I apologize for the break, but there has been a lot of work going on behind the scenes. I wish I had been able to share it with you at the time, but I’ll just have to make up for it now.
My post last Monday dealt with the subject of religion in politics. There is a reason for that. On Saturday, there was a political rally called the Family Leadership Summit. Many of the Republican front-runners descended on Iowa to schmooze with religious people who want them to do their bidding (and vice versa).
I took part in a protest of the event and I spent my spare time last week preparing. Most of us in the protest were atheists and agnostics. We’ve had one or two Christians protesting in the past, but no one mentioned that alignment on Saturday.
Our main message was that the founding fathers designed our government with—as Thomas Jefferson put it—a “wall of separation between church and state.” It is our profound belief that this wall protects both the believer and the non-believer. Yet, perplexingly, it seems that a great number of believers do not understand this simple concept.
Today, 57% of Republicans want Christianity to be enshrined as the national religion. Tell me, when has that ever been a good thing for true believers? Religions have always turned bloody and brutal when they gain control of the sword of state. It’s like no one remembers that this nation was first settled by people running from countries that had Christianity as the national religion. Derp!
My pastor used to tell stories about the Anti-Christ rising to power on a world-wide religion that got its start when apostate Christians petitioned their government for a state-run church. Don’t pastors tell those stories anymore?
Forget all that. Doesn’t the very idea of government having a say in what people believe send shivers down your spine? Politics panders to power, and power doesn’t care who it hurts as long as it gets to keep its power. Does anyone really think that the rich, the powerful, the movers and shakers in government will give a single thought to what God might want once they have the mind-control mechanism of the church in their hands? Who’s kidding whom?
150 years before Jefferson penned that letter, a preacher named Roger Williams said that there should be a hedge of separation between the compromise of government and the pristine garden of the church. Williams was concerned about the corruption of the church. After all, politics is all about compromise, and where is there room for compromise when the will of God is at issue?
The wall of separation serves believers as much, or more than it does nonbelievers. Clearly, if you don’t believe in gods, or believe in a different god than the majority or take your faith more seriously than the average schmoe, you’re going to take a beating when the new politico-church takes power. Ultimately, everyone loses.
Jefferson was right. “Religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions.”
Next time we stand up for religious freedom, I hope we will find at least a few Christians who have come to their senses standing alongside of us.