Religion Will Be the Death of US
Change my mind.
If you are a Christian who is all in favor of using your will and your beliefs to undermine the separation of Church and State, then I have an enormous beef with you.
Just as I would for ANY other religion known to humankind.
You do know that our Founding Fathers—flawless as they were—created our system of government with the express idea of keeping religion and politics on each side of what was meant to be an insurmountable wall? The intermingling of religion in the affairs of government had not been particularly smooth in the previous centuries in the homelands from which they had fled, so they had good reason to want those competing ideas kept apart.
I don’t think Christians were ever very happy about it.
Here comes my usual caveat.
I know very little about organized religion despite the fact I grew up in a household with a god-fearing and worshipping mom and a father who made his living starting churches and speaking on Sundays from podiums in those churches. I was baptized and I took lessons at the church but I found other ways of fellowship and community and I ditched the church as soon as I possibly could.
Like most people, I love the stories of Jesus’ kindness. I love the story of Jesus creating havoc at the temple toppling the tables of money changers. Jesus was Everyman and even if I didn’t believe he was the son of some all-powerful being and even if I didn’t believe he had died for our sins, I saw him as one cool, generous, kind dude. Those stories were powerful.
And as a secular humanist, I have no problem learning those stories of Jesus so long as every other prophet from every other religion is given equal time and regard. And—more importantly—the words are not shoved down my throat.
In the public sphere, religion ruins everything.
The right to die? Mucked up by religion.
A woman’s right to choose whether or not to bring a child into the world? Screwed up by religious beliefs.
What countries we choose to invade? Totally connected to religion.
Gay marriage, AIDS, the whole bathroom gender brouhaha? Trace it all back to religious beliefs.
Universal health care which, I believe, would have a cascading effect for many other problems, like homelessness? Cock-blocked by religion. (Puritan work ethic, anyone?)
Name a social safety net-related issue, it will have been stymied, malnourished or buried by the religious right. Don’t get me wrong. I know churches do wonderful outreach work. My father helped found one of the first “soup kitchens” out of The First Presbyterian Church of Dallas. But those efforts are piecemeal, disjointed or hit-and-miss.
History lesson of the day…
Did you know that in the 1600s—in America—it was possible—for a brief period of time—for the offspring of Black slaves to be baptized, thereby being considered Christian, and then they could receive their freedom? Christians were not allowed to enslave other Christians. It was—I guess—unseemly. Well, you know how loopholes in the modern age are as ubiquitous as angry drivers? The religious colonists who counted on owning slaves shut that loophole down in record time. Amazingly, even to this day, Black Americans, percentage-wise, are more enthusiastically Christian than they have any sensical right to be.
If we were truly a pluralistic nation, we would not have “Under God” on our paper money, we would not have inserted “Under God” into our Pledge of Allegiance in the ‘50s and we would not have political nitwits insisting on The Ten Commandments be placed out front of our nation’s courthouses. Speaking of which, we would not be laying our hands on Bibles in courtrooms. (I’m assuming that’s still a thing when there are actual in-courtroom cases.)
My distaste of how far religion pervades our daily lives has been with me for decades. But, I must confess, having watched the first episode of “The Family” on Netflix that’s a quasi-documentary about a religious ‘pipeline’ associated with many of our most cringe-worthy politicians over the last 60 years, set me off. It’s not helpful this form of religion worships a “warrior WASP-y” Jesus. Not the Jesus most of us learned about in Sunday school.
This Jesus is muscular. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson of Jesus’s.
And it really doesn’t matter that the creators of the “The Family” might have embroidered the reality. This cultish group of worshippers, who were more than willing to twist the story of King David in order to embrace an Anti-Christ like the flaccid emperor of Mar-a-Lardo, sponsor an annual National Prayer Breakfast that every President feels compelled to attend.
No one makes them attend. But, for as long as I’ve been alive, every president has had to kowtow to American religion despite our supposed “separation between church and state.” (As an aside, for my more youthful readers, did you know it was quite the big deal Americans elected a Catholic President in JFK? America’s particular religiosity has an out-sized influence in our politics—and everything else.)
I propose we return to our Founders original intentions.
I propose we uphold their vision of a truly pluralistic nation. If for no other reason than to watch Fox Dis-Infotainment’s talking heads explode.
It’s the ONLY wall we should be building.
Books I’m reading.
Four Hundred Souls. Edited by Ibram X. Kendi—author of How to Be An Antiracist. The book has eighty approximately three-page “chapters”. Each chapter covers 4 years in America—starting in 1619 when the slave ship White Lion landed in New England “disgorging 20 and some odd Negroes”—and ending 400 years later in 2019. At the conclusion of 40 years (10 chapters) a separate author encapsulates the lessons, aesthetics, history in a poem.
Also—
I picked up Unthinkable by Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin. I’m a masochist that way. He is one of our most well-spoken and thoughtful leaders not named Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
As I understand it, hope transcends all when you arrive at the final page—even after everything he endured including the loss of a gifted son to depression and suicide. Which happened immediately before he was given the lead role in one of the former president’s impeachment trials. (If you don’t remember, were it not for the need of a super majority in the Senate—60 votes—what’s his name could very well have been the ONLY president to have been “convicted” in our illustrious history. C’est la vie!)
