My view of the presidential campaigning can be summed up very easily. The religious right, which does not represent most Americans, has been permitted by political parties to dominate the political debates for far too long. The Republican party has been running the most religion-permeated presidential campaign. Although I will admit that the Democrats are not innocent of this either.
We do not elect a Pastor in Chief. Our Constitution is expressly godless, separating government from religion. We need a reason-based, not a faith-based government. It's time for politicians to quit pandering and preaching, and concentrate on running a secular country.
If you are a Christian and don't agree with this, just put yourself in the shoes of a Jew or Muslim. How would you like it if you were made to feel that you were un-American because you do not live by the teachings of the Christian bible? Because this is how I as an atheist am often made to feel.
Here is a portion of a speech given by John F. Kennedy on Sept. 12 1960 to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers, on the issue of religion in politics. These are words we should all keep in mind.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
I would not look with favor upon a president working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test — even by indirection — for it. If they disagree with that safeguard, they should be out openly working to repeal it.
I want a chief executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none; who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him; and whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.
2 comments:
Nice post, Eric. If only we could live by that today. You know by now what we have to put up with here with Focus on the Family (James Dobson) and the like. It's amazing how they have the non-profit section that can't endorse political candidates and the for-profit section that can. There is such a fine line between the two that it's quite laughable (or not). And we get the Catholic priests who say that if you support someone who believes in the right to choose then you may not receive communion. Sounds like a political endorsement to me. We in Colorado are even going to have on the ballot this year a vote to declare that a fertilized egg is considered a person. I hope people are prepared to kiss their birth control pills goodbye if that passes because all you have to do is look up how they work to know that you could be "killing a person." Every time I see the anti-choice people picketing (which is often) with their pics meant to horrify I always want to go with a sign of my own that states "How many of you have adopted children from foster care?" If all the many anti-choice people out there adopted children, and I don't mean just the "perfect" kids, then maybe those poor kids being bounced around from foster home to foster home wouldn't have to suffer. I know some people do this but not many. Okay, you didn't want to discuss it but I needed to vent. Thanks.
Thanks for the post Barb! And I completely agree with you. You get the point exactly as to why I am fired up about these religious tests for office that the candidates are going right along with.
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