If I am anything, I am a free-lance Christian writer. I love to read the Bible and apply its wisdom to our modern times. After Communism fell, the radical, religious right, (Can you say, John Birch Society.), turned their hatred from "The Commies," to public schools, "humanism," and now the Democratic Party.
I had a friend named Howard who sang in the choir with me. We both struggled with singing bass. No professional training; our ears had calouses on them. We had a lot in common, even though he was 16 years older than I was. He played the fiddle and the piano by ear. The piano he could only play in two gears, F and C.
At every choir practice, he would come in and sit down next to me, frown, and llama spit, "Hill, you're a baby killer! I cannot imagine how you could claim that you are a Christian and be Democrat. Baby killer!" I have brother that says the same thing.
To both I say, "The day you develop a vagina and a womb, is the day that you have the right to express your opinion on a woman's right to choose."
Howard would grumble about it, open his folder, and we would do our thing, including some fun, "non-written" musical harmonies. Howard was an educator and once was a principal, and I respected the man as a devoted, professional educator and a Christian.
While we shared the choir, we also shared music in other distinct ways. I play the guitar and am a big time harmonica player, both diatonic Blues, diatonic melodies and harmonies, and ... the chromatic harp. For years we would meet at the old folks home and sing every Tuesday. With no professional voice training, I finally had to quit, because the singing gave me a permanent sore throat. Howard had retired from teaching years earlier.
The first thing I did, after I retired was let my hair grow out and dawn a beard. The man hated it, even though Gillette Blue-Blades hadn't been invented in Jesus's Day! Howard would whisper, "Hill, your nothing but a baby killing hippy!" and I would laugh. It really burned him that I voted for Al Sharpton, because, "... he does a great James Brown!" and I supported Jesse Jackson. I have a never worn, "Jesse Jackson For President" t-shirt, which I would mention to him, often; and Howard simply could not handle the fact that I was probably the only white guy in our area who voted for Sharpton.
Howard had heart problems in his golden years and had to quit the choir, while I had to quit earlier for medical reasons. The man chose to use some quack remedies to "open his arteries," which cost him a couple of thousand and then he had a medical stint opening up an artery. He died, suddenly, while tuning a piano. I miss Howard; I truly do, but Howard is the very description of tons of religious right-wing Christians, who qualify as modern day Pharisees. In my whole family, I am the lone striped sheep, who votes the OTHER way. As Will Rogers once said, "If I look up, and I share the same political agenda as everyone else, it's time to change my politics." (Paraphrased)
After the first Bush election, an email landed on my desktop from my uncle which demanded,"Describe to me as if I were a blind man, how you could vote, as a Christian, for Al Gore."
After I chewed him up and then regurgitated him, and then hit him with a digital ugly stick about Bush, his email read:
"I don't like how you describe our elected president!"
"Then call out the state Republican Mafia!"
I'm off his, pass-on list, now.
"Momma, " one of my nephews asked. "What do Democrats look like? Do they have horns?"
In our family, the reasoning is, you can't be a Christian and be a Democrat. If Jesus were here, he would "just have to be a Republican!" Not so! Jesus ministered to the down and out of the society, as the Pharisees criticized him for not meeting their "FUNDAMENTAL" approach to their religion.
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