Altogether different kind of rage:
Some of you probably remember that I posted recently about a close friend's wife dying suddenly. We held her memorial service yesterday. Went about as well as could be expected, except for one part.
Her family is very, very religious (some flavor of Pentecostal Holiness, I think) and very strict and conservative. At some point in her young life, she had made a conscious rejection of all that. Which is not to say that she was atheist, far from it. But she held a much more positive, much more personal type of religious faith that was more or less non-denominational. As does her husband, who grew up in a similar (though not quite as oppressive) conservative religious background and likewise had a conscious rejection of it. (His family's church did
glossolalia, if that you gives you any indication.)
So...I would say they were two of the most "religious" of my friends, but it was an altogether positive, affirming sort of "folk" Christianity. They didn't really go to church, although they used a (female) Episcopal minister for their wedding and for her funeral service.
So anyways, the rage part....there was a "sharing of stories" near the end, and her brother spoke. And within the first couple of minutes, he started talking about her "struggle with religion" and how she had "rejected her faith". The hackles stood up on the back of my neck. I don't give a flying fuck what else is true in this world, you do NOT use someone's funeral as a platform to criticize them. You just don't. I looked at a buddy of mine, and I think we were watching each other as if to say, "Am I going to have to hold you back, or are you going to have to hold me back?"
He finally wound it up after a few minutes and essentially said, "Well, anyways she had started to become Episcopalian," (not really) "and while that's a different kind of Christianity than ours, I guess it counts. So she died a Christian, and that's good."
Of course, of our circle of friends here, most are atheists, agnostics, Jews, Buddhists, Unitarians and Taoists. I was worried his spiel was going to go into far worse territory, with him somehow blaming her death on "turning away from God" and casting blame on her husband and all her heathen friends for encouraging her. THAT would have turned things super-ugly.
But still, who the fuck publicly criticizes someone at their own funeral? Especially when it's your own goddamn sister?? RARGLBLAGHRAEG
This is why
fuck fundies. Seriously, fuck those guys.