My contact with believers sometimes goes unrecognized by me. Ordinarily, they are just like ordinary people – just like you and me.  Now, following the election which was won by fundamentalist majorities in southern central states, the believers are active consolidating their power and crowing over it. Their agenda is the same as it has always been.  What they want is our nation to be a nation based on narrow Christian beliefs supported by odd groups including certain Orthodox streams of Judaism and perhaps Hindus and Buddhists. What they want is nothing less than religion taught in the Public Schools with a hold on “theories” such as evolution while the Bible is accepted as science.

I really don’t mind exchanging banter with some of the more responsive types. Most, however, just gather strength from the constant stream of e-mails about the perfidy of Liberalism and “Godless” others who have been leading our country into paths leading to the devil. They send these messages to me as absolute truth. These are people who literally believe every word in both the Old and New Testaments were dictated by God to men and every word must be followed literally, figuratively and absolutely. They do not practice “tolerance”. Their political agenda is to take over the government and rule the American people and, beyond that, the people of the world.  They saw the election as a battle and a war to be won and they are victors. With G.W. Bush they know they have a mandate.

You cannot deal with some who believe impossible things. You cannot deal with children who see monsters under beds or in closets.  You have to love and comfort them and wait for the light of day to show these things do not exist. You cannot deal with adults who work, have homes and families and believe that they have a God-given mandate to punish evil. For them the Devil exists.

One of my correspondents is a follower of a particular conservative Rabbi with links to Christian fundamentalists. His explanation for this is that the Rabbi is automatically correct in his beliefs and will accept non-Jewish aid from Christians to achieve both their goals to redeem Israel, the Temple Mount and the acceptance of the Messiah as having arrived in the person of Jesus – just in order to supplant the Muslim presence in both Israel and Palestine.

It is more complicated than that.  For anyone who has read the fiction series about the “Rapture” preceding the coming of the Messianic Age, you will know the kind of people we are dealing with.  These are the ones you cannot deal with for they believe in impossible things but they are in your face and will not go away.