Published on Thursday, January 10, 2008 by the Kennebec Journal (Maine)
Religion-Politics Mix Gives Rise to Fear
by Naomi Schalit
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/10/6309/
I grew up in a household where among our many guests were older people
with tattooed numbers on their arms. They spoke with accents — Polish,
German, French.
These were friends of my parents who had survived Nazi concentration
camps — the Holocaust — and lived to tell their stories. And what they
spoke of, over and over again, was the danger that comes when
government dictates which religion is good and which religion is not
(and thus which religion's adherents are good or bad).
They had lived in countries where the very fact that you were a Jew
meant you couldn't hold certain jobs, live in certain areas, attend
certain schools — where, ultimately, in its most horrific
manifestation, being a Jew meant you were targeted for death.
I lived in a household where the memory and evidence of that Holocaust
was directly and powerfully linked to the belief that America was a
safe place because this country clearly separated religion and the state.
But these days, I see that changing.
I'm a Jew and I'm scared.
It's not just that Mike Huckabee, an Evangelical and self-described
"Christian Leader," won the GOP Iowa presidential caucus last week.
It's the photos of his supporters praying and holding American flags.
Jews don't feel good or safe when flags and religion get all mixed up.
Put government and the Church or the Koran or Bible together, and Jews
usually lose. (You'll probably say the state of Israel — whose flag
bears the Jewish Star of David — puts the lie to that theory, but I'd
disagree. The very theocratic nature of the state of Israel has led to
the current profound threats to its legitimacy, both as a nation and a
democracy. I know, I'm half Israeli, daughter of two families that
fought for Israel's establishment.).
But back to Huckabee.
My fear didn't really start with him, but it's flowered in the last
few days of a presidential campaign that's been marked by candidates
shamelessly pandering to the Christian electorate, falling all over
themselves in the God stakes to demonstrate who's a better Christian.
It's been growing, though, over the last decade, when the principles
that had kept me feeling safe and secure as a Jew in America have been
under attack.
In elementary school, I remember how awful it felt to sing carols in
our annual Christmas assembly — because singing the words in praise of
Jesus felt like I was doing something terrible, for which I would be
punished.
And how much of an outsider I felt when Christmas trees went up in all
our classrooms. And how really bad it felt when some boys locked my
brother in a classroom and forced him to push a penny around on the
floor with his "Jewish nose." Or when I got such anti-Semitic hate
notes in my bookbag that I finally left the school I'd been in for
only five months.
But in the years since I was a child, through court battles and the
evolution of our consciousness as a democratic and pluralistic
society, our country seemed to be well on the way to carrying out the
promise of our founding fathers and the First Amendment, that America
would be a society where no religion would be favored by government:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Christmas trees and
churches in front of city halls were banned, Hanukkah and other
religious minorities' holidays found their way into holiday
celebrations at school, a Jew was selected to run for vice president.
Yet along with this evolution came counter-revolution.
Just as societies being forcefully modernized in Africa, Asia and the
Mideast developed their own homegrown extremists, along came America's
versions: the Moral Majority, the more violent fighters of the
abortion battles, the growing electoral power of the Christian right,
without whom, it seemed, Republicans felt they could not win the White
House.
And then came the presidential primary race of 2007.
My jaw dropped when Mitt Romney said that "freedom requires religion
just as religion requires freedom." No, freedom doesn't require
religion, Mr. Romney, and whoever has been giving you history lessons
needs to re-read the Constitution and the First Amendment's
Establishment Clause.
What is it about "no" (as in "no law respecting an establishment of
religion") that you don't understand?
The otherwise rational and well-informed John McCain said he thought
the Constitution established a "Christian nation."
Where does that leave folks like me and my children?
Hillary Clinton has a "Faith, Family and Values" team on her campaign
staff.
Can we please stop hiding behind euphemisms and call "faith" what it
really is: "religion"?
Democratic primary candidate Bill Richardson told a crowd of Iowa
voters that their state needed to maintain its first-in-the-nation
status "for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord."
Oh, please. And the Lord wants New Hampshire to vote second, right?
And while Americans rail against the Taliban's atavistic treatment of
women, Republican caucus voters in Iowa just chose a man, Huckabee,
who has said that he agrees with the statement that "a wife is to
submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband."
America is not on its way to forming concentration camps.
An African-American has just been chosen as winner of the Iowa
Democratic caucuses.
My children, both Jews, can largely join any club they want, go to any
school they like, choose any profession to which they're suited.
This is not pre-Nazi Germany.
But we are on a dangerous path — one that is fundamentally
anti-democratic and un-American.
The growing population of Bible-thumpers on the campaign trail has
distinct roots in American history, to be sure, but they are not proud
roots.
They are the roots of prejudice and discrimination, of exclusivity and
narrow-mindedness.
I have great respect for all this country's religions — so much so
that I chose to study religion in college and raised a child who has a
master's degree in divinity. Religion is is a deep and profound part
of our political culture in America and I have no argument with that fact.
Yet it is the emphasis on one, favored form of religion, one kind of
belief that is so frightening to me.
Hand in hand with the growing public acceptance of professions of
Christian faith on the campaign trail is the implicit idea that this
is the one faith that is true and correct, and which qualifies its
holder for the presidency.
Like me, I do not think that the majority of Americans believe this to
be so.
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You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation
of Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is
why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v.
Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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