The "Christian Nation" Issue

One of the primary messages of the Republican Party (a party I might be able to associate with if not for their stance on this particular issue) is that the United States is, or ought to be, a Christian Nation.

I hear regularly, both from friends and from political figures, that this is a nation with an inherent Christian virtue, with Christian founders and a Christian ethos in its founding documents. Apart from my understanding of American history (which was offered up to me at a Catholic high school, and not the evil, secular public school system), which does not indicate that the founders of our nation were any more religious than the other world leaders of their time, and some were militant in their secular-ness. That's not a relevant point.

I'll check my religious bias at the door on this one, as best I can. Clearly, I like the idea of living in a secular nation better than a religious one, on a personal basis. This bias is undeniable, but hopefully my logic will codify my position enough that the rational basis for my points is obvious.

Exhibit A: The Establishment Clause.

Perhaps cliched, but, as a part of the Constitution inserted deliberately, it's worth mentioning.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Now, it may not be clear how this undermines the notion of a Christian Nation. Apart from the fact that, as Justice Souter put it, "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion," it undermines one of the fundamental principles of Christian ethics: the understanding that Christianity is absolutely right, for all people in all times.

This, with respect to Judeo-Christian teaching, is incredibly important, and the basis for the First Commandment, also known as the "You shall have no other gods" clause.

The Establishment Clause also permits, clearly, idolatry. After all, a religion which worships idols cannot be opposed by legislation in the United States. Not only is there no grounds for enforcing one of the most important of the Ten Commandments (which the Christians should recognize comes well before murder or adultery).

As if Fred Phelps needed better fodder, I bring to the stand my second piece of evidence.

Exhibit B: Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is not absolutely protected in the United States, it turns out. There are, to be sure, some things that we are not allowed to say. We can't yell fire in a crowded theater. We can't use hate speech.

However, we can blaspheme, and this is one of the pieces of the First Amendment that has not ever been challenged. Establishing that the United States Constitution allows for violation of the first three commandments seems a clear enough demonstration that we are a nation that, in its very foundation, defies the basis of Christian teaching.

The values of the United States Constitution are not at all Christian. I have heard it argued that "Do Not Murder" is a Christian value, but (apart from contradicting two thousand years of Christian history) that is not a value directly built into the United States. It is not written, in the founding document of our nation "do not murder." That law exists within a social contract built by our legislature.

The purpose of the Constitution defies Christianity, not just in the letter of the law, on which the two will never agree, but also in principle, and this is the final piece of evidence.

Exhibit C: Democracy

The United States was founded with the intent of creating a social contract that could be dictated by the people. The Constitution lays the groundwork for a society governed by those who live within it.

Christianity demands a society governed, not by the people, but by the unquestionable word of the Christian diety.

The acknowledgment of the will of the people, the presence of popular sovereignty is a defiance of Christianity. Christian society demands theocracy. A Muslim society demands adherence to the will of Allah. A Jewish society demands adherence to the law as passed down by Moses and taught in the Talmud. These are the bedrock of those societies.

Democracy is not a matter of faith in the will of the god who operates the subtle mechanisms of the universe based on his own celestial will. It is not a matter of placing the future of a civilization in invisible, omnipresent hands.

The foundation of democracy is faith in the people who control its law, the recognition that the future of any nation will be guided by those who live within it.

This is the principle difference on which those first two pieces of evidence hinge.

Instead of instilling the Christian ethic, which demands respect for the teachings of a long dead Nazarene preacher and an ancient desert god, the Constitution offers us the freedom to choose whether we accept that morality. That freedom, to choose what we believe and what faith we practice and what we say, is patently un-Christian.

An Outright Lie about the Abortion Rights Movement

I apologize ahead of time for being such a political fist pumper the last few weeks. I was trying to stay away from it on this blog, but this pissed me off enough that I saw fit to write something about it.

In a debate posted on PBS.org, Troy Newman presented one of the most annoying lies I've ever seen, a card ignorant of the facts that should be seen as absolutely reprehensible.

Newman says (or writes, it's hard to tell, given the debate format):

Attempts to smear Operation Rescue with false accusations of culpability in the brutal murder of Tiller fall flat. Accusations that our rhetoric caused the slaying are untrue and only serve to inflame emotions. The pro-life movement is the most peaceful social movement in our nation's history. We preach and teach a message of life while refusing to skirt the truth of the painful fact that an abortion is, in and of itself, an act of violence that kills an innocent child. The truth is that Roeder has reportedly been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Early police statements were that he appeared to have acted alone. A lone student shot up Virginia Tech, but not all students are murderers. Postal workers have been known to kill fellow employees, but not all mailmen are terrorists. Muslims killed 3,000 Americans in the 9/11 attacks, but not all Muslims act out Jihad. However, all abortionists murder children.

I think the comparison between Islam and the "pro-life" movement is a little much. However, the comparison between the pro-life movement and a radical sect of Islam (like, say Wahhabi) seems incredibly appropriate. That, though, is a problem for another day.

The point is that what Newman has said is an outright lie.

I won't argue that the African-American Civil Rights movement was completely peaceful. The approaches of the Nation of Islam were a blemish, as were the aggressive positions of many leaders in the movement who dissented from the peace-based position of Dr. King and A.J. Heschel (who I mention, because he was a great leader and an interesting voice alongside Dr. King's).

Still, if one looks at the protests opposed to gay marriage, or in support of it, there's far less violence on that issue.

You know why?

Because the term "murder" doesn't get thrown around.

If Troy Newman feels the term is appropriate, he's entitled to his rhetoric, but he's an idiot if he thinks it doesn't have consequences. Any pro-life activist who uses the term murder is entitled, by the First Amendment, to say whatever they like. However, since murder is a crime punished in the Bible by retributive execution (death) and that practice of killing murderers is still common in parts of western society (and not dead in the United States), people here the term "murderer" thrown at an abortion doctor and (you know what they think?) he's a murderer.

This mindset quickly becomes:

What do we do to murderers?

Kill 'em.

And there goes the pro-life term.

Just to solidly debunk Newman's claim that the pro-life movement is peaceful, here are just two events worth remembering from within three months of each other in 1993.

Murder of Dr. David Gunn. In March of 1993, Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed by Michael F. Griffin. Posters of Griffin with a wanted style appearance (if you get the connection to the above) had been distributed by Operation Rescue.

The first shooting of Dr. George Tiller (RIP). In July of 1993 Dr. Tiller was shot outside of the abortion facility where he worked in Wichita, Kansas. The shooting occurred at the same time as a demonstration by Operation Rescue outside of the clinic.

Of course, I mention these because Newman's organization has been tied to both incidents, as well as the fatal shooting of Dr. Tiller on May 31st of this year.

The Washington Post piece links above makes the hard connections to Operation Rescue (so that I don't have to). That said, it's despicable that Newman would make that claim, as its so patently false. I hope he understands what an idiot he sounds like.

Progressing Islam

My father is reading an interesting book by a progressive Muslim author on Islam in the modern world. While the book has a tendency to glorify Islam and, from the excerpts I've read, seems incredibly dismissive of some of the inherent issues within the Muslim world and a little to ready to blame the problems that Islam has on the media, which does not create problems (though it does often make them worse, or appear worse).

Religions are often hijacked by political movements looking for a way to get unquestioning masses which are already engaged in a church to accept their political ideology and develop a certain degree of xenophobia to demonize their opposition. We've seen this with the Christian Right in America, which has used the fear of an ever more secular world to demonize a "Secular Left."

This backfired, of course, but it hasn't backfired in the Muslim world. In point of fact, it seems that Muslim leaders have had an easier time hijacking political movements than political leaders have hijacking Islam. The example of the Taliban is perpetual.

The Taliban is a movement unmistakably political in nature, and its use of strict interpretations of fundamentalist Islam, to the point where no freedom to dissent is possible (one of the most powerful and dangerous statements which can be made by a political movement) seems to indicate that it is a political movement which has used Islam as a means of developing a certain degree of popular support and creating dissent for the "Secularized" or "Judeo-Christian" West (sometimes it's the Jews and Christians attempting to oppress the Muslim world, sometimes it's the secularists, it waffles). It is hard, when looking at their roots as the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, to dispute this point.

Of course, there are other examples of fundamentalism in the Muslim world where it has been the religious clerics, not the political activists, who have brought Islam into the political arena, and into the world at large, as a means of enforcing strict interpretations of the law. We saw this with the Ayatollah, who went from being a powerful religious figure to enforcing his will over the political arena internationally, and we've seen similar acts of enforcement by religious clerics choosing to force European legislators to engage not simply in Muslim apologetics, but in the oppression of free speech.

What is interesting about the book that my father is reading is that it points out a few very interesting things the western world has come to accept about Islam that are certainly, objectively untrue.

The author makes valid points about women in education and leadership roles (and it is worth noting that women have taken leadership roles throughout the Muslim world, while it has been far more difficult for them to establish power in the US). Those, though, I think are worth overlooking for a moment.

The American media is under the impression that Muslim fundamentalism is somehow radically different from Christian fundamentalism (and Jewish fundamentalism, though the Jewish political position stays out of the spotlight, because they are more of a lobby than a voting block). This is disputable. While it's true that Muslim fundamentalists engage in acts that we find terrible, that we term terrorism, so do many Christian fundamentalists.

The KKK is an explicitly Christian organization, which engages in acts of terrorism and is seen by the United States as a terrorist organization engaged in the same form of hate speech that Muslim fundamentalists engage in. While they don't kill the same number of people (though they did about forty or fifty years ago), they still engage in the same acts of intimidation, high levels of illegality and political activism (i.e. David Duke).

That analogy from the opening, post-9/11 episode of the West Wing still rings true today:

[Muslim] Extremest is to [Islam] as the Klu Klux Klan is to Christianity.

Of course, the Klan is only a singular example of Christian fundamentalism. It is important that we recognize that Christian fundamentalism extends far further. If the Phelps family had political power and social relevance, they would be in a similar position to the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, without a doubt. The different, of course, is that in the west, these groups are not empowered. Those who are transparently and unashamedly racist have been pushed to the fringes of western society.

Muslim countries are working to push these political movements to the fringe of their world, but it is not easy. It was not easy for us, in the west, and anyone who thinks that the Muslim world is having a harder time than we did is lying to themselves. Let us not forget that we had openly racist leadership in this country for generations, that even a man considered one of the most progressive and praiseworthy leaders in this nations history, Abraham Lincoln, was not without staunch political opposition, and that his successor was a man who allowed for the moral failure of this country to lead to hundreds more years of racial inequity.

Of course, the Muslim world is not about racial oppression, it is about religious and social oppression, which is a far more dangerous dynamic. In the United States, we had a first amendment which ensured the freedom to politically dissent from opposition. The fact that America was a nation that came into being out of political dissent and discourse allowed it to ensure that the minority opinion, however conservative or progressive, would be heard.

There is no first amendment right assuring free speech in the Muslim world. It is not a right supported by Islam, and those who claim the right of Islam claim to right to protection from any sort of dissent, because dissenting from them is dissenting from Islam, and to dissent from Islam is death.

The west is under the impression that our right to dissent offers us some degree of moral superiority and, perhaps, there is a cultural superiority when political opposition can be open and stand in the street with signs and shout at the top of their lungs without fear. However, that feeling is not productive, that statement that "we are living right and you need to shape up and be like us" gets us nowhere in conversations with the Muslim world.

Understanding Islam is difficult, and America doesn't have a grasp on the religion that acts as a language for political discourse in the Middle East, just as it doesn't understand the history of tribal warfare that defines the African continent. It would be unfair to advocate that we should remain silent in issues which deeply affect our country, but it is not so outlandish to suggest that in a time of political strife within these nations we should ensure that we, at the very least, attempt to understand that these countries are moving forward in a way that we did, and that while America did not get to where it is without the help of powerful leaders, that vast majority of that leadership came from within a nation that wanted to change.

It seems that countries in the Muslim world want to change. They see the way that we live, and the way that the world is changing around them and understand this much, and often their governments ask for our help, as Pakistan has asked for help in their ongoing war with the Taliban. However, it is not our place to believe that we are capable of mediating conflict in the Muslim world, or that we are capable of enforcing peace, or that we even have a duty to.

In listening to President Obama speak to the Muslim world, one thing has become clear, there is a single gift that the western world can offer the Muslim world, a gift which, unlike the AK-47, unlike the anti-tank weapons, cannot be turned on other governments by the rogue leadership of political movements (like the Mujahadeen) which we once supported. That is the gem of free political discourse.

The Muslim world has voices of moderation and progression, though, like the voices in the early years of the United States, those voices are silenced by gunfire, it seems the Muslim world is progressing towards a more fulfilled understanding of the value of dissent from a political position, and hopefully this will allow for a dissent from religious values, and lead to the progression of a society which understands the virtue of personal freedom.

Freedom, though, cannot be enforced by military might. There cannot be a free people when they need a tank and a dozen American military personal to police their streets. A free society must stand on its own. These are lessons from our own history that we have forgotten to apply to the Muslim world, because we think it is radically different from our own.

Make no mistake: The Muslim world is radically different from the one that we live in, but it is not different from the world that, not so long ago, our great-grandparents tried to change, and then our grandparents, and then our parents, and now us. Theirs is a world moving forward, just as ours is, and to refer to them as a backwards civilization run by religious fanaticism is dismissive and overlooks that, not so long ago, we, too, were just the same.

NOTE: I have been told before that I am anti-Islam. This is true. I believe that there are primitive aspects to Islam, and to Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism, and Hinduism, and so on), that are not conducive to life in modern, civilized society. That aside, the answer is not to enforce secularism in the Muslim world, or anywhere, the answer is to allow for political dissent, and to let debate over the merits and beneficial nature of religion ensue, so that the people, on an individual basis, can decide whether it is something that their society wants to embrace. This is a principle of Freedom, and expressed clearly in the first amendment.

The Gay Marriage Debate and Biblical Support

The more I listen to the gay marriage debate and the Biblical citations it entails, the more I realize that it takes a secular individual to act as a substantial intermediary, because they are capable of looking at what the Bible says without attempting to justify it.

There are a few groups that take the Old Testament and New Testament statements about the evils of homosexuality very seriously. The one that jumps immediately to mind is the Westboro Baptist Church. Of course, the WBC is all about the old time punishment of homosexuality: Death.

Most Evangelicals used to accept this position as valid, but now only a few extremists in the Evangelical movement accept the proposition. I say this because if we look at the number of people who think its ok to legislate against gay marriage, and then look at the number of people who think its ok to legislate against homosexuality, there's a discrepancy. My point is that there shouldn't be.

The first point of Evangelical hypocrisy and (it must be said) stupidity is that it maintains that the Bible proposes a concept of One Man and One Woman (some, like Rick Warren, would tag "for life" on the end of that, but since the divorce rate in this country is so high, I'll leave that alone for now).

The Bible does not state that the institution of marriage is between one man and one woman. Of course, the Christian Right makes the points about Adam and Eve (Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, and so on), but the truth of the matter is, the Bible happily endorses polygamy.

Jacob (Israel), one of the great Patriarchs in the Old Testament, had two wives, as well as children by two additional concubines.

According to the 1 Kings 11:3, King Solomon had 700 wives. While Solomon's wives are depicted as evil women, the act of polygamy is hardly decried.

The Bible never addresses these as sinful and both are considered blessed figures, especially Jacob. This account of traditional marriage is a failure in and of itself, but is not the largest failure of the argument.

The point that needs to be made is simple: the Bible does not condemn marriage between homosexuals, it condemns homosexuality.

It is true that the Bible openly condemns homosexuality. Moderate Christians can attempt to apologize for this point, attempt to minimize its impact on society, but it's a fact. The Bible says that homosexuality is wrong. It also condemns a lot of other things (like, for instance, divorce), but let's not get caught up in those.

One who accepts the Bible as the literal revelation of the word of a god who created the universe must acknowledge that the Bible condemns homosexuality, and do similarly. This is standard progessional logic.

The Bible is true. (P1)
The Bible is law. (P2, drawn from P1)
The Bible condemns homosexuality as "an abomination." (P3)
Homosexuality is an abomination. (C)

Of course, I reject premise one and, as a result, premise two. That said, it is important to make note that there are those who accept these points, but reject the conclusion on the grounds that it is not desirable.

You can't have it both ways and claim a logical position. This debate on gay marriage is an issue of the failings of those who read the Bible to differentiate between "opposing gay marriage" and "opposing gays."

As someone who hears from many anti-gay rights activists that they don't hate homosexuals, I have to ask "why?"

The Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination. Why don't you agree with that statement? Where's your Biblical support?

And the answer is, there is none, but they don't want to be portrayed as literal, closed minded, hateful, religious fundamentalists, even when the Bible says they should.