Internationally respected religious expert, Charles Kimball’s “When Religion Becomes Evil”{2002} lists five warning signs of corruption in a religion: absolute truth claims, blind obedience, establishing the “ideal’ time, the end justifies any means, declaring holy war. Kimball talks of his 1950’s background, in which many of his Baptist and Church of Christ friends were convinced Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians were in grave danger of missing “the true gospel” of Christ. Catholics were “not even on the map.”
Katherine Stewart’s “The Good News Club, the Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children” documents a plan to undermine and eliminate public schools. She attended a religious right convention in which one seminar’s main topic was “addressing the problem of how to subvert Catholic teachings and practices so subtly that the Catholic-born students won’t alert their parents..” because being devout Catholics doesn’t mean they are the “right kind” of Christian.
It has been said often that more people have been killed, more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than anything else. Catholics and Protestants killed each for centuries in Europe. Sunni and Shi’ah Muslims have killed each other for centuries. One reason Native Americans were nearly exterminated was they weren’t Christians. There was long-standing prejudice against Jews in Europe before 1933. Hitler used that bigotry to murder 6 million Jews.
America’s Founding Fathers knew some of this. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states; “..no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Amendment I states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..” A religious test cuts two ways. Your religion is neither a positive reason for office, nor a negative reason against you. Amendment I also cuts two ways, you have freedom to conduct your own religious experience and beliefs, AND, the rest of the American people have a “freedom from” you. It is unconstitutional for you to force others by law to run their lives by YOUR religious beliefs. In 1963, Boston Archbishop Richard Cardinal Cushing told a radio audience: “I have no right to impose my thinking, which is rooted in religious thought {opposition to birth control}, on those who do not think as I do.”
Using the Bible, any Bible, presents problems Kimball says. The Christian Bible has 66 books written over 1,000 years and many kinds of expression, requiring interpretation at many levels. The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek. In 2002 there were “nearly two dozen contemporary English translations points to challenge of communicating the meaning and intent of the original text.” Which Bible is the “right” one?
Kimball quotes Peter Gomes, Harvard Memorial Church minister of 38 years: “Literalism is dangerous..meaning is determined by what the reader takes out of the text..Thus, what the reader thinks is there becomes not merely the reader’s opinion, but the will of God, with all the moral consequences and authority that that implies..”
Kimball places the Taliban and the American religious right on a continuum: “Christian reconstructionists in America are only one step removed from the counterparts with a concrete, divinely ordained plan for an Islamic state or the reconstituted, expanded biblical state of Israel. The gap begins to close when the agenda includes denigration of Islam or direct action against abortion clinics.”
The major difference between Middle Eastern religious zealots and American zealots is the Islamic ones kill people physically, the American zealots kill people using laws. Church doctrines are forced into laws and judicial interpretations. Susan Jacoby, in The Age of American Unreason:” Justice “Scalia, a profoundly conservative Catholic as well as a profoundly conservative jurist, has said bluntly that Catholic officeholders should resign if asked to uphold any public policies that contradict church doctrine..” Pat Robertson, in a taped, 9/18/97 speech discussing the goal of shaping America’s future and expecting to “select the next president of the United States” and Republican obedience: “We just tell these guys, “Look, we {the religious right} put you in power in 1994, and we want you to deliver..we’re going to hold your feet to the fire while you do it..”
The “culture war” the religious right has foisted on America didn’t begin with Roe-v-Wade. It began with the Griswold decision process. One of the religious right churches wanted to ban all Connecticut married women from using birth control. The 1965, 7-2 Griswold decision, in part, said: “We deal with a right of privacy older than The Bill of Rights.” Goldberg’s supporting opinion: “The entire fabric of the Constitution demonstrated that thew right to marital privacy were just as fundamental as any that were explicitly enumerated.”
Interestingly, in l987, following the 58-42 defeat of Judge Bork’s Supreme Court nomination, the Senate’s judiciary committee chief counsel said: “if the Bork struggle was over any one case, it was “Griswold-v-Connecticut.” Others agreed: “Bork was deprived of a seat on the Supreme Court largely because of his refusal to acknowledge the ‘unenumerated’ right to privacy as being part of the set of constitutional rights legitimately enjoyed by Americans.”
In December, l977, a group of prominent theologians and ethicists said: “We are sadened by the heavy institutional involvement of the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in a campaign to enact religiously based antiabortion commitments int5o law and we view this as a serious threat to religious liberty and freedom of conscience.” In the 1992 “Casey” decision, Justice Kennedy said: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. In light of a woman’s pregnancy burdens: “her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist..upon its own vision of the woman;s role..” {David J. Garrow – “Liberty and Sexuality”}
The original intent of the Founding Fathers, of the common people of the various states, of religions in l787-1792, is definitively described in Leonard W. Levy”s book, “The Establishment Clause.” When they said “NO” law respecting an establishment of religion, they meant none, as in never, in any way. Levy relates hoe Evangelicals in Virginia demanded separation of church and state; framer Richard Dobbs Spaight: “Any act of Congress on this subject would be a usurpation;” Baptist preacher John Leland advocated a radical separation of government and religion, and “religion is a matter between God and individuals..:” Madison, Jefferson, and Christian fundamentalists felt the founding principle was that to require a person to support even the religion of his choice denied him his freedom of choice and his right to religious liberty; Evangelicals who profoundly cared about the purity of Christian faith warned against the corrupting embrace of government, and advocated separation in order to defend religion.
Levy spends considerable time explaining why 1980’s figures like Rehnquist, Meese, and Burger were wrong in their attempts to twist the First Amendment. As many have noted, the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts have further twisted the First Amendment out of the Founders’ original intent. Ironically, this will be done in the name of “originalism!.’ And, of course, the prime beneficiaries of this twisting, surprise!, will be the top 1% and corporations.
Levy also relates Tocqueville”s famous trip to America and his observations about American religion: ” ..all thought the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over their country was the complete separation of church and state. I have no hesitation in stating that throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that.”
“When you pray, do not do as the hypocrites do, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, so that they may be seen by men..Instead, when you do pray, enter into your room and shut the door, and pray to thy Father who is in secret.” Matthew 6: 5-6
With Justice For All 