Frank Schaeffer: How Fundamentalist Religion Is Destroying the World

The earth is full of life, but far right exclusionary religion deals mostly with an earth full of death! The countries in our world with intense fundamentalism are the world's greatest trouble-makers: Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Vatican City, and the state of Israel come to mind. Among one of the most devout followers of Jesus, my friend, a wonderful pastor in our armored division based in Pleiku, was often depressed, because of the destruction around him, sometimes bought a few bottles of alcohol, and I once saw him walking from our Class Six store in Camp Enari. He had just come from one of our sordid missions north of Banmethuot, where he gave communion to the dying young young men who fell in battle. At the time, I remember scolding him, to take a few weapons with him, so that he could survive an enemy counter-attack. He avoided my glance, and told me that there were always a few M-16 rifles laying near the dead, so that he could sustain a counter-attack, and that the men under his care could then return in one of the many wooden caskets. President Woodrow Wilson's religious views were the driving force in his political career, informing his quest for world peace. Like all fanatics, he decided to achieve peace through war! The "devout" president upset the Presbyterians, as he moved our nation toward entering World War I, including William Jennings Bryan, who quit his office as secretary of state in protest. Wilson's "Idealism" led to the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the Second World War! The twentieth century began with wars rooted in religion and nationalism, and ended as a century of wars rooted in ideological atheism, led by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. The fanatics in America and abroad included George W. Bush and the Ayatollah Khomeini, and many, many more. The deluded religious belief that any people or nation, or church is "chosen", will once again lead their idiotic followers into more and more deadly conflicts, and will eventually cause the total destruction of every man, woman, and child on this beautiful planet.