With all due respect to Pastor Brett Reitenbach, Christian values — which might better be called Judeo-Christian values — and secular humanism are close to the same thing. Justice, mercy, truthfulness, compassion, loving your neighbor, caring for strangers, respect for the individual and the rule of law — these are the values put forward in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

They are also the basis of secular humanism, which began in the Renaissance, corresponded with with that era’s revived interest in ancient Greece and Rome, and was initially propounded by the Catholic theologian Erasmus.

I have lived in and written about a historically non-Christian country, and while many fine values and ethics are observed in that country, some values that we in the U.S. hold dear, like brotherly love, did not top their list and made human interactions quite different from those we expect and encounter in this country.

But the fundamental values that permeate a society are not the same as religious dogma. Christian nationalists seek not to express Christian values (and often seem totally at odds with them) but to impose a specific confession or set of beliefs on society as a whole: Jesus Christ is our savior; the life we cannot kill begins at conception; homosexuality is evil; God created a material world (in six days); women should be subservient to men, and so on.

While one can find some justification for these beliefs in the Bible, one can find much in Scripture that contradicts them. Moreover, the Bible in general (and Jesus in particular) has a lot to say about hypocrisy.

Ergo, imposing dogma — anti-abortion or anti-gay legislation or allowing discrimination in the name of religion — is not excusable as “reflecting biblical principles,” as Pastor Reitenbach contends in his recent guest column [“Are they really white supremacists,” Recorder, Sept. 9], especially when these efforts fly in the face of so many other “biblical principles,” like loving one’s neighbor and valuing him or her as much as oneself.

(And by the way, calling slavery “Black immigration” [as per the Abeka curriculum, which the writer defends] is pretty damning, whether you call it racism or simply an egregiously willful and ignorant misinterpretation of history.)

Kathe Geist is a historian, author and Christian, who has read the Bible cover to cover. She lives in Charlemont.