Angela Coulter

Recent Activity

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  Angela signed the petition | over 1 year ago

  Tell the FDA: Put a Label on Genetically Engineered Salmon
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  Angela commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  In the Name of Equality: Jimmy Carter Leaves Southern Baptist Convention

  I have strong spirituality and an irrevocable belief in God; however, I refuse to limit myself to a church, as it seems something like 95% of the ones I've been to are very similar to what Jimmy Carter has experienced when it comes to what the churches deem justified discrimination (remember in the history books, how religion has been used for political control over may peoples over the centuries... as well as "killing in the name of God"). However, if you take out the limitations of denominations and formal religion, the overall message is similar... and that's what's worth exploring!

  
  

  I originally come from Long Island, NY -- a huge melting pot -- and listened/learned from my friends of different beliefs and religions.... and as a teenager stopped going to the church my parents brought me up in (which was the Episcopal Church - or, as we used to joke about it, "Catholic Step-Down" church), because it seemed the people who got on the proverbial soapbox at the church (and the ones who made it almost every weekend) were often the most hypocritical... as if going to church gave them a free pass to be ugly people every other day of the week.

  
  

  I moved to NC in 1996, and have been shocked at what I've learned of some of the church teachings down here, in what is still "The Bible Belt" -- discrimination, prejudice, and judgement "in the name of God" (as what Carter says). What disgusts me most is when parents pass that rationalization right down to their children -- and I've seen it firsthand. Funny, how all children start our trusting, and indiscriminately loving, and then they get taught otherwise by their parents and/or their church, which will ruin them as people.

  
  

  My husband and I have made it a point to talk about faith, God, and spirituality with our children since they were very little, and also about multiple religions and their beliefs. How to be open-minded, and how to accept people as they are. Yet we continue to be amazed at what they've heard from other children they know -- for example, there are these 2 little boys down the block that like to play with my girls (they're several years younger than my girls). The father is very involved in their church... in fact, I think he went to seminary. But the boys once told my girls how they "worried about them" because they didn't go to church, and that we had symbols used by heretics on our house (which, by the way, are Asian symbols for happiness, peace, love, and prosperity on the door). My girls' reply: "Worry about yourselves. We're just fine." My oldest won't even socialize with them anymore, because she finds their continual mention of it annoying and closed-minded. The other one will only go over there every once in awhile. 

  
  

  Anyway, if churches got rid of using the structure as political control in one way or the other, and instead focused on our similarities and universal love and acceptance, I think that would go a long way towards improving the problems we have as a world.