agree to disagree G.

peacefully, yep

history shows that the gospels where the handmaiden to Mercantilism or Mercantilism was the handmaiden to the gospels.  Either, either, or.  There was a loser & a winner,  The losers called themselves the people.  The winners called themselves Christians, the losers were NOT heathens or savages OR in need of a good bit of fine schooling.  Just different…&, you & I both know, the persecution of the different is the hasty pudding of the devout.  Such is the rub.  Either with “the word” or with your own tongue, you persecute (through your pity or call it what you will) those of different spiritual beliefs than your single-minded view of the scriptures.  It is a given that a good Christian MUST build a wall and put a door in it…that anybody who chooses can enter into, if they are righteous.  I know you can redirect every bit of this, with astute word usage & a holy heart.  But you won’t change my version…until you can find a minister who can move a mountain in DC and make 100% good on EVERY treaty ever broken by the powers that be, in God we trust.  This conversation may never find a happy medium GM, because what I’m asking is probably as impossible as anything has ever been, & I will never EVER see it any other way.  Those who read the Kings English and others of wealth & power from other languages & creeds & their flocks have wielded God like a blood-soaked sword, all too often against the most benevolent [generous hearted] people. 

If an old man is sitting in a chair on a screened porch, blowing hope into a harp and sipping a cold beverage, …& a wasp slips in through a loose window frame and stings him, & kills him (because he’s fatally allergic), is it the old man’s fault for being there?   NO, the fckn wasp bastid showed up on private property while in search of plunder, like it was his right to be there, and killed the occupant.  Bad analogy, granted, but takers take & caretakers take care.  The takers had Bibles, flags & title deed forms in hand and their trusty old Whigs, like security blankets, in the bottoms of large travel chests.  Travel chests that they didn’t want to have to carry themselves, didn’t bring enough servants with them, certainly, & were sure glad to create a new lower class who could do the job.  Even if they were long haired hippy freaks…with big drums and inadequate weaponry. 

That said, if I was at your house and you said grace, I’d pray with you…to the same Great Spirit.  Only you’d be saddled with having to feel sorry for me and my uncertified train ticket home. 

You said, “greedy men, all too often in the name of Christ, have done bad things to native peoples of all stripes the world over.”     ~~Yessir, agreed.