Religious favoritism can be taken elsewhere
As the product of a “witch-burning, Christian household,” I became an atheist. I have a rather unique religious perspective - specifically on religion’s role and impact on U.S. government laws and policies.
The very beginning of the First Amendment is “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” There’s a reason this is the first thing out of the Founding Fathers’ pens. Creating a relationship between any religion and the government is the most subversive threat to independence, freedom and choice. Religion and government have different functions, hence the necessity for separation between church and state.
But when a government starts conflating the two, it runs across all sorts of problems. People insist marriage is only acceptable between a man and a woman because a holy book says so or life begins at conception, therefore abortion is equivalent to murder. Or, to deviate the argument from Protestant tradition, eating meat is murder, women can’t show their face in public or cloven-hooved animals are unclean. When religion is brought into government, those who don’t follow the endorsed religion end up screwed.
People recognize this potential dangerous precedent, which is why separation of church and state holds such a pivotal place in our Bill of Rights. Yet there are still citizens and officials trying to impose their religion on our universal government. One of the most annoying characteristics of the self-appointed Religious Right is their deliberate disregard for this secular tenant. They persistently attempt to pass legislation which violates this separation, continuously trying to make Protestant Evangelism the default religion of the United States.
Well, it isn’t and never should be.
But unfortunately, their insidious campaign is working; many have internalized this default as normal. An annual survey of the State of the First Amendment, which compiles attitudes toward First Amendment rights and their connotations, shows that 42 percent of respondents think teachers and other public school officials should be allowed to lead prayer in public school. Of course, those surveyed probably assumed that said teachers and prayers would be Protestant and Christian. I suspect that a Buddhist teacher holding morning meditation would have a very different reception.
And that’s exactly the problem. The Religious Right is not trying to pass laws that respect religion in general, something which most people, even secularists and atheists like myself, wouldn’t mind. After all, everyone has different spiritual needs and everyone will choose to fulfill them as they see fit. But the Protestant Evangelicals who are doing this are aiming to embed themselves in American culture in an attempt to swell their ranks and gain political power. They’re aiming for laws that favor their religion, which goes exactly against the First Amendment.
Even worse, many respondents from the survey had a disproportionate view of religion’s role for the Founding Fathers and within the Constitution itself. A troubling 46 percent of those surveyed believed the nation’s founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation and 38 percent believed that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation.
The people surveyed should have paid attention in history class. There is no mention of God or any sort of deity in the Constitution. Taken into account with the fact that the Founders went out of their way to ensure that no national religion was established or favored — this was the first rule they laid down in the Constitution, signaling its importance — the opposite is found to be true. We are not a Christian nation - the Founders made sure of this. We may be a nation with a lot of Christians, but that’s not the same thing.
The Religious Right should not be permitted to pass laws catering to their specific religious beliefs. It’s one thing to say that certain laws are inspired by religious beliefs, such as “Thou shalt not murder” - an idea that actually exists in many religions, which is why all people can universally agree that this law is important in a society. But Judeo-Christian tradition was not the first to come up with the “killing is bad” idea, and to imply that their religion is the basis for all of our original laws is false. Nor does it make the Religious Right the source of all our future laws. They should not be permitted to pass laws catering to their specific religious beliefs.
If they want to live in a Christian nation, they can go buy an island using their combined tithing power, appoint Pat Robertson as their king, Rush Limbaugh as their U.N. representative, and spend the rest of their lives attending purity balls and pretending like no one has sex. Then the rest of us can continue being accepting of gay people, respecting a woman’s right to choose and using universal health care.
Read the original column online here.
