It always astounds me how completely closed the Conservative world is. After all only in that echo chamber could something called the “Bring Back the Holy Bible and Christian Prayer in Schools Month” even be proposed, and not laughed out of existence in a few seconds.
However you will find just this idea kicking around Conservative Christian circles this week. I don’t even know where to start on how completely wrong this is on so many levels. Here is a quote from Charisma(a Right Wing Christian magazine):
"American blessings will come by obeying God. We have seen the difference between God's blessings for obedience and His judgments for disobedience. Test scores, morality and the economy improve with Christian education,” Andrew says.
"Why should the 80 percent Christian majority pay for public schools if Jesus and our Founding Fathers' Christian faith isn't taught? Our Founding Fathers fought for God's unalienable rights of Christian life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Freedom comes from obeying God,” Andrew says. “Let's get active to bring back the Holy Bible and Christian prayer to schools.”
What is it with Right Wingers and their complete and total inability to understand history and the history of law in the United States? This is one of those things that I will never ever grasp.
They are the first to whine that their religious freedoms are being impinged, but they have no problem with arguing for their particular brand of religion to be imposed on those who are not of their faith or have none at all.
And don’t even get me started on the whole “Christian life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. Leaving aside that “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” are in the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution, if the Founding Fathers of the Untied States had wanted it to be explicitly Christian they had plenty of opportunity during the debate and mark up of the Declaration.
The Establishment Clause makes the Framers intent very clear, that there shall be no established State religion and that any move to do so violates the foundational legal document of our nation. Of course, Rev. Steven Andrew totally rejects the notion of separation of church and state, even though it has been upheld by Supreme Court after Supreme Court over our 235 year history.
It is tempting to think of this as a non-story, just another religious zealot out to bring his brand of enlightenment (misery) to the world, but it is always worth while keeping an eye on these nuts. After all we know that anytime a lie is repeated often enough some portion of the nation will believe it.
The problem is that there is more of this kind of thing every day. The whole Seven Mountains movement, reports of the Family, the whole Christian Dominionism movement is out there and growing.
As an atheist I probably am not the right person to be bringing this forward. I find all religion goofy. At the same time I am willing to let people be goofy as long as they don’t try to force me into that same goofiness (I have my own goofiness, thank you very much, it just is not about gods).
I would ask those of you reading this with a belief in a deity to take the lead in calling out this kind of thing. I know that there are some who do like the fine folks with belief at People for the American Way, but we need to have more of them to counter this kind of insidious campaign to make our nation a Christian Theocracy.
If you think that it is just not that big a problem, just take a look at how important it is to be a Christian and the right kind of Christian in the Republican nomination process. One of the big selling points of current front runner Gov. Rick Perry is his “Christian values”, the same goes for Santorum and Bachmann.
Some of my atheist friends will rail about all the problems that religion has caused over the history of our species. I am not going to rehash that, but I will say that any time a set of religious beliefs has been forced on a people, even one that is majority that religion, then very bad things has come from it.
One of the things that has made our nation so special over time, has been the tolerance of minority religion and the resistance to the defining the nation as owning allegiance to a particular one. Now we have yahoos like this Steven Andrew who in the name of our Founding Fathers wants to take it all apart.
I am very happy this morning that I don’t believe in an after-life, else my mind will be filled with visions of Ben Franklin and John Adams puking over what is being claimed for their nation in their names.
The floor is yours.