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: robertweitzel@mac.com
Writings 
Subscribe to this comment's feed
