Quick, identify the following quote:
"The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims."
President Obama? Ted Kennedy? Barney Frank? Nope. Try The Treaty of Tripoli. It wrapped up free America's first war, against the Barbary pirates. In 1797.
Contrast this with the advocacy of the Christian voting bloc of the Texas State Board of Education, who for the last decade have been bringing up educational areas for review, which have a profound influence on not only Texas public schools, but the public school curricula of just about every other state in the nation except California and New York. According to board members such as Don McLeroy and current board chair Gail Lowe, their aim is not to force Christianity upon the state so much as it is to restore it from exile. In their opinion, Biblical ideas dominated the creation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. While McLeroy et al. have legitimately drawn ridicule for their attempted elevation of intelligent design and the role of neo-Conservatives like Newt Gingrich, it would be a mistake to dismiss their efforts as the exploits of the lunatic fringe. America is a Christian nation, and it isn't a Christian nation. It was founded on the Christian Religion, and it wasn't founded on the Christian religion. It all depends on who you ask, and which Founding Father you examine. The Founding Fathers were devout Christians -- John Adams, John Witherspoon, John Jay -- except for the ones that weren't. The Founding Fathers were Deists -- Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin -- except for the ones that weren't. As it is with any large gathering of politicians, the Founding Fathers were all over the map when it came to religious orientation and attitudes.
One enduring Constitutional principle since the beginning of the country, enshrined as it is in the 1st Amendment, is the separation of church and state. The phrase itself was actually coined by Thomas Jefferson, after his election in 1800, in his response to a letter from a group of Baptist ministers. Back then, most states had state religions, usually Congregationalist in the north (descended from the Puritans) and Anglicans in the south (descended from the Church of England). Most other Christian denominations were minorities, and treated about like religious minorities tend to get treated. Jefferson expressed his belief that the First Amendment’s clauses — that the government must not establish a state religion (the so-called establishment clause) but also that it must ensure the free exercise of religion (what became known as the free-exercise clause) — meant, as far as he was concerned, that there was “a wall of separation between Church & State.” Religion wasn't trivial to early America. In fact, a lot of early domestic policy depended on it.
This seems to have motivated present-day Christian education activists to propose that Christianity be placed in a prominent position in American history. One recurring theme in Christian activists' advocacy is the concept of American exceptionalism, and their firm belief that Christianity was the driving force behind what made America great. This is the point, though, at which Christian activists overreach and begin illegitimately conflating history with present-day domestic policy. If America is no longer great, it must be because Christianity has been removed from its rightful place as the cornerstone of our country. Now, it is beyond dispute that America was and is a Christian-majority nation, but that is no more extraordinary than the Ottoman or Persian Empires being Muslim-majority. The fall of those empires is no more caused by Islam than any future decline of America would be caused by Christianity or our society's lack of it. Correlation does not prove causation, and one could argue that any religion could have been at the center of America's development.
A primary motivation of Christian activists appears to be a reaction to what they see as overcompensation on the part of secular America to even the playing field amongst faiths. I find it amusing, and a little pitiful, to hear Christians bleat about how they are persecuted in America. They desperately grasp a kernel of truth, that the de-religioning of our government has at times gone too far. Searching the Internet, one can find examples of Christian activities and sentiments being shut out of public facilities. They gleefully trot out stories of how Christian student groups are prohibited from meeting in public school classrooms after school, or how Christian students were ordered to remove crucifix jewelry, or how students were admonished for bringing bring Bibles (or, in one bizarre case, a book by Rush Limbaugh) to school.
One massive mistake that I see Liberals make is that they don't seem to know where along the "separation of church and state" spectrum to stop, and they don't seem to recognize when they're being inconsistent. A lot of their attitudes are not so much secular as they are anti-Christian. One common example I see consists of Liberals roundly condemning Christianity as paternal, closed-minded, authoritarian, hostile to women, homophobic, and unyielding to criticism. And don't get me wrong, Christianity is usually all of those things. However, Islam is also usually all of those things, but I seldom see a Liberal characterize Islam in those terms, or denounce them as harmful to society like they do conservative Christianity. If I were to guess why, I think it is because Islam is a minority religion in America, and Liberals consider criticism of minority viewpoints, especially non-white viewpoints, to be rude. (Although I think its noteworthy to observe that this tolerance does not extend to primarily white-male-oriented minority religions like Scientology. In contrast, Wicca is mostly white, but also predominantly female.) Who are we to criticize?, they maintain. Christians attack Islam, therefore Islam must be defended, regardless of any other considerations.
Part of the reason, I think, is that most Americans, not just Liberals and/or Conservatives, are ignorant of other cultures and religions. But we know Christianity. We know their excesses, their prejudices, their past sins and present vices, and to be progressive means to resist those excesses. Most Americans, myself included, just aren't well-versed in the principles of Islam, so we assume that when Christians attack it, it can't be justified. Obviously they're attacking it because they're bigoted. And perhaps they are. But again, correlation does not prove causation. On the other hand, I know Wicca, and most Americans don't, and then from my perspective, Christian Conservatives' attack on it and Liberals' defense of it makes sense, more or less by accident of course, because I know what I'm talking about when I talk about Neo-Pagan religions in general, and Wicca in particular.
I have, in the past, blogged a bit about my attitude toward Islam. We all have prejudices. The most thoughtful among us, though, don't wish to be bigots. We want to find the truth. This pursuit of the truth can only take place when there is not the spectre of government force hovering over it. If we inject Christianity into public schools, for example, we are automatically throwing a wet blanket over its objective examination. Liberals complicate matters by attempting to bleach the religion out of our public lives. We don't permit Christians to ban non-Christian groups from using public facilities. Likewise, we can't ban Christians from using public facilities unless we ban ALL religions from using them. But if it's okay for a Wiccan student group to meet at school, it must be okay for a Christian student group to meet at school. We do not need to behave unfairly in order to "compensate" for any perceived excesses of Christianity. That is exactly the sort of thing that invites Christian activists to push back and emboldens them to make assertions about "restoring" Christianity to its proper place in history.
The separation of church and state is real. The reason we don't see the word "God" in the Constitution, and the reason we see circumspect references in the Declaration of Independence such as "Creator" and "the laws of Nature and Nature's God" (which I could just as easily interpret as an endorsement of Wicca) is because even the most religious of Founding Fathers were products of the Enlightenment, where Reason was frequently given precedence over Faith, even by the most devout of them. We cannot establish state religions, and we must ensure the free practice of religion, and we must prevent a religious majority from suppressing religious minorities. But most people are not atheists or humanists. They have religious faith and they get pissed off when high-minded Liberals tell them they're primitive and deluded. The imposition of no religion is no more correct than the imposition of Christianity on our public institutions.
We need to have faith that, when people are treated as rational moral agents, they will do the right thing. After 11 years, McLeroy was defeated in the March 3rd Republican primary election, and Dunbar is not running for re-election, so it appears that the wheels are coming off the conservative Christians' cart. They pushed too hard, and Texas voters decided they'd seen enough. They'd had enough of being embarrassed nationally over their science and social studies curriculum debates and the Christian activists' pushing of their agenda. I believe that people want balance in their lives, the right amount of secularism and religion, a recognition that both are important, but an unwillingness to enshrine one viewpoint at the expense of others. The Christian activists on the Texas board had made the same mistake as the secularists before them. They overreached. They mistook the desire for a minor course correction for an endorsement of revolutionary overhaul. It is easy for activists to get elected, but difficult for them to keep their elected offices, because they tend to be ideologues first and thoughtful legislators second. When the backlash comes, they're the first ones bounced.
I have little doubt that the Tea Party Republicans will learn this the hard way very soon.
* Key portions of this article were derived from "How Christian Were the Founding Fathers?" from The New York Times Magazine, 2/14/2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magaz
"The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims."
President Obama? Ted Kennedy? Barney Frank? Nope. Try The Treaty of Tripoli. It wrapped up free America's first war, against the Barbary pirates. In 1797.
Contrast this with the advocacy of the Christian voting bloc of the Texas State Board of Education, who for the last decade have been bringing up educational areas for review, which have a profound influence on not only Texas public schools, but the public school curricula of just about every other state in the nation except California and New York. According to board members such as Don McLeroy and current board chair Gail Lowe, their aim is not to force Christianity upon the state so much as it is to restore it from exile. In their opinion, Biblical ideas dominated the creation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. While McLeroy et al. have legitimately drawn ridicule for their attempted elevation of intelligent design and the role of neo-Conservatives like Newt Gingrich, it would be a mistake to dismiss their efforts as the exploits of the lunatic fringe. America is a Christian nation, and it isn't a Christian nation. It was founded on the Christian Religion, and it wasn't founded on the Christian religion. It all depends on who you ask, and which Founding Father you examine. The Founding Fathers were devout Christians -- John Adams, John Witherspoon, John Jay -- except for the ones that weren't. The Founding Fathers were Deists -- Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin -- except for the ones that weren't. As it is with any large gathering of politicians, the Founding Fathers were all over the map when it came to religious orientation and attitudes.
One enduring Constitutional principle since the beginning of the country, enshrined as it is in the 1st Amendment, is the separation of church and state. The phrase itself was actually coined by Thomas Jefferson, after his election in 1800, in his response to a letter from a group of Baptist ministers. Back then, most states had state religions, usually Congregationalist in the north (descended from the Puritans) and Anglicans in the south (descended from the Church of England). Most other Christian denominations were minorities, and treated about like religious minorities tend to get treated. Jefferson expressed his belief that the First Amendment’s clauses — that the government must not establish a state religion (the so-called establishment clause) but also that it must ensure the free exercise of religion (what became known as the free-exercise clause) — meant, as far as he was concerned, that there was “a wall of separation between Church & State.” Religion wasn't trivial to early America. In fact, a lot of early domestic policy depended on it.
This seems to have motivated present-day Christian education activists to propose that Christianity be placed in a prominent position in American history. One recurring theme in Christian activists' advocacy is the concept of American exceptionalism, and their firm belief that Christianity was the driving force behind what made America great. This is the point, though, at which Christian activists overreach and begin illegitimately conflating history with present-day domestic policy. If America is no longer great, it must be because Christianity has been removed from its rightful place as the cornerstone of our country. Now, it is beyond dispute that America was and is a Christian-majority nation, but that is no more extraordinary than the Ottoman or Persian Empires being Muslim-majority. The fall of those empires is no more caused by Islam than any future decline of America would be caused by Christianity or our society's lack of it. Correlation does not prove causation, and one could argue that any religion could have been at the center of America's development.
A primary motivation of Christian activists appears to be a reaction to what they see as overcompensation on the part of secular America to even the playing field amongst faiths. I find it amusing, and a little pitiful, to hear Christians bleat about how they are persecuted in America. They desperately grasp a kernel of truth, that the de-religioning of our government has at times gone too far. Searching the Internet, one can find examples of Christian activities and sentiments being shut out of public facilities. They gleefully trot out stories of how Christian student groups are prohibited from meeting in public school classrooms after school, or how Christian students were ordered to remove crucifix jewelry, or how students were admonished for bringing bring Bibles (or, in one bizarre case, a book by Rush Limbaugh) to school.
One massive mistake that I see Liberals make is that they don't seem to know where along the "separation of church and state" spectrum to stop, and they don't seem to recognize when they're being inconsistent. A lot of their attitudes are not so much secular as they are anti-Christian. One common example I see consists of Liberals roundly condemning Christianity as paternal, closed-minded, authoritarian, hostile to women, homophobic, and unyielding to criticism. And don't get me wrong, Christianity is usually all of those things. However, Islam is also usually all of those things, but I seldom see a Liberal characterize Islam in those terms, or denounce them as harmful to society like they do conservative Christianity. If I were to guess why, I think it is because Islam is a minority religion in America, and Liberals consider criticism of minority viewpoints, especially non-white viewpoints, to be rude. (Although I think its noteworthy to observe that this tolerance does not extend to primarily white-male-oriented minority religions like Scientology. In contrast, Wicca is mostly white, but also predominantly female.) Who are we to criticize?, they maintain. Christians attack Islam, therefore Islam must be defended, regardless of any other considerations.
Part of the reason, I think, is that most Americans, not just Liberals and/or Conservatives, are ignorant of other cultures and religions. But we know Christianity. We know their excesses, their prejudices, their past sins and present vices, and to be progressive means to resist those excesses. Most Americans, myself included, just aren't well-versed in the principles of Islam, so we assume that when Christians attack it, it can't be justified. Obviously they're attacking it because they're bigoted. And perhaps they are. But again, correlation does not prove causation. On the other hand, I know Wicca, and most Americans don't, and then from my perspective, Christian Conservatives' attack on it and Liberals' defense of it makes sense, more or less by accident of course, because I know what I'm talking about when I talk about Neo-Pagan religions in general, and Wicca in particular.
I have, in the past, blogged a bit about my attitude toward Islam. We all have prejudices. The most thoughtful among us, though, don't wish to be bigots. We want to find the truth. This pursuit of the truth can only take place when there is not the spectre of government force hovering over it. If we inject Christianity into public schools, for example, we are automatically throwing a wet blanket over its objective examination. Liberals complicate matters by attempting to bleach the religion out of our public lives. We don't permit Christians to ban non-Christian groups from using public facilities. Likewise, we can't ban Christians from using public facilities unless we ban ALL religions from using them. But if it's okay for a Wiccan student group to meet at school, it must be okay for a Christian student group to meet at school. We do not need to behave unfairly in order to "compensate" for any perceived excesses of Christianity. That is exactly the sort of thing that invites Christian activists to push back and emboldens them to make assertions about "restoring" Christianity to its proper place in history.
The separation of church and state is real. The reason we don't see the word "God" in the Constitution, and the reason we see circumspect references in the Declaration of Independence such as "Creator" and "the laws of Nature and Nature's God" (which I could just as easily interpret as an endorsement of Wicca) is because even the most religious of Founding Fathers were products of the Enlightenment, where Reason was frequently given precedence over Faith, even by the most devout of them. We cannot establish state religions, and we must ensure the free practice of religion, and we must prevent a religious majority from suppressing religious minorities. But most people are not atheists or humanists. They have religious faith and they get pissed off when high-minded Liberals tell them they're primitive and deluded. The imposition of no religion is no more correct than the imposition of Christianity on our public institutions.
We need to have faith that, when people are treated as rational moral agents, they will do the right thing. After 11 years, McLeroy was defeated in the March 3rd Republican primary election, and Dunbar is not running for re-election, so it appears that the wheels are coming off the conservative Christians' cart. They pushed too hard, and Texas voters decided they'd seen enough. They'd had enough of being embarrassed nationally over their science and social studies curriculum debates and the Christian activists' pushing of their agenda. I believe that people want balance in their lives, the right amount of secularism and religion, a recognition that both are important, but an unwillingness to enshrine one viewpoint at the expense of others. The Christian activists on the Texas board had made the same mistake as the secularists before them. They overreached. They mistook the desire for a minor course correction for an endorsement of revolutionary overhaul. It is easy for activists to get elected, but difficult for them to keep their elected offices, because they tend to be ideologues first and thoughtful legislators second. When the backlash comes, they're the first ones bounced.
I have little doubt that the Tea Party Republicans will learn this the hard way very soon.
* Key portions of this article were derived from "How Christian Were the Founding Fathers?" from The New York Times Magazine, 2/14/2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magaz
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