The essays with a religious bent began in the North during this academic year.  Two community college students whom I worked with were slavish in their constant references to God in their writing.  One student insisted on using Biblical references for papers that she completed for an upper-level English course, while another student rationalized every bad event that had happened in his life with a religious interpretation.

Over the past several years I have moved further and further away from any religious affiliation.  As religious fundamentalism grew in the U.S., I was drawn to a completely secular belief and value system.  After reading Bertrand Russell’s "Why I Am Not A Christian," (While Russell wrote his essay with Christianity in mind, it applies equally to all religions.) I came to view the residual effects that religion had in my life through the perspective of what Russell identifies as superstition.  I was left with no firmer belief in some all-knowing deity than I was with the tooth fairy.  That’s not to say that there isn’t anything that can be gained from religion.  I look to one of my heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., and I can see how his sense of a religious interpretation of justice can be both a solace and a driving force for action.  Still, the effects of religious dogma and extremism have left a trail of dead bodies from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Palestine Territories and back to the World Trade Center.  I want nothing to do with such blind extremism!

When I returned to the South in the New Year, I knew that the expressions of religious fervor would dwarf anything I had experienced in the North. Again, I began editing students’ writing in a community college setting.  The expressions of religious sentiments came fast and furious as students began coming into the learning lab where I work seeking help with their writing.  Remaining neutral in the face of points of view that a person vehemently and diametrically rejected was no easy task.  I corrected grammar and syntax and content without trodding onto the hallowed fields of the religious expression of students. 

It seems that at the community college where I work in Florida a great many students who write from a religious perspective do so because their lives have been tested by extreme deprivation.  This is especially so for some of the students who have emigrated to the U.S. from Haiti.  I cannot imagine the economic and political environment from which they come, but see the expression of religious fundamentalism in essay after essay that they bring to me for editing.  On a given day I see numerous examples of the latter in students’ work.  One student, a native of the U.S., was writing a paper that interpreted Biblical psalms, asked me during our work together what my religious affiliation was.  Again, her paper reflected a fundamentalist view of the Biblical literature with which she was dealing, and when I responded that I was a Jew, she said, "My husband is Palestinian and he hates Jews!"  I didn’t bother to respond that I was a secular Jew, if indeed she could understand that concept, or that I have long favored the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In Florida, it is not only students who feel free to flaunt their religion.  One of my supervisors sometimes wears a scarf that reads: "I Love Jesus."  In a classroom building adjacent to where I work there is an entire bulletin board given to the use of a campus group called Faith Walkers for Christ.  Slogans on the board read: "Encounter Faith: Explore Answers to Life’s Questions," and "Surrender Our Lives to His Honor."   There are also advertisements on the board for a nearby fundamentalist church and a student pastor available to advise students.

I’m not surprised by any of this since, after all, I am working in the Bible Belt.  What did surprise me, however, was a fellow worker I ran into while taking a break in the lunchroom at this college.  She had completed copying a huge pile of packets for the supervisor who I mentioned above.  The cover of each packet was topped with a picture of the supervisor’s church in a nearby community.

In the single positive note at semester’s end, a professor rejected a student’s essay on marriage that railed against gays.  He simply returned the essay with the note that, "this is the Bible, not writing." In a sea of intolerance at least one open mind exists.

However, the worst example of religious intolerance came unexpectedly from an acquaintance. I asked her opinion about the establishment of a Palestinian State.  Her response, in the form of a tirade, seemed endless.  "You’re not one of those people?" she asked angrily, probably meaning that she viewed me as a liberal Jew, making my point of view toward Israel and the Palestinian Territories immediately suspect.  She continued, "And how about the rockets fired from the Gaza Strip?"  The latter being a standard response for any challenge to Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and the recent war in Gaza.

For those of a liberal bent, don’t wager on the fact that the religious right has been defeated in the November elections.  And don’t think that the wall between church and state will be rebuilt anytime soon. Those on the religious right are just biding their time.

Howard Lisnoff is a freelance writer.  He can be reached at [email protected].

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