Voice for Religious Right’s Majority

Hooray for mail carrier Dan Jones. He said what many conservative Christians have been thinking and articulating for a long time (“Conservative Christian Says We Have Religious Right All Wrong,” Dana Parsons, Dec. 13). The media has put us all in a box that fits only a few.

I’m a conservative. I’m a Christian. Yet I absolutely abhor the activities of Randall Terry. I cringed in disbelief at Pat Robertson’s Republican convention speech. I disdain the hypocrisy of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. OK, so now we have the teeny minority of Christians that the media focuses on out of the way.

The huge majority of Christians are caring, loving people. I did not say perfect. We have our faults, failures and problems. We do live in this real and imperfect world, but most of us are not the narrow-minded bigots that the media makes us out to be.

At my church, we feed from 100 to 200 homeless people on Thursday nights, we have Kids Clubs that minister to about 100 children, plus junior and high school activities for inner-city kids in Long Beach. We have a Coffee Break group that helps the single moms and any other lady who wants to come--also in the inner-city of Long Beach. We’re an ordinary (about 350 to 400 people) Christian church; yet we’re multiplied thousands of times across this nation. This is Christianity in action--not the hatemongering.

This column by Dana Parsons is the very first time I’ve ever seen in print the opinion shared by a huge majority of Christians; we’re sick and tired of being tarred and feathered with unfair, inaccurate media coverage. Your coverage during the recent election of anyone who happened to admit to being a Christian was an absolute disgrace.

We do not desire to force others to do things “our way.” Christianity is a choice. We do think “our way” could be portrayed a lot more truthfully so people would have an honest chance to make or reject that choice on its true merits.

LaVONNE GUNDERSON

Garden Grove