A Unitarian friend once observed that the only occasion he could recall hearing “Jesus Christ” aloud in his church was the time the custodian tripped and fell down the stairs. Yet set alongside my family, even the least pious of Unitarians would come across as religious fanatics.

     We Blinders, though nominally Jewish, descend from a long line of atheists. If, as new evidence suggests, faith is in fact a hardwired, inheritable trait, the good Lord would appear to have shorted my family’s chromosomal lineage of that critical gene.

     Be assured – never in my childhood home did I once hear a derogatory word about God, religion, or people of faith – any faith. Nor was there anything akin to today’s acrimonious debate between the devout who believe religion essential to the sustenance of man’s morality, and apostates who see it as animator of faith-driven violence, ethnic slaughter, evangelical demagogues, and their revered spiritual idol, Donald Trump. The subject never came up. Since the gods did not exist, what was there to discuss?

      So growing up as I did a minority (atheist) within a minority (Jewish) I found many more opportunities to acquire a picture (however astigmatic) of Christianity than of Judaism. I gleaned, for example, that were you a Catholic Christian you might expect to fare badly in the afterlife had thou slain thy neighbor or engaged in what my mother called “unmentionables” with thy neighbor’s spouse, or God forbid, consumed meat on Friday.

       Were you a Calvinist Christian, however, though you too could expect a hostile posthumous reception if thou killed thy neighbor or engaged in said “unmentionables”, at least thou could scarf down as much meat on Friday as thou wanted – thy credit rating with God remained solid. But if thou hoped to somehow redeem thyself in the eyes of God for whatever terrible things thou might have done, you were plumb outta luck. You see, to the Calvinist Lord it mattered not at all if you devoted your life to bringing aid and comfort to a leper colony, or alternatively, you chose to be a serial killer. It was my understanding that once dead, all Calvinists were immutably equal, their place in the hereafter already set in celestial cement.