Mr Muldoon and religion

Press, 20 November 1982, Page 14

Mr Muldoon and religion

Sir,-Neville Rush (November 17) feels that my accusation of “fear and damnation” sects adds to the “confusion.” Surely that same confusion originated with these very sects, preaching their endless subjective interpretations of scripture — a sqrt of latter-day tower of Babel, all righteous, all ramming their versions of guilt, fear, sin and salvation down our throats. On last Sunday’s “Credo,” while interviewing four faces of Christianity, Brian Edwards, a self-con-fessed atheist, likened the churches to a physician who injects the unwary patient with some mythological disease (guilt, original sin), then offers

him the cure (grace, salvation). In fact, the churches do not offer so much a cure, as ah analgesic, a hallucinogenic drug, or, as Marx (Shhh!) astutely observed, “an opium for the people.” This is a bitter pill that ’numbs one to the cold reality of for ever being duped and exploited by politician, profiteer and priest.—Yours, etc., BILL FILSHIE. November 18, 1982.

Sir,—The virtues of the affluent are seldom queried and purity is supposedly the prerogative of the poor. They should also display suitable humility and preferably invisibility. Predictably, any church or organisation which attempts to alleviate the distress of a faction, deprived by race, colour, religion or poverty, cardinal sins, is labelled Marxist and Left-wing. R. M. Anderson and his mentor elevate these labels to terms of endearment to a rapidly swelling segment, 87,000 plus, of our population who are doubtless the authors of their own destiny. Possibly members of the Methodist congregation are searching for Christ in the service of their fellow human beings and they might find him. Christ lived as a carpenter and a member of a deprived subject race and came to a distinctly unpleasant end. — Yours, etc., ERIN E. Van DIJK. November 19, 1982.