Christians
Should Fear
A Christian Nation
By Robert Weitzel
26 January,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Legend
has it that two thousand years ago President Bush’s favorite
philosopher dodged the treason bullet by giving a group of Pharisees
his honest opinion on the separation of church and state. Appreciating
the wisdom in keeping heavenly and earthly concerns separate, Jesus
advised them to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s;
and to God the things that are God’s.”
Regrettably,
the 2008 presidential frontrunners of both parties are ignoring Jesus’
advice regarding the preferred relationship between church and state
by professing—ad nauseam—their undying fidelity to the
Christian Right’s version of morality and its vision of our
nation as their exclusive fiefdom.
Consider
the statements of two Republican candidates. Senator John McCain said
he believes the “Constitution established the United States
of America as a Christian nation.” Mike Huckabee said we should
“amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards
. . ..” McCain is pandering. Huckabee is deadly earnest. But
keep in mind, many a democratic nation has been trampled because politicians
were outsmarted by those whose boots they licked.
At least
one sitting Supreme Court Justice shares Huckabee’s “deadly
earnest” regarding God’s standards. In a 2005 Supreme
Court case considering whether a monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments
sitting near the entrance of the Texas State Capital was unconstitutional
and tantamount to government endorsed religion, Justice Scalia lectured
the plaintiffs, “It is a symbol that the government derives
its authority from God. That’s what it is about. Our laws are
derived from God.”
It is of
no little consequence when a Supreme Court justice pronounces that
our laws are based on ancient biblical commands rather than on the
“godless” Constitution. In essence, Scalia is saying that
the secular democracy envisioned by the Founding Fathers should be
a Christian theocracy as envisioned by a determined sect of fundamentalists.
Not only
do the folks who share Huckabee and Scalia’s “deadly earnest”
want to change our nation’s Constitution, they want to change
its history as well.
Rep. James
Forbes (R-VA), backed by thirty-one other Representatives, has proposed
House Resolution 888 designating the first week in May as “American
Religious History Week.” The purpose of the bill is to affirm
“the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s
founding and subsequent history . . . and for the appreciation of
and education on America’s history of religious faith.
If passed,
this Resolution will be as divisive and detrimental to the study of
American history in public schools and public squares as intelligent
design creationism has been to the study of evolution. It will—as
it is meant to—bolster the Christian Right’s claim to
both our nation’s past and its present.
Michael
“Mikey” Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom
Foundation and former White House counsel during the Reagan administration,
said that “House Resolution 888 is perhaps the most disgraceful,
shocking and tragic example yet of the pernicious and pervasive pattern
and practice of unconstitutional rape of our bedrock American citizens’
religious freedom by the fundamentalist Christian right.” Mikey
is not known to mince words.
That a
good number of the Framers of the Constitution were Christians is
undeniable. But it is this fact that speaks strongly in defense of
their decision to build the “wall of separation” between
church and state that keeps government out of the business of religion.
Their concern was not necessarily for the rights of the nonbeliever,
but for the believer’s freedom to choose which creed he or she
will embrace.
The particular
genius of the Founding Fathers was their understanding that a Christian
nation can be a dangerous place for both believers and nonbelievers.
They knew that government prescribed religion—usually that of
the most politically connected sect—invariably leads to intolerance
and tyranny.
James Madison,
writing in defense of this notion, asked the question, “Who
does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity,
in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease
any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”
If there
is any doubt as to the salience of Madison’s question for a
secular democracy, one need only consider a promise made by Pat Robertson,
the fundamentalist voice of the Christian Right and 1988 presidential
candidate. In a stump speech Robertson assured his audience that “after
the Christian majority takes over this country, pluralism (non-fundamentalist
beliefs) will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit
anyone to practice it.” If Robertson or Huckabee or Scalia or
Forbes have their way, our national motto will be modified accordingly,
E Pluribus Fides Unum—Out of Many Beliefs, Only One.
It is a
small thing for people of faith to allow religion to creep onto the
public square. What harm is there in something as seemingly innocuous
as a reference to God in the national pledge or motto, a moment of
prayerful silence in the classroom or in a nondenominational prayer
at a high school graduation? Why not give equal time to creationism
in public schools or support faith-based organizations with tax dollars?
And what
person of the “true” faith will object to their child’s
daily recitation of the Christian pledge of allegiance: “I pledge
allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior for whose Kingdom
it stands, One Savior, crucified, risen and coming again, with life
and liberty for all who believe.” And for those of us who do
not believe or who believe a little differently?
In 1817
John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “Do you recollect, or
have you ever attended to the ecclesiastical strife in Maryland, Pennsylvania,
New York, and every part of New England? What a mercy these people
cannot whip and crop, and pillory and roast, as yet in the U.S.! If
they could, they would.”
Both believer
and nonbeliever have a vested interest in the secular nation envisioned
by the Founding Fathers; a nation whose “godless” Constitution
and social pluralism ensures the kind of democracy in which the practice
of any religion, or none, is an inalienable right.
Robert Weitzel is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, Freethought Today, and on popular liberal websites. He can be contacted at: [email protected]