Ballard, Terry Prof. wrote: >> When I was a teenager I joined the Southern Baptist Church......the question was posed: "How many of you would walk out of the church if a black family walked in?" More than half of the people raised their hands.... << The Southern Baptists are the largest and most reactionary Christian denomination in the USA. They split away from the Baptists in 1845 over slavery, because they thought that slavery was okay. After the civil war, some Southern Baptists founded the Ku Klux Klan. Intense hatred against blacks was to remain the trademark of the Southern Baptists for another century. In the 1960s, the Southern Baptists supported segregation laws and opposed the black civil rights movement. In 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention issued an apology to all African-Americans and asked for their forgiveness. Should they forgive them? Should we? If any should want to find the most Christian group today, one that really tries to follow the loving message of Jesus, check out the Quakers. Not the Steeple house Quakers, they're more like fundamentalists, but what is called The Meeting house Quakers. I'm a member of a forum out of Earlham College, a Meetinghouse Quaker college, and you wouldn't believe how accepting they are of people that differ from them (they accepted me, and I'm hell on wheels towards religion, which they liked). Thru this forum I've met Buddhist Quakers, New-Age Quakers, Native-American Quakers, Old Traditional Quakers, Agnostic Quakers, and even, Atheist Quakers. And they all get along, and express love for each other. I've never seen such a thing like this in Christianity ever. But considering that I was raised a Southern Baptist, who have grown to their present numbers by getting into fights and splitting the church down the middle, thus forming two churches (this is not growth in my book, but a cancer), and then, in my young adult years, joined a much more strict fundamentalist Christian cult, I'm use to seeing Christians that can never agree, even with close brothers and sisters in their own group, people who believe identical to themselves. So it is refreshing to me to find such Christians, that even accept non-believers as their brothers and sisters. Now I've come to see that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith. If I'm not mistaken, it's takes more faith to not believe that it does to believe. Also, from these Quakers I've picked up on, "Following the Teacher Within", which is what they all do, even the non-believers, or atheists. They meet in silence, to seek this teacher, and it's probably why they can be so accepting of differences. The Teacher Within is their authority, and they trust that even if their brother or sister differs from them, they are all following the same teacher within. It's a far cry from following The Book, and it reflects in the love their hearts; love that more closely resembles the teachings of Jesus. "If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian." - MT "God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance." ~ MT - Notebook, 1904 "The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward." -- Mark Twain, Letters From the Earth (1909?; published in 1962) -- Mark Twain, Notebook Harold