Miscellanea Agnostica

At long last, there is at least one national voice that’s as fed up as I am over the way the presidential candidates are bowing and scraping at the altar of American Hyperreligiosity. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker offers this, in the wake of Pastor Rick Warren’s attempt to abscond with the 2008 election in the name of rabid Christian evangelicals:

At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister — no matter how beloved — is supremely wrong.

It is also un-American. …

For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won. …

The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state.

The loser was America.

Parker includes some kindly comments about Warren and understates his obvious theocratic bent, as if she doesn’t want to be too harsh on him … I’d have preferred she call him what he is: A transparent opportunist trying to leverage this election so as to give evangelicals even more political power than they already have, regardless of who wins. Nevertheless, she wraps up with an excellent point:

For the moment, let’s set aside our curiosity about what Jesus might do in a given circumstance and wonder what our Founding Fathers would have done at Saddleback Church. What would have happened to Thomas Jefferson if he had responded as he wrote in 1781:

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Would the crowd at Saddleback have applauded and nodded through that one? Doubtful.

By today’s new standard of pulpits in the public square, Jefferson — the great advocate for religious freedom in America — would have lost.

It’s ironic, of course, that the Religious Right™ generally claims to be obedient to the Founding Fathers and their “intent” — even though the Founding Fathers were not evangelicals like themselves … mostly because modern Protestant evangelical Christianity didn’t exist in the late 18th century, and also because most of the Founding Fathers were actually freethinkers, not religionists.

The childishness of Christians is palpable in the town of Southport, Indiana. It seems that a standing tradition of prayer at the start of City Council sessions is at stake, due to a new mayor taking office there:

A debate over prayer in government meetings will take center stage in this small Far-Southside city tonight as a new mayor and a skeptical City Council try to find common ground.

Four weeks ago, all five Southport City Council members walked out of their monthly meeting in protest of first-year Mayor Rob Thoman’s continuing refusal to present a prayer as has been done for nearly two decades at the start of the public sessions.

The crybaby Christians on the City Council managed to coerce a compromise “moment of silence” out of the new mayor.

Folks, what is it about Christianity that makes Christians want to break the law for Jesus? We have something in the United States known as “separation of church and state.” Yes, I’ve heard the whine that those precise words are not in the Constitution, so it must not exist; but the United States Supreme Court — you know, those folks who do have the authority to say such things — have declared otherwise over the years. Besides, even James Madison — you know, the author of the First Amendment, upon which this principle is based — himself objected to the seating of Congressional chaplains and the practice of opening Congress with prayers!

You didn’t know that, did you? Well, read all about it from his own pen (spellings per the original):

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?

In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority.

So Christians, you can whine and cry about it until you’re blue in the face. You can stamp your little feet and fume and bluster. You can even claim “persecution” at the hands of those evil secular humanists who dare to defy your religionism. But you simply must stop lying for Jesus and pretending that prayers in government settings are acceptable, because they are not. Grow up and stop foisting your religion on everyone else just because you think you’re entitled to — because you’re not.