I wrote this a long time ago to an old friend from my Christian high school who emailed me concerned about my atheism. I never sent it to her. But I have to get it out. Finally. It's really long, so feel free to tune out at any point. But thanks to all of you Progressive U people for being my sounding board as I work out the kinks from my screwed-up childhood.
I grew up in a radical church that my dad and my pastor liked to proudly describe as "independent, fundamental, Bible-believing Baptist." I spent my entire youth desperately trying to please a jealous, holy god.
I was still a teenage Baptist Republican in 2005 when my delayed Delta flight from London Heathrow landed back in Washington, D.C. Half a year in England had rocked my small-town perspective, and I came back in love with Britain, a blue-eyed toff from Kent named Alex, Premiership football, and the BBC.
So...it seems that political types and all major U.S. news network have agreed to tut that Obama made a boob of himself in San Francisco. How dare he insensitively reduce small-town Americans' preoccupation with the second amendment, Moses's tablets, and border-hopping, job-stealing, welfare-sapping immigrants to our underlying frustration with the thinness of our pocketbooks?
I, like many of the rest of you, bumbled onto this site thanks to FastWeb's helpful suggestion that the Progressive U people like giving money to kids for that opulently expensive fairytale experience called college.
