Disturbing Messages Delivered From Pulpit

Thanks for the fine article by Richard Natale about gay couples (“The New Protocol,” June 6).

My wife and I have attended an evangelical church and noticed a disturbing pattern over many years. In the late ‘30s, we would occasionally hear inferences from the pulpit that Jews killed Jesus Christ. After the horrors of WW II, these comments abated, but they were gradually replaced with sermons about godless hordes in the Soviet Union.

Now that communism has run out of gas, we are steadily hearing more and more abuse from the pulpit against gays. I am now revolted by my church and realize it has become a mouthpiece of the religious right.

Do churches really need hot-button issues, such as hatred of Jews, hatred of Russians and hatred of gays to coalesce their congregations? We thought Christian churches were supposed to promote the teachings of Jesus--love, forgiveness, compassion.

And it’s not just our church. We read about a minister in Texas who mobilized his flock to initiate the reversal of a gay civil rights ordinance. Another minister interviewed on TV news preaches from his pulpit that gay people should be executed. These messages are so disturbing that we have stopped attending church.

ALFRED COOPER

IRENE COOPER

Los Angeles