Religion in the Public Square

[zdon011]

Ditto Leela; she speaks rightly. Bush and God? Bush and money? Here’s a guy whose grandad aided and abetted the Nazis!

Uh, oh. Whenever social conservatism or right-wing politics are brought up in a discussion, you can be sure the ol’ National Socialists are just waitin’ round the corner.
This topic’s on a downward spiral.

 

[zdon011]

The difference is that King and Tutu were not elected officials and that they made arguments that those not subbing to their particular religion could find convincing.

But still, Leela, you imply that if ‘theocrats’ (as you call them) came up with policies that ‘those not subbing to their particular religion’ agreed with, then those policies would be ‘okay’. And indeed, many neo-cons were not Fundamentalist Protestants, despite what CNN would have us believe.

The is no \argument at all in “God wants me to be President.” There is something scary about his claim that e would nominate judges who understand that our rights come from God." What exactly is that supposed to mean ? How is believing that or not believing that supposed to affect their judicial decisions?

Aren’t you being a little…simplistic?

Pax tecum,
zdon

 

[antroji]

Yes, zdon, and I am reminded of the picture of Palin wrapped in a flag and holding a cross. It is rightly captioned, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the Flag and waving a cross.” That is typical of how symbols of meaning are abused to sugar coat perversion. We cannot in this country any more have a Christian theocracy than a Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. And if it was a Christian theocracy, then we would have what–about two hundred versions of that, including a few Catholic ones in the arena fighting it out as to whose God is in charge. Maybe if we had a Zen or a Buddhist “theocracy,” that would be OK as they might not care how you personally floated your boat. But as I often say, “Dear God, save us from those who “love” You and your Son!!”

I will have my worship and leave you to yours under a secular government, thank you. We already have enough “religious” competition under the worshipers of mammon to the point we could invert the stripes on our Flag and make them look like a bar code and replace the stars with corporate logos. If there is a dominant religion in the public square, that would be it’s symbol, and it is subverting the Cross to its ends.

 

[colmcille1]

Yes, zdon, and I am reminded of the picture of Palin wrapped in a flag and holding a cross. It is rightly captioned, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the Flag and waving a cross.” That is typical of how symbols of meaning are abused to sugar coat perversion. We cannot in this country any more have a Christian theocracy than a Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. And if it was a Christian theocracy, then we would have what–about two hundred versions of that, including a few Catholic ones in the arena fighting it out as to whose God is in charge. Maybe if we had a Zen or a Buddhist “theocracy,” that would be OK as they might not care how you personally floated your boat. But as I often say, “Dear God, save us from those who “love” You and your Son!!”

I will have my worship and leave you to yours under a secular government, thank you. We already have enough “religious” competition under the worshipers of mammon to the point we could invert the stripes on our Flag and make them look like a bar code and replace the stars with corporate logos. If there is a dominant religion in the public square, that would be it’s symbol, and it is subverting the Cross to its ends.

antroji, would you mind if I asked you a personal question?
Don’t worry, I don’t want details. A simple “yes” or “no” will suffice.
The question is: Bearing in mind the topic of this thread, are you actively involved in the promotion of your Faith?

 

[antroji]

That is not a yes or no question, Colmcille1. Legalism and digial thinking don’t apply here. Can you ask it in another way? Remember, there are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Oh, wait a minute… What is it that understands and transcends both?

 

[colmcille1]

That is not a yes or no question, Colmcille1. Legalism and digial thinking don’t apply here. Can you ask it in another way? Remember, there are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Oh, wait a minute… What is it that understands and transcends both?

Thank you, antroji. You’ve answered my question.
God Bless,
Colmcille1.

 

[antroji]

I thought as much. Run with it. Oooops…Have you already tripped?

 

[buffalo]

Bottom line - if the majority of American want to protect the founding documents and intent then they have the ability to do so. Who said pluralism was wanted or even desirable?

 

[colmcille1]

I thought as much. Run with it. Oooops…Have you already tripped?

“Run with it”?! I wouldn’t touch it with a disinfected barge pole!
Your posts are boringly predictable and, once again, thanks for your expected reply!
God Bless,
Colmcille1.

 

[antroji]

God bless you too, Colmcille1. Thanks for your engaging chat.

 

[Betterave]

Another possible prayer (possibly better): “Dear God, help me to love those who ‘love’ You and your Son.”

 

[antroji]

Yes, I’ll accept that. It is better. Thanks, Betterave. The other was more of a comment than a request.

 

[zdon011]

…symbols of meaning are abused to sugar coat perversion.

Like…let me guess…the rainbow?

Maybe if we had a Zen or a Buddhist “theocracy,” that would be OK as they might not care how you personally floated your boat.

My dear antroji, if you knew about how the Buddhist theocracy in Tibet treated their own, or the interesting ideologies spawned by Zen, I guarantee you WOULD NOT think a theocracy of those persuasions was ‘OK.’

 

[colmcille1]

Like…let me guess…the rainbow?

My dear antroji, if you knew about how the Buddhist theocracy in Tibet treated their own, or the interesting ideologies spawned by Zen, I guarantee you WOULD NOT think a theocracy of those persuasions was ‘OK.’

Very good post, zdon! As no doubt you are aware, the Catholic Church is the number 1 soft target for all manner of assailants. The level of such antipathy here in Ireland is shocking but, alas, not surprising.
Still, we live in Hope that said assailants will be healed.
God Bless,
Colmcille1.

 

[Leela]

Sure. Theocracy is rule by religious authorities.

Right, and when Bush said that God wants him to be president and later that God wanted him to invade Iraq, he was claiming such authority. The scary thing is that so many people seem to want that.

As Pat Robertson, Leader of the Christian Coalition put it, “Our aim is to gain dominion over society.” Exactly how that was to be accomplished was revealed when he told the Denver Post in 1992 that his goal was to “take working control of the Republican Party.” Robertson’s Christian Coalition has 1.7 million members and his television program, 700 Club, boasts 7 million viewers each week. He wields a $27 million annual budget with which to work to try elect “Christian candidates” to public office (though he would lose his tax-exempt status if he were to explicitly endorse any particular candidates.)

D. James Kennedy, pastor of the 9,000 member Coral Ridge Ministries until he died of a heart attack in 2007, reached a weekly viewing and listening audience of over 3 million people every Sunday. At a “Reclaiming America for Christ” conference in February, 2005, Kennedy stated the duty of every Christian as follows:

“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors – in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”

Kennedy preached a theocratic vision where Christians dominate everyone else as God’s representatives on earth. In his 1994 book, Character & Destiny: A Nation In Search of Its Soul, Kennedy specifically attacks the notion of secularism and its church-state separation:

“If we are committed and involved in taking back the nation for Christian moral values, and if we are willing to risk the scorn of the secular media and the bureaucracy that stand against us, there is no doubt we can witness the dismantling of not just the Berlin Wall but the even more diabolical ‘wall of separation’ that has led to increasing secularization, godlessness, immorality, and corruption in our country.”

Note the implicit claim of victim status in the Kenedy quote above. Christians are risking “scorn” from “those who stand against us” for being committed to “Christian moral values.” In a country where the vast majority of Americans are Christians, it is a wonder that anyone would try take the tack of playing the persecuted martyr, but it is too-common maneuver.

In a speech for a gathering of Roman Catholic legal professionals in Darien, Connecticut in 2005 Bush’s controversial Federal Judicial nominee (later confirmed) Janice Rogers Brown said:

“These are perilous times for people of faith, not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud.”
Who are the persecutors? As you can probably guess, it is the subscribers to “atheistic humanism,” who have “handed human destiny over to the great god, autonomy, and this is quite a different idea of freedom. Freedom then becomes willfulness."

[cont.]

 

[Leela]

Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay helped raise money for an organization called the Traditional Values Coalition to fight back against the “war on Christianity” and "stop the all-out assault on Christians being waged by our government, by America’s educational institutions, by the media and throughout popular culture and, according to a fundraising letter, “to help [TVC founder Reverend Lou Sheldon] show America how the liberal Democrat have hijacked America’s courts to push a radical anti-God, anti-family agenda on America.”

Delay’s home state is Texas, where the State of Texas GOP platform of 2004 stated that, “The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States of America is a Christian nation.” Lest anyone think that theocracy is merely an extremist concern that we need not worry about, let’s read on:
“Our Founders expected that Christianity–and no other religion–would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate peoples’ consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference.”

I think that last sentence is probably true and that the one preceding it then is probably false for that very reason. The Founding Father’s would not have sought any governmental favor for Christianity, if only because no other religion was on their radar any more than radars were on their radar. They didn’t imagine a country where Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and atheists resided together any more than the could fathom blacks and whites on equal social footing. That last sentence is only true in the way that it is true that most of the Founding Fathers apparently thought of “all men are created equal” as applying only to land-owning white males. Nevertheless, we now take the Constitution as ensuring that all people regardless of sex, race, or land-owning status are all deserving of the same protection under the law, and of course we all agree that we should. Likewise, we ought to regard all religions and the lack of religious belief as equally respected in terms of the establishment clause.

As philosopher of religion Jeffrey Stout said, “Wherever theocracy [the desire to have God’s representatives on earth dominate everyone else] catches on, even among a sizable minority, democracy is in trouble. Sooner or later, theocracy disintegrates into conflict over who God’s earthly representatives really are. Each band of theocrats takes itself to be God’s elect, claims for itself the right to hold earthly power over others, and declares its opponents deluded by sin” and perhaps by Satan himself.

Obviously at that point, the democratic process of exchanging reasons to try to reach a consensus has broken down. People deluded by Satan cannot be persuaded, only marginalized and dominated. Therefore, everyone who is committed to democracy and freedom from such religious domination–that same desire for religious freedom which, as we were taught in grade school, drove many of the original settlers to the New World to begin with–has a stake in opposing theocracy.

Theocracy is a real threat today. Consider the Texas Republican Party’s platform of 2004 in its resolution that “Our party pledges to exert its influence to restore the original intent of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and to dispel the ‘myth’ of the separation of church and state.” The myth of the myth of separation of church and state seems to be gaining traction, and we therefore ought to be prepared to argue for secularism as a way of ensuring religious freedom.

Consider also the Constitution Restoration Act of 2005 filed by Republicans Richard Shelby and Robert Aderholt sought to make explicit, in the words of Roy Moore, a drafter of the bill,

“the acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, and government…contained within the Declaration of Independence which is cited as the ‘organic law’ of our Country by United States Code Annotated. The constitution of every state of the Union acknowledges God and His sovereignty, as do three branches of the federal government. The acknowledgment of God is not a legitimate subject of review by federal courts.”

The bill was originally introduced in 2004 and them was reintroduced in 2005. On both occasions in stalled in committee. That last sentence refers to part of the intent of the bill as to protect Christmas nativity displays in the so-called “war on Christmas.” Though it never had any chance to make it to the floor for a vote, the point of mentioning it and the Texas GOP platform is to point out that the theocratic movement is no straw man. It has some real state and national level appeal and is a real danger to furthering the cause of secularism. But it also enough of an extremist view that liberal and moderate Christians can be enlisted to help fight it alongside atheists so long as the defeat of the new theocrats is not allowed to be painted as an atheistic campaign. We all, believers and nonbelievers alike, need to fight theocracy not in the name of atheism but in the name of democracy.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

Bottom line - if the majority of American want to protect the founding documents and intent then they have the ability to do so. Who said pluralism was wanted or even desirable?

It isn’t a question whether pluralism is desirable. Of course it would be easier to run a government if we all agreed on the same premises. The fact is that we are a pluralistic society and have always been so. The Founding Fathers sought a way for a pluralistic society to function without any one group being allowed to establish dominion over the others.

The modern theocrats are attempting to use democratic means to achieve anti-democratic ends. They claim that in a democracy, the majority rules, and the Christians have always been the majority; however, The Bill of Rights is there to ensure that democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Maintaining majority status can only be done through the peaceful non-coercive means of remaining the most convincing position within the democratic exchange of ideas. Separating government and religion was one way in which the Founding Fathers tried to ensure that any religious majority may not establish dominion over the minority by using the coercive power of the government to enforce adherence to one religion’s other-wordly vision and limit the ability of minority groups, religious or otherwise, to try to convince enough others so that they may become a majority.

The majority does rule to an extent, but that extent is limited. The Bill of Rights is there to help ensure in various ways that the majority may not use the coercive power of government to prevent a minority from peacefully trying to become a majority. It guarantees freedom of speech and assembly and imposes a separation between the government and the press as well as the government and religion as two institutions which if allowed to be colluded would make democracy nothing more than the tyranny of the majority.

What seems to be missing from some of the majority/minority talk of the religious on the issue of secularism is the ability to imagine being in the minority. Catholics and Protestants and lots of particular denominations have been in the minority position in the past and suffered politically for it, and they could find themselves in that position again. In fact, if the theocrats win their current war against non-Christians, the focus of the Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell-types will switch from domination of non-Christians by Christians to domination of Protestants over Catholics. Count on it. Once that is achieved it will start to seem necessary for one brand of Protestantism to dominate all others. Therefore, it is in everyone’s interest, theists and atheists alike, to defend the secularization of government in the face of religious pluralism. The wall of separation serves to protect Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Evangelicals, Muslims, Jews, and atheists from being dominated and coerced into following whatever the dominant religion of the day happens to be.

Best,
Leela

 

[buffalo]

It isn’t a question whether pluralism is desirable. Of course it would be easier to run a government if we all agreed on the same premises. The fact is that we are a pluralistic society and have always been so. The Founding Fathers sought a way for a pluralistic society to function without any one group being allowed to establish dominion over the others.

The modern theocrats are attempting to use democratic means to achieve anti-democratic ends. They claim that in a democracy, the majority rules, and the Christians have always been the majority; however, The Bill of Rights is there to ensure that democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Maintaining majority status can only be done through the peaceful non-coercive means of remaining the most convincing position within the democratic exchange of ideas. Separating government and religion was one way in which the Founding Fathers tried to ensure that any religious majority may not establish dominion over the minority by using the coercive power of the government to enforce adherence to one religion’s other-wordly vision and limit the ability of minority groups, religious or otherwise, to try to convince enough others so that they may become a majority.

The majority does rule to an extent, but that extent is limited. The Bill of Rights is there to help ensure in various ways that the majority may not use the coercive power of government to prevent a minority from peacefully trying to become a majority. It guarantees freedom of speech and assembly and imposes a separation between the government and the press as well as the government and religion as two institutions which if allowed to be colluded would make democracy nothing more than the tyranny of the majority.

What seems to be missing from some of the majority/minority talk of the religious on the issue of secularism is the ability to imagine being in the minority. Catholics and Protestants and lots of particular denominations have been in the minority position in the past and suffered politically for it, and they could find themselves in that position again. In fact, if the theocrats win their current war against non-Christians, the focus of the Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell-types will switch from domination of non-Christians by Christians to domination of Protestants over Catholics. Count on it. Once that is achieved it will start to seem necessary for one brand of Protestantism to dominate all others. Therefore, it is in everyone’s interest, theists and atheists alike, to defend the secularization of government in the face of religious pluralism. The wall of separation serves to protect Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Evangelicals, Muslims, Jews, and atheists from being dominated and coerced into following whatever the dominant religion of the day happens to be.

Best,
Leela

What religion is that which simply believes there is a higher power and absolute truth?

The Wall of Separation is a fallacy. The wall is a one way wall - government cannot force a religion, however, religion should be in the public square.

 

[kildare]

A christian dominated republic is still not a Theocracy. In a theocracies, the civil rulers would be synonymous with the eclesiastical rulers. In fact England is technically more a theocracy than the United Sates, because there the head of State appoints the head of the “state” religion. A republic can be christian or materialistic, but I’m not sure it can be both, which seems to be what our society is trying to do at the moment.

Anyway basically it seems that you dont want religious influence in the state, but like Lenin, to avoid it you will have to turn against democracy, less the mob, in their misguided relgious zeal, undo all the progressive work done by liberals over the last 40 years. Interestingly this same tactic is occurring in Europe by stealth. So its also true that the liberal elites are only democratic when it suits them.

The real problem though is that you are a partisan of one philospohy while most of teh members of CAF are partisans of another. Both are incompatible, and both are not likely to be democratic. The problem with republicanism and democracy is that it will only work in a htereogenous society. Otherwise the republic will fragement. Unfortunately there is no middle ground here, and you have to chose. If you can understand that then you can understand why the christian side has to fight back. If they dont it will soon be too late.

 

[Betterave]

Right, and when Bush said that God wants him to be president and later that God wanted him to invade Iraq, he was claiming such authority. The scary thing is that so many people seem to want that.

No, he wasn’t, for the perfectly obvious reason that Kildare pointed out (in his first two paragraphs). Democratically elected leaders who act in accordance with their consciences are clearly not thereby promoting theocracy - your claim is nonsense. And you still haven’t said what you think democracy is - can you tell us that??