live my life and arrive at your conclusion". Of course this is taken as a clear indicator that I am not a Christian, otherwise I would have boldly, instantaneously and proudly declared in the affirmative,for as far as they are concerned, being a Christian is all about what one believes based on one's denominational interpretation of one's Holy Book and everything else is secondary.
 So do we live in a Christian Society? Certainly we do.
 One of our biggest problems is that  the fundamentalists have told our people that they are not Christians over so many hundreds of years, and we very well know that people live their lives based on what they are taught to believe. If, in our social construct, we tell people from birth that they are not Christians, why be surprised when they behave in an unchristian manner? We have no right to solicit Christian behavior from persons who have been told all their lives  that they are not Christians, especially in societies where Christian behavior is intrinsically associated with regular church attendance,noisy prayer meetings, strict association with persons of similar beliefs, a fundamentalist idea of morality and the sacrificial paying of tithes.
 My quiet concern in all of  this is that the traditional churches ( Anglicans, Catholic, Methodist and Moravian, lead by generally more rational and traditionally more broadly educated, analytical churches leaders) are trying too hard to become like the fundamentalists, instead of leading the way to sensible Christian understanding of how much of what a nation does is acceptable and how much is not; when and where compromise makes rational common sense, and where tipping points are likely to be required. We must not leave leadership of the national conscience in the hands of  fundamentalists when we know that closed-minded, myopic fundamentalism leads to nothing more than chaos, utter confusion and irrational decision making on national policies.

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