Dear Secular America,
I am sorry. I am so, so, sorry. I know the extremist Religious Right probably drives you crazy, and for good reason. They blabber on and on in such a self-righteous way and annoyingly, disturbingly, and unceasingly carry on with amazingly intolerant doctrines. I myself cannot stand to listen to them, and I'm not even the sort of person they accuse of going to hell.
So ignore them. Walk away when one tries to argue with you. Or simply keep in mind that they are hypocrites who cannot even hope to live up to their own standards.
Please don't think the religious right stands for all of us Christian. I am a proud Christian, and have been one nearly my entire life. If you happen to be an Atheist, a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, an Agnostic, or anything else at all, that is completely fine, and I firmly respect your decision. A person's spirituality (or lack thereof) is a completely personal choice, and the Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights completely recognizes that, thank goodness. The Religious Right doesn't see it that way, unfortunately. They want to completely rewrite the history, turning our secular nation into one built solely on their ultra-conservative interpretation of Judeo-Christian values. And, even more unfortunately, they are even more wrong it terms of theology (from my interpretation of the Bible) than they are with the history of the United States.
If you look throughout the New Testament, the one most important theme is "love thy neighbor." It never grants any exceptions. It can be reasonably reduced that the Bible wants you to love thy poor neighbor; love thy gay neighbor; love thy Muslim neighbor; love thy imprisoned neighbor; love thy disenfranchised neighbor; love thy sinning neighbor; love all neighbors, no matter what race, what social position, what personal history, what beliefs. It is love, the very most important theme in the New Testament, that the Religious Right so desperately misses. Love is not enforcing hand-picked religious laws-- rather, it is the selfless service to the hungry, the naked, the widows, the imprisoned, the orphans, the marginalized from society. And yet the Religious Right has the nerve to condemn homosexuals when the Bible tells us to love all, to scream at government social programs when the Bible says to give to the poor, to yell at foreign aid while 6 million children under the age of 5 die each year of malnutrition and the Bible tells us to feed the hungry. The New Testament grants freedom, forgiveness, and fairness, and the right denies all of these. The Religious Right has effectively twisted the words of God for their own purposes and turned them into nothing more than a political tool.
And I am sorry for that. I offer my deepest apologies to secular America for what the religious right is trying to do to this country, and I simply hope that you know that not all Christians are like that.
Sincerely,
A concerned and sorry Christian liberal