Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Why Religion Must Not Be Quashed in America
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
One simple sentence, yet it has caused so much trouble. And I suppose I am about to cause more for myself with what I am about to write. In ancient times, the name of G-d could be neither spoken nor written for fear of offending the Almighty. Now the dread sight of a baby Jesus in a manger must be suppressed lest it arouse nervous palpitations in our fellow humans.
It's been years since I went to church. The last time, I'm ashamed to say, was my son's wedding almost five years ago. The ceremony wasn't even held in church, but in a garden under an arbor. I don't attend church for a variety of reasons; one being that I tend to get emotional. It touches something deep inside me and I find this profoundly annoying. Another is my longstanding problem with authority, which is perhaps doubly ironic in an Episcopalian (is there any authority left in the Anglican Church? Discuss amongst yourselves.) It's those durned Ten Commandments you see: they're so directive in nature. Downright heteronormative, in fact. No discussion, no debate allowed. Church is a profoundly undemocratic institution: an artifact of the fascist patriarchal hegemony intent on oppressing and marginalizing womyn and those it insists on demonizing and treating as "Other". That's what really gets my Irish up. I pay my taxes, after all, and I really don't see why I shouldn't have some input into these so-called 'rules for better living'. God can't tell ME what to do.
But despite my objections to church, I'm not quite ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm not quite prepared to drive God from public life. Even as I stand with fists clenched in defiance against an uncaring Cosmos, I understand that churches are uniquely human institutions and, like people, they have their share of virtues and failings. But God is an entirely different matter; for the concept of the Eternal - however we choose to conceive it - is inextricably intertwined with an idea I find indispensible to our continued liberty: that of natural rights.
In yesterday's RealClearPolitics, Carlos Alberto Montaner's excellent essay on natural rights sent my overworked brains into overload:
To Zeno, a Jew and founder of stoicism in the fourth century, is attributed the first formulation of the theory of natural rights. Zeno and his followers posited something novel and revolutionary: Human beings, because of their unique nature, possess some rights that came not from ethnic grouping or city structure but from the gods.
Those rights predated the existence of the tribe and the state so they couldn't be suppressed by tribal leaders or the city's political authorities, because the rights hadn't been granted by them.
This concept, suitably cleaned up for our sensitive modern ears, appears in our Declaration of Independence as "certain inalienable rights": i.e., rights which cannot be taken away by government, because they did not arise from government. They are not the result of a "social contract". Despite the belief of some that "There is a Free Market that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will", they are not for sale...yet. But we may yet succeed in giving them away:
In the late 17th century, English philosopher John Locke, along with others, reprised the argument of natural rights and laid the foundations for liberal democracy: Neither the king nor parliament can legislate against liberty and the right to life and property. Locke inspired England's Bill of Rights and established the principles that 100 years later would lead to the founding of the United States and the drafting by the French of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
It's just that simple. If there are no natural rights, it may be acceptable to enslave prisoners, discriminate against women and execrate foreigners or homosexuals. All that's required is a decision by a legitimate source of power, such as a majority in numbers, for instance, or a group of notable and petulant wise men.
Another example: Marxism, which denied the existence of natural rights, felt authorized, in the name of the working class, to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, to deprive millions of people of their property and to execute and imprison millions of others because they were ``class enemies.''
Nazism, which also did not believe in natural rights, exterminated six million Jews and one million Gypsies and other minorities because there was no moral or philosophical impediment to curb it.
Of course there is a tiny flaw in Montaner's argument, but it is not an insurmountable one:
If there are no natural rights, it may be acceptable to enslave prisoners, discriminate against women and execrate foreigners or homosexuals. All that's required is a decision by a legitimate source of power, such as a majority in numbers, for instance, or a group of notable and petulant wise men.
We all know (because we are scourged with this information on a daily basis) that the United States of America has a shameful past with respect to womyn, minorities, pets, and the transgendered/LGB community, not necessarily in that order. And some of this is even true. No human institution, be it church, state, school, or even secular NGO, is immune to venality and vice, nor to betrayal of our higher principles. And America has always been a work in progress, evolving towards a vision of increasing freedom and opportunity. But our lapses, though painful, have not been deliberate policy decisions nor tools of statecraft.
We have not, as Nazi Germany did, undertaken to wipe an entire people off the face of the planet.
We have not, as Russia did under Stalin, murdered and starved 20 million of our own citizens.
We have not, as Pol Pot did in Cambodia, erected grisly piles of human skulls as testimony to our own lust for power. 2 million Americans do not lie dead as a result of the rise of democracy.
We have not, as Communist China did, run over our own students with tanks in Tianamen Square, nor killed 65 million of our own people.
It ought to give those who thirst for a God-free society more than momentary pause to consider that all four of these societies began with a ruthless push to drive the church, along with all mention of God, from public life. If they cracked a history book, they might deign to notice that much of the opposition and reform movements in these nations sprang, again, from the church. We are often told religion is the source of all repression, evil, and intolerance on planet earth but this is both an exaggeration and a gross untruth. It was Quakers, Baptists, and Methodists who founded the Abolition Movement which eventually freed the slaves in 1865.
The Spanish Inquisition is often paraded before us as an example of Christian intolerance. Interestingly enough, it turns out that meticulous records survive to this day, contradicting the horrific legends:
Thankfully, the Spanish Inquisition kept very good records and these are now being sifted through by historians. They paint a very different picture of sentencing patterns to traditional historians. Geoffrey Parker analyzed 49,000 trial records between 1540 and 1700, representing one third of the total, and found 776 executions took place. This suggests a total of about 2,000 in the period reviewed. Earlier records are less well preserved but do not support the picture of a bloodbath usually painted. Henry Kamen (p. 60) does not believe more than a thousand executions took place in the earlier period. However, he points out that the Inquisitors' activities were heavily slanted towards Jewish and Moslem communities who would have suffered far more than most from their activities. Recent work, sponsored by the Catholic Church, also points to a significantly lower death toll. Professor Agostino Borromeo, a historian of Catholicism at the Sapienza University in Rome, writes that about 125,000 people were tried by church tribunals as suspected heretics in Spain. Of these, about 1,200 - 2,000 were actually executed, although more killings were performed by non-church tribunals.
Where is the sense of proportionality? Where the reasoned comparisons to the records of "Godless" states like Russia, China, and Cambodia? Yet organizations like the ACLU continue to suggest that it is the mere mention of baby Jesus (or the even-more-amorphous notion of a Creator) which kills, not the violation of our natural rights by a state which has usurped that which it had no power to take from us.
Back in March, I replied to a comment by Dean Esmay in which he said, "liberal democracy within a constitutional republic is the most reliable protection for human rights that mankind has created to date":
Yes, but your "liberal democracy" rests upon Natural Rights which possess their "inalienable" character for no other reason than that they were, in fact, held to be God-given, and thus, not to be abridged by mortal men. Consider:WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men...
Thus was our present government founded upon Lockeian principles (and the Declaration is almost pure Locke). Flowing throughout the Declaration is the recognition that rights and the enforcement of rights are necessarily two different things as long as free will exists; thus men voluntarily surrender some freedoms and enter into social contracts to guarantee the preservation of the greater of their natural rights.
What seemed so natural and inherently "right" to Enlightenment-era men (even religious skeptics) is not so to our modern ears; that the 'inalienable' character of our natural rights necessarily depends precisely on their coming from some higher source than the consent of other men. What makes our present system of government different is that the theory of natural rights has these rights vested in the individual: not a Divine Right of Kings, but a Divine Right of Individuals. What he (and others) miss is that the modern attacks on religion have, at their foundation, not the ultimate goal of eliminating religion itself, but the goal of eliminating the authoritative source upon which our legal system is based.
Once that is gone, all is debatable. Nothing is fixed, immutable, "inalienable". WE HAVE NO INALIENABLE, NO "NATURAL RIGHTS".
And for anyone who truly believes, for one instant, that we can safely trust in the charity of our fellow men for protection and the guarantee of our American civil liberties, let me commend to him the examples of the ICJ, the United Nations, the new European Union Constitution.
Now before the Atheists attack me en masse, let me say in my own defense that my concept of the Eternal and Inalienable is entirely New Age, Sensitive, and Infinitely Flexible. In other words, being an enlightened Anglican, I have always entertained doubts about the nature of the Almighty. Do I think, necessarily, that you have to believe in Jesus Christ to believe in natural rights? No. I do not care one whit whether you believe in Him, whether you recognize Him, or if you do, how you choose to envision Him/Her/It. Anthropomorphasize or not, as you will. Without doubt, my favorite Bible verse has always been this one, from the Apostle Paul:
"For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know
even as also I am known."
Perhaps because I am female and a mother, I have always seen religion as a struggle to understand ourselves and the nature of the universe we live in. The existence of other religions and the fact that other people believe, or don't believe, doesn't bother me because I think we're all on the same road. The nature of God: whether it is internal, external, knowable, unknowable, or some combination, is to me ultimately irrelevant. And I don't much care whose version is right, at least for now. We will all find out, eventually. I am terribly interested in the questions. I think values matter enormously: in the end, they may be the most important things on earth.
People complain that Scriptures (all holy texts, for that matter) are unclear. I always thought that perhaps that was by design: that we were given an intellect for a reason and that, hand in hand, we were meant to struggle toward the light. Hopefully there isn't a Mack truck behind it.
It bothers me deeply when I see organizations like the ACLU trying to quash religion in public life. It is not questions and expressions of faith we should seek to silence. Those are the better angels of our nature. They lead us towards something unknowable - something larger and better than ourselves, even if we don't all agree on what it is, and even if we aren't sure what it is. The answer isn't to silence the debate: that debate launched our forebears on the arduous voyage across the Atlantic ocean to our fair shores. That debate is still getting people killed and tortured in nations with rigorous "separation of church and state" like Vietnam. Hooray for freedom from the onerous shackles of religion. Meet the new boss - worse than the old boss: much worse.
The Establishment Clause is written in simple, plain English. Read what it says, slowly:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
It says only that the State cannot favor one church over another, nor prevent Americans from worshipping their Creator. How did we allow a pack of Sartre-readers to discern the essential pointlessness of existence in a Nation under God? It's time to take away their Derrida primers and their oh-so-flaky profiteroles and hand them a history book. One wonders when the mass graves of the countless millions slaughtered before the ACLU saved us from the pernicious effects of Christmas trees in public squares and decalogues in courthouses will finally be shown on national television? I guarantee you, Stalin will look like Santa Claus when CNN finally covers this story. It's time for our long national nightmare to end.
Hint for the clueless: go after the actual civil rights violations, not the harmless expressions of faith. I don't think baby Jesus in the manger has slaughtered anyone lately, though he hath a lean and hungry look about him and Peaceblossom over there says she feels oppressed just looking at him, smirking at her from his swaddling clothes. Don't complain that you feel "the State" is foisting their religion on you because a plastic infant squinted at you sideways from a pile of straw. That isn't a crime. If you desperately need it to be a crime, persuade your local legislator and enough of your fellow citizens and try to get a law passed and the Constitution amended. It's called democracy. Until then, leave your neighbors alone and stop being so prickly. This nation is large enough to encompass all of us.
And stop oppressing me with your UnBelief.
12 Comments:
By 
Papa Ray, at
Wed Dec 07, 01:59:00 PM:
I also have my reasons for not going to church. I won't go into them here.
But, I can tell you that ol' saying "There are no atheists on the battlefield", proved true to me long ago and far away.
I don't think much about religion as such, except when I can't get into my usual parking place to go into the cafe to drink coffee with the rest of the ol' guys, because the lot is full of cars from the church across the street.
Then you don't really want to know what I think.
But as far as this nation being large enough for all of us (religion wise) I agree with the following reservations.
That these "religions" harm no one, including their own.
That they not interfer with anyones freedom or liberty or try and fost their beliefs on someone who doesn't want them.
Other than that, they can do what they want, how they want to.
Oh..and stay out of my favorite parking spot.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
By ScurvyOaks, at
Wed Dec 07, 03:15:00 PM:
Cassandra,
From a fellow Anglican who also gets emotional in church, this modest suggestion: some time soon (maybe this month), sneak off to a church where you don't know anyone, and let yourself get totally emotional. Then go home, and ponder it all. In my experience, His yoke is easy, and His burden light.
By Cassandra, at
Wed Dec 07, 03:36:00 PM:
Thank you, scurvyoaks :)
Papa Ray, I suppose I just get aggravated with anyone who wants to foist their beliefs (or unbeliefs) on others. It seems to me there are just as many zealots in the one camp as there are in the other. I think we need to be more concerned with the actions of others. What anyone else thinks, as long as it stays inside their head, is really of little concern to me. And I'm not terribly threatened by symbology either. That little crescent or cross or star of david isn't going to unduly harsh my mellow.
Now if you lock me up because I won't bend the knee or force me to recite the Koran I'll get downright testy, but until that happens, everyone just needs to take a large chill pill and regain their sense of perspective. The ludicrous notion that adding six elves, a winterfest tree and a properly secular reindeer to that manger scene, or juxtaposing a cross and wicaan regalia next to the Hanukah display somehow serves to dispel the foul stench of God-ness from these harmless celebrations of faith is just too idiotic for words.
I can let someone else celebrate their faith without it threatening me. I don't mind if they go around screaming "there is no God" either. Who knows? The joke could be on me?
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Dec 07, 04:20:00 PM:
I think what you are all speaking about -- and which makes this country the best on the planet available to us -- is the uniquely American concept of tolerance.
Many (most?) who chose to come here escaped something, a place where they were not accepted for what they were. As a consequence, America adopted an unprecedented religious tolerance. I find it ironic how completely intolerant current day secularists are. As a child in school, I vaguely remember this notion of tolerance as a core value. Yet today it seems to have been dismissed, in favor of a secularism completely at odds aith American history and, I suspect, the majority of its people (esp its non urban people).
Here's raising a glass to tolerance...
By Final Historian, at
Wed Dec 07, 04:31:00 PM:
James Madison didn't want to include a Bill of Rights in the US Constitution because he thought that if those Rights were enumerated in the Constitution proper, that they could then be removed through Constitutional means. He wanted them to rest on something higher and grander than a piece of paper.
By 
, at
Wed Dec 07, 09:51:00 PM:
EXCELLENT article, Cassandra.
WRT, your feeling about the Ten Commandments, and your confidence that one day you'll know the answers...
Just wondering if you've ever heard of the Ten Commandments referred to as **promises** instead of authoritarian commands?
IOW, "Thou shall have no others gods before me" is actually a promise that on the day when all is revealed, and you have perfect understanding, you will also have no other gods before you.
Someone shared that interpretation of the Ten Commandments with me several years ago, and I now think of them more as positive promises than as negative proscriptions.
By Pile On®, at
Wed Dec 07, 10:24:00 PM:
So this is where you have been keeping yourself?
Damn it, I can't keep up.
By Cassandra, at
Thu Dec 08, 05:16:00 AM:
Sorry Pile - just helping out while TH was in the Land Down Under for a few days. I've had so many migraines the past week I wasn't really sure I'd be writing much so I didn't tell anyone, but it's been a nice stress reliever.
Too bad I haven't figured out a way to make this gig pay...
Heh.
By Cassandra, at
Thu Dec 08, 05:29:00 AM:
anonymous:
No, I'd never heard that before, but it's not entirely unlike an explanation I once gave to my small sons for why parents lay down rules. FWIW, while I do have some issues with authority I'm not quite as much of a know-it-all as I undoubtedly come off. I can never quite resist the temptation to make a joke at my own expense, however.
I have an awful lot of failings. I vividly remember sitting in church years ago during the confession and absolution, reviewing every lousy thing I'd done that week. And though the 'memory of them was grievous unto me' and 'the burden of them was intolerable'... darned if two seconds later my wayward mind hadn't wandered away into speculation of something I sure as heck wouldn't have wanted to admit in front of anyone!
So much for a contrite heart! I had to laugh. Of course thinking isn't doing, but still...
By Sissy Willis, at
Thu Dec 08, 08:18:00 AM:
It isn't the denial of natural rights so much as the denial of human nature that underlies the dustbin-of-history legacy of the the murderous utopian 20th-century isms. One doesn't have to be a believer to accept Christianity's fundamental insight, the tragic view of human nature. It reconizes our sinful nature and works from there to build a just society, the opposite of Rousseau's "noble savage" corrupted by society.
By , at
Thu Dec 08, 08:47:00 AM:
Papa Ray, are you deliberately teasing the Muslims? "Christian Proselytizing" is punishible by death in countries that adhere to Shar'ia. Remember the ladies in Afghanistan who were slated for execution for passing out bibles before the Taliban fell? While the Taliban were pretty egregious, prohibitions of other relgions' recruiting is common in all majority Islamic Countries. Of course, the Muslims do not discriminate. Not only is "proselytizing" punishible by death but, should any Muslim fall for it and convert out of Islam, he/she is subject to the death penalty for the crime of "Apostosy". The Koran commands Muslims living in a non Muslim country to either dominate the country or impose Shar'ia on the Muslim minority -- that is seek to exempt Muslims from the common law that applies to non-Muslims. Such demands have been made (and acceded to) in Niger, Canada and Australia. Muslims seek to enforce the requirements of Shar'ia on non-Muslims where the infraction involves Islam. For example, the murder of Theo Van Gogh for making a film criticising the subordination of women in Islam. Also, the death fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie for writing the "Satanic Verses" which suggested that the voice of Gabriel which Mohammad claimed to hear dictating the Koran may have included a couple of suggestions by the Shaitan, cleverly immitating Gabe's voice. "inalienable rights" may come from the Jewish and/or the Christian God but they definitely do not emanate from Allah. The Koran explicitly sanctions slavery and requires the subordination of women. Unlike the bible, which is first and formost a history of God's Chosen People and treats the issues of slavery and female subordination as facts of history which change over time and which ends up with St. Paul's ringing declaration that "There is no male there is no female, there is no master, there is no slave but all are one in Christ Jesus" and Jesus' simpler but more generically profound: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me". There is nothing comparable in the Koran. Western societies have traditionally held that "rights" pertain to individuals. Muslims maintain that "rights", if any, pertain to the "Umma" or Islamic community. Thus, if a Muslim woman living in the west chooses to exercise the "rights" guaranteed by a western constitution -- say for example, the German constitution -- and begin living like other German women, her family may have her brothers kill her for the families "honor". For the moment, the public prosecutors in Germany have the power to try and convict the brothers (this is an actual case) -- but for how long? In France, Muslims make up 10% of the population and the French police do not dare to aggressively patrol certain majority muslim areas around Paris. In such "no go" zones, French law applies only whenever the French government is willing to send in the necessary force. "Honor Killings" in those areas are unlikely to be prosecuted in anything other than well publicised cases. Presently, the Gendarmes can enforce their writ through major effort, but considering the fact that only 10% of the population creates a de facto state within a state and considering the fact that 30% of the population of France UNDER 20 YEARS OF AGE is Muslim, it is clear that within another decade, French law can be made to prevail over Shar'ia in an "honor killing" case only by applying division level force by the French Army -- which by that time will be about 30% Muslim. Given the rules on movements of population among countries in the EU, how long will it be before the same conditions exist in Germany?
The conclusion I draw from all of this is that God will not be driven from the public square. The only choice we have to make is whether it will be Yahweh or Allah. Any temporary success the ACLU may have in excluding religious representations from the public square will be strictly that - temporary.
By , at
Sun Dec 11, 08:52:00 PM:
The speration of CHURCH AND STATE realy mean that we will not have a estabished religion like they did in england during the time of the AMERICAN REVOLUTION in which evrybody had to be of the same religius persuasion as the ruling monarch
