I consider myself pretty conservative, and I worked for years in the social services (of course you know how I feel about welfare after doing so) and while a lot of people in the "church I don;t really attend" do give lots back to the church for the reason you mention (thanking God), it's also because they ARE compassionate. They are out there running soup kitchens, running shelters, running food closets. I don;t doubt there are lots and lots of liberals "laboring in the fields of compassion", but I think there are lots of conservatives too. (As you know, I live in yuppieville, and we vote heavily Republican.) To make a sweeping general statement about liberals being the ones in those fields of compassion, well, it seems to me to be shutting off another area where we might find some commonality.
Compassion, feeling another's pain and wanting to alleviate it, is no less valid when it's carried out within the context of a religious system, is it? Most of these services do not require conversion as a prerequisite to obtaining them. Churches are an excellent organizational tool for getting the services out there. I remember talking about this once on Feelies-- when someone was saying that atheists haven't done much good, where the church has done so much. It was a stupid argument, of course, since atheists aren't an organized group by definition. So I, though an agnostic, do my volunteer work through a church because they are the ones out there doing it the most efficiently.
This actually is related to YYB's religious music argument about which I feel very strongly (as you also know- damn- you know everything I am saying already- we're like an old married couple- "jeez she's going to tell that story againnnn"). I think we need to be aware of the baby and the bathwater possibility in a wholesale rejection of religious faiths. |
