Let's face it: Jerry Falwell and his peers have no clue what they're talking about. When these people are the spiritual leaders, the teachers, we are in big trouble.

Good thing that Jerry Falwell is dead--even though, in a sense he lives on through his university, Liberty. Unfortunately, Pat Robertson (also has a university, Regent), James Dobson, and other fundamentalist preachers are out there carrying on the tradition of using religion as an evil political tool in the United States. Remember Ted Haggard? He was another good one. Good thing buying meth from a gay prostitute ended his career as a evangelical preacher.

You're probably too young to remember the fictional character Elmer Gantry. A movie was made about him many many years ago. Burt Lancaster played the lead role. That is why I like to call it the "Elmer Gantry Syndrome".

There probably aren't many things more evil, than to take a thing that people look to for hope. For comfort. Something to believe in that enhances their otherwise mundane life, and use it for personal gain. We have had this type of thing exposed again, and again, and again over the years. And innocent people are still taken in. Why? Because people still hope.

I had this thought at that time, that the persecution and cruelty of the people responsible for the reformation was justification, to me anyways, that they were doing the right thing. But now, with all of the willful ignorence of those who refuse to see the remarkably brilliant style of literature in the bible such as allegorical stories that illustrate a simple message, the poetry, the hyperbole. I just feel that maybe the Pope could have had a point, even though the method was cruel. Historically.

"the remarkably brilliant style of literature..." This is sarcasm, right?

"the remarkably brilliant style of literature..." This is sarcasm, right?

Anyway, I'm not recalling the historical sequence, but my impression is that the reformationists were trying to reform some seriously bad practices in a church that had become a whore of the political system, and that the reformationists wanting the people to have the Bible in their own language was a perfectly logical and appropriate thing to do. Whether or not the various reform movements went in good or bad directions is another (and very complicated) issue, but if you have this book that supposedly contains the foundations of your religious tradition, it can't make sense to not let people read it in their own language.

No. It is absolutely not sarcasm. I meant what I said.