Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Musings: Christian bigotry should be a contradiction in terms

You may have received a forwarded email defending the use of God's name in public oaths and celebrations -- a practice I find solidly based in national faith and tradition. (I quote the key passage from one such email below.) However, another national tradition besides religious freedom is religious tolerance: Freedom means believing and worshipping God in any you choose -- not in whatever way the majority dictates. Indeed, this is why Protestants founded this nation in the first place.
Freedom. One problem with being in the majority is that, for control-oriented people (esp. those who would build a theocracy), having a majority is never enough: Having even one infidel in the crowd might cause someone among the "faithful" to pause, ponder, think, question, and possibly even use his God-given free will to alter his religious belief and practice to differ from that promulgated by the majority (and esp. the majority's powers-that-be). Well, our freedom is built on pluralism -- e pluribus unum -- not conformity.
Truth. While hotly pursuing its agenda, the majority also usually gets its facts wrong: I think it is more like 95% of all people believe in God. (You would think that ideologues would marshal all the facts that would help their case, but the truth is, they are intellectually lazy as well as dishonest.)
Goodness. Last but not least, a majority fighting for universal conformity tends to apply its moral standards to everyone else but not itself. It also acts rudely when pushing its platform. I ask you, WWJD: What would Jesus do? Tell everyone who did not believe in him to "sit down and SHUT UP!"? To quote St. Paul: "May it not be!" (Romans 6:2a).
Summary. These three problems with the "moral majority" can be summarized in five words: They need enemies to fight. Instead, I suggest, the public moralists should apply chastisement to their adherents only, and stop demonizing others in the effort to whip up bigotry and hate -- for it is always about hate, which always leads to persecution.

Quotation: I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn't. Now it is your turn. It is said that 85% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having "In God We Trust" on our money and having "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to sit down and SHUT UP!

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