Where Religion and Politics Should Not Cross

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/churches-religious-officials-political-speech_n_1616273.html?utm_hp_ref=religion&ir=Religion

While religious organizations and associated 501(c) 3 charitable organizations are not prohibited from having political positions and being on the side of one issue or another, the IRS has restrictions on their supporting one candidate or opposing one actively. But some preachers are scoffing at this and risking their churches all for the sake of a ridiculous idea that church needs to be this involved with politics as opposed to the more imminent issues, like saving souls or spreading the gospel. Not that I believe in souls or the value of the so called “good news”, but I think I’ve made that apparent enough. Bottom line, there are a number of reasons churches don’t need to push this envelope, notwithstanding the IRS effectively ignoring them so as not to give them any real publicity beyond what they already have. Supposedly the standards of audits are complicated and the potential legal implications are what may be primarily hindering any enforcement. The only other solution is to enact sweeping changes and enforce them more stringently. If the IRS doesn’t do something about this, it’s going to encourage this emerging movement of borderline theocrats thinking that we need to run this country by religious morals and standards instead of using reason and secular standards that everyone can abide by without infringing upon individual rights to believe nonsense. The law protects your right to practice religion even if it also says that the right itself is not absolute. This sort of practice needs to be nipped in the bud or it will just spiral into something worse than a remotely harmless resurgence of religiosity, but actual political confrontations by people both tightly and loosely affiliated with these antiquated traditions motivated by mob rule and peer pressure to try to ask for special treatment. No one wants to limit religion more than necessary, but you can’t ignore the law when it’s convenient to you and this is no different than politicians trying to get lesser sentences because of their previous contributions to society. Religion may have benefits, but it doesn’t get tax breaks and also make political statements that directly involve it with secular and civil election processes. Keep your theology out of the government and we’ll make sure the government stays out of your theology.

This practice of taking on the IRS and its threat of removing tax exempt status for churches has been going on for nearly 4 years and nothing seems to have been done. If anything, it behooves them to start focusing on this issue because the taxes that could be gained from those churches would be a benefit to deficit issues in this country. Outright removing the tax exempt status for all churches might be too extreme, but enforcing the law about political involvement as regards candidate approval and disapproval with these churches could aid in lowering the U.S.’s crippling deficit that looms over us according to many conservatives. Freedom of religion is not so absolute as to allow those in positions of authority as spiritual leaders to flaunt the law in the spirit of what can be a reasonable practice of associating political decisions with personal faith and convictions, and taking it too far in directly campaigning from the pulpit against or for a particular candidate. Of course, one might argue that churches which don’t get involved in politics in any sense might be justified in at least getting some tax breaks, even if it was made mandatory for all churches to pay some portion of taxes. Those that are especially political might not get those cuts, but that would be a choice they’d make from the start. It shouldn’t be such a big deal for mega-churches to keep preaching politics or even advocating for candidates as long as they keep getting money. And wouldn’t it be a good thing for Christians to support the U.S. with money from their churches, especially if they’re all about the U.S. being a “Christian nation”?

The Catholic groups railing against the contraception mandate in the healthcare plan put forward by President Obama are another group that is pushing their protections under the law. When they say Obama is anti Catholic in his positions and then urge their congregations to vote their “conscience”, it’s not as explicit, but it’s certainly able to be interpreted as preaching party politics. I wonder what they expect Catholics to vote for instead. If Mormonism is a cult and/or false Christianity, then can Catholics truly vote for Romney either, unless voting one’s conscience means ignoring dogma that explicitly states the church in question is against the true church’s teachings? This concern with insurance plans covering birth control and such creating a conflict of religious ethics and secular law seems to be blown out of proportion, especially with evidence pointing towards the majority of Catholics actually using birth control anyway. Of course they don’t get abortions, but if you don’t want to cover abortions, one might be justified in saying you have a right to refuse coverage for it under the plan. But birth control has other benefits besides the prevention of a particular stage of reproduction, namely fertilization (implantation prevention is a whole other treatment), such as preventing STDs and in terms of hormonal birth control, evening out one’s menstrual cycles and aiding with other issues such as painful menstruation or inconsistent menstruation. I’ve noted this before in “Catholics,Contraception and Conscience,”; birth control can be justified in terms of an overall healthcare plan as it has medical benefits aside from what the church has a person moral objection to. It isn’t compromising their religious freedom overall and will not necessarily escalate to anything further in simply saying you have to provide what is considered basic medical care even if you personally object to it. And wouldn’t it be better off to prevent unwanted pregnancies than to cause undue suffering to children you feel morally obligated to bear and then are unable to provide adequately for them?

Is it really clashing between freedom of religious exercise/expression and separation of church and state when you enforce what is a fairly simple rule of not endorsing or attacking political candidates from the pulpit? You can speak politics in general, but not be partisan about it, which is partly what the IRS is worried it will appear when it cracks down on the offenders. But you’re just being fair in applying the law to those who break it. You shouldn’t play favorites merely because the offenders in question are in a special position by cultural perspective. Religion does not deserve favors because it supposedly helps people be more moral or any such thing: in fact, since it does such things, it shouldn’t ask for more in the government’s treatment of it. Stay within your limits and no one will rock the boat of your sensibilities about politics and faith. Until next time, Namaste and aloha

A Synthesis of Sacred and Secular

http://pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Religion-and-Secularism-The-American-Experience.aspx

http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2010/02/13/religion-and-the-myth-of-coexistence/

This topic is rife with contending sides and positions, so I’ll try to give as balanced a perspective on the two main views on an issue I’ve confronted slightly  in “Religion and Secularism’s Questions and Answers”. This time, I’ll give a short exposition on the two subjects and then detail the two prominent perspectives on their interaction. Religion and secularism’s relationship has been lukewarm at best, though it isn’t necessarily always combative by nature either. There are lay theologians in Christianity, not to mention the “secular” monks who did more worldly things as part of their duties, like the monastics in convents and monasteries who gardened, wrote, etc, as opposed to primarily contemplative behavior. But these days, we seem to have a very contentious environment of the profane and the sacred, the nonbelievers and believers of various stripes. This is especially the case in the U.S., but it isn’t necessarily resolved perfectly in any sense around the world. Japan maintains an interesting blend of secular and sacred, though the more immanent and pantheistic form of religion makes this easier. The transcendent nature of religions more prominent in America makes the separation into spheres much more common and thus the resolution of any conflict becomes either a truce or a retreat of one into its own area in surrender. So, my question is twofold: what are religion and secularism (in the basics) and what is the nature of their relationship?

Religion is much more complex in definition than secularism, since it has existed for longer in history and language, but admittedly has two formulations, one more Western, the other more Eastern, though there is always an overlap, such as Wicca or Sikhism for two examples. As I explained somewhat in “Looking At Eastern Religion From the West”,  Western religion tends to be much more based in sacred scriptures and belief in God or gods. There’s more ambiguity in Western religious studies about nontheistic religions and whether they actually are religions or philosophies. Buddhism, Confucianism and even Daoism in some sense are either pantheistic or nontheistic in some sense regarding the existence of gods and whether they matter. There’s a term formulated by Paul Kurtz, sometimes called the father of secular humanism, made up of three Greek words. The prefix eu, meaning good, the word praxis, meaning practice and Sophia, meaning wisdom. Eupraxophy refers to worldviews and philosophies that are secular in nature and don’t rely on the supernatural in order to advocate being a good person. The three religions enumerated beforehand fit in this classification with some possible qualifications. Religion at its heart could be specified to be that which regards the supernatural as relevant to human life and makes a system of tenets that people are expected to follow. This is, of course, very simplistic, but for the purposes of this discussion I think it suffices to distinguish it from secularism.

There are two kinds of secularism we could discuss when confronting this topic: the first is more political in maintaining a strict separation of some form between church authority and state power, but not always completely keeping it out of the public square. Turkey and France based their form more on laicite, one form of the second very strict and philosophical position on religion in the public and political square. This contrasts a great deal with America’s which is more permissive in a sense of religious expression by private citizens within the public forum without favoring any single religion. Secularism is not a religion, contrary to rumors and accusations from theists, though secular humanism might be considered one. But most secularists are not secular humanists, though all secular humanists are secularists technically. Fundamentally, secularism is some position about religion that desires to keep it at least separate for the most part from policy making and a much more religiously diverse society or is fundamentally opposed to religion’s claims and wishes it to be put in the spotlight and actively criticized for its falsehoods and also reserved to the private sphere it originated in.

Secularism and modernity have done two things for religion in my estimation. First is that religion and beliefs about it have become more private. Believer or not, you are very individualist about it. Secondly, religion has still kept a certain place in the public square in the face of separation on the grounds that as a part of the history of the country, religious expression in public is very much part of the culture and may stay that way for quite a while longer, particularly for political gain as we see with virtually every Republican candidate to one degree or another, as I mentioned in “Conservatives Clamor For Christianity” . Altar calls and other such identifications to a larger group are what make Western people religious, as opposed to in the East, where it’s very much an eclectic and syncretic approach of the culture at large and not so much a matter of affirming particular creeds or such. With the Western method of voluntaristic religious affiliation, there is a strong element of competition between religions and thus they have to constantly change tactics and also allow the existence of their opponents, even if they disagree with them, so as to have opportunities for conversion. There is both a freedom of individual conscience and also communal association with any religion or lack thereof, but still holding what tend to be religious beliefs. The concept of civil religion further complicates the issue of religion’s presence in what is supposed to be a more secular country in the sense of not favoring any religion in its decisions. It is commonly understood to be the sorts of things that have become intrinsic to the American identity, which includes the unconstitutional and divisive motto of the country, “In God We Trust” Religion in America, shared or esoteric, reflects a unique and compelling approach to how it overlaps with secularism as a whole.

The U.S. Constitution almost seems to necessitate that there be a conflict between religious and secular interests by the notion of separation of powers given within it. Not to mention the first amendment creates a sort of ambivalent interaction of the exercise of religion on the one hand and the neutrality of the government towards it on the other. With the historical nature of the U.S. being a country with economic demands of a free market comprising radically diverse people with varying beliefs, there was a necessary development of religious pluralism as well as the secularism that creates a barrier against any one religion or any religion becoming influential for policy making. Christianity, the dominant religion of America, surprisingly has theology within it that allows for more advocacy of separation of church and state than you would think. There’s a basic relationship between the religious and secular communicated through the idea of two kingdoms, one of the world and one of God. Jesus’ saying “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” comes to mind as well as Augustine’s treatise called City of God where he elaborates the differences between the two spheres in the Christian understanding: the profane and the sacred. Of course, there will be flux in the exact nature of this exchange of religious neutrality and religious tolerance, but it actually seems more compelling than what has become the other popular position, especially with the mistakenly titled “New Atheists” like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Antitheists in particular claim it is questionable as to whether actual tolerance exists in religions, since they are commonly very prescriptive and absolutist in those normative claims about how the world ought to be. Not everyone is this way, but fundamentally, religion takes time to get away from that sort of mindset and there is a likelihood that people cannot completely get away from the tendency to convert people, to influence people in their way of thinking, indignant that others would believe heresies and false spiritual teachings. Thus, true coexistence of the religious and secular, in a sense of non overlapping magisteria similar to science and religion, demands that religion change very sharply and drastically. The kind of tolerance religion in America necessitates is generalized and not anything beyond a bare acceptance of the existence of various competing systems that most believers in any of the exclusivist religions would say are wrong at heart. Religion would have to become much more inclusivist or pluralist in nature. The only other alternative would be to retreat into the churches and make religion a much more private matter, like it was allegedly back in the times of America’s founding fathers. But history may not take that turn any time soon.

Any sort of religious/secular fusion in society will necessitate that religions be propagated more, of course. We should promote a free market of ideas, even those that are delusional. But we should also spread critical thinking about religion and the criticism of it, rejecting the notion in popular culture that religion is sacrosanct and not able to be held to the same standards we hold every other belief to. Once you do this, there is a balancing out of what can be negative traits of religion with the agreement of many religious people that we need to carefully examine out beliefs to hold them consistently and reasonably, even if we disagree. Religion must be willing to not only be in the public square, but also be subject to rigorous criticism which we give to anything else, such as science and politics, and not given a special place. The religious questions should be taken seriously, but they shouldn’t be said to be purely one way or the other. One can accept religion’s existence as a phenomenon without assenting to any beliefs that they have. Atheists can appreciate religious as part of American culture and history, literature, etc, but nevertheless not hold religious views, but more philosophical ones based in reason. The irreverent and the pious may always be at each others’ throats to an extent, but one can hope there could be a better truce arranged in the future between them. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Vote Christian or Vote Conscience

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/07/breaking-pastor-to-gop-dont-vote-for-romney-because-hes-mormon/

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/10/10/mormon.politics/index.html

http://mvbclander.com/2010/10/23/the-non-christian-vote/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/15/my-take-are-evangelicals-dangerous/

Surprisingly, Rick Perry’s still campaigning and a close preacher friend of his, Robert Jeffress (conveniently preaching from Dallas, Texas) is telling members of the GOP to not vote for relatively popular candidate Mitt Romney simply because he’s Mormon. He qualified this so as not to see bigoted by saying he believed Romney was a moral man, but he thought that Christian citizens would prefer a competent Christian. At least he qualified that patently biased perspective; that you should only vote for someone if they share your religion; by saying they should be competent. I wonder how he expects the everyday Christian who is only moderately politically active to discern whether someone is competent. And what does he mean by this term? Does he mean someone who knows what they believe in terms of Christianity or in terms of sound policies for fiscal and social purposes in their campaign? If it’s the latter, then it could make sense, as long as they’re not expecting this person to try to legislate unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity. But if it’s the former, we have an issue that I’ve visited before in “Mormon Candidate Discrimination”. It shouldn’t matter whether the person you vote for agrees with you on everything, but only if the candidate holds a majority of the policies that you would advocate as well. If Rick Perry is incompetent, but a Christian, would you vote for him solely on the basis of his religious affiliation as opposed to whether he’s actually capable of running the country? If Mitt Romney is more effective as a president than Perry, then don’t you have a responsibility to vote for someone who will try to improve America as opposed to voting based on the status quo? So much of this depends on where GOP voters’ priorities are and I hope more of them reflect the tendencies of other nominees, like Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain, who apparently think it’s a non-issue, however crazy they are for thinking God told them to run.

It’s astonishing that we still insist on making such a big deal about what are first and foremost personal convictions that people happen to hold. There has commonly been a difficulty in America of choosing between loyalty to a faith and loyalty to a country. Christians have been able to resolve this problem pretty well throughout history, commonly citing Romans 13:1, which states that believers should respect the authorities, since any authority is supposedly established by God. This is an idea that persisted in spite of the Protestant Revolution with some qualifications. Protestants would argue that they can respect authorities without conforming to them ultimately when they feel they conflict with God’s law. Ultimately what can result is antinomianism, which technically is formulated as the belief that moral law by religious authorities is not in any way pertinent to salvation, which is solely through faith. But one can observe a different form of “antinomianism” (literally being against laws; in this context, civil/secular law) which suggests that a theocracy should be established, where the citizens are governed by Christian based laws, not secular laws of the land. This explicitly manifests most commonly in Dominionism, but many Christians might overlap with that unknowingly with desiring that we apply the Ten Commandments in legislation or claiming the country was founded on the Ten Commandments, both of which are either dangerous or inaccurate. Fundamentally, it shouldn’t matter whether a person is Christian, Jewish or any religion one could describe as long as they conform to the Constitution consistently. Many Christians speak so highly of the Constitution and claim it is based on Judeo Christian jurisprudence and the like, but they neglect to consider that all the Christian scriptures were written in a fundamentally different time with city states in Greece and Rome in one form or another and going further back in Jewish law, more tribal ideas that don’t really conform in any significant sense to modern representative democracy. An elite group of people made decisions about policy as if they thought they always knew what was best for the people. But that wasn’t always the case. With the form of government we have enumerated in the Constitution, there is a greater potential for people actually getting their voice heard and getting their desires fulfilled in terms of legislation, as long as it doesn’t conflict with other laws. If you want the people as a whole represented, you don’t need to vote based purely on yours or a candidate’s religiosity or religious affiliation, but on whether they will treat everyone fairly according to basic principles of American law.

Christians have never needed the government’s endorsement of their faith or the church in order to exist. They take people in for various reasons and maintain themselves through tithing and donations of other sorts and have never needed federal support, primarily because they’re tax exempt and thus are prevented by law from intervening in political affairs as a church and non-profit organization under tax law. There’s also the general theme in Christian scripture that the Church will be supported by God itself through all the tribulations, so I don’t see why any Christian makes a big deal of government endorsement of them as essential. The fact that anyone thinks Christians need prayers sponsored by government entities or any representations of their religious history in a religiously neutral context, the governance of the whole United States or any individual state, suggests a strong insecurity that is ironic considering the privileged status Christians have. You are not automatically judged to lack morals by people, like atheists are, nor are you associated automatically with negative stereotypes that have no obvious counter example people can bring up. If someone alleges Christians are bad, people can find an equal amount of good Christians to counter that claim. As much as there are good atheists, people refuse to see them and the stigma remains in spite of more education and more prominence of atheists in church/state issues. This is a dangerous problem of popular opinion that exists with many, but not all, Christian voters and it stands to reason that they should not be seen as harmless by any stretch of the imagination. If they ally together to do something, you should keep your eyes on them for the simple matter that their perspective is commonly opposed in one way or another to fundamental rights and principles found within the Bill of Rights. They disbelieve people have a freedom from religion along with freedom of religion, they seem to insist as if it’s obvious that the majority rules and the minority shouldn’t have any influence over them and other ideas propagate through candidates like Rick Perry in particular regarding the constitution as it relates to their personal and communal religious beliefs.

If you want to vote in legislation based on your beliefs, at least consider the rights other people have of non interference in the practice of their religion or general ethical behavior without religious backing. If you think it’s unethical to abort a child, try educating children about birth control and responsibility in the same breath. Teaching children about safe sex is not an automatic condoning of pre marital sex anymore than giving a child a bb gun is asking them to shoot cats for fun. If you have problems with gay marriage, perhaps you could establish better standards for straight people marrying in the first place or keep divorce rates much lower by association of taking Jesus seriously when he commands you not to get divorced unless your spouse is unfaithful and trying to get the no-fault divorce law repealed for an explicit example. If you made that commitment, then stick to it, since you hold yourself to faithfulness before God except in the extenuating circumstance mentioned prior. Any issue of policy can be solved and campaigned for by people of faith without resort to legislating religious morality of a particular worldview upon everyone else who doesn’t necessarily share it. The difference is between voting your convictions and voting your conscience. If you want to change things, vote for action that is not oppressive to others, in the thought that people will give you the same courtesy and not vote for things that suppress your rights.

When you start advocating that a Christian only vote for a Christian, what’s to stop you from discriminating based on specific doctrinal differences of your politicians as a logical progression? The only thing stopping you is the rationalization in your head that you’re all the same, but that’s not the case. Christians can disagree fundamentally on a great many things, let alone the differences between Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox groups throughout history. Just because Mormons are the newest group of people with historically Christian overtones doesn’t mean they ought to be discriminated against because they don’t share particular mainstream Christian beliefs any more than Protestants would call Catholics “whores of the Pope” or such obscenities and call that fair. That sort of bigoted and ignorant idea has hopefully died away since the controversy with J.F.K. running for president decades ago, so this issue will eventually become less contentious with time and education. Bottom line, you should vote based on practical concerns, not superfluous issues that ought not to matter in the 21st century in as religiously diverse a country as ours. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Military Missionary Messages

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/03/air-force-bible-and-nukes-dont-mix/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/09/air-forces-use-of-christian-messages-extends-to-rotc/

The U.S. military has gotten itself into some trouble recently concerning favoring Christianity over other religions; though this has come up more times over the last few years anyway with other events as well, from what I remember. Both a video educating soldiers about the ethics of using nuclear weapons and a ROTC training video explaining military virtues have overtly Christian tones to them. It’s not that the military shouldn’t teach soldiers about why they should use restraint in relation to nuclear weapons. Just war theory in any form, Christian or otherwise, is a good start, though it seems like there is more favoring of the use of nuclear weapons, which doesn’t bode well if people take that advice to heart. The more explicitly Christian nature of the ROTC training as described by an anonymous instructor, who was troubled by them, is a larger concern to me in terms of church and state separation. The government’s explicit endorsement of Christianity in this and the context of nuclear weapon usage as relates to just war theory are both problems of government secularism that apparently persisted for as long as 20 years.

Nuclear weapons are the most dangerous weapon any military possesses, since with improper use, they cause more harm than good, and in the worst case scenario, would raze the world to the ground on the oft referenced principle of mutually assured destruction. What that means is that if China (for example) launches a nuclear missile at the U.S., we have nuclear capacity to launch responses that would guarantee that both sides of the conflict would suffer losses of a nuclear scale. This is part of general military ethics in terms of the use of weapons of mass destruction, but a slide show recently pulled by the military due to objections from members of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation seemed to focus solely on Christian just war theory instead of considering the original Roman context it arose from and no doubt influenced theologians such as Augustine of Hippo. This shows a problematic endorsement of religion by a government entity that is explicitly forbidden from proselytizing. The existence of military chaplains might be argued to counter this claim, but they are merely there to counsel members of their religion on various psychological or ethical issues, not to spread their religions as they might feel they are called to do. In terms of teaching so called “nuclear ethics” the military is responsible not only to present a variety of views on justifications of nuclear force, but also contrasting views that either advocate disarmament on some level or a stronger level of restraint than is usually put forward by many just war theorists. One of the first things done is to determine whether the cause of the war itself is just and determining that can be somewhat vague even with the standards still being adjusted to this day. Many might say a war is just when it advances the cause of justice and this can defend the practices of interventionism in foreign policy and associated threats of nuclear force to pacify one’s enemies. This particular form of pacifism is a majority position, since it doesn’t pacify by anything more than a mutual truce or threat of attack. Pacifism as restraint or forms of non resistance have always been a minority in history, mostly because, as many would observe, those who try to pacify without the use of military force are commonly the first to lose their lives and thus do not remain in history for very long. But even if people commonly disagree with just war pacifism or nonresistance/nonviolence ethics in terms of military engagements, these positions should be presented alongside the more popular and oft defended practices in politics of the use of military force where there may be no need.

In ROTC training, short for Reserve Officer’s Training Corps, aspiring students can take classes through the military for college credit and other future benefits. It’s commonly a way for students who want to enlist in the military in the future, but also want to get a college education so as to bolster their background after they leave their tour of duty. But even in a context with young, impressionable minds still learning about the world, the military apparently was trying to inject Christian overtones into their courses. This lies primarily with the Air Force, though it may be possible that other branches of the military are using similar slide shows as the one found that references 7 of the 10 Commandments and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  The intent was to showcase the virtues of the Air Force, but I wonder why there is insistence here as with the briefings for officers launching nuclear missiles to preach exclusively Christian messages about why you can launch nuclear missiles or be a good ethical soldier. The preceding standards in Roman philosophy for just war theory and equivalent virtues found in the 10 Commandments that exist in systems that far predate Christianity make favoring Christianity not only unfair, but unnecessary. Presenting a variety of perspectives can be done and not grant undue merit to one system over another. Christianity’s defense of use of nuclear missiles could be balanced by other Christian perspectives on why use of nuclear weapons is un-Christian and other religions and philosophies that support or decry nuclear force. In this way, the adolescents and young adults aspiring to aid their country would not only get a presentation of virtues they should aspire to in their military practice and everyday lives, but also begin to understand that there are shared beliefs and ideals across the world. When you start to not separate and bisect everything into static categories, you begin to appreciate things all the more. In a military context, this could be a stronger motivator to use military force not as an end in itself, but a means to the end of peace, as it has been commonly advocated through history many times, though certainly 

not always so explicitly.

Apparently with both the slide show advising officers authorized to launch nuclear missiles and the ROTC training, the air force either purposefully ignored the other perspectives that would’ve supported their ideas or just weren’t aware of them to begin with. Either way, it’s troubling to me and many others, since the military is an aspect of our country we should be proud of in some sense, and yet there is such blatant ignorance of the diversity of positions and shared ideas across the world. It doesn’t make me want to “support our troops” or the wars they fight in if they are educated in this myopic fashion that not only favors Christianity, but endorses it through a government entity, which poses serious First Amendment establishment clause violations. I’m not surprised, but I think we should still press on to broaden the perspectives of the military officials who sponsor and officiate these things. Simply put, get out of the last 2 generations and try to take on things in a post WW2 paradigm. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Founding Fathers and Founding Faith

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/04/davis.jefferson.other.words/index.html

Again, I look at the perspectives on church and state, as well as the burning question: is the United States a Christian nation? To be honest, the answer is an ambivalent yes and no. Yes, the U.S. is a Christian nation in the sense that Christianity permeates the history and is the popular demographic of politics and citizens. No, the U.S. is not a Christian nation in any sense that the citizens or the government should give undue favor or special treatment to the Christian religion in any way, shape or form. Christianity being the majority only grants it popularity; it does not give it any right to say the minority doesn’t deserve equal treatment in the eyes of the government or to claim that Christians should be respected more than non-Christians of any type.

Historically, there was discrimination against other Christians in early U.S. history, pre Revolution. Catholics and other Protestants were exiled or executed on grounds of heresy or blasphemy, if I understand it even a bit accurately. In terms of the educated, however, there was the belief that religion was a private matter, something between you and “God”, espoused particularly well by Thomas Jefferson. In this way, even assuming he was Christian, which he was in the Unitarian sense, not believing in Jesus’ divinity, Jefferson wouldn’t want Christianity to be favored or sponsored in any official or implied sense by the government, but left to the individual’s devices as they sought truth and fulfillment.

Part of the disagreement might exist on that common or uncommon understanding of the term “Christian nation,” If you mean a nation governed by Christian principles, then there are disagreements amongst Christians as to what those would entail. Some Christians might go further than simply instating the Ten Commandments, though they would be a minority amongst the faith, since instating a great deal of the Levitical laws would go against the understanding in Christianity that Jesus nullified the temple purity laws and the like. Then again, even instating the Ten Commandments seems to be a problem, and I imagine most Christians realize that. So the only thing that seems to be left is simply granting Christianity some other kind of favor without directly sponsoring it through the government. Many would respond that the First Amendment simply means no single denomination would get favor but that Christianity would still have an important place in the government. I’d ask what they mean by that, since as I pointed out, there’d be problems with even instating the most basic of Christian foundations in the Ten Commandments, or even one of Jesus’ two primary commandments: “Love God with all your heart, mind and soul,” If, however you simply mean that the U.S. is a Christian majority nation demographically, then even the founding fathers would go along with that notion, since unless we have a shift in population or convictions of people, the general culture and traditions of society lean towards raising children in some form of Christianity. There’s always a minority who would either raise children in another tradition, such as Judaism, or those like myself, who’d endeavor to instill a sense of respect to all religions and independence to choose your own beliefs, even if they don’t conform with any particular group you identify with. I was raised Christian, but when I say I’m Buddhist in a secular sense, I imagine many Buddhists could conceivably see problems with my skepticism and even apathy at times about doctrines of reincarnation and rebirth as well as the actual existence in any sense of the six realms in common Buddhist cosmology, going from the hell and hungry ghost realms to the asura and deva realms at the top, right above human and animal, the two of which I’d reasonable assent to as actual realms one could conceivably be reborn in. My girlfriend and I probably wouldn’t have problems agreeing that we can raise our children to believe what they will, even if it is neither of our general traditions of Wicca and Buddhism respectively.

Saying that a Christian nation can allow people to believe what they want and not discriminate against them seems to clash with the idea that the nation pays favor in some unspoken sense to Christianity even if there isn’t an official state church of any denomination. If the country is founded on Christianity, what does it say in terms of policy about citizenship? Should every citizen be required to affirm Christian creeds or the like? If not, why call it a Christian nation except nominally? It seems as if the only people who have any real concrete idea of what a Christian nation consists in ignore any sort of First Amendment considerations about separation of church and state implied within or they outright ignore the very implications within the Christian text itself that attest, as other Christians have said previously, such as Mennonites in my post, “Separation of Church and State Loyalty”. The church remaining as the church apart from minor state involvement of political protocol (no supporting candidates, for example) and the state functioning as the state apart from the church’s general opinions voiced by the voters (ethical issues and such) seems a fair relationship. I don’t see why Christians would want to try to overstep these boundaries unless they’re insecure about the state of their beliefs. Most Christians aren’t like this, I’d imagine, unless they’re unduly influenced by charismatic leaders who suck these people in with rhetoric that preys on their fears and dreams together, wanting peace and avoiding discomfort. They would try to solve their problems with this sort of theocracy and people buy it even if they would otherwise say that people can believe as they will and that their rights to believe should be equally defended. I only hope that some middle ground can be found, that Christians and non-Christians alike will see that they can practice as they will without any need for the state to interfere beyond basic reasons we can see in everyday politics. Let Christians pray in their church, let politicians deliberate in their offices, and things will go about as well as they can go in both cases. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Idle Hands Are God's Plaything

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/07/texas-gov-calls-for-prayer-and-fasting/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43367928/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/

This time I’m not talking about church and state issues so much as the state of politics in relation to religion as a solution to those kinds of problems. Rick Perry, governor of Texas, is organizing a prayer meeting August 6th to call on God to unify people on economic issues, among other problems they think are rampant in America (Help, the gay minorities are oppressing us!). They seem to even be taking the George W. Bush route and trying to pray away natural disasters, as if God still won’t let the hurricanes and tornados blow through the world like they’ve done since the beginning of time. This is not a problem in that this will be paid for with public money or anything like that. Instead, this is just a group of governors across the country being rallied together under this ridiculous notion that prayer is the first response and should be used for a day; as if it will do anything more than twiddling your thumbs.

A few governors are ambivalent about whether they’ll go, but thankfully reason and pragmatism are not completely overshadowed by a desire to appear religious to your respective state. Chris Christie from New Jersey is not going, since he has probably reasoned that focusing on the real issues is a better solution than wasting a day appearing pious in public. Michigan governor Rick Snyder is also not attending, since his schedule is also filled with doing important stuff like helping education reform or any other issue that’s miles above this little event. Some are undecided, and more outspoken Christian Republicans like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Sam Brownback from Kansas have already signed up as guests.

There are a few concerns from political commentators on this, especially as to whether taxpayer money will be used to transport the governors to Texas at Houston’s Reliant Stadium. If so, it would imply endorsement, not to mention it’d be a giant waste of money in the long run. Others have called Perry on not quite violating the establishment or endorsement clauses in the first amendment, but nonetheless trying to blur the boundary between church and state. When you try to use prayer as a method to rally people instead of just calling on their duty to the electorate that trusts in them as human beings, it shows how much contempt you have for the people who voted you in. If anything, Perry seems to be trying to temporarily remove himself of the position of governor in this event, praying as an American citizen. In that instance, he wouldn’t be a representative of the state, since he’d be participating as a citizen in a privately funded event. The problem is that he’s calling other governors to participate, suggesting some sort of countrywide collaboration. A lot of this would depend on how the governors will represent themselves at the event. If they are merely there as believers and/or citizens, one cannot strictly touch them. But the moment they start representing their state in any sense at this strictly Christian event is when there start to be problems of religious endorsement.

No one’s saying you can’t pray privately and in fact many governors may very well just be doing that in lieu of wasting even private money on this farce of religious devotion. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, said that governors would be not only more likely to pray alone before they begin their work, but would be all the more sincere in doing so, since it wouldn’t reflect anything of a public relations campaign to get in good for the next election. That’s actually pertinent to the scheduling of Perry’s event, one week before Iowa’s straw poll, which is a simulation of a vote from what I understand. But Perry’s advisors insist he had already thought of this in December, so it’s purely coincidental (or not?).

I would hope these men that have at least a Masters’, if not a Doctorate level, education in politics and/or economics would see that this is an unnecessary distraction from them actually doing their job, getting things done on the state or local level, and solving problems overall. Some other governors are apparently not travelling, but nonetheless taking Perry’s idea and issuing declarations on August 6th to the public, three by the last count, from Florida, South Carolina and Washington. So by that admission, already over 10% of the governors are going along with this idiocy. Again, I’m not mocking them for being religious, but for thinking this is any kind of solution to the problems. A day wasted in prayer could be used directing state funds to help the victims of Joplin, still no doubt recovering from the tornado, or working on further education reform of one sort or another. To even consider that God cares about any country’s petty concerns is to create a proverbial idol of a God in supposed contrast to the impassable and immutable God who favors no country, but only those faithful to it as individuals in their private spiritual life and in the community of believers called the Church. The God they believe in is apparently willing to help them with every little problem the U.S. is having instead of letting us solve our own problems with community efforts and sacrifices of things we want over things we need.

A lot of this could be due to Christian fears that Muslims are trying to take over, but I can’t speak in full confidence about this. There is the accusation that this is in fact violating the first amendment in that the governor is endorsing this, but that’s a bit of a fine line to draw, as mentioned before. At the very least, I hope future developments will be more reasonable and practical on this addition to what is already the first waste of legislation for the National Day of Prayer every May, which must’ve passed by this year rather uneventfully.  So until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Revised Pledge and Religious Pride

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/23/nbc-apology-on-pledge-of-allegiance-doesnt-satisfy-family-research-council/

In the final round of the U.S. Open, there was a video featuring children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with patriotic imagery, soldiers and landmarks in D.C. So, you’d ask, what’s the problem? Well, it’s half and half technically. On the one hand, the recitation took out the phrase added into the pledge in 1954, “under God,” But on the other hand, it also took out part of the pledge that was in the original version, “indivisible,” NBC promptly apologized, and even made a second apology later in the week, after Twitter exploded with statements lambasting NBC for the controversy. This demonstrates a few things, one of which amazes me a lot: people still care about golf even slightly. More importantly, and to be serious, it shows people care about their country, even though political apathy and inaction (myself included) still exists on religious or political grounds. Patriotic indignation about small groups editing the pledge could be justified if there was a larger portion removed, but it was only three words, two of which are still contested to this day as to whether they are constitutional or even prudent considering the vast religious diversity of the U.S.

But it makes some sense to get riled up about removing part of the original pledge’s wording, even if it doesn’t completely alter the general intent. If “with liberty and justice for all” is still maintained, then it isn’t as huge a problem as taking out “indivisible”. But then, the “indivisible” part might be more pertinent these days alongside “with liberty and justice for all” since there are calls across some states, such as Texas, for secession, dividing the country. And equal rights for gays and lesbians are also quite debatable, even with New York legislating gay marriage recently, making the total number of states over 1/10 of the country. Most people are getting bent out of shape over something that was, in all likelihood, a mistake or an isolated incident of one group trying to selectively censor something, which won’t happen again. I’m a bit miffed, but I’m more than willing to sacrifice the word “indivisible” in the pledge if it also removes “under God,” which I think is ironically divisive in itself. So in actuality, it seems to solve that problem of conflict that results from “under God’s” insertion into the pledge, which makes the country divisible by God believers and non-God believers.

The real contention is in the form of the Family Research Council, headed by Tony Perkins, who spoke about gay marriage in my “Gay Marriage Does Not Equal Anarchy” post. His group is very conservative by nature, so they’ll pick up on any controversy of a religious or political nature that clashes with their values and then boycott it, protest it or send angry letters pleading changes in policy, among other options. This time, they’re asking NBC to recite the pledge daily. I could see their request being fair if it was on a weekly basis, maybe, but not daily. There’s plenty of other stuff the free market advertising can do with that time and patriotism through school recitation and sport based traditions of the pledge seems to enforce that notion of respecting the flag and the values it stands for well enough without TV stations doing it as well.

Perkins at least had a good idea in the form of suggesting that NBC run a program detailing the history of the pledge and the reasoning behind adding “under God” in the Cold War. It would be a way to educate people, though I’m skeptical as to whether Perkins’ intent is to educate neutrally and impartially or try to communicate some ridiculous historical revisionism that says the U.S. is a Christian nation or some such drivel. It would be nice to present different perspectives and look into the context of the writing of the pledge as well as the context when it was altered. But if it’s just some attempt to push this notion of the founding fathers wanting Jesus to have a special place in the government, they’d be sorely mistaken just on the face of men of that time being more private with their religion. They believed in Christianity, probably traditional, but nonetheless, religion wasn’t something they made a part of government beyond private affairs, which admittedly aren’t as private, such as Congress where they open with a prayer.

All in all, this incident should be put behind us and left in the dust. There are plenty of other important issues to focus on, like getting gay marriage legalized in more states, advocating more education about secularism and evolutionary theory and other concerns we can all get on board with to one extent or another. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Public Prayer Not Always Privately Protected

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/27/judge-blocks-va-from-barring-jesus-christ-from-memorial-day-prayer/
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7583145.html#ixzz1NYpWcU00

I must report disappointment on secular affairs in Texas, unfortunately. A federal judge declared that the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs cannot remove the mention of Jesus Christ from an invocation by a pastor at Houston National Cemetery. The minister in question has done invocations in the past, but according to his testimony that he had mentioned Jesus in the past prayers, it would appear the violation flew under the radar like many have in the past. But this time around, he seems to be confident he will go through with it, as he has the backing of the Liberty Institute, which reminds me of a conservative mirror image of the ACLU, the American Center for Law and Justice. Yet again, we have a problem of interpretation of the establishment clause and the 1st amendment’s general protections of freedom of speech, not to mention the 9th amendment’s protection of minority rights from being dashed to pieces by majority tyranny.

Judge Lynn Hughes said the government cannot "gag citizens…in the interest of national security, and it cannot do it in some bureaucrat's notion of cultural homogeneity," I don’t see any relevance to the first part of the critique. Issues of government endorsement of religion in violation of the establishment clause of the 1st amendment aren’t concerned whatsoever with national security. The U.S. is not in imminent danger from terrorists because some preacher flubs up and forgets to be inclusive in a public prayer. But it is a serious problem when people continue to do this in the name of tradition. The second critique still seems to miss the point. Many people judge that being politically correct is stifling free speech. But in this context, free speech isn’t what is at issue; what is the problem is prayer that started off trying to be inclusive and ends excluding every faith but Christianity through this pastor’s invocation as represented by the federal government; through invitation I might add. No one’s saying he can’t go forward with his prayer, but the touchy issues of inclusivity and exclusivity can have the reverse effect and make many pastors get too enthusiastic about their faith and trample over everyone else’s. This is why a moment of silence is a more practical and equitable solution to these issues. But as the Bastrop story demonstrates, people can find loopholes to get around that as well. This incident in Texas would be harder to defend, except by saying the pastor is a private citizen in the context of being clergy. But once he does an invocation as part of a public and federal ceremony, I don’t think he can hide behind his “protected” position anymore.

The Liberty Institute responded in the vein of the judge’s sympathies by saying that the government “cannot stifle private speech on public land,” I cannot imagine where they’re getting this justification. That’s like saying a KKK Grand Dragon can just stand out in the street corner and spout racist epithets and teachings. No one would say that’s protected. If a cemetery funded by the government is considered a public area, then private speech is protected to the extent it isn’t inflammatory or exclusionary. You don’t have a justified freedom to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, even if you technically have the potential to do so; similar to shouting racial slurs at minorities in the streets; you could do it, but it’s hate speech. And the inverse of the claims by the Liberty Institute would be justified. Public speech on private land would be justified and unable to be censored by the government. If the KKK held a rally at a place they owned and paid money for out of their own coffers and made public statements of a racist and anti-Semitic nature to an open audience, the government couldn’t really touch them, anymore than if they got official permits by the state to march in a parade.

The private and public, as well as government and private spheres of speech, can be misunderstood, especially when considering things important to us, such as religion and politics. And in issues we get offended about, like neo Nazi parades, we can forget the protections that nonetheless exist for such groups. We tend to agree that people proclaiming offensive things are nonetheless protected by the 1st amendment, such as the relatively recent decision that Westboro Baptist Church is, regardless of our deep-seated frustrations, protected (within potential future restrictions of prudence). But the same cannot be said for people proclaiming their particular religion as more important than others’ beliefs in particular contexts, even if they’re trying to be tolerant while steadfast in their faith. Even if the pastor tries to qualify he respects other people’s beliefs, like Laci Mattice at Bastrop High School’s graduation, he is disrespecting people of different beliefs in saying he gets priority to place his own religion in a prayer within a public context. The argument by the opposition is that since he is expressing his private religious beliefs, also noting his invocation is being sponsored by a private group, his speech is private and thus protected by Supreme Court decisions that the government cannot censor private speech on public property. Problem is the nature of this incident is not like if a sangha meditated in a park or a Christian fellowship was praying to Jesus in the same park. Considering both of these as religious beliefs expressed in public, the government would have no justification to censor that speech, since they’re doing no one any harm. But since this pastor was invited by a public group to do the invocation, one can argue they have a responsibility and standing to censor this singular part of the prayer mentioning Jesus. By all means, he can pull out of this event. The problem is the argument that this private speech in a public incident is protected even though it’s not done purely as a private citizen, but in response to a request to officiate this part of the event as clergy. The preacher doesn’t have the right to push his own personal beliefs into something that by nature should be inclusive to all veterans of differing beliefs nor does he have the right to sue because he believes his rights have been violated, since they haven’t in reality. And his qualification that he respects others doesn’t actually reflect respect. I don’t respect someone when I punch them in the face, but say beforehand, “I respect your face’s right to bleed,” Nor would it be any fairer if a Muslim tried to pray to Allah in this situation. People would be up in arms about that, but they give a free pass to the majority religion in the country on a troublingly consistent basis. The ACLU and FFRF seem to have their hands full with an overflow of such problems. My hat’s off to them, though if this passes, it won’t be the end of the world, but it will set a bad precedent. Just my last thoughts on this. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

No Southern Hospitality For Atheists

http://www.bastropenterprise.com/features/x2132687894/Student-challenges-prayer-at-Bastrop-graduation
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/hed7y/threatened_to_contact_aclu_for_prayer_at/
http://www.blaghag.com/2011/05/atheist-high-schooler-receives-death.html
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/standard_small_town_saga.php
http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/05/21/what-happened-at-damon-fowlers-graduation/

This topic jumped out at me due to my near addictive interest in issues of church and state. Just recently in Louisiana the graduation at the local high school in Bastrop, Louisiana proceeded with a student directly violating the First Amendment’s establishment clause; in a pretty duplicitous manner, might I add. This was a willful and unjustified protest against the changes the school put in place, responding to Damon Fowler, a fellow secularist, and his allegation that they were not only violating the Constitution, but Louisiana state law, which has a similar provision against laws that discriminated against or favored any religion. Technically atheism is not a religion, but one can instead claim that it was favoring Christianity, and since this is a state sponsored institution, a public high school, doing an invocation that favors a particular religion is unconstitutional. Here’s the first of two different videos involving willful defiance against the change in the program from a prayer to a moment of silence. The student in question, Laci Mattice, stated at the beginning of the ceremonies that she was originally going to lead an invocation, but that she was instead told to lead a moment of silence. I don’t see why leading a moment of silence is less important than leading a prayer. The worst part of this was her trying to weasel out of her official duties by disclaiming that before she “fulfilled [her] obligation” she wanted to thank God for helping her graduate; because she really needed to pray to be the salutatorian instead of actually studying. Afterwards, she tried to sound amicable to nonbelievers by asking that those who believed as she did bow their heads to pray. But she never temporarily suspended her duties with those disclaimers; it doesn’t work that way. As personal and individual as she tried to make it, she was sponsored by the school in that position and she had no right to do that prayer regardless of her personal beliefs or being offended by the replacing of the “traditional” invocation with a moment of silence. Pure and simple, she was not only in dereliction of her official duties, but she was spitting in the face of religious freedom. And don’t tell me that her letting all the Christians bow their heads was being charitable to non Christians. She wanted to shove this prayer down everyone’s throats in direct opposition to the school itself telling her that she could not do a prayer. And what does the school do? They sit by as the status quo is maintained even in spite of an affirmation to the contrary by the school authorities. There’s a time and place for being religious and thanking your creator for academic success, and it’s called the baccalaureate. Quite possibly, the first video might have been a baccalaureate, but the sources suggest this was related to, but not the same as, the graduation ceremony itself.

This video, however, seems to be the graduation ceremony, where the same student proceeds to go with a nearly identical process. She says she respects other people’s beliefs, but then proceeds to disrespect them by saying that her desire to thank Jesus trumps the rights of everyone to not hear it in a public context sponsored by the state. She asks her fellow students to join in, again trying to slip around the school sponsored prayer bit, but you can clearly hear the audience joining in, so she might as well have just announced to everyone, “Hey, we’re having a prayer, even though they told us we can’t legally do it. They can’t touch us, we’re the majority!” It’s a contemptible display of majority tyranny. Tennessee can be pretty bad about it in certain regions, but I can’t recall getting even a minute vibe similar to this travesty. And in both instances, they give a pittance of time for the moment of silence, maybe 15 seconds, while they get at least twice that length for their own public soapbox to condescendingly preach.

The student in question, Damon Fowler, was reported by his brother to have gotten death threats from some people. Couple this with the social ostracism from a class that’s practically the same size as mine in a relatively small area and it’s amazing he hasn’t been outright attacked. This whole incident was an unnecessary and unfounded vindication of a majority’s wants over a minority’s needs. Atheists don’t want to be treated like everyone else; they deserve and need to be treated like everyone else. For someone to ask their classmates, even nicely, to pray is to isolate non Christian students. But with the community at large cheering this girl on, it just reinforces this negative tradition that anyone not in the majority religion should sit by and let their supposed guarantee of freedom from state sponsored religion get trampled on.

Any Christian reader should not get the idea that I have a problem with students praying privately and reading their bible in non class contexts at school. My problem is with people being so proud of their own faith that once they’ve realized they are in a majority, they think they deserve special treatment. Even if they preface it by saying other people have their right to believe or not, when you use a position of authority like this to pray your specific prayer, you instate the exact opposite feeling which you were trying to inspire before. It only makes religious diversity seem all the less likely when you think being a majority religion or a religion of many founding fathers gives you carte blanche to speak openly about it with no fear of persecution. Not to mention it clashes with an admonition from Jesus himself in Matthew 6:5 that you should pray privately to God, so as not to seem like a hypocrite who wants to be seen by everyone as religious. Your outward behavior is not what God cares about, from what I understand; it’s your internal convictions. And aren’t we supposed to be in the last days where Christians are persecuted? Clearly these kids aren’t worried that Christians will be persecuted since they feel they can just pray a Christian prayer and no government will get on them. I only hope the ACLU and FFRF get on the school about this, though I’m not sure of the exact intervention they could do at this point. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Nothing New In Nation "Under God"

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/28/former-alabama-supreme-court-chief-justice-to-form-presidential-exploratory-committee/
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/28/gingrich-fears-atheist-country-dominated-by-radical-islamists/

Since the presidential primaries are coming up next year, a lot of hopeful nominees, for the Republican Party in particular, are already setting up for campaigning. Two of particular interest are Roy Moore, a former Supreme Court Chief Justice who lost his position because he refused to remove a copy of the ten commandments he put in an Alabama courthouse, and Newt Gingrich, who needs little introduction; he’s had 2 affairs, been married three times, 2 of which are directly related to previous infidelities, was formerly a House Representative and gave up that position over 10 years ago when Democrats took over the House, becoming a pundit instead. Both of these men are looking for nomination in the Republican Party, among others, such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, both of whom I’ve spoken of at length. But one has to wonder if they’re even capable of getting significant support.

Moore was campaigning recently in Iowa, getting support from Tea Party supporters and middle class evangelicals, neither of which surprises me. Tea Partiers seem to be really strong on individual rights, including your right as an employee of a secular government to put up explicitly religious paraphernalia in direct opposition to the principle that the government should not reflect any support of a particular religion in its administration. If this guy wants to put up the Decalogue in his house, I have no issue. Put them on the front yard if you want, but in a court room, there’s no reason you’d need it, especially considering you’d have a distinct possibility in such a religiously diverse country as the U.S., to encounter people who don’t’ follow half of them or might know more about them than you do, such as the potential mistranslation you might be posting of number 6, even presented to me as “Thou shalt not kill,” when it’s universally agreed by scholars to be “Thou shalt not murder,” which is a pretty large restriction in lieu of the amount of indiscriminate divinely mandated or originated killing in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. It’s not like the guy doesn’t have some positions I could align with, like his opposition to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and advocating that the U.S. seek out new sources of energy so the oil crisis doesn’t reach a fever pitch. But the guy also opposes gay marriage in the same breath he’d say he opposes DADT, so the amount of compartmentalization he has to do borders on psychotic. Not to mention the obvious misunderstanding he seems to have of any idea of the First Amendment’s religious establishment clause that almost makes Christine O’Donnell look smart about it, which is hard. The guy persists in emphasizing that “Without God, there can be no ethics,” which was his response to the panel that removed him from his Chief Justice position, primarily due to his vehemently resisting a court order to remove the Ten Commandments. The guy tries to sound like he’s for the separation of church and state, but he also emphasizes that God is overarching across both church and state, which means he thinks (il)logically that we should recognize God’s sovereignty in courtrooms across the country: seems like the church is getting a bigger piece of the pie than the state is. If the state wants to restrict the use of religious monuments by a federal employee directly advocating one religion over another, especially if it’s paid with taxpayer money, then Roy Moore just shoves that restriction to the side. Since God “clearly” overrules any human law, since it made those ten rules that are somehow legally binding upon us, even though only about half of them have anything to do with law. I’d sooner vote for the next guy than this one…but not really.

Newt Gingrich has never been popular with me in politics. I did an article last year on him and Palin both railing on Obama, as if they could manage things better. Even if they put both their heads together, I can see things going much worse than Obama has supposedly made them. Gingrich, who’s also running for a Republican nomination in 2012, spoke at Cornerstone Church, headed by John Hagee, who had wanted to endorse John McCain when he ran in 2008, but was rejected on the grounds of anti-semitic sounding remarks he made concerning the Holocaust. Basically, he said Hitler was part of God’s plan to advance the growth of the state of Israel. But enough on a preacher who’s potentially crazier than Newt Gingrich and Roy Moore put together; let’s talk about Gingrich’s concern he voiced at his speech. He said he was worried that America would become “a secular atheist country…dominated by radical Islamists,” This is already a pretty clear contradiction; we’re beyond paradox. You can’t have a secular atheist country that’s run by Islam, a majority of which would support both a theocracy and a theistic religion as the source of law. If anything, he seems to think that somehow, radical Muslims and radical atheists will be willing to team up, which seems silly. If anything, there’s only a possibility that one half of the country would be Islamist and the other half atheist. But it seems like if it’s going to be one way or the other, it can’t be a shared endeavor, since Islam and atheism are at least descriptively opposed in not both being theistic. Christians and Muslims, maybe; atheists and secularists, sure, but not secularists or atheists alongside Islamists, unless they’re Muslim in name only, which is something critics of Islam say Muslims can be: that is, affirm Muslim tenets, but in reality believe only in atheist ideas (though that’s a bit of an oxymoron, since atheism isn’t a religion).

The whole concern here is focused on Gingrich’s worry that people will forget the “American ideals,” which to him are being Christian and Republican, in that order. One can understand where he might be worried people are trying to censor the Founding Father’s individual beliefs concerning Christianity and such, but history seems to demonstrate that many of the men who were the impetus to the U.S. declaring independence from Britain didn’t care whether Americans were Muslim, Jewish, Christian or atheist, among other possibilities. The basic freedoms in America are not a matter of freedom to be one of many varieties of one religion, as many fundamentalists and overly politically oriented devotees of Christianity seem to want to convince everyone around them. That was something of the original idea of the earliest settlers, but as diversity continued to expand, it only made sense that being American was not about strict standards for what constituted identity, but shared ideals. If Gingrich is worried people will forget what being an American is, perhaps he might consider that we’ve always had a good idea of what it means to be American; it’s people like him that are skewing the idea to a more narrow and exclusive perspective that pushes out any other religion from public view. They’ll say other religions, like Islam, have a right to practice, but that Christianity gets priority for historical reasons. And that’s not only unjustified, but it’s unconstitutional. Even putting favor towards a religion as an elected official is impermissible by the First Amendment, since even if it isn’t a matter of law, it’s still trying to make us believe that Christianity and the Ten Commandments are where our Constitution originates from, when that’s clearly not the case. I can’t say I’d recommend voting for either of these guys, assuming they even get in the primaries. Vote Mitt Romney before you even think of the proverbial Four Horsemen of 2012: Palin, Gingrich, Moore and Huckabee. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Obama's Faith: Personal and Political

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/03/obama-to-deliver-major-speech-on-personal-faith-white-house-official-says/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/03/president-obamas-remarks-at-national-prayer-breakfast/

President Barack Obama gave a heartening speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, held every year on the first Thursday of February, about his hopes for the future, such as Representative Gabrielle Giffords’ recovery from the shot to the head as well as her husband’s adjusting to the near death experience. He also wished for the situation in Egypt to play out peacefully and in favor of the people protesting against the one party system persisting for around 30 years since Hosni Mubarak’s replacement of Anwar El Hadat after his assassination in 1981. But throughout the rest of his speech, he spoke very candidly and publically for the first time about his faith, which many people continue to be skeptical about, due to various groups propagating the notion that he is a closet Muslim pretending to be a Christian.

While there is no absolutely conclusive evidence that Obama isn’t lying to millions of people about his faith, I fail to see what justification or benefit he could see in doing so, and why people would believe that someone would try to maintain such an elaborate ruse, when the President doesn’t get paid much more than others, not to mention his job is already quite taxing on the body and mind. His spiritual aspirations should be the least of people’s concerns; not to mention he has had plenty of associations with Christian preachers, including Rick Warren and Billy and Franklin Graham. Not to mention that Obama’s general reticence regarding his faith can be seen as a sign of discretion in times when the religious affiliation of a president should be very low on the list of concerns of the governed as opposed to what are more pressing issues of politics, economics, foreign policy, etc.
As divided as Obama admits many people might be on the issues like healthcare, the federal deficit and foreign aid, he at least strives to emphasize in this speech that he shares the Christian faith on some level with the majority of people in the United States. Some comments on the article inquired about theological specifics, but this is hardly relevant for a person that represents a diversity of millions, not all of them even finding Christianity’s story of salvation compelling in the slightest. With this unification under some theistic civil religious principles in mind, he calls for a focus on at least this common ground he has with most Americans even if there are very polarizing divisions that exist on other issues.

But the fact that people, educated or otherwise, continue to buy into the rumors of Obama’s true faith as a Muslim being deceptively disguised as God fearing and Jesus following to the majority demographic of Christians is what continues to divide people across political spheres. We still seem to want our representatives in politics to share the same faith as us, even though we can also feel sympathy and pray for Gabrielle Giffords, a Reformed Jew. But those same Christians, who eye Obama with distrust and accuse him of being both a Muslim and a Communist/Socialist/Marxist (which I can’t imagine are internally consistent with each other), will say that they can’t be anti-semitic because the Jewish people are their spiritual family, since they are also in a covenant with God, albeit they always would emphasize that it’s the Old one, not their New (and improved?) one with Jesus, who happened to be a Jew himself; which most people conveniently leave out.

I don’t have to agree with Obama’s politics or religion to still respect him as a person and as someone who represents the country in all its diversity, Christians and varied non Christians like myself as well (which he has spoken on occasionally in his speeches, giving him kudos from me that no other president to my knowledge has gotten yet). I could ramble on more about how religion and politics need a radical separation and, more importantly, a shifting of priorities. Being religious has become a negative label in my own area of the South, equated to following rituals and rules without any spirit or conviction behind their substance. And then there’s the allegation that the president needs a faith, usually a conveniently Christian faith that makes the person involved feel privileged. But the president neither has to be religious or faithful to any particular religion or faith; but at the very least should admit that he, like any politician, is dependent on those who vote for them and also has an obligation of fidelity (related etymologically to the word faith, ironically) to those constituents to follow through in some way.

Now, I admit I’m using something of the rhetoric and method that many conservative Obama critics and Tea Party followers use, but only because when communicated without politically vitriolic venom, it speaks volumes to what ought to be a reform of politics on some level, however unrealistic it might actually be to put into practice. If anything, people need to look past what people tell them and investigate those claims as individuals. But they shouldn’t let their own judgments about Obama determined through research be the end of the discussion. Exchanging opinions with others is a way to check against isolated politico-religious decisions. If you judge Obama simply by what everyone else says, there’s a problem in that you aren’t willing to think critically and objectively. However, judging Obama purely on what you think critically and “objectively” about is also a difficulty, because you dismiss any criticism as being “un-American” or “un-patriotic” or any number of other negative associations that only drive a wedge further into what is already a fragmented system, exacerbated by blind loyalty to party lines instead of choosing people based on alignment with your own political policies, regardless of being Democrat, Republican, or anything in between.

If we started accepting that we won’t agree on everything and try to find both common ground (the governed under the government) and principles of governance we share in common (benefitting people without coddling and spoiling them into becoming co dependent on any government subsidies or aid), then perhaps there wouldn’t be the need to question Obama’s faith either as individual believers or as communal citizens. We’d at least accept that when the facts point to Obama being a Christian (Methodist or Baptist or whatever) that we should take them as they are without succumbing to the media as the only source of information for our daily lives. Whether Obama is a Muslim or Christian or agnostic shouldn’t matter as long as he is honest with America. And again, I see no reason why he would need to lie about such a personal conviction when there are plenty of people that could counter any deception he might speak in a speech or prayer. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.