The Godless Campaign
With a new campaign ahead, it's time to end the damaging American
penchant for mixing religion and politics, writes Timothy Egan.
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/godless/index.html?th&emc=th
[excerpt]
June 11, 2008, 10:40 pm
Godless
This Father’s Day, one of most popular pastors in America will open his
megachurch to homo***ual dads, an event that would usually signal an
extreme weather alert from old guard Republican evangelical leaders.
Rick Warren. (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the Press)
But by welcoming gay fathers into his Southern California flock, Rick
Warren, author of the “The Purpose Driven Life,” is not just living up to
the highest standards of Christian fellow****p, he’s turning the page on a
particularly embarrassing part of our politics.
Just to refresh: it was televangelist Pat Robertson who predicted
“earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly even a meteor” would hit Orlando for
inviting gays to Disney World, and Rev. John Hagee who blamed Hurricane
Katrina on a vengeful God angered over a gay pride parade in New Orleans.
And they did this even without Doppler radar.
The fact that these people were taken seriously about anything other than,
say, what color socks to wear on bingo night, tells us something about how
far we’ve strayed rom the pulpit into the town square.
Over the last 30 years, church and state have become far more entangled
than any of our fair-minded founders and their better successors —
including some chiseled on Mount Rushmore — envisioned.
The good tidings from Warren’s Saddleback Church come at a time when
Barack
Obama has ditched his incendiary ex-preacher, and John McCain has
separated
himself from the apocalyptical Hagee.
It’s a start, but how about a clean break? Let’s go Godless for the rest
of
the campaign.
I know, it’s not going to happen, with Obama courting evangelicals this
week and McCain trying to figure what makes Catholics in the Rust Belt
tick.
But for a moment, imagine no religion, as John Lennon sang.
Forty-eight years ago an Irish Catholic presidential candidate said this
about a bedrock principle of his:
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is
absolute.”
And, “I believe in a president whose views on religion are his own private
affair.”
That was John F. Kennedy, of course, . . . [end excerpt]
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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.
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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