Re: [UUPoly-L] Stranger in a Strange Land

"Edward Blanchette" <ejjabla@comcast.net> · Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:30:28 -0000

I just have to get that book and read it, see what it is that so startled 
you and some others!  BTW, Harry Truman was President when I was 18-19. 
Long time ago.  :-)
The book that shook my world, that I had to quit reading fairly early in the 
book, was a history of institutional Christianity  from 1 CE to the present 
day.  This was sometime between 1958 and 1965, in my late 20s to early 30s, 
in Mobile AL when I and my wife were members of a Southern Baptist church. 
This was after I graduated from the University of Florida .  The shock was 
the difference between the true historical  facts and what I was taught 
about Christianity  and the early church there and in the Boston MA church I 
grew up in.  Only within the last year did I find another copy of the same 
book and was able to read it cover without any qualms.
Ed <ejjabla@comcast.net>
Citrus Heights (Sacramento County)
California USA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: JasmineGld@aol.com

To: uupoly-l@uupa.org

Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 9:56 AM

Subject: Re: [UUPoly-L] Stranger in a Strange Land
In a message dated 8/17/2008 11:38:31 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
ejjabla@comcast.net writes:
Jasmine, you have got me so curious I have to ask, even though I  have not
yet read Stranger in a Strange Land!  What was it about  that book that so
shook up your  Southern Baptist religious  beliefs, how did it do it.?

Oh, that was a zillion years ago! I remember it happening, but pulling up
the details would be nearly impossible. Here's the little I do remember.
The first time I tried to read Stranger, I was in college, so probably 18 
or

19 years old. It was a small, conservative Christian college; I had a lot 
of

fundamentalist influence around me. Somewhere in the middle of the book, I

had to put it away and stop reading because I was so disturbed at the

religious implications. It shook my world.
I think this was the first time I ever quit reading a fiction book  in the

middle. It was several years before I went back to the book and read it 
cover

to cover.
Needless to say, I've come a long way since then.
Jasmine