On the day before Easter, the guest columnist in ash's local paper was a minister from central casting. While it can be argued that Christians wouldn't be Christian without feeling compelled to convert all human inhabitants of the planet, ash felt assaulted by the bunny statistics morphing into threats of damnation homily in the wrongest possible forum and made her sentiments known:
For a striking demonstration of bait and switch as a rhetorical device, look no further than the most recent “In My Opinion” column. What begins as a harmless excursion through Easter bunny-related factoids and trivia soon diverges into the most absolutist and scathing diatribe outside the walls of a Pentecostal church.
Apparently some Christians in general and this particular Christian minister are unaware that, short of self-imposed seclusion, it is virtually impossible for a non-Christian American to escape the Christian tenet of Jesus as the only guaranteed path to heaven, and, tangentially, the conviction that all other routes lead to hell.
Yet Saturday’s contributor saw fit to proclaim this “revelation” without such qualifiers as “according to my religion,” “our doctrine instructs,” or the admittedly circular reasoning of “because it says so in the Bible.” While the minister wouldn’t be a minister if he didn’t believe in these edicts, I find it highly inappropriate for such rigidly theological dogma to appear in an ostensibly secular newspaper.
The columnist’s sermon is beyond offensive to anyone who doesn’t happen to subscribe to his brand of worship. In fact, in all the years I’ve read the guest editorials, I have never seen the space occupied by a more mean-spirited, divisive message.