3 posts tagged “religion”
The overwhelming majority of Americans, as well as people around the world, have positive views of President-elect Obama, and hope has lifted us. Unfortunately, there are those who are consumed by hate who would destroy the very foundations of our country. No, I'm not talking about al Qaeda. I'm talking about people who would promote this kind of behavior in their children (h/t Andrew Sullivan):
Whoolery and his wife couldn't believe it when their second and third graders got off the bus last week and told them what other students were saying.
"They just hadn't heard anything like this before," said Whoolery. "They were chanting on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama. Assassinate Obama.' Then adding in a name sometimes of a classmate on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama and Kate.'"
The Whoolery's explained to their kids what assassinate means then contacted the school about what was happening.
This is not funny. It's not harmless. It's irresponsible at best, and traitorous at worst. For those who may have forgotten or be too young to remember, before the attacks of 9/11 the worst terrorist attack on American soil was carried out, not by scary brown people, but by these guys:
That's right, good "patriotic" white males. People who allow their delusions, stoked by zealots and talk show hosts, to run wild can cause catastrophic damage. The tragedy is only increased by the fact that the "enemy" they feel compelled to fight against exists only in their minds.
Those of us who lived through the turbulence of the 1960s still remember the horror and disbelief of seeing three of our great leaders, John, Martin and Bobby, murdered. Whether it's the lone madman or an organized group, there's no way to completely protect ourselves from such people. That is part of the cost of living in a free society. There is simply no such thing as complete security — unless you're locked in a padded cell. But that realization doesn't preclude us from making every effort to eliminate such behavior by marginalizing it to the point that it gets into the "being struck by a falling meteorite" range.
To think that people would teach their children to chant words like "assassinate" while thinking of themselves as "righteous" and "patriotic" is just sick. It's up to every one of us to resist this kind of talk, whether it comes in a forwarded email or a casual conversation. It is a cancer in the soul of humanity, and every individual has a responsibility to do what they can to stop it wherever it tries to spread.
It's not funny. It's not patriotic. It must stop.
You can't make this stuff up. This is what the Christian Right has come to in this country. Via John Cole:
“We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems,” she said. “While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble.”
I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian church, so I spent a lot of my youth reading and studying the Bible. Although I have abandoned the literal, supernatural interpretation of the Bible, I have retained the core principles of Jesus' philosophy, along with enough grounding in the Bible as literature to see the irony in this situation. Obviously I'm not the only one to see the comparison to this episode from the book of Exodus:
For those who aren't familiar with the story, while Moses was up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments, the people he had just led out of slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews, were down below melting their gold jewelry to make an idol in the shape of a calf. When Moses came down and saw them praying to it, he was really mad. What followed was 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
Praying for wealth is the antithesis of Christian philosophy. The self-proclaimed leaders of the right-wing religious movement in America have a lot more in common with another group of people, and I don't mean Jesus' disciples, but the Pharisees.
The next time you see or hear someone claim they are doing God's work by persecuting the "sinners" and praying for success in the stock market, I think it's safe to say that Jesus would be seriously offended. I know I am.And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
John 2:15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;
John 2:16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
One point made by General Colin Powell in his endorsement of Barack Obama for president deserves more discussion (hat tip to Glenn Greenwald):
I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as: "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is: he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian.
But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be President?
Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion: he's a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
Powell related a story about a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. His name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a Muslim-American. Greenwald points out:
There has been much condemnation over the "Obama-is-a-Muslim" line of GOP attack, but almost all of it has been on the ground that the attack is factually false as applied to the Christian Obama, not on the ground that it is a reprehensible and dangerous line of attack even if it were factually true.
"Arab" and "Muslim" have become so synonymous with "terrorist" in much of the discourse in America that it's hard for some to believe that their are many, many American Muslims, and they are just as American as the Christians, Jews, Mormons, et al. Again, from Glenn Greenwald:
When John McCain, at that rally in Minnesota last week, sought to chide his supporter for asserting that Obama is an "Arab," McCain did so by pointing out that, in fact, Obama is a "decent family man" -- as though that proves that he's not "an Arab because "decent family man" is the opposite of "Arab"
For those who may have forgotten, the founders of of the United States of America wanted it to be absolutely clear and unambiguous that there was NO state religion here. For example, 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.
And there is the "Establishment Clause" of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights, which states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [emphasis added]
So if you claim to be a patriotic American, especially a "strict constructionist," you must acknowledge that people of every faith — or no faith — have equal status under the laws of our country. This is what makes freedom of religion possible.
