By Ole Anthony
ONLINE EXTRA, January/February 2004

And now we introduce a lady who needs no introduction - the late Madalyn Murray O'Hair. O'Hair was a fierce proponent of the separation between church and state, tirelessly working on behalf of Atheists everywhere. In the days before Saddam and Osama, her anti-religion passion made her Public Enemy #1 in the United States.

In the mid-'70s, when Door Publisher Ole Anthony was going through his "Media Phase," he interviewed O'Hair a couple of times on his radio show. He found her ... unsettling. Not because she didn't believe, but WHY she didn't believe. Naturally, they quickly formed an uneasy friendship that endured to O'Hair's horrific, mysterious death a few years ago.

We ran across these tapes recently and were so intrigued that we had them transcribed. Our intern Sarah MacIlvaine condensed their several hours together into one short interview.

We think you'll find it ... unsettling, also.

THEDOORMAGAZINE: Madalyn, why do you think you've become such a phenomenon?
MADALYN MURRAY O'Hair: Atheism is one of the mysteries of the religious mind. Since the beginning of the United States anybody criticising Christianity was eliminated in the minds of the rest of the population. I made a breakthrough, the time was right. Everybody was aghast and said, hey look, we have a real life honest to God, if you'll excuse the expression, Atheist. And I became a token Atheist later because the American people could then say, "Hey, look how liberal we are. We even permit an Atheist to appear on radio and television."
DOOR: In light of your appearances with Dr. W.A. Criswell (First Baptist, Dallas) and Johnny Carson, do you think people are interested in Atheism or interested in religion?
O'Hair: I think they are interested in a look at Christian doctrines from outside the religious community. The religious community has interpreted, reinterpreted, broadened, and liberalized their ideas, but no one has been able to express any ideas about them. I think there is a fearful eagerness to hear the other side. It's enticing to look at something prohibited but not take too great of a peek in case something titillating may happen.
DOOR: There is a statement in the Bible saying, "In these days there shall be a form of Godliness, but they shall deny the power thereof." Do you think most people are only christians because it is socially acceptable? Is the reason there is so much excitement because they might have a guilt feeling because there is no power in their lives?
O'Hair: I'm not saying that a great number of Christian person's have not had an inner, transforming, spiritual experience, something that has been exciting to them. But Christianity is its history. It cannot deny its history, it cannot thrust it aside, nor can it say that it is some institutionalised religion operating under Christian tenants; these do not adequately represent true Christianity. I think this is a plea to special thinking, or a plea to taking us apart as being an esoteric part of Christianity.
DOOR: I know you grew up in Pennsylvania, what did you want to do when you grew up?
O'Hair: I wanted to be a doctor but I went through college, started into pre-med, and was confronted with a frog. I couldn't bring myself to butcher that animal. Talk about a moment of truth, in a flash I knew I would never be able to get myself into an almost barbarian kind of profession. Another moment of truth happened at a human physiology exam during which I was asked to define pain. I knew exactly what the professor wanted me to write down but the whole human mechanism was so wonderful in my study that I could not bring myself to give a pat answer to the question of what is pain.
DOOR: So what did you decide to do?
O'Hair: During the Second World War, I joined the army as a buck private but the first thing they do is give you an IQ test and when I came out with 150, they pulled me out and put me in Officer's Training. I wanted desperately to go to the Pacific because my husband was there with the Marines, but they sent me to Europe. Honestly, what better assignment could anybody have? How could you go to Paris, or Africa, or Italy, or France, or Germany and not be totally involved?
DOOR: I know you were a professional student for a time, what degrees do you hold?
O'Hair: I have a Doctor of Jurisprudence from South Texas College of Law, and I have a Ph.D. from the Minnesota Institute of Philosophy. I got that Ph.D. in Philosophy and religion. In addition to that I have a Master's Degree in Psychiatric Social Work, a Master's Degree in History, a BA in History, and an L.L.B. in Law. I wasted an awful lot of time in colleges and universities.
DOOR: So you were an intelligent child, were you precocious as well?
O'Hair: Yes. I skipped third, fifth, seventh, and ninth grade. I got out of high school when I was fifteen.
DOOR: Did you ever feel growing up that your intelligence kept you from communicating with people?
O'Hair: I think many years later I had an understanding that smart people are not generally liked. But I was not perceptive enough to understand that when I was younger. I got so quickly involved in things and couldn't see beyond my involvement.
DOOR: What is the happiest moment you can remember?
O'Hair: I was very pleased with my church attendance believe it or not. I went to the Presbyterian Church, and it was beautiful. There were white walls with beautifully shined wooden pews, and stained glass. I remember the silence, the solemn beauty of religious music. I love religious music very much, I love Handel particularly. I absolutely loved to dress up every single Sunday, go to Sunday school, get my lesson, be the head of the class, and get my little lambs for having the right answer which I pasted on something.
DOOR: What were some of the hardest things that you can think of?
O'Hair: That is tough. I had handsome parents, a brother, and was born into a family of considerable affluence. We couldn't have been more wasp if we tried. My father was a steel contractor in Pittsburgh. We had servants, a chauffeur, several maids, an enormous yard to play in, a great number of friends, and a car, which smelled like leather all of the time. I enjoyed getting dressed up. I used to have patent leather shoes that I loved, and dresses with pleats that I loved. I knew that I was a handsome child with a good, strong, straight body, and that I was attractive. I hardly ever got ill, and I went to good schools. I absolutely adored school, I never had enough books to read and the snow absolutely fascinated me. I did have a dog that died, but my parents handled that beautifully. They pointed out that roses die, and flowers, trees, and dogs die, that death is a part of life. I had a very happy childhood, and I cannot pretend that it was terrible, and miserable, and dirty, and all of that. It wasn't.
DOOR: Were there any milestones in your life?
O'Hair: I don't know exactly what you mean by that. I feel there are thousands of landmarks in a person's life. It's a landmark to fall in love, get married, have a child, and have a terrible illness. It's a landmark just to move and change jobs, and all of those things happened to me. But they have happened to every other person I think.
DOOR: What makes you different then?
O'Hair: Some people came up from Baylor University to do an oral history on me and at the very end one of them said, "Well, you know Madalyn, the thing is that Nietzsche thought like you, but he was pessimistic. You are thinking like Nietzsche but you're optimistic." There are very few times when I am depressed or unhappy. Those are phenomena's, which do not occur to me.
DOOR: What do you think about the Christian idea that there is an empty place, a desire in every human for a union with something greater than themselves no matter what their intelligence, or state of being is?
O'Hair: My personal experience is that I do not feel a void. I absolutely don't feel a void. I have not been ecstatically happy all my life, but I have been happy all of my life that I can remember. I am an unconverted optimist.
DOOR: What about when your son was being berated because he wouldn't pray. Was that a happy time for you?
O'Hair: I could not have survived that experience if I was not basically, psychologically secure. If I hadn't had a sense of humour to laugh off the excesses of the religious community they would have driven me insane, which of course they tried to do.
DOOR: Let's go back to that time. Your son was in Junior High School. What happened, he made a decision not to pray when everyone was praying and he was persecuted for it?
O'Hair: Yes. What concern is it of anybody's if we don't pray? Why should they coerce my family, brutalize us, destroy our home and our cars, go to our employers, ostracize us, and persecute us, because we don't want to participate in what they're doing? I think that the most ugly, vicious, brutal, hate-filled persons in the world are Christians. I think that a very fundamental core feeling of Christianity is intolerance. Here you had a family professing something that the Christians did not profess and they were intolerant of my holding that opinion.
DOOR: And that was your motivation then for the court action?
O'Hair: Our country was predicated on the proposition that religion is and ought to be a private affair between a man and his God. Here was a situation, which was enforceable by existing law. I was an attorney at the time and the only way to remedy an existing law is to have that law struck down the United States Supreme Court, or have a new and different law passed. So I took legal action. It was also something personal having to do with my child and the coercion upon him to pray whether he wanted to or not.
DOOR: If they had not taken the position to make your son pray, if it had not been personal, would you still have taken it to court?
O'Hair: Yes, the persecution on my family was just an incident in the battle.
DOOR: How much did it cost to get Christian doctrine dismissed from schools? And how do you feel about some schools still openly teaching religion?
O'Hair: Ninety-five percent of schools across the nation are in compliance with the United States Supreme Court ruling. Schools that are flagrantly teaching religion are showing children defiance of the law and our Constitution, and teaching our children to be criminal. They are saying primarily that you can get away with breaking any law if the reasons are religious. As for the financing, personally it cost me my employment, my home, my reputation, and my family. But as an organization, we relied almost entirely on the American Atheist community to support the Bible prayer case. In actual legal fees and court costs it was about $25,000. The average Atheist sent me $2.67 over the four-year court fight.
DOOR: You said earlier that Christians are the most ugly, hate-filled persons in the world. Do you see any difference between someone who says they are a Christian and somebody who says they are a born again Christian?
O'Hair: Yes, the born again Christian is more insane. An ordinary Christian is a person that has been indoctrinated into Christianity by their parents, school, or minister. They are seized at a very early age during their very first intellectual beginnings. They don't have a chance. A born again Christian is an adult who, when looking over Christian tenets, deliberately as a mature adult reaffirms, and reasserts, and rededicates himself to the absolutely insane idea of Christianity. I think all of those people, without exception, are a little sick, they have a portion of their brain split aside, in which they carry on irrational ideas and fantasies, and cannot be wholly intellectual people.
DOOR: You know, I am one of those idiots called a born again Christian.
O'Hair: That floors me because I feel your intelligence working, and it is incredible that you can be a Christian. Such a nice young fellow, how did you ever get caught up in that?
DOOR: I made a conscious decision to be an Atheist very early in life, and I rejected all the doctrine. I was kicked out of high school for refusing to capitalize God, and all the other kinds of oppression one goes through. I had never been to church in my entire life until I was 33 years old and never heard any of the doctrine. Then this precious moment in time came when everything in the universe made sense, I spent a year and a half doing nothing but reading the Bible. I didn't read any Christian books. I didn't listen to Christian theocracy. I had not gone through all the indoctrination. How do you rationalize that?
O'Hair: I think you have had some sort of a serious emotional confrontation in your life, and were not able to handle it so you have retreated from the world.
DOOR: President Jimmy Carter was also a born again Christian and you supported his candidacy, why did you do that if you perceive born again Christians to be sick?
O'Hair: I'm an advocate of church and state separation, and I base my advocacy of that on the Constitution of the United States. When religionists start fiddling with the Bill of Rights they may be after ideas concerned with their God, but they wind up with ideas concerned with reducing freedom of speech, reducing freedom of press, reducing freedom of conscience. And anybody who would possibly attack the first amendment should be removed from office. Therefore, when any political figure takes a position in respect to separation of church and state, we endorse that position, never the man and his total policies. Carter based his solutions for the problems of the nation on highly rational concepts. At the same time, he continued to believe that he was going to be alive after he died and that Jesus Christ was an historical person, and that prayer has efficacy. Yet, while he was in the governorship of Georgia, he was very careful to remove prayerful instances in the government, and to see that there was a strict separation of state and church.
DOOR: Are most Atheists in the United States members of the Republican Party?
O'Hair: I think if you stop for a minute, you will understand why Atheists are Republican. They are highly individual persons. A great percentage of Atheists are people who are singularly capable of ordering their own lives. By that I mean that they are doctors, lawyers, dentists, and veterinarians; they have nobody else to tell them what to do. They are people who are able to stand-alone economically. An extraordinary number of small businessmen are Atheists across the nation. So here you have one out of every four people in the country claiming to be Atheists, according to the Gallup Poll, who want to think for themselves, do for themselves, stand independent economically, philosophically, and theologically.
DOOR: The Gallup Poll also said there were fifty million people plus who claimed to be born again.
O'Hair: This is the same thing as Betty Ford, and Mrs. Rockefeller having breast cancer. One week afterward every woman in America thought she had breast cancer. With Carter saying he is a born again Christian, you're going to have fifty million people in America professing they are as well. Two years from now those fifty million people are going to laugh at themselves. How many people have seen flying saucers, how many people have actually experienced the devil? During the heightened period when "The Exorcist" was showing all over America and all over the United States, many people testified to having experiences with the devil. All of this has to do with the imagination of the American public and nothing else.
DOOR: You have been accused recently of badmouthing some membership of your group because it was infiltrated by church members? Was there any truth to that?
O'Hair: I badmouth anybody that I want to badmouth particularly if I have facts, figures, and statistics. I feel that this is a part of the American ability to attempt or try for freedom of speech. What happened is we have an organization in Dallas and when I went up to Dallas to catch up, I found their church state separation committee functioning out of a Unitarian Church. The minister came and sat down, told me he was a committed Marxist, and that he was going to see that the organization followed Marxist lines. As I said earlier, most of the Atheists in America are of the republican persuasion and I'm supposed to be speaking for them. So I told the Dallas group they could go to hell, take the Unitarian Church and their minister with them, and form their own little Marxist group, do their own little Marxist thing, and go to church as much as they want to. Incidentally, I don't know how many Unitarians understand this, but one of the requirements to belong to a Unitarian church is to believe and accept that there is a Supreme Being. No Atheist can have a belief in a Supreme Being. I had a blow up that got into the local press, some stayed, but the good Atheists got the hell out, and started another chapter.
DOOR: I have heard your son Bill claimed to have a born again experience?
O'Hair: That is entirely erroneous. My son works within our organization and he has never had a born again experience. My two boys are very committed Atheists and they have been from the time they were about ten years old. There are all kinds of stories that go out about me constantly. I have heard stories about my own sneaking into churches. I have heard stories that I am a Roman Catholic. I was charged by a major magazine in the United States with being a Roman Catholic agent inside the Atheist movement.
DOOR: How would you feel if one of your children did become a born again Christian?
O'Hair: If my children would become so irrational as to accept Christianity as a guide for living, I would be so disappointed in their intellectual development I could not honestly continue a relationship with them.
DOOR: There must have been something that happened between loving church as a child and your current beliefs.
O'Hair: It's an old fairy tale that you're going along and everything is beautiful and then something terrible happens.
DOOR: I didn't say something terrible, just that something must have happened. Was it a gradual process?
O'Hair: This is the whole point. Lets say there is a young black boy sitting in south Dallas, mentally retarded because his parents had syphilis. He cannot figure out life, do anything right, talk, or communicate. I cannot perceive a God would put him in that situation and me in mine. If my parents had had malnutrition, I might have been born with an IQ of 80 instead of 150, I might have been deformed in body, or in emotions. If I had grown up in a slum, I might have a terribly aggressive instinct for self-preservation. It is only by accident alone that I happened to be born where I was and that he happened to be born where he was. It could not be by design, it's too cruel. I see a natural origin for myself, and I see a natural origin for the course of my life. I see that my life has been swayed by events.
DOOR: Do you think there may be two levels of an existence in the natural and the spiritual?
O'Hair: No, I think what you see as a spiritual concept you see with a very physical mind. If your mind was damaged in an automobile accident, you could not conceive any more of that spiritual. It's the essence of materialism vs. idealism. The materialist position is that all ideas come from a real physical brain, and that without that brain and its capacity to demonstrate what it has developed, there can be no ideas. Idealism says there was idea first before the brain existed. This is the pinpoint, the heart of the difference between Christianity, or religion and Atheism. We believe all things come from something material, and you believe all things come from something of the spirit. These differences are manifested in that an Atheist believes we must live to live, and a Christian believes we must live to die. Your whole reward system is after death.
DOOR: That is a misunderstanding. The reward system is now; it's the foretaste of what life is really all about.
O'Hair: Foretaste. Your words give you away. The actual taste, the experience that you roll around in your mouth is the experience you are going to get when you die. Christ essentially taught his disciples to have no thought for things of this world. Throw them away, that's behind the idea of, "sell all you have and give to the poor." The churches have not done that.
DOOR: I'm not defending churches.
O'Hair: When Jesus Christ says, "Do not worry about faith, good health, good food. Do not worry about relationships with your fellow man, but throw all of these away..."
DOOR: He said the relationship with your fellowman is the most important of anything.
O'Hair: He said, you must hate your brother, you must hate your sister, and you must hate even your own self before you can come unto me. Don't tell me He taught love, He didn't. He taught rejection of self, He talked of beratement of ego, and He talked of complete subjugation. The last thing that He was interested in was self-realization. He said to people, you couldn't have self-realization. You must abase this and come unto me. Only through becoming as the least of these, becoming as ignorant as a child, can you come to me.
DOOR: How about instead of as ignorant as a child, as innocent as a child?
O'Hair: It's the same thing isn't it?
DOOR: Maybe not. Why don't you explicate the Atheist ideals a bit further?
O'Hair: An Atheist is a person who must of necessity and intellectual conviction follow the life style, the philosophy of Atheism. We cannot take directions from without; we must have a realization from within. Everything that we do must be for a fulfillment of life here and now. We cannot waste a minute of time because the only thing that we have is time. We cannot do anything to abuse the earth, we cannot cause death because this is the enemy of life, and this is the antithesis of life. Every position that we take is based on the philosophy of Atheism. For instance, every single Atheist is an ecologist, because we feel that it's very important to preserve what we have now, the natural world, our independence, existence, and relationship with other people. Everything is done for a respect and understanding of the earth and the animal kingdom; a respect and understanding of ideas, a sorting through of ideas, a confrontation of them. We try to see if we cannot have, while we are alive currently, peace and understanding, love and appreciation of one another. I think the religious community constantly is being told through the precepts of religion, "Forget about all of that because the earthly things are not important. Heavenly things are more important than the physical things right now. You don't need to have good health and be clean. It's much better if your physical body suffers; it's much better if you're agonizing at this particular moment, reaching toward something else." We have a philosophy of living, we have a philosophy of happiness, we have a philosophy of well being, we have a philosophy of inner development. In all of these things I see that the Christians are in opposition.
DOOR: The obvious question is if today you die and there is nothing after that, why should you be so interested?
O'Hair: Because today is important. Today is beautiful; today is overwhelmingly crowded with events and relationships. It's important to live this day, to reach out now and touch, and be happy now. It's important to solve human problems now. I don't know an Atheist that doesn't have a certain excitement about life. It's terribly exciting to live, to love, to fornicate. Probably one of the most wonderful, satisfying things in the whole world is just to have a bowel movement if you stop to think about it. It's very important, because you see every bodily function is dirty for the Christian. It's something you do and get over with, and forget about, and isn't that rotten, with foul four letter names attached to it. We are saying constantly, everything is wonderful, everything is good, and it's all in how you look at it.
DOOR: Are you an evangelist for Atheists?
O'Hair: I don't use any religious terminology at all. I'm an explicator for Atheism.
DOOR: At any time in your life did you ever believe in God?
O'Hair: That's very difficult because I do not know the honest answer. I attended church until I was about eleven or twelve years old. My presumption is that I believed what was presented to me during that time.
DOOR: Who is Jesus Christ if anyone in your mind?
O'Hair: I don't accept or believe that there was a historical figure such as Jesus Christ. I feel that was all cooked up by ignorant people, in ignorant times when there was no literature, no philosophy, no understanding, and no science. I believe that the Jesus Christ story originated in a myth of Krishna, describing Krishna as having a carpenter for a father and being born of a virgin, named Mary, in a state six hundred years before Jesus Christ, where a mean king killed off all of the firstborns.
DOOR: Do you accept the apostle Paul as an historical figure?
O'Hair: No, I think that Paul was a part of the thesis, the story.
DOOR: Do you think the Bible is true?
O'Hair: If you're asking if the Bible represents a thesis verifiable by human experience, or a story of human history or development, then the answer is no, the Bible is not true. But the Bible is true for those persons who accept it as a philosophical statement of theists. There are fragments of the Bible, which reflect common understanding and decency. This is incidental to the main thrust of the Bible because I think the Bible is a very poor standard of living for anybody. I think that the Old Testament particularly is horrendous. The idea of a God of jealousy, wrath, and war, along with deprecation of women in the Old Testament is sick. And the New Testament where a man looks at his mother and says, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" If either one of my sons were to say that to me I'd slap them in the face and say, "There, you S.O.B., that's what you have to do with me."
DOOR: You obviously don't believe in Satan then, either?
O'Hair: No, come on, that's laughable, that's a joke.
DOOR: Some people have claimed to believe you are demon-possessed. How do you respond to that?
O'Hair: I find it to be hilarious that a person in America today could think in terms of possession of a physical body; somehow being entered, and assailed and taken over by a malignant force. When they say things like that, they are saying something horrible is going to happen to me for having the audacity to have an idea other than theirs. Why do they want to force me to believe? Why do Christians want converts? Why can't they believe what they believe, and let me believe what I believe? I don't understand why Christians dedicate their lives to coerce other people to believe.
DOOR: I would argue they are supposed to live to be conformed into the image that God has chosen for them, to live a life of innocence. We are supposed to be dedicating our lives to being non-judgmental.
O'Hair: But you judge those who are not Christian as unworthy and in need of your solicitation. Christian instructors all over the United States have so indoctrinated people into this nonsense that they can get back onto the air like Pavlovian conditioned creatures spouting meaningless ideas and phrases. It's criminal what you've done to people.
DOOR: You realize of course I'm going to be persecuted for having you on my show, you realize that?
O'Hair: Well, those are your Christians, you're not going to be persecuted by any Atheists, believe me.
DOOR: I understand. I'd simply like to ask forgiveness for the people who did those things to you.
O'Hair: You cannot, it's part of the Atheist philosophy. Every person acts of his own motivations. You can't do anything to amend what they have done. They have to be the ones to do it, not you.
DOOR: It still burns me to see people take ridiculous action in the name of God. For that, I can and I am, asking forgiveness.
O'Hair: Yes, but they are doing what He commands.
DOOR: There is nothing in the scriptures telling Christians to persecute you for your beliefs. Luke 6:35 says, "But love you your enemies and do good, and lend hoping for nothing again, and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the highest."
O'Hair: I don't immediately have my Bible at hand, but give me your address and I'll send you the passage in which Jesus Christ, using an allegorical story, says, "Bring my enemies in front of my feet and kill them, that I may see it." The whole glory of Christianity is in a choir song that my son used to sing all the time, about how the Christians would watch the non-believers suffer in the fire below.
DOOR: Is it possible that Christians have made a mistake? Is it possible that the real Christians are citizens of another country and they've made a mistake by trying to force the laws, and rules, and regulations that are called the Bible on the citizens of this country?
O'Hair: I'm not sure. It would explain all of the things that have been done in the name of God or in the name of Christianity. The cruelest wars in history have been done in the name of Christianity or religion. The cruelest acts of bigotry have been done in the name of religion. But it seems to me, that's the essence of Christianity. You say, "Ours is the one true God, and you shall have no other Gods before ours", and you say that we must accept the rules and regulations promulgated by that God.
DOOR: But what happens if the ones that are saying that are not right?
O'Hair: You see then, your mistake has brought human misery, hasn't it?
DOOR: Amen.

A Christian Remembers Madalyn Murray O'Hair By Richard Schneider      A passing reference to Madalyn Murray O'Hair's death brought memories of my association with her. Odd in that I am with Guideposts, an interfaith inspirational magazine.      I came to know her through a little Italian immigrant woman, Rita Warren, an indefatigable Christian activist who in the '70s fought to get prayer back into the Massachusetts public schools. Rita still mounts Christian displays on the U.S. Capitol steps today.      In the 1970s, television studios brought Rita and Madalyn together as natural adversaries on talk shows. After their first debate, Rita in her inimitable way invited Madalyn home for a spaghetti dinner. The two became good friends despite their ideological differences.      I met Madalyn after I worked with Rita on her Guideposts story, "Mom, They Won't Let Us Pray." The article later turned into a book by the same title and since it quoted Madalyn, I was obliged to run those pages by her. She made only one request: that "Atheist" be capitalized.      The day came when Rita and Madalyn came to New York and I invited them to lunch. At first glance there was something fortress-like about the substantially built woman. I was reminded of a battleship. Her cool grey eyes looked out from a broad face framed by close-cropped white hair. Her jaw a granite cliff.      However, in conversation I found Madalyn to be witty and affable. When I asked how could she be friends with such a religious personage as Rita, she laughed. "Because she is sincere, she is real, not like those other phonies."      I was surprised to learn she detested communists. She expressed her concern over people being duped into letting those who believed this ideology take over their countries.      She spoke about how her landmark Supreme Court case came into being. "I didn't believe my son had to stand with the other Baltimore school kids and say prayers when he was an Atheist," she said.      "When I explained this to school authorities, they said he could stand with the rest, maintain an attitude of reverence and just move his lips as if he was saying prayers."      "What a joke," she laughed.      When she began pursuing her legal case (Madalyn was a lawyer) she told how her older son was beaten bloody by gangs calling: "Jesus loves you, commie!" Her eyes moistened as she told how her younger son's kitten disappeared, only to be thrown strangled on their porch. Her house and car were vandalized, and shots were fired through their windows.      "The filthy, obscene letters were bad enough," she said, "but the ones that scared us were the death threats, some with grisly details on how the killing would be done."      "All in the name of religion," she added quietly.      After our lunch, we toured Guideposts offices. At the end, she leaned against the door and smiled: "Now I have seen the enemy camp."      Before we parted, she asked for a subscription to our magazine. Maybe, I thought, she felt we were "sincere and real," too. We obliged her, of course.      Afterwards, I wondered: Would her cause ever have reached the Supreme Court if she had been given some "Godly" love at the beginning?

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