A Plague Among Us?

- A school principle in cancels a performance of Arthur Miller's Pulitzer-prize winning play "The Crucible" because of complaints from a local church.

- The Harry Potter children's books, among others, are burned in a symbolic "cleansing" held in a fundamentalist church parking lot.

- A middle school teacher states that at least once a year she is threatened by a parent for teaching evolution.

- A navy chaplain, sworn to the service of all faiths, ends a Jewish prayer with "in Jesus name," and cannot understand what the hub-bub is all about.

- Walmart pharmacists think it is their right to decide what medicine to dispense, and to whom, despite the fact that a woman has a legitimate prescription from a licensed physician.

- A reborn Christian sect stages protests at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. Among other things, their placards state "God hates America," and "Iraq is punishment for Homosexuality"

- The largest American evangelical organization threatens to withhold accredation of 400 military chaplains because they have been asked to ensure public prayers are "inclusive" of the sensibilities of other faiths.

- A anthropology professor at a public college bemoans trying to teach a class where over 65% of his students are strict creationists.

- The head coach at a US military academy hangs a banner inside the school's locker room stating "We play for TEAM JESUS."

- A significant portion of the population of the US Midwest believes the world is four to five thousand years old, based upon biblical writings.

- School boards in several states and municipalities mandate the teaching of creationism in science class - one even goes so far as to change the official definition of science so as to lend an air of psudo-legitimacy to their actions.

With all due respect to those who believe that their personal beliefs are just that - personal - and who don't try to force them upon the rest of us, is it any wonder that the Rev. George V. Coyone, Director of the Vatican Observatory, calls biblical literalism "a plague in our midst?"