MY GOD!
- 13 minutes ago
- 5 min read
AMERICA’S WHITE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS SO WRONG
It is good to see that god has made a big comeback in America. Why just four or five decades ago (next to nothing in god years), there was talk of something called “separation of church and state.” It has been said that this concept was enshrined in the First Amendment to the lofty US Constitution. There it actually says that the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”* These hallowed words were believed to provide both a protection against the establishment of an official state religion and the freedom to worship as one pleased or not worship at all.
Recent years have seen the steady erosion of what seemed to many like a pretty good idea – the fundamental notion that free people should be able to find god where they want to, when they want to, and, importantly, if they want to at all. After centuries of religious zealotry at the heart of so much human misery for those who didn’t drink the cool aid of the day, the people who worked hard to create a top flight America for White Christians somehow decided that it wasn’t necessary for everyone to be a White Christian nor that the federal government be empowered to declare a state religion.
In fact, it seemed that racism took up enough of the odious societal space that the downside of religious freedom paled in comparison. For much of America’s post-Constitution history, it seemed enough for many White Christians to vilify Black people, without having to throw in their growing distaste for those who were not Christians at all.
So what happened? It isn’t very clear to me what happened, but I think this most recent American outbreak of mindless religious zealotry can find its roots in the ever-popular Crusades from the Middle Ages.** Additional inspiration can be found in the Inquisition and, closer to home, the execution of witches and the like in Salem, Massachusetts. At its core, today’s religious zealotry, like its antecedents, is religion usurped to drive a cruel and immoral agenda.
Just a couple of weeks ago, in a show of governmental devotion to religious devotion, the Trump administration sponsored a Christian American lovefest on the very public Washington Mall.*** There was nothing subtle about this one. High-profile Christian “celebrities” and high-profile administration figures and Congressional flaks couldn’t get enough of that old time religion and the palpable desire for god to bless them and their version of America. On its face, this is disgusting enough.
However, and more importantly, governmental sponsorship of and participation in this fraught White Christian nationalist performance theater does not square with the US Constitution’s historical devotion to separation of church and state. Further, it makes a mockery of the underlying constitutional principle that each of us should be free from our government’s choice of religious winners and losers.
To better understand right-wing America’s enthusiastic embrace of symbolic Christianity, it is critical to note that there does not appear to be any requirement for adherence to actual Christian orthodoxy. Far from it. So many in today’s right-wing America identify with both Christianity and the Republican Party, including its patently cruel, racist, socially unjust, and culturally exclusionary political and social reality. As a casual observer, there does not seem to be much there for Jesus to love.
Further, there is absolutely no sense of Christian irony in the added infusion of right-wing constitutional orthodoxy into the mix. While there is a thrilling rush to maximize governmental resources to trample on the separation of church and state, there seems to be an even more frenzied effort to exclude governmental resources from being used to provide a measure of freedom from the tyranny of gun violence in the nation (Second Amendment****). It is worth remembering that many of these same folks see abortion as murder of a viable human being while cheering on the death penalty for condemned human beings, all in god's name.
To many viewing the world’s problems in general, and America’s problems in particular, this latest retread of the dark side of religious zealotry may seem of little significance. Please don’t be fooled; there are thousands of pulpits in America spewing to the flocks of “true” believers some of the most vile, racist, and Christian nationalist propaganda you will find anywhere on America’s airwaves and under America’s spiritual rocks. Wrapping Christian orthodoxy and right-wing constitutional orthodoxy around the “message” only makes it more persuasive and more pernicious.
In this context, Trump has shown a venal capacity to espouse so much of the mythology of the American Dream while at the same time using Christian symbolism to define the dream for his followers. This halleluiah version of the “dream” has been handed down by generations of unscrupulous Christian politicians, preachers, educators, and historians. Now, it permeates so much of America’s public space that their version of the “dream” can be manipulated to advance the corrupt, cruel and immoral ends of those controlling that space.
That is what is at the heart of right-wing Christian nationalist thinking. It feeds on the notion that someone is trying to take away THEIR America. Trump and his acolytes are right about this part. WE ARE trying to take away THEIR America, because theirs is an America that never existed and never will. Unfortunately, WE seem, at the moment, to be losing that fight.
THEY are fighting today for a return to a “glorious” past that was only the stuff of legend. Their past is a past of happy native Americans sharing the bounty of the land, smiling Black slaves tilling the soul for their better future, and so many women so content to be free of the burdens of owning property and voting. And oh, the glory of god’s bounty.
Unfortunately, the real past exposes an America always riven by social and racial injustice, income inequality, subjugated women, despised immigrants, and cultural rigidity. So, as god reemerges as an avenging angel and the message becomes uglier by the day, every effort will be made by the White Christian nationalists and their crowds to conveniently use their god to keep their momentum going for a governmentally enforced return to their delusional past.
So, make no mistake. There is nothing innocent about this erasure of the line between church and state. It is today’s crusade . It is fueled by righteousness and armed, and it has captured the apparatus of the federal government of the United States of America.
If you think that upcoming elections will somehow save the nation from those who are in charge today, think again. I believe they have a plan, and that plan leaves little room for their failure.
* https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text - First Amendment (ratified in 1791):
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.
*** https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-backed-faith-event-features-100629382.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall - “According to the event's website, it is meant to give ‘praise to God for 250 years of His Providence for the United States, in praying that God Bless and Protect America for the next 250 years, and in solemnly re-dedicating our country as One Nation under God.’"
**** The Second Amendment to the US Constitution has been routinely interpreted to include and ever-expanding litany of gun owner rights, often at the expense of public safety.
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text - Second Amendment (ratified in 1791):
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.