Dear Mr. Bageant,
I cannot tell you how struck I was by a couple of important lines in your essay about the Left Behind series. I am one of those ex-fundamentalists who cannot escape what my childhood and teenage years in a Pentecostal church left me with. I have spent years in therapy trying to find out why I constantly sabotage my happiness, why no matter what I do I feel the nagging guilt that I haven't done enough. I never once connected this sense of self-hate with the self-hate I was taught in church.
So, for that I want to thank you.
A little background: I left the church 25 years ago, at the age of 20, when I found out that my pastor, around whom my church had quite a cult of personality, had been systematically seducing the women of the church for years. I know that not every pastor does that, but it coincided with my desire to expand my horizons and to go to college, which my pastor and all of the elders strongly discouraged. I've never regretted leaving, but I've never been able to reconcile with Christianity, or any religious belief system, since then. It's as though I can taste the hypocrisy.
Once more, thank you for putting into words what so many of us feel.
Hope you have a very happy holiday season.
Sincerely,
Mary
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Other than telling us how to live, think, have sex, marry, pray, vote, invest, educate our children and die, the Republicans have done a fine job of getting government out of our personal lives.
