America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives?
By Steve Weissman
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040605B.shtml
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
-- First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian
doctrine.
-- George Washington
When Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin boasted that his God was
bigger than Islam's, many people demanded his scalp. But, as angry as
his critics were, they dismissed what he said as little more than
military machismo, political insensitivity, and bone-headed public
relations. How could we possibly win Muslim hearts and minds when this
highly decorated Crusader so callously belittled Allah?
Few critics asked the tougher question: What did Gen. Boykin's
remarks mean for the U.S. Constitution, which he had sworn to support
and defend, and which - in the very first words of the First Amendment
- forbids any "establishment of religion?"
Dressed in full military uniform with his spit-polished paratroop
boots, Boykin spoke to at least 23 evangelical groups around the
country, proclaiming that America was "a Christian nation."
"We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have
been raised for such a time as this," he declared. "[Our] spiritual
enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of
Jesus."
Defending Boykin, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld carefully
cast the issue as one of free speech and religious freedom, both of
which the First Amendment guarantees.
"There are a lot of things that are said by people that are their
views," said Rumsfeld, "and that's the way we live. We are free people
and that's the wonderful thing about our country, and I think for
anyone to run around and think that can be managed or controlled is
probably wrong."
But, in expressing his beliefs, Gen. Boykin spoke as a high-ranking
official. A former commander and 13-year veteran of the top-secret
Delta Force, he had recently become deputy undersecretary of defense
for intelligence, the Pentagon's top uniformed spook. In that post, he
helped expand American torture at Abu Ghraib and currently oversees the
Pentagon's worldwide covert operations, including the widely reported
"death squads."
Nor was Gen. Boykin simply passing comment on the religious and
cultural heritage of his fellows Americans. Instead, the evangelical
general directly challenged the plain language of the Constitution and
over 200 years of Supreme Court decisions maintaining what Thomas
Jefferson called "the separation of church and state."
A Christian Nation
With all their many sects and denominations, American evangelicals
differ on all sorts of questions, from when Jesus Christ will return to
the proper way to run a church. But most Southern Baptists and
Pentecostals share the belief, more political than religious, that
America once was and should again become a Christian nation.
This is Christian nationalism, and no one has done more to
popularize it than an energetic young man named David Barton. A
self-taught historian, he has dredged up hundreds of fascinating
historical quotes and anecdotes in an effort to prove that the founding
fathers were primarily "orthodox, evangelical Christians" who intended
to create a God-fearing Christian government.
Barton's books, videos, and Wallbuilders website are wildly popular
on the religious right, and his views have become gospel for Pat
Robertson's Christian Coalition, James Dobson's Focus on the Family,
Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge
Ministries, Phyllis Schafly's Eagle Forum, and hundreds of Christian
radio and TV stations.
In 2002, Barton appeared on Pat Robertson's 700 Club armed with a
stack of books and historical artifacts.
"This is the book that the founders said they used in writing the
Declaration ... John Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government, from
1765," he showed Robertson. "This quotes the Bible 1,700 times to show
the proper operation of civil government. No wonder we have had a
successful government - 226 years we celebrate this year. There are
1700 Bible verses at the base of what they did in writing the
Declaration."
"So," said Barton, "this nonsense that these guys wanted a secular
nation, that they didn't want any God in government, it doesn't hold
up."
Robertson asked about a Revolutionary War motto.
"The motto ... was 'No king but King Jesus,'" said Barton. "It was
built actually on what Jefferson and Franklin had proposed as the
national motto, which is, 'Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.'"
To his credit, Barton highlights the religious side of the American
Revolution that conventional historians often overlook. But to his
critics, Barton's hyperactive enthusiasm quickly outruns any historical
expertise he might have. He ignores mountains of evidence that
contradict what he wants to believe. He relies on second- and
third-hand sources, often with a religious agenda of their own. He
fails to put much of anything in context. He misquotes and distorts
Supreme Court decisions. And, he confuses his present-day evangelical
faith with the very different religious sentiments of earlier times.
Even more galling to his critics, Barton systematically fails to
see that many, if not most, of the founders were men of the 17th and
18th Century Enlightenment, who consciously rejected any literal
interpretation of the Bible. To the degree they had religious faith,
and many did, they believed in a God who - like a cosmic watchmaker -
created the world and its natural laws, and then played no further
part.
Deism, as they called their belief, runs unmistakably through the
Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson wrote of the
"the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" rather than of the personal,
miracle-working God of David Barton's Christianity.
To cite only one example:
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the
world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity]
one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and
mythologies. (Letter to Dr. Woods)
Barton short-changes this Enlightenment philosophy. At one point,
he even claimed that Jefferson wanted his wall of separation to work in
only one direction. "Government will not run the church," Barton
paraphrased him, "but we will still use Christian principles with
government." Jefferson never said anything of the kind, as Barton was
later forced to admit.
Similarly, he quoted "the father of the Constitution," James
Madison:
We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon
the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the
Ten Commandments of God.
No one could find where Madison ever said anything close. In fact,
in the debate over religious freedom in Virginia, he said the opposite,
advocating "total separation of the church from the state." Again,
Barton had to back down.
Rob Boston, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
is perhaps Barton's most persistent critic, and accuses him of "factual
errors, half truths and distortions." Boston has published a list of 12
bogus quotations that Barton has admitted getting wrong.
But Barton suffers a bigger glitch. His "history" undermines his
conclusion. The more he can show the founders as Christian in their
personal convictions, the less he can answer the obvious: Why, then,
did they leave out of the Constitution any mention of God, Jesus
Christ, or Christianity? And why did they explicitly reject any
religious test for public office, which many of the colonies had
enforced?
The explanation is simple. Whatever their religious beliefs, their
political philosophy led the founders to move in a different,
revolutionary direction. Because they had seen religious conflict and
repression first hand, and knew of the bloody religious wars in Europe,
the authors of the Constitution set out purposely NOT to create a
Christian nation. And they did it by prohibiting both the establishment
of a national church and the mixing of God and government.
Succeeding generations have maintained the wall only imperfectly,
as when Congress put the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance
during the Cold War hysteria of the 1950s. But, until recently, the
vast majority of Americans paid at least lip service to the separation
of church and state, and no one more fervently than Southern Baptists
and Pentecostals, who feared that Episcopalians, Congregationalists,
Catholics, and others might use the power of the state against them.
Now growing rapidly while the more established denominations
decline, the evangelicals suddenly see a chance to bend government to
their will. This likely explains why they have reversed their belief in
separation and adopted a radically new understanding of American
history.
As for David Barton, he became vice-chairman of the Texas
Republican Party, which has committed itself officially to declare the
United States "a Christian nation" and "dispel the myth of separation
of church and state." He also took a job in 2004 with the Bush-Cheney
campaign, which hired him to tour the country spreading his Christian
nationalism to evangelical groups, the very people who cheered General
Jerry Boykin as their "Onward, Christian Soldier."
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http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.notserver.com/
Scientology crooks: http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
Scientology murder: http://PerkinsTragedy.org
Improving the herd: http://www.rightard.org/
http://www.religiousfreedomwatch.org/extremists/ricef.html
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