Why, cont.

So, how did my religious beliefs morph?

I began to question the basic assumptions of how the underdog--the powerless accessed the system. Along this road I pursued a few degrees in American history and many of the cultural myths of upward mobility and equal playing field disappeared. How had America addressed issues of race, environment, class and gender? Not well. Not well, indeed.

Those questions became the impetus to leave the Baptist church. For like conservative America, the Baptist church, in my estimation, had been dead wrong on the central issues of class (including poverty and labor), race, gender and the environment.

Don't get me wrong, it isn't that the left has been dead right on these issues, but they haven't dismissed them as unimportant. That is something.