Re: Militant Christians letter to the editor (The NEWS, April 23).
Militancy in any arena, religious or otherwise, is dangerous and threatens the individual freedoms we as Canadians hold dear. We can all cite examples of horrendous things that haves been done “in the name of religion.”
We can also select excerpts from any doctrine to support our position on a particular issue. I would invite letter writers Fern and Laurence Wayman to not limit their knowledge of Jesus’ teachings to Matthew 10, Verse 35 (verse 34 in the King James version). If anyone takes the time to really study Christ’s true message, it is one of love, which encompasses, among other things, tolerance, joy, compassion, service and peace of mind.
The various Charters of Rights and Freedoms and constitutions of modern democratic societies certainly bear similarities to the principles Jesus taught, and those individuals who drafted such previous documents, while perhaps Christians, did not do so as the Waymans state “predicated on the assurance that all Canadians are believers in the supremacy of their God,” but rather predicated on the assurance that justice, equality and freedom for all citizens would be preserved.
Devaluing these principles has resulted in devaluing individual worth, and frankly, as far as the line in our national anthem “God keep our land, glorious and free” is concerned, we’re not doing a very good job of that on our own. Since the Waymans identify themselves as militant atheists, does that not put them in the same arena as militant Christians? Where does it end? Can we please drop the militant attitude, and replace it with tolerance?
Leslie MacDonaldParksville