The chickens. They came home. And roosted.

Having grown up as an MK (and having had to do the “dress up and smile for the church folk” thing when my parents were carrying out the special kind of begging/speaking tour required every few years in order to maintain our modest lifestyle), the most surreal thing that ever happened to me was when my grown-up atheist self was door-stepped by a Bible-wielding, deadly serious, Nigerian JW missionary.

It will be even more surreal, however, when the next Nigerian I meet turns out to be doing the field work for a thesis on “Kinship in crisis: geographical mobility and stress on family networks in a European culture.”

and likewise only a complete idiot could read a Bible and interpret “the Jews said this”, “the Jews did that” as blanket references to all Jews.

Unfortunately, a lot of complete idiots read the Bible.

Tanzania is regarded as quite a good place to do work (scientific field work). The British colonial history left a cultural legacy with some real positives from my POV (certainly negatives too of course).

Zanzibar being one of them?

Greg, perhaps more than you realize. African groups are now establishing churches and missionary organizations in the US for the purpose of converting liberal and non-Christians. If the rise of evangelicals into the middle class had offered us the hope of any relief from their insanity, the African churches are now there to pick up the slack.

Jose’s points are interesting, though without further evidence I take them with a grain of salt.

There are bits in the New Testament which are regularly used to tease (ha!ha!) to bully and generally to give a hard time to Jews – this is a fact.

These actions do depend upon the precise sect and its practices. They also depend on which of the multiple translations they choose and, remember, no-one at all knows what the original said.

It is not necessary to proclaim a political philosophy such as Hitler’s in order to speak and behave in an anti-semitic manner – as any Jew would tell you if you troubled to ask!