Wonder why evangelicals target Mormons, who are only small potatoes [“Hug One Another,” April 21, City Weekly]? Why not go after the big guys? To make a greater impact, why don’t evangelicals disrupt Easter services at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome? Or desecrate the Quran at the Blue Mosque in Iran?
Come to think of it, though, there are precedents for stalking the weaker members of the religious herd. Catholics have always been obsessed with the powerless Jews (whom they referred to for years as “perfidious Jews”) instead of harassing the much more numerous Muslims and Hindus. (The Crusades were a temporary and local phenomenon.) And, again, instead of slaughtering these large groups, Catholics annihilated the weaker Albigenses in France, killing more than a million according to some reports.
Is there a moral here somewhere? “With God all things are possible”? “God is love”? “Kick them while they are down”?
Ben Coke
Salt Lake City
Come to think of it, though, there are precedents for stalking the weaker members of the religious herd. Catholics have always been obsessed with the powerless Jews (whom they referred to for years as “perfidious Jews”) instead of harassing the much more numerous Muslims and Hindus. (The Crusades were a temporary and local phenomenon.) And, again, instead of slaughtering these large groups, Catholics annihilated the weaker Albigenses in France, killing more than a million according to some reports.
Is there a moral here somewhere? “With God all things are possible”? “God is love”? “Kick them while they are down”?
Ben Coke
Salt Lake City
