Jay+C’s+OpEd+Article

= "Religion versus the Church" = = by Jay Campbell = Ironically, I am quite sure that the Churches lead many away from the belief in the religions they are trying to teach. How can a person put all faith into an organization that has corruption in its highest levels, with child molestation in the shadows and campaigns to deprive large groups of people rights they should be granted at birth? Would you want to be a part of a movement that destroys culture in uncivilized nations or one that kidnaps children from their mothers in terror-stricken countries?

My answer is clearly no, but that doesn’t mean that myself or people like me are atheists.

While I have never been exposed to religion as a child, I always had the option open to me. My parents both grew up religious and experienced first-hand some of the processes that the church encourages, and these reasons are precisely why they are not religious today. For instance, after my Grandpa was murdered by a hit a run driver, my Grandma eventually remarried. For this, she was excommunicated. She had four children to raise and was a full-time mom. If she wasn’t remarried, she couldn’t have survived and given the essentials to her four children. Yet, she was exiled for the organization she was devoted to for over forty years. Surely because of this, all four children stopped attending church, but none of them (to my knowledge) are unreligious.

In my family’s case, we are not opposed to religion, but violently opposed to the Church. The Church has let its higher ups corrupt it so much that it ironically leads to a growing number of atheistic and nonreligious individuals. The Atheists have a strong case: what sort of God would allow the establishment that represents Him rape children and destroy individualism?

The Church condemns gay marriage and abortion precisely because both of those deprive the church of more devout followers, neglecting the most beneficial option for the parties involved.

In the days of the Holy Roman Empire, the citizens were shamelessly taken of in obvious, successful attempts to bring money to the leaders.

Holy wars allow men to kill other men in the name of God – wait, weren’t we teaching acceptance?

Devout followers turn to murder, such as in the case of the murder of an Abortion Doctor while he sat in Church.

Missionaries in Haiti kidnapped and smuggled children across the border after the devastation of the earthquake, without checking to make sure their parents were still alive.

Numerous boys have been raped and emotionally scarred permanently by higher-ups in the Church.

Missionaries waltz into impoverished countries, give the natives what they sometimes don’t need, obliterate their culture, and rip families apart, and effectively bring an extinction to diversity, all for the word of God, as seen in Chinua Achebe’s novel __Things Fall Apart__. In the novel, missionaries come and bring with them a series of events that ultimately leads to Okonkwo’s life to completely fall apart. He respects his culture, but is unable to adapt, and for that he is severely punished. Does this seem right?

None of these crimes have been committed by the religion, but by the Church and those who represent it.

The Church has become a complete paradox: it has successfully begun to encourage a lack of spirituality. Maybe they should clean up their act before preaching to us about our sins, because I'm not buying it.media type="file" key="jayc-muckraker-0910.mp3"