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Memphis proper is unfortunately a cesspool of crime and gang activity, in which entire areas of the city have been ceded over to gangs and police won't enter. The school system can't produce graduates capable learning to work cash registers or load trucks. This week alone, there's discussion of further lowering school standards. Memphis expands, absorbs and destroys communities in its wake of eastward expansion, ever seeking additional tax revenue for its corrupt infrastructure.

Memphis is the home of 60,000 career criminals, according to FBI statistics of a few years ago. At any given time, there are a hundred thousand outstanding warrants for serving.

I grew up there but moved to Collierville 25 years ago. I think that what you are referring to is the county (Shelby) and the sleeping satellites, the bedroom towns, of which there are 6, I believe, incorporated in Shelby County outside of Memphis.

I grew up Southern Baptist, and I am a member of the dreaded and scorned Bellevue! (Though I often attend Hope Pres with my daughter and friends who belong to that congregation, and we are equally at home I believe.) I know many, many Baptists. I hear them talk in their private moments. They do not speak or think as you imply. Those who are aware of the tenets of their faith (and all churchmembers aren't at Bellevue or at any other church of any other faith) recognize liturgical, canonical and doctrinal differences between Southern Baptists and Catholics. But there does not exist the sort of antipathy you describe. What you describe sounds like Belfast or something. I have and have had doctors, dentists, co-workers, classmates, bosses, subordinates, and girlfriends, who are Catholic. But until now, frankly, I never really thought about it. But, yes, I would draw the line at Islams or other cultists---I wouldn't be so open to them.

I assure you that among the many Southern Baptists I know, those who are well-versed in their faith, Catholics are highly revered for one reason above all others, and that is for Catholicism's uncompromising stand for the sanctity of life in the protection of the unborn. (I think you'll find that most people who sow seeds of ill-will among Baptists and Catholics are pro-abortion, and they see the exploitation of Baptist-Catholic differnces on liturgy as diminishing the overriding congruency the faiths have in their total and unmitigated opposition to abortion.)

Baptists I know love and respect YOUR Holy Father. He is an unflinching advocate for the unborn.

For politically aware Baptists I know, some of our greatest heroes are CATHOLICS: Dr. Alan Keys, William F. Buckley, Pat Buchanan, and on and on.

And in my generation of conservatives (I am age 50) if there is ONE SLAM against Catholics that remains today, it is the errant and rebel Catholic priests (Berrigans, I think was the name?) who committed acts of sedition against the United States during the Vietnam war. Of course, participants in treason come from all religious backgrounds.

I think that the LIBERAL manifestations of the Catholic church---the faction that promotes homosexuality and sides with murderers against their victims---are the things most troubling to conservative Christians who are not Catholic. But there again, MANY people of DIFFFERENT religions promote homosexuality. And many "fundie" Christians who are not Catholic (Chuck Colson??) strongly oppose the death penalty.

Baptists get slammed by the PC police for ordaining only male ministers. Catholics get the same treatment from the same people. Baptists catch heck for its opposition to "womens rights" (code word for any and all abortion, up- to and including partial-birth); so do Catholics.

In Memphis, in my lifetime, Catholic schools were always respected by all. MANY non-Catholics sent their children there for the same reason that many do today: because parents know what the children will receive there in the hands of the Catholic schoolmasters. When public schools began to rot in the wake of court-ordered busing some 30 years ago, and before the rise of church-sponsored schools in the Protestant community, many Protestants opted to send their kids to Catholic schools.

When it comes to friends and acquaintances, I know more than some, fewer than others. And I know many non-Catholics in Memphis whose children have attended or attend Christian Brothers High School, Christian Brothers University, Catholic High School, and also the Catholic girls schools, the name of which escape my old mind now. In fact when I was in high school, it was quite common for parents who could afford it to send their daughters to Sacred Heart and others.

In summary, this is not to say by any means that there are not differences among Christian denominations over Biblical interpretation. And there are Catholics and Pentacosts and others who believe Southern Baptists are dead wrong. There are Christian denominations that believe only they or only a certain number of people will enter heaven. But among Southern Baptists, among Baptist Christian apologists---students of the Bible and of the faith---you will find those who have beliefs that include or exclude from "Biblical" or acceptable dogma---as you will in any faith.

I believe you have expressed a sort of paranoia that is unfounded in reality, at least among Bellevue-ites. (And let me note that our pastor Adrian Rogers is one of the most wonderful, loving and kind men I have ever known or known of.)

Actually, in growing up in Memphis and in the South in the 20th century, there are virtually no etnic or religious distinctions; it's pretty much black and white. I was grown before I realized that kids I grew up with were of Italian or Jewish (like me---I am Jewish lineage), or Polish or Irish origin. We just didn't think that way. I guess you'd say that the normal human tendancies toward prejudice and bigotry were simply directed toward blacks.

Then when I grew up, and visited and met people from the Northeast and Boston and NYC (which, I love, BTW), I found that prejudice and hatred was not reserved by whites only for blacks, but also for "dagos", "wops", "kikes", "polochs," etc. As kids growing up in the South, in Southern Baptist churches and in all-white schools, we had never HEARD these words. And when I did, it was clear from parents and schoolteachers and church-teachers, that these words (just like "nigger") were unacceptable and not polite.

BOTTOM LINE about Southern Baptists, Bellevue Baptist, and---if you follow the lefties' logical thought progression---also Catholics and Jews and all Bible believers: Liberals hate us. Get over it. Liberals hate America. America was founded and thrived upon the principles of the Bible. The left can't stand that. The left cannot abide absolutes. "Right" and "wrong" are concepts the left wishes to obscure first and destroy ultimately. If you think these lefties seek only to chastise those identified as "closed-minded" or bigoted or fundamentalist Christians, think again: after they demonize and villianize and marginalize Southern Baptists, they will move on to Presbyterians and Methodists and even liberal Catholics. Remember: to the left, there can be but one god, and that is the STATE.