DANGEROUS RELIGIOUS intolerance is right here in Barbados too.
I was raised by Christian parents, who instilled in me the importance of tolerance, for example if someone had a handicap or was poorer than I was. This tolerance very much stopped there.
I was not to listen or engage people with extreme religious views from mainstream Christianity as they put it, like atheists, Seventh-day Adventists (SDA) and Jehovah’s Witnesses. For the most part other denominations varied slightly in beliefs.
However, on becoming an adult I became a Seventh-day Adventist, very much to my father’s abhorrence.
Now, if I thought my father was intolerant, Seventh-day Adventists took it to a new level.
I was taught that they were the only true church, Jesus was only coming back for those who go to church on Saturday. I was told to send my children to SDA schools only, only marry from the SDA congregation, so much so that if one did they were sanctions against that person.
They taught that the [mainstream] church and the pope would form an alliance with the state and enforce Sunday as the religious holiday and both the Christian church and the state would persecute them. Hence, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is not a member of the Christian Council.
They have formed a paramilitary group made up of young Adventists called the Pathfinder Movement where they trained members in preparation for their conflict with the pope, the Christian community and the state.
Many of my readers would ask, “In 2015 do people fall for this?”
Yes, they do, and with one of the most organised recruiting campaigns, it is growing. There is a strong recruitment drive in workplaces and neighbourhoods, where every non-Adventist is seen as a project by his Adventist. One knows well instances of Jehovah’s Witnesses standing outside of other people’s churches.
It was no surprise when Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, an Adventist elder, said a non-Christian, in particular a Muslim, should not be elected as president of the United States.
All this information is supposed to enlighten the Barbadian public that religious intolerance is not only in the Middle East, it is right here banging at our door.
World peace is not threatened by terrorists any more than it is by religious intolerance.
– OBOYO M. EDWARDS
