I used to be a Christian; indeed for several years I was deeply mixed up in a fairly extreme fundamentalist charismatic church. They took the Bible completely literally.

The things I personally found hard to come to terms with were their treatment of women (heads covered in church, obey husband in marriage, male-only church elders), science (as a biologist, I got asked more than once to lecture on the arguments against evolution), education (secular universities are the seat of the devil) and wealth (God will provide, therefore savings/pensions/insurance are evil). Compared with this, fidelity in marriage and chastity outside it were relatively trivial.

For this reason, I now find it hard to understand why Christians tend to focus on sexual morality.

Mistral wrote about the lack of idolatry in contemporary society.... well, that was not the view of this church. Education, money, television... you name it, they could sermonise on its idolatrous influences.

Ob B7: well, I've often wondered why the Federation abolished religion when it would be so easy to institutionalise it to keep people in their place.

Tavia