[A long speech so I suggest people read the whole thing at the link
below. Note that Bill Moyers is a devout christian but of a variety
not well represented by those strutting the US stage right now. When
reading remember he wrote it originally for a speech at Union
Theological Seminary so he will have certain assumptions about the
audience.]


"Soul Freedom"
Bill Moyers
http://www.alternet.org/story/25274/


At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized
in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still
do. My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under
theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it
to others.

"Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils," thundered the dissenter
Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying
Puritan authority over his conscience.

...

Yes, I know: the early church fathers, trying to cover up the
blood-soaked trail of God's sport, decreed that anything that
disagrees with Christian dogma about the perfection of God is to be
interpreted spiritually. Yes, I know: Edward Gibbon himself
acknowledged that the literal Biblical sense of God "is repugnant to
every principle of faith as well as reason" and that we must therefore
read the scriptures through a veil of allegory. Yes, I know: we can go
through the Bible and construct a God more pleasing to the better
angels of our nature (as I have done.) Yes, I know: Christians claim
the Old Testament God of wrath was supplanted by the Gospel's God of
love [See The God of Evil , Allan Hawkins, Exlibris.]

I know these things; all of us know these things. But we also know
that the "violence-of-God" tradition remains embedded deep in the DNA
of monotheistic faith. We also know that fundamentalists the world
over and at home consider the "sacred texts" to be literally God's
word on all matters.

Inside that logic you cannot read part of the Bible allegorically and
the rest of it literally; if you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus,
his crucifixion and resurrection, and the depiction of the Great
Judgment at the end times you must also believe that God is sadistic,
brutal, vengeful, callow, cruel, and savage -- that God slaughters.
Millions believe it.

Let's go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering
when the reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television
to proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God's punishment of a
corrupted America. They said the government had adopted the agenda "of
the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and
the lesbians" not to mention the ACLU and People for the American Way
(The God of the Bible apparently holds liberals in the same low esteem
as Hittites and Gergushites and Jebusites and all the other pagans of
holy writ.)

...

True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation
of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals--this very seminary
is part of that tradition; it's the American way, encouraged and
protected by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the
radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America's
great political parties -- the country is not yet a theocracy but the
Republican Party is -- and they are driving American politics, using
God as a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment,
foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social
services and so on.

What's also unique is the intensity, organization, and anger they have
brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists,
and homegrown ayatollahs: Their viral intolerance--their loathing of
other people's beliefs, of America's secular and liberal values, of an
independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search
for objective knowledge -- has become an unprecedented sectarian
crusade for state power.

They use the language of faith to demonize political opponents,
mislead and misinform voters, censor writers and artists, ostracize
dissenters, and marginalize the poor. These are the foot soldiers in a
political holy war financed by wealthy economic interests and guided
by savvy partisan operatives who know that couching political ambition
in religious rhetoric can ignite the passion of followers as
ferociously as when Constantine painted the Sign of Christ (the
"Christograph") on the shields of his soldiers and on the banners of
his legions and routed his rivals in Rome.
...

As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one
lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies -- political
bullies, economic bullies, and religious bullies -- cannot be
appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their
own. This is never easy; these guys don't fight fair; "Robert's Rules
of Order" is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front --
and especially freedom of conscience -- never comes to those who rock
and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting.
...


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|\* | Emma Pease Net Spinster
|_\/ Die Luft der Freiheit weht