Religion and Rampant Cultural Xenophobia

Reaction to Differences A few days ago I ran into someone on the street preaching about the Christian religion, trying to convert others to Christianity by saying that Christianity was the only real religion, all others were dead, or not real religions. Anyone following another religion was a liar, a thief, or worse. Being a member of a different religion I was admittedly a little offended by this as he was saying essentially that because I belong to another religion I was no better than a murderer. That I deserve to go to jail simply because I did not believe what he believed, that I did not believe in his particular flavor of God. I have been hearing things like this now for close on to two decades now. If you do not belong to the Christian religion you are essentially a second class citizen, not good enough to live in society with everyone else because I have different beliefs. I recently had a person I considered a friend tell me that they could no longer be a friend with me because I was not Christian, and another that I was in a relationship with would no longer even talk to me because her church leader told her that it was a sin to associate with someone on a personal basis if they are not Christian. No religion that is not of Judaic origin attempts to tell people that because they are of a different religion. This is I believe symptomatic of a particular disease that is rampant throughout American culture, Xenophobia. We as a culture have come in many ways to reject anything that is different from our own beliefs and values, though we are a country that was founded, and developed, through those very differences. The United States as a country is supposed to hold freedom, including freedom of religion, and the pursuit of happiness as one of our highest ideas, but when it comes to practicing these ideas, we tend to fall short. Religion, one of the biggest areas of our culture that we tend to be at our most xenophobic. We as a culture have