While I was raised in a Jewishly thick family, the Alexandria of my youth was saturated with a Southern Baptist/Confederate ethos, and I was fascinated by both. After all, Alexandria was Robert E. Lee’s hometown. The Baptists were the majority religious group in the city of 30,000, and many of them, including my Boy Scout leader, projected a cavalier attitude they were the true believers and guardians of both God and America.
One unforgettable event of my youth triggered a lifelong question: How could a religion that stressed universal love and God’s “Amazing Grace” vilify and demonize its spiritual and historic parent: my beloved Judaism?
That decisive episode took place on a hot Saturday night in the early 1950s at an outdoor revival meeting in a huge tent erected about ten miles south of Alexandria on U.S. Route 1. While it was my first revival meeting, it was old stuff to my three high school friends – all evangelical Christians – who had invited me to join them.
One unforgettable event of my youth triggered a lifelong question: How could a religion that stressed universal love and God’s “Amazing Grace” vilify and demonize its spiritual and historic parent: my beloved Judaism?
That decisive episode took place on a hot Saturday night in the early 1950s at an outdoor revival meeting in a huge tent erected about ten miles south of Alexandria on U.S. Route 1. While it was my first revival meeting, it was old stuff to my three high school friends – all evangelical Christians – who had invited me to join them.
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