Religion and a brief mention of corn flakes

Before I left I was chatting about travelogues with Peter and he pointed out that all his travelogues are obsessed with food, and are really boring to read after you get back. This is why I'm not going to tell you how happy I was to eat corn flakes for breakfast this morning. I was really happy though.

Instead I'm going to talk about Protestants. Protestants are the persecuted religious minority in Gondor. As religions go, the oldest is the old African stuff that no longer exists much although there's apparently some practitioners in the ruraller areas I've never met them. So effectively the religion that forms the old boys club in Gondor is the Christian Orthodox and that's what most people follow. There is a Muslim contingent, but they've been here so long that they don't really get persecuted anymore. They probably did back in the day though. So the Protestants are the newest form of religion in Gondor and they seem to be treated about as well as Medieval Jews*. As recently as 13 years ago there have been incidents of Protestants being murdered and beaten up. They have a harder time getting a job and when they recently built a church to worship in it was burned down while all the Protestants were out celebrating the building of their new church. If I were coming to Ethiopia and was a Protestant I might neglect to mention this fact. Oddly this religious intolerance seems to have singled out Protestants as most other religions are just the religions of foreigners and the locals only have a vague understanding of them at best.

To end on a lighter note I'll relate a story my friend Avi, (who is Jewish if you hadn't guessed from the name) told me. He was asked his religion and said Jewish to which he was happily clapped on the shoulders and told he was just like them (they were Orthodox). A little surprised by this he pointed out that there were a few differences in their religion to which they replied "Like what?".
"Well, there's the Jesus thing"
"But you believe in him right?"
"Well, I believe he existed."
"But we both believe he was the son of God so we're the same"
"Actually Jews don't believe he's the son of God"
"But you know he was the son of God right?"
"No, we don't believe that."
"Are you sure?"
"Yep, pretty sure"
"I think that you know he was the son of God."
"No, we don't believe that."

It went on in this vain for a while. The point being that he (the Ethiopian) seemed to think that Jews really did know that Jesus was the son of God, but just claimed he wasn't to be difficult. Those wacky Jews always denying the truth of Christ even though deep down they know he was the son of God.

All this talk of religion and I haven't even discussed powerpoint presentations (which are apparently very important to religion) or my Buddhist defensive measures. Hopefully I'll do that soon.

Jordie

*I actually don't know much about the life of a Medieval Jew, so what I actually mean to say is they seem to be treated about as well as I vaguely understand Medieval Jews were treated.