Feeling Torn after the Nathan Phillips-Covington Students Debacle

When you grow up in an evangelical family and go to a public school in a suburb of New York city, you learn how to demonize people. I heard negative things from each group (the evangelicals, the people at school) about the other. People who haven't accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior are unbelievers, worldly, bound for Hell. People who are religious are naive, ill-informed, not intellectual. And then my parents got divorced. One parent saw the other as negligent and selfish. The other parent saw the other parent as controlling and rigid. I loved both of my parents. I eventually distanced myself from the evangelicals, but I still cringe when I hear someone dismiss born again Christians or call them, as a group, hypocritical or hateful. I know what it feels like to believe in eternity and in Hell and to worry about friends who don't believe what you need to believe to avoid Hell. I know what it feels like to be judged or to be annoyed or afraid that someone will impose his/her religion on you. Pro-choice people are baby-killers. Anti-abortion people are misogynists. I love people who belong to either group. I am grateful for my experience. I have been the Other in various situations where I was also accepted. My friends at school knew I was sort of weirdly religious, and they accepted me. My grandma loved my agnostic boyfriend. My conservative cousin knows I disagree with him on abortion and same-sex marriage. I suppose our views are abhorrent to one another, but he traveled across the country to my father's funeral and made a point of speaking lovingly of him. I love my cousin, and he loves me. He is one of he smartest, kindest people I know. Many years ago, the mother of a friend, contemptuously said something about "the kind of people who say grace before meals." My friend's brother -- aware of my background and probably sensitive to my discomfort -- said, "What kind of people are those, Mom?" I don't say grace before meals, but my mother and brother do, many people I love do. It hurts to hear them dismissed. When people talk about self-serving journalists, I think about the journalists I knew when I lived in Washington, DC. They are generous people who care about the truth. It's really about sweeping, negative judgments about a group of people. It's about seeing people as members of tribe rather than as individuals with human needs and weaknesses. It's about prejudice. That old song -- used in a public service ad in the 60s, from "South Pacific" -- "you've got to be taught to hate and fear..." Who do you hate and fear?