My perspective on religion is heavily shaped by the fact that I am a Jew and consider myself a part of the Jewish peoples. That means Israel is now and always has been part of my life.
I look at the religions of the world with that lens.
I feel comfortable with Buddhism in its many forms, Daoism and Shintoism, whatever those three may actually be (probably not religion in the same meaning as Christianity or Islam).
On a personal basis, as a young boy living for a few years in El Paso I was tormented, chased and beaten as a Jew by Mexican Catholic Dominicans from my public school.
As an adult I was the business manager of a United Methodist Church and knew many Methodist ministers and a few bishops. I had great admiration for many of them.
I watched American mainstream Protestant religions go from important, large, vital organizations in 1965 to trivial today. From 35 million regular church goers in an America of 200 million people to 15 million attendees in a nation of 320 million people. An effective fall of 75%, three quarters.
What these churches did to self destruct is clear. They joined the Democrat Party. That was an abandonment of religion. Or a redefinition of religion as partisan politics.
Now these remnants of important religions are on the path to total self destruction. The three largest denominations the United Methodists, Anglicans and the Presbyterians have each declared themselves Jew hate organizations.
I won’t argue the specifics of their Jew hatred. Only a fool would think that anti-Israel policies that only apply to Israel are not based on Jew hate.
The issue for me is that these three Christian organizations have eaten the bitter fruit of self hate. When you hate Jews you are hating the founder of your religion. Jesus was born in Israel of Israeli parents; he walked the paths of Israel and his friends were Israeli’s.
For people today to hate Jesus’ people for any reason is self hate. When they pray to ‘Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’ they must have some part of their brain that says ‘that Jew would have nothing to do with me today’.
Christians who are now part of a Jew hate cabal are people who have to live with a cognitive dissonance of the first order.