To the Journal editor:

I think I understand why politicians don’t play nice. They’re all sort of play acting.

They pump out an endless stream of little stylized dramas with stereotypical good guys and bad guys in order to get potential voters periodically enraged, loosely engaged, persistently uninformed, and generally left out in the dark.

Behind closed doors and out on the golf course, politicians of both stripes endeavor to quietly please their deep-pocket donors by passing legislation written by and for the rich to keep their positions of “power” until, that is, they “retire” to become lobbyists or exceedingly well-compensated members of corporate boards or the outfits they legislatively advantaged along the way.

But religious leaders, I just don’t get. The latest assault on rationality by a religious leader involves the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, echoing Putin’s “Russia World” assertion which argues that the people of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus are one united civilization flowing from the 10th-century baptism of the Slavic tribes in Kyiv, which was then the center of lands known as Rus.

The fact that a religious leader justifies the wanton destruction of an entire nation and the slaughter of countless innocent civilians to fulfill some “good old days” tribal mythological nausea is, unfortunately, not an isolated case in world history. Despite the protestations of a precious few isolated religious folks, the vast majority of Christian Churches looked the other way as Hitler orchestrated the death of six million Jews.

Unfortunately, I could go on. Sunni v. Shia, Protestants v. Catholics, the Crusades, on and on it goes. Religious history is written with the spilled blood of the “infidels” of the day.

If kids acted like this, we’d take their toys away and make them sit in their rooms until they learned how to behave.

I remember one especially unpleasant luncheon meeting where the assembled Christian pastors debated whether to consider the request of the leader of the local Latter Day Saints Church who asked to attend future luncheon meetings. Long story short; the food was awful and the group ultimately voted “no” to adding the Mormon guy to the group.

As a matter of principle, I argued to include the Mormon and, more urgently, to meet at another restaurant in the future. I lost on both counts. Turns out the restaurant owner was a close friend of one of the pastors.

William Kennedy

Houghton