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

For many millions of frustrated and highly concerned about the growth of irrationality in post-1980 America, there is a book for you.  It is bestselling author Kurt Andersen’s “Fantasyland, How America Went Haywire.”  Andersen provides a 500 year history of craziness in America; significantly, nearly half the book is about post-1980 “delusions and magical thinking.”

Andersen doesn’t mind that one lives in a bunker with 10 years food; or manage a fantasy NFL team; or are a Civil War general on maneuvers; that you’re prepared for Jesus’ imminent return; or speak in tongue4s; believe people who said they died and went to heaven; dress like a feudal baron or wizard; believe that believing you’ll get rich will make you rich; believe burning sage cleared your house of evil spirits; believe alien spirits taught us how to build computer chips

“So what if there are lots of Americans with various screws loose?  So what if they dream and stew in their own mad, mad, mad, mad dreamworld?  Ignore them let them alone, let them be.  Right?  Aye, there’s the rub.  There are real consequences in the real world.”

“Delusional ideas and magical thinking flood from the private sphere into the public’ become so pervasive and deeply rooted, so ‘normal’, that they affect everyone.  Some American fantasies have become weaponized, literally… our pockets ARE being picked and our legs ARE being broken.”

“”As  the more fantastical ideas of alternative medicine are mainstreamed, millions of people are cheated, which doesn’t break your or my leg; but when their diseases deposit them in the actual-doctor-and-hospital healthcare system late in the treatment game , paid for by my insurance and the government, that does pick our pocket.  The belief that childhood vaccines cause autism was a fantasy that directly produced disease and death among people who happened to be in the proximity of unvaccinated and infected children.  As disbelief in science grows, our whole society may become less prosperous and more vulnerable.   as religious belief drives government to make legal contraception and abortions more difficult to get, the rest of us will have our pockets picked in all kinds of ways for years to come.”

This is the beginning of the price to be paid for “doing our own thing, i.e., ” believing in “alternative facts.”  How long does America remain competitive if half of us don’t accept evolution, the basis for modern science and medicine?  How long do we remain competitive if we don’t accept global warming, like the rest of the advanced world?  The adults reading this will most likely be dead when the predicted, and now occurring, consequences reach catastrophic levels.  But, your children and grandchildren will, for a while, not die.  They will ask why you did nothing while you had the chance.

How long will America remain competitive denying science and reason in general?  Parents are free to send children to almost any school.  But, what if those children are deliberately taught falsehoods?  How do they communicate with kids from other countries who were taught accepted truths?

How long does America remain competitive when one major party is increasingly antagonistic to the very idea of good government?  When this party opposes taxes in general, but most especially on the top 1% – the supposed “job creators?”  How long do we maintain a fiction our ballooning post-1980 national debt has no relationship to the fact that the top 1% have been given numerous loopholes and tax dodges, and have foreign tax havens?  And because of this debt, we don’t invest in America?

How long do we survive as a rational middle class society if the American population is continually bombarded with falsehoods by a major TV network, by talk radio hosts making millions to incite people with lies, by misinformation, not only by the Russians, but by many Americans on the internet?

How long do we survive, supposedly divided and hating the other half?  Who gains by the lower 90% being confused and misinformed?  Who gains when civility and decency, basic respect for other human beings, slowly disappears?

Mr. Andersen;s fine book stands by itself as a classic.  Unfortunately, it is not the first to discuss some aspect of America’s self-destructive post-1980 lapse into irrationality.  Our parents and grandparents left us a great functioning democracy.  We are allowing this great world treasure to fall apart around us.  Shame on us.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  You are entitled to your opinion.  But you are not entitled to your own facts.:

Kellyanne Conway:  “You’re saying it’s a falsehood.  And they;re giving… our press secretary gave alternative facts.:”

 

Hannah Arendt:  A mixture of gullibility and cynicism have been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality…In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached a point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing….Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One wonders what Shakespeare would create of 1980-20l8 America! Probably his greatest tragedy. Think of the material he has to work with! The world’s greatest “democracy” is slowly transformed into a theocratic plutocracy, and…many people support it. The lower 99% conditioned to see their greedy Scrooge-like ( borrowing from Dickens) oppressors are really the “job creators!” The ruling top 1% has reduced its taxes by 50% from the middle class golden age of 1947-l973 – but – this is “good.” It means more wealth can “trickle down!” Think what Shakespeare could do with millions of poor and middle class people voting against themselves! The U.S top 1% has outdone Goebbels! Defeat is victory! OK, he borrowed from “l984” too.

How would Shakespeare treat 1980-2018 Republicans who run for public office with the intent of sabotaging government – and – rewarding their top 1% donor patrons? Yes, some Democrats are guilty too. What villains would Shakespeare have portraying successive cabinet secretaries ruining the environment and aiding polluters in the name of “public service?” How would Shakespeare portray crooked politicians (the real D.C.’swamp) taking billionaire’s money, and then writing laws favoring those same people?

Think what Shakespeare could do with Nixon-Reagan-Bush II-Trump! Would this be a separate comedy? Or several acts of the entire tragedy? Think what Shakespeare could do with Watergate! Or Iran-Contra; or with “weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t exist; or war crimes like Abu Ghraib or massive lying; or taxpayers paying for family business trips’ or hypocrites claiming to stand for “family values” doing the same things they’re legislating against!

Think what Shakespeare could do with a Supreme Court ruling (Citizens United) that facilitates billionaires corrupting government in the name of “freedom of speech!” And a Court that says paper people (corporations) are the same as real human people for legal rights (top 1% wins again). How would Shakespeare portray the arrogant, greedy billionaires using donor-anonymous “charities” to subvert democracy tax-free?

How would Shakespeare portray American voters who’ve supported and voted for politicians who’ve blatantly lied to them, demagogue people’s fears;used divide and conquer diversionary tactics covering the real 1980-2018 villains’ the top 1%

How would Shakespeare portray the children – the dead at Sandy Hook, the dead at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas- for whom the adults did nothing; actually worse than nothing by refusing to listen to them? And the living children and young adults, the outraged thousands of high school and college students protesting against being potential victims? What could he do with this ultimate irony of gutless adults being forced to see massive corruption, by their own children? How would he show who really is the real “adult in the room?”

Would this be Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy? The innocent, idealistic, truthful children, representing the true American ideals – are deliberately sabotaged by the “adults.” You can see it now, the stage slowly empties, then grows dark, while the music softly ends. The movie version ends with these words from Teddy Roosevelt’s Mount Rushmore plaque: We here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. Dickens had his Scrooge redeeming himself at the end. 2018 (or 2008 Scrooges) are not that generous, or even caring about what they’ve done.