What does America being a christian country have to do with anything? Other people have other religions.

Dearest ****,

What kind of Christian are you that you deny Jesus Christ, to a room full of people? [I never told him I was a Christian] You might well be having some sort of crisis of faith, or breakdown but there's no reason for your issues to get projected onto me in that way. You shouldn't be representing yourself as a Christian because I have never in all my years on earth come across one who doesn't believe in Jesus. [again... never said I was a Christian] I can see your full of spite and have your problems but its no way to behave taking it out on others. I prayed for you this afternoon after you were hateful on the phone, and Jesus had nothing to say which tells me that he wants about as much to do with you as I do. This is about you making advances on me, and being rejected [there's been no advancing... not one bit of it! ] and I thought you were a better person than to do that. I have always been respectful towards you because my parents brought me up with manners and I know not to go making a show of myself so I'm left wondering, who brought you up to be so rude? I know it was deliberate just like when you encouraging ***** when she had an abortion and you knew that disgusted me. [I didn't even know the woman he's refering to had had an abortion. ] I know what your game is and that your trying to make me look foolish but you see, you just made yourself look like an idiot. I saya gain stop telling people your a Christian when your no such thing and I will leave it at that. (I spoke to many people at my church about it and they have never heard of a Christian like ou either)

I will pray for you again and let you know how it turns out.

Best Wishes,

****.

oh.. my.. good... GODS!
This man needs a a round with the reality hocky stick upside his head bad.

Gimmee his email.. *cackles*

I have received an email. I was going to explain what it says, but gave up on that idea (you'll see why) in favour of posting it in its entirety instead. I've deleted names and my notes are in green:
To be clear, I have never made a pass at this man. I wouldn't even if he didn't look like the back of a bus because I am happily married, thank you very much. I even wondered if he'd sent the wrong email to me at first, but he did put my name at the beginning of it. I've never pretended to be a Christian... absolutely not. Why would I? And I can't believe that he really thought I was one. I'm a tad befuddled.

the question is did you ever explicitly tell him you were not a Christian prior to the dinner event?

have you spoken to his wife about the evening yet?

if he really did have a repressed upbringing he may interpret any friendly behaviour from women as a come on,

PS what does your husband make of all this? has he offered to throttle the guy yet?

I have received an email. I was going to explain what it says, but gave up on that idea (you'll see why) in favour of posting it in its entirety instead. I've deleted names and my notes are in green:
To be clear, I have never made a pass at this man. I wouldn't even if he didn't look like the back of a bus because I am happily married, thank you very much. I even wondered if he'd sent the wrong email to me at first, but he did put my name at the beginning of it. I've never pretended to be a Christian... absolutely not. Why would I? And I can't believe that he really thought I was one. I'm a tad befuddled.

Some years ago, without realizing what it might mean, I accepted a dinner invitation from a Jewish colleague for dinner on Friday night. I should say that my colleague had never appeared particularly orthodox, and he would have known that I am an atheist. However, in the course of the meal, some kind of observance was put in train, and it turned out I was expected to play along�put on a hat, or some such. I demurred, saying that I felt uncomfortable doing something that might be the expression of some belief that I do not hold, or of joining a �fellowship� with which I felt no special community, and with which I would not have any particular fellow-feeling beyond whatever I feel for human beings in general. I was assured that what it would signify, if I went through with the observance, was not that I shared the world views or beliefs of my host, or wished myself to identify uniquely with some particular small subset of humanity, but only that I respected his beliefs, or perhaps his stance. I replied that in that case, equally, I could not in conscience do what was required. The evening was strained after that. But, I argued to myself, why should I �respect� belief systems that I do not share? I would not be expected to respect the beliefs of flat earthers or those of the people who believed that the Hale-Bopp comet was a recycling facility for dead Californians, and killed themselves in order to join it.

�Respect�, of course is a tricky term. I may respect your gardening by just letting you get on with it. Or, I may respect it by admiring it and regarding it as a superior way to garden. The word seems to span a spectrum from simply not interfering, passing by on the other side, through admiration, right up to reverence and deference. This makes it uniquely well-placed for ideological purposes.

I wrote this column seven or eight years ago for Beliefnet.com. Happy Thanksgiving from the Diocese of Washington.

A few years ago, while I was on an academic fellowship, my family and I spent Thanksgiving with other fellows and their families. In religious terms, we were a mixed bunch: Christians, Unitarians, Jews, agnostics, and atheists.
A multi-religious dinner table always presents a bit of a problem when it is time to say the grace before meals. But Thanksgiving presents a particularly sticky situation, because it is the one occasion on which even the irreligious feel that some sort of invocation should be made. But who, or what, should we invoke?

After several minutes of communal hemming and hawing, one of the braver of our number delivered a prayer to the earth, thanking it for its bounty and seeking its forgiveness for our environmental sins. In all, it sounded more Green Party than pagan. Having crossed that hastily improvised bridge, we tucked into our feast.

But the moment stayed with me, for it illustrated what a peculiar, not to mention sneaky, holiday we were celebrating.

Thanksgiving is not a purely civic holiday like Memorial Day or Independence Day, although we are, in part, celebrating the fortitude of our Pilgrim forebears. Nor, like Christmas or Passover, does it come freighted with the content of a particular faith. Rather, Thanksgiving straddles these two categories; it is civic and religious. To paraphrase Jesus, Thanksgiving gives both to Caesar and to God.

In doing so, it discomfits believer and unbeliever equally. For giving thanks assumes the existence of one (One?) who deserves our gratitude--anathema to atheists. But giving thanks as a nation assumes that we stand before God as citizens of a country, as well as members of a faith. And that should offend anyone who believes that salvation flows from the church and not from the state.

Thanksgiving, in other words, assumes the existence of something that doesn't exist: an American faith.

On these grounds, I suppose one could argue that this holiday violates the establishment clause of the Constitution. I leave that task for some particularly dogmatic member of Americans for the Separation of Church and State. What interests me is the ubiquity of gratitude, the understanding, even among witnessing atheists, that it is important to be grateful for our good fortune.

For me, the desire to give thanks is evidence, at a minimum, that human beings are innately religious. The theologian Karl Rahner wrote that there is a "God-shaped hole" in every one of us. With Rahner, I believe that it is God who put it there.

You can take that argument or leave it. But if you leave it, help me to understand why we experience this particular species of gratitude. I'm not talking about the kind of gratitude we feel toward someone who has done us a favor. I mean the sort of global gratitude inspired by gifts we could not have known enough to ask for, or the kind we feel when matters beyond our control end well for us.

Who do you thank for your sweetheart's brown eyes; for growing up where it snows (or doesn't); for being alive at the same time as Bruce Springsteen; or for seeing your children born into a country that is prosperous and at peace?

You might argue that there is no one to be thanked. Maybe all our purported blessings are a matter of random chance. Perhaps the desire to extend gratitude beyond the human is an evolutionary glitch--a useful social trait that got too big for its britches.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps we awaken one day and realize that we are not now, and have never been, masters of our own destinies; that our successes were not entirely of our own making; that our souls magnify the Lord, whether we like it or not.

Again, you can take this argument or leave it. It is easier to believe in chance than in grace. Chance requires nothing from us. In fact, if life is a succession of random events, than any response to good fortune is superfluous.

Grace is different. In receiving grace, we are challenged to become channels of grace. This is more than a matter of a few good deeds (although those help); it is an invitation to place one's self in God's hands, and devote one's self toward what we perceive as God's ends.

Thanksgiving, then, is a call to action: a gentle poke to awaken our collective conscience from its postprandial slumber. To whom much is given, etc. etc.

In a county as religiously diverse as ours, we may never be able to express our gratitude in words that are acceptable to everyone. Fortunately, deeds work even better.

People may start out by insisting on respect in the minimal sense, and in a generally liberal world they may not find it too difficult to obtain it. But then what we might call respect creep sets in, where the request for minimal toleration turns into a demand for more substantial respect, such as fellowfeeling, or esteem, and finally deference and reverence. In the limit, unless you let me take over your mind and your life, you are not showing proper respect for my religious or ideological convictions.

I think however that rather than try to come up with some sort of consensus regarding the prayer you should have simply been the first person to refuse to pray.

If you ganged up on the guy this is what caused the problem.

It seems to me that the only reason you have posted this story and the subsequent email of doom is to prove that you were in no way responsible for the outcome of the actions.

You had met you say for several years so I find it quite hard to believe that you wouldn't have been able to simply stand up for yourself regardless of whose home you were in.

Iit appears to me that in your case there would have been other ways to handle this. Just simply NOT GO? for example if the guy was that outrageously rude.

But you don't seem to want to consider any other alternative than "you are right" and "he is wrong" and if this is how you approached it that's part of the problem.

You are the one who initiated the consensus and you obviously are the one who felt the most need to stand up. You just didn't handle it tactfully. You also haven't at all tried to consider the man's point of view.

I don't know Shadow, it seems to me you are tipping the initial discussion to painting this guy as a total horror. And as I stated earlier, the fact that your friends, that you have known for years, did not in any way back you up says something.

(has a feeling the emails will suddenly be forthcoming.....)

He'd agreed not to. Nobody thought he was going to say a prayer. We asked him quite some time before the meal - we generally sit about for some time before eating, or help with the preparation. He had time to digest the request. He'd been talking to everyone before we sat down, asking how we all were. It wasn't until we sat down that his mood changed again.

He also told me that the chap had been asked not to do it on one occasion before - something I didn't know - that the request had been made by the host of the party a few days before we were due to meet, and that the christian had flatly refused to attend the dinner if those present were going to exhibit such religious intolerance, so he'd been asked to go ahead and pray that time too. It would have been nice if they'd told me that a few nights back. I

The hostess said, when she asked me to think about what I'd done, "we all told you it would end badly". Well, no, they didn't... they were too busy talking about how small he made them feel to do that. But if she can lie blatantly to my face she can sure as hell lie to herself and everyone else for that matter.

After my departure, the christian chap had ranted for quite some time, but had eventually calmed down, and the group had discussed how to deal with the next meal. They've agreed that the christian chap can say his prayer aloud, and that everyone will participate, but that if anyone feels the need to say thanks in their own way after that they can sit in silence for a moment while the others go ahead and begin the meal. The group decided that this was a fair compromise. I'm not sure they understand the meaning of the word "compromise"

So he WAS told about it before? I am sorry I thought you said that this was the first time it was brought up to him.

Next you said he was "Not impressed" which suggested that he was spoken to at the dinner and was not impressed and proceeded to pray.

Then you said

The fact that he was a total buffoon doesn't give you a free pass to act any way you want in trying to bring him down to size.

I think calling them turncoats and liars is interesting as well. It seems like you want to be right and get irritated when someone disagrees with you and if this is your nature then THAT is what probably upset the guests.

Not the religious argument. That seems like no big deal to them really.

I'd stay away from them anyway. That guy's email is really frightening and just creeps me out to no end. Its almost like a stalker wrote it or something.

I am wondering if something he said in his email was more a case of him projecting his own current state onto me. He mentioned a crisis of faith or breakdown. I have never indicated that I'm going through this - but maybe he is.

The way he finished, saying he will pray for you again and let you know how it turns out....well....all I can say is..if he turns up with a 'ducking stool'...LOCK THE DOOR!

It seems that the Christian chap was more than a bit sozzled when he wrote the email to me, and in his anger he blind copied it to everyone in the group.

...but then said that one of the reasons they didn't keep me in the loop was because you can't trust people who don't have secrets. Now I would have thought that it would be the people with secrets that you wouldn't trust... but apparently those are the ones you can trust. And they feel that I don't have any. It's gone over my head.

The lapsed Catholic has dropped out of the group. He's said he won't be attending the dinners. One of the others has suggested just having a drink somewhere neutral instead of in each other's homes.

Buddha's buttcheeks!

[What started as a reasonable scenario about a old philosophical argument now turns into a total group of loonies with secrets and back stabbing.

My god what a horrible group of people the whole group is>? Were you staying at a mental institution when you met them all? They all sound dreadful.

If I you were I would start believing in miracles because the way this has played out since you first posted the OP is nothing short of a miracle.

You have to keep us posted on what happens next. This is better than a soap opera !

This could probably describe all kinds of groups, large and small...political, religious and social. Only the ones with strict rules and restrictions hold together longer than most.

Sorrow Shadow I didn't mean to offend you. Its like a farce though....funny you didn't seem to care that much before I posted my reply, taking your lead it seemed as thought you were triumphant and vindicated.

I had no idea you were so deeply hurt. I apologize.

i appreciate the story , it illustrates how much relgion can divide us.....shadow it has been a delight exploring this all to imoportant issue..i think we can always grow in understanding and even the best of efforts sometimes aren't enough, as you certainly tryed to resolve it with peace as your guide.....

just to absolutely beat into the ground how horrible Christian fundies are...

I wish he'd said he needed to pray... not "I'll pray because it's my right and you can't stop me". I wish he'd been open. If he'd said he was going through a bad time and needed everyone to pray with him I wouldn't have had a problem with that. Ok, some of the other members of the group, as it turns out, would have had a problem with him regardless.

His church won't have him back, and he's been with them for years. He's bending over backwards to get back in but they don't want to know. I thought church groups were supposed to support you when you mess up... isn't that when you need it most? But the door's firmly shut for him.

that is too bad yes it does seem that your church should be there for you ... is he christian shadow???what denomination?