When shepherds abdicate responsible ways, sheep scatter

Religions with the most adherents in the United

States originated in the Middle East. Abrahamic religions include Christians, Jews and Muslims. Adherents remaining in the Middle East generally still look like Middle Easterners, but around the world, there are many converts not physically descended from the earliest followers of these faiths. If the Grand Wizard went to church and experienced a reincarnation of the wedding where Jesus turned water into wine, the Ku Klux Klan would likely show up to burn a cross and run those people out of town.

As a naive child, I thought places of worship existed to guide attendees to be their best selves, in turn aiding our nation to be exceptional. My own ethics were largely informed by a small Protestant church and included biblical ideas such as charity and love should be our chief impulse; treat others as we’d like to be treated; render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s; the human body is a temple; and we are caretakers of the earth.

In 1958, an event in my small Oklahoma hometown shattered the foundation of my beliefs. No black people resided in town. I hadn’t yet understood I lived in a sundowner town. On one pivotal night, our local high school football team played its homecoming game against a mixed-race squad who had the temerity to win by a large margin, embarrassing our team’s fans.

Prominent men from my church blocked and surrounded the visiting team’s departing bus, pounding it with their fists and rocking it violently while shouting crude remarks. My parents hustled me past the violent scene. My mind was restless throughout the night. I had seen hatred and bigotry in people I had previously admired, and who claimed to follow a religion of love.

I know now that religions morph and depart from the teachings of their benevolent founders and often become tools for sinister actions, as have occurred with the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Nazis, KKK, drinking the Kool-Aid, the Westboro Church and Branch Davidian standoff vs. the FBI outside Waco, Texas.

Atheism is the fastest-growing “ism,” especially among millennials who have seen too much hypocrisy during their formative years — including Elmer Gantry pastors with appetites for mansions, helicopters and infinity pools, priests molesting children, radical Muslims dropping the twin towers, and politicians taking their oaths on the Bible and then turning their backs on constituent needs. Hypocrisy and religion are a volatile and unnatural mix.

KAREN COODY COOPER,