I’m leaving for India on the 16th. I’ll be back on January 8th. I’m super excited. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.
The following account is just my biased view of what happened last week in Comp. Rel.

Last week, in my comparative religions class, we had an Anglican preacher(pastor, minister, or whatever they are called) come speak to our class. We had just started Christianity the a couple of weeks ago, and we are reading Mere Christianity. I am not a Christian. I would say I practice many of the traditions of Hinduism, but I was raised a Hindu. I’m a pluralist more than anything. My comp rel. teacher has me and another student escort him to her classroom, and we talked. I really liked him, because he seemed like a really intelligent person. For his lecture, he’s doing great, talking about his background, his church, and all of that stuff. Then, the question and answer part of class. I ask him a question about Mere Christianity. CS Lewis says something like he believes there is some truth in all religions. I asked the pastor what he thought of that. He says something along the lines of “there may be some truth in all religions, but the Truth(big T) is in Christianity.” I’m okay with what he says. It’s what he believes, and I did ask him. Then he goes on to say that “there are some pretty moral people who will go to Hell because they have not accepted Christ into their hearts.” This bothered me. He was looking straight at me when he said that, and I was hurt. I tried to let it go, but I needed to express how I felt about it.

A couple of days later, we start off talking about Mere Christianity, then we get off on a tangent about separation of church and state. Let me give you some background, so will understand all that happens next. I live in the middle of nowhere, GA. 90% of the school is white and conservative. I’m part of the 10% that is a minority. I’m also an outspoken liberal. Many of my friends are extremely conservative and religious. In my comparative religions class, we are about oh so close to having an actual fight. There are only about 10 people talking, but 3 of us are outspoken liberals, and the rest are extremely conservative. So close to a fight, and many times the conservatives would not let us get a complete thought out before jumping down our throats to say what they want to say. My teacher stopped us before we actually got physical, and we all calmed down. We were all friends again and everything forgotten. I really care a great deal about my conservative friends; we have a lot in common except for our political views. It bothers me though that whenever their is a debate, they don’t let us “the liberals” express our views. This is largely because we are the minority.

Earlier today, I was talking to my friends, conservative and liberal in the halls. I said “I do not believe in Jesus.” Those are just my beliefs. Than one of my friends says “Be careful what you say in these halls. You might get beat up.” This from one of my most conservative friends.

I hate that so many people in my school are closed-minded. My conservative friends, they may disagree with me, but they’re open and accepting of my beliefs. They don’t try to change me or convert me or anything like that. They accept me. Right after we had that heated debate, everything went back to normal. We might have been a bit pissed off, but we were cool with each other.