Image this scenario: A group of ministers in a small town get together to take unified action to respond to their falling church membership numbers or to confront a few town “rebel rousers” who have the audacity to consider a less than strict biblical interpretation or to solely embrace a rigorous conservative religious point of view and puritanical social mores.

These ministers publically preach that only they know and live “the truth” and that the Devil has reared his head in their beloved town and that those who believe or even consider otherwise must be the servants of the Devil and therefore need to be publically ostracized, if not destroyed.

This ministerial group hopes that this coordinated and public attack against a few errant practitioners might instill a fear of similar accusations and damnation being made against any of their own church membership or townspeople who might question or hesitate to zealously support or embrace their aggressive tactics and narrow religious agenda.

Sounds like Fountain Hills you say?

Actually, this is a historical description of the 17th century conspiratorial Salem “witch hunts” motivated and instigated by a strikingly similar group of ministers of Salem, Massachusetts, resulting in the Salem “witch trials” and shamefully cruel deaths.

Surely, 400 years later and post “age of enlightenment,” we can do better than to passively allow this current religious “witch hunt,” driven by a few misguided local ministers, to continue to attack our constitutionally protected religious freedoms and, more importantly, to publically debase even one more of the religiously, politically and culturally diversified and good people of our town.