My friends baptism

[dr. klopek]

I have known my friend since we were thirteen. He came to my grade school and we started making mischief. We have been good friends for about ten years now.

We've always sort of been the same "philosophically," not religious (despite going to catholic schools), cool with drinking and drugs (not, you know, "drugs"), down with pre-marital sex. Anti racism, homophobia, evil, etc.

I talked to him a couple weeks ago after not seeing him for a while, and he mentioned that he was going to a bible study. He had mentioned to me before that he had started hanging out with some kids from school that were all churchy n s[/i]hit, and they had been inviting him to a bible study. I didn't really think much of it.

So, he called me up on Friday night and asked me what I was doing on Sunday, and if I would come to his baptism. I told him I would. (I'm "skeptical" at best about religions.) I support it if he thinks it can make him better and happier, however, so I was happy to go. I found out at the (to my mind, cultish) baptism that no one there had known him for more than three weeks.

I was talking to him today about it, and he was telling me that the church that he has become a part of is christians who believe that the bible is one hundred percent divinely inspired. I asked him if the people at his church would say that I'm going to hell. He told me yes. I asked him if he would vote against allowing gay marriage. He told me yes. They believe everything that the bible says (though I don't know if they're literalists like creationists or whatever, if they are, it's worse than I thought).

This group of people embodies one of the things that I hate the worst about religion.

Is my friend my ideological enemy?