Religion, moderate or extremist?

Recently at a presentation by the Washington Area Secular Humanists, the speaker was Don Evans, who spoke on the topic of whether religious moderation is as harmful as religious extremism.  Here's an article by him on the same topic.  Fortunately for me, he took the side that religious moderation is okay.  That's good, because I participate in an organized religion and consider myself moderate.
 
But okay, so what's moderate?  When we look at somebody else's religion, for instance Islam, from the outside, it's easy to decide that moderate Muslims, including all of the dozen or so Muslims that I know personally, are the ones who use their religious practice to form a fellowship, and do not expect anybody else to agree literally with their theology.
 
Why, then, can we not apply the same standard to our own religion?  Here's an essay by John Shelby Spong, whom I consider to be a religious moderate.  But within the Episcopal church, Spong is considered to be somewhere out on the fringe.  We simply can't accept the idea that belief in the literal truth of the Nicene Creed is actually an extremist view.
 
In other words, the Episcopal church, one of the most progressively moderate of all denominations, is still about 80% extremist.
 
I won't bother to go very far into most other denominations because I really don't know what's happening within them, but perhaps the Roman Catholic church should be addressed.  From its inception in 325 AD, the Roman Catholic church has been the most extremist of all denominations, in fact, they even excommunicated Bishop Arius for trying to introduce a few slight shreds of moderation.  In modern times, Pope Benedict XVI has gone to extremes to reaffirm the extremist position and squelch the few small voices calling for moderation.
 
However, there's one area in which the Roman Catholic church, at least in the United States, has slipped out of extremist control in recent years, and that's in their parochial schools.
 
Back in the 1950's and 1960's, children entering public high schools from Roman Catholic parochial schools had a tough time of it.  They were several years behind, and had a tough time catching up.  People entering college from Roman Catholic high schools had it even worse.  They had been so steeped in theological doctrine that the very concept of rational thought was total culture shock.
 
Since then, that situation has changed drastically.  Recent graduates of the Roman Catholic parochial school system now actually have a significant edge over most public high school graduates when they enter college.  Obviously, the proponents of moderation and rational thought have somehow intruded into their school system.
 
In church, I try to stay out of crybaby contests with the many extremists among my fellow congregation members.  That would just damage the fellowship that I believe to be the fundamental purpose of religion.  I believe that making decisions according to rational thought gets things done, and if others don't have time for rational thought because they're too busy trying to use theological magic, they're the losers.

Terrorism and Attitudes

Here's a letter that appeared in last Friday's Calvert Recorder.  (link here)  I wish I could say it's a parody, but I'm afraid it isn't.  The abject willful idiocy and hate-mongering bigotry are exactly what you'd expect to see on the True Christians Unite parody role-playing site.
 
Right off the bat, the writer begins by bragging about her education, which the rest of her letter proves she doesn't have.  Then she moans about how horrible it is that her granddaughter is getting an education on topics of importance in the modern world.
 
Her seething hatred for Muslims is so intense that she even thinks that using correct grammar to talk about them would honor them undeservedly.
 
Then she claims she's been through something called "a revised history book" without finding any reference to Christians.  I have no idea what sort of history book she's talking about.
 
She decries the death, destruction, lack of respect, and violence in the modern world, utterly oblivious that it's attitudes like hers that are causing it.
 
She claims the students are not allowed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  I have no idea what school she's talking about.  Recitation of the Pledge is a regular thing in all of our public schools in this county.
 
Then she claims the students are not allowed to say the Lord's Prayer.  Hogwash!  Of course they can, as long as they don't try to cram that primitive tribal war chant down the throats of differently-believing classmates.
 
She complains that freedom is no longer.  The only freedom that's lacking is her freedom to cram her religion down everybody else's throats.
 
Somehow she believes that the Constitution has been abolished.  She sounds like one of these people who mistakenly think the Constitution is a Christian document, blissfully unaware that the founders of our nation were of various religious beliefs, with Humanism and Deism predominating.
 
She doesn't believe that Muslims, almost 25% of the world's population, are a fit topic for study by children who are going to have to deal with them.
 
And then she mumbles something about God, the American Flag, and the Constitution all in one breath, and tries to claim that the Bible is the greatest book ever written, ignoring that other perfectly law-abiding citizens believe the same about other holy books.
 
And in other news, there's a terror alert active for the state of Maryland.  (link here)  It appears to be faddish nowadays to blame Muslim extremists for all the terror in the world.  We forget that our nation is full of Christian extremists who are only one small step away from terrorism.