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Edited on Sun May-20-07 01:22 PM by KzooDem
I just crafted this rather longwinded Viewpoint column for submittal to my local newspaper. They frequently print my Viewpoints unedited, so I'm hoping this one gets printed as well. I might add that I always run them by my fellow DUers for ideas, edits, etc. and I beleive that is what helps make them stronger columns. So, please feel free to suggest any edits, point out any errors/inacuracies, etc... Thanks!
So finally we get to hear from the far recesses of the Republican peanut gallery.
No sooner had Jerry Falwell’s body been embalmed and laid out on the same catafalque upon which Ronald Reagan’s remains rested in repose, none other than twice-divorced and admitted adulterer and probable GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich swooped down upon Liberty University’s commencement ceremonies like an opportunistic vulture. There, he pandered for potential votes from the newly minted batch of conservative Christian Evangelicals who believe our government is, and always has been, based on their brand of religious idealism.
“A growing culture of radical secularism declares that the nation cannot profess the truths on which it was founded,” Gingrich said.
I don’t know which history books Gingrich has read, but if I were him I’d be asking for my money back. What he and Falwell’s single-minded followers fail to comprehend is that this nation was not founded on the premise that our system of government and its laws be derived from Christian scripture.
“In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms,” Gingrich droned on.
Newt Gingrich and I agree on one thing: there is certainly hostility to American history when it comes to discourse on separation of religion and government. That hostility, however, comes from the likes of the late Jerry Falwell and pretenders to the now-vacant throne of Grand Poobah of Evangelicalism, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, and from their respective flocks of the Evangelical faithful.
Anyone who cares to study the history of our nation in more than a cursory, thirty-second sound byte fashion will learn that the author of the Declaration of Independence and third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson held with great disdain the notion that government and religion should be intertwined.
“The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man,” Jefferson wrote in 1800.
Later, in an 1813 letter to Alexander von Humboldt, Jefferson gave a more pointed indication as to his views of mixing religion with government. He wrote: “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”
Still, like so many broken records, those who wish to co-opt political power as a means for advancing their religious zealotry seem to continue to insist that this country was “founded on Christian principles.” If Christianity was intended to hold sway over the governing principles of our country, isn’t it curious that George Washington’s biographers describe a man seemingly singularly detached from Christianity?
In his book ‘George Washington: The Making of An American Symbol,’ historian Barry Schwartz writes: "George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian... He repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative."
In 1796 John Adams, American founding father and our nation’s second president, in drafting the preamble to the Treaty of Tripoli, wrote: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion…”
If today’s Christian conservatives insist the founders were pious Christian men and meant for Christian dogma to play an influential role in our governance, why were clergymen complaining half a century after our country’s birth that no president up to that date had been a Christian? In an October 1831 sermon reported in the newspapers of the day, Episcopal minister Bird Wilson of Albany, New York, said: "Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion…"
If holding dear the ideals of our founding fathers gets me branded as a radical secularist by those ignorant and obtuse enough to thumb their noses at the essential fundamentals on which our nation was founded, then it is with great pride that I accept that moniker.
Many who read this Viewpoint will likely peg me as an atheist or hater of Christianity. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, I believe this country has fared far worse since certain fundamentalist sects have exerted their power on our country’s government. In exasperation, I turned to history to educate myself on what our founders had in mind for our nation, and it is certainly not the fragmented mess in which we currently find ourself mired – a mess, I might add, created by leaders who have sold their souls to religious zealots.
So, if right-wing Evangelical Christians wish to return our nation to the ideals of our founders, I say “bring it on,” because their principles were ones of enlightened reason, tolerance, and free thought. Truth be told, the early architects of our country are likely turning in their graves over the way conservative Republicans have not only allowed the roots of religious extremism to manipulate their way into our political heritage, but have also fertilized and encouraged them to grow in exchange for political gain in the form of votes. Talk about filthy lucre.
Nobody sought to blur the line between religion and government more than Falwell, Liberty University’s founder. Hand in hand with Ronald Reagan, who allowed him a complicit entrée, Falwell hijacked the GOP and gave religious fundamentalism a dangerous foothold in American politics. Is it any wonder that the most corrupt administration our country has ever had the misfortune to be saddled with is represented by the party that traded its principles to the Falwells, Dobsons and Robertsons of the world for votes? Is it any wonder those lines are more blurred now than they ever have been?
Our founding fathers knew what type of insanity would ensue if we allowed our founding principles to be auctioned off to the highest bidder in the name of religion. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Gingrich chose to perpetuate the politico-religious myths of the religious right instead of challenging them with truth and facts. Instead, it looks as if the old guard of the GOP machinery is still intent on offering control to religious radicals in exchange for votes. This should serve as a stern warning to Americans of any political persuasion.
Lest we let recent history repeat itself in 2008, any free thinking voter should heed the words penned by one of this country’s most-beloved founders, Benjamin Franklin: “When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
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