Thoughts in a Haystack

Ed Brayton, at Dispatches From the Culture Wars, takes Maggie Gallagher of National Review to task over her defense of opposition to gay marriage. In particular, Gallagher tries to avoid the comparison between resistance to gay marriage and anti-miscegenation laws:

Same-sex marriage is quite different from bans on interracial marriage in one powerful respect: It asks religious Americans to surrender a core belief -- not only Leviticus (disapproval of gay sexual acts), but Genesis (the idea that God himself made man as male and female and commanded men and women to come together in a special way to image the fruitfulness of God).

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Labels: Blog Against Theocracy

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:42 AM 3 comments

This is something I've posed before but it is so appropriate for this Blog Against Theocracy weekend that it's worth posting again. It is the 10 Commandments of the Establishment Clause taken, with only slight modification, from Justice Hugo Black's decision in Everson v. Board of Education, the case that has been convincingly said to be the event that kicked off the Culture Wars. Justice Black's eloquent explanation of what the Establishment Clause means is an excellent line to draw against theocrats. So here, fully suitable for placement in government offices and courts, are the:

10 Commandments of the Separation of Church and State:

1. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church.

2. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.

3. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will.

4. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can force a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.

5. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs.

6. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious disbeliefs.

7. No person can be punished for church attendance or non-attendance.

8. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.

9. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups.

10. No religious organizations or groups can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of a state or the Federal Government..

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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 8:26 AM 0 comments

Who better to hear from this Blog Against Theocracy weekend than James Madison? Thomas Jefferson had drafted The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1779, though it was not enacted then. In 1785, Patrick Henry lead an effort in the General Assembly of Virginia to pass a bill that would have assessed all the citizens of Virginia to support religious teachers from a limited number of Christian sects. Madison wrote his influential "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" in opposition to Henry's bill. A few months later the General Assembly passed Jefferson's religious freedom bill. Madison's words can still stir:

If "all men are by nature equally free and independent," all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an "equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience." Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered. ...

Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world by vain attempts of the secular arm to extinguish religious discord by proscribing all difference in religious opinions. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried, has been found to assuage the disease. The American theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and complete liberty, if it does not wholly eradicate it, sufficiently destroys its malignant influence on the health and prosperity of the State.

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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:03 PM 0 comments

I thought I'd warm up for the Blog Against Theocracy weekend which, coincidentally I'm sure, happens to be Easter weekend this year. If you want to participate in Blog Against Theocracy, you can find the details here (along with the cool logo) and the form for submitting your entries here. Now to the present tale:

persistent

ADJECTIVE: 1. Refusing to give up or let go; persevering obstinately. 2. Insistently repetitive or continuous: a persistent ringing of the telephone. 3. Existing or remaining in the same state for an indefinitely long time; enduring: persistent rumors; a persistent infection. 4. Botany Lasting past maturity without falling off, as the calyx on an eggplant or the scales of a pine cone. 5. Zoology Retained permanently, rather than disappearing in an early stage of development: the persistent gills of fishes.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Sometimes persistence can be an admirable trait. Other times it can be the hallmark of a deep stupidity. I'll let you judge which category this falls into: "Slow Learners: ACLU Sues Louisiana School Board – Again" by Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

There are certain things you can count on. The sun will rise in the east and set in the west. Old Faithful will erupt. And, every few years, the American Civil Liberties Union will sue the Tangipahoa Parish School Board in Louisiana.

The members of this board seem to be having difficulty grasping the concept of separation of church and state.

The last time I looked at this particular bastion of anti-American disregard of our Constitution, they had racked up five suits by the ACLU, all of which they lost or had to settle. That I have not been vigilant is demonstrated by the fact that a new lawsuit marks the seventh time the ACLU has taken the Tangipahoa board to court:

This time, the issue is prayer before board meetings. In August 2007, the board adopted a policy stating that clergy from "religious congregations with an established presence in the local community" will be invited to give invocations prior to school board meetings. The board president gets to decide who makes the cut, essentially giving him veto power over the prayers.

"Yet again the Tangipahoa Parish School Board has indicated that it favors some residents over others, and would rather waste taxpayer money on litigation than follow the law," Marjorie R. Esman, Executive Director of the ACLU Foundation of Louisiana, said in a press release. "The Constitution does not permit school boards to endorse or promote religion, because the government must remain neutral to religion. The Tangipahoa Parish School Board is well aware of this bedrock legal principle, but chooses to flout the law rather than to obey it."

You know that wall conservatives are so anxious to build along our border with Mexico? If the folks in Tangipahoa Parish are so dissatisfied with American law, maybe we could arrange a little detour around the place.
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Labels: Blog Against Theocracy

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:14 AM 3 comments

How about some spine-chilling fireworks for this Fourth of July?

Not the gunpowder and sparkler kind but the sort where hypocrisy explodes a shell of pretense and reveals white-hot ... I can think of no other word for it ... evil.

The theocracy-in-waiting that was the Bush Administration in better days expended no little effort on pushing the notion of "abstinence only" sex education. Among the people it turned to was Pam Stenzel, whose "expertise" in the area was founded on a psychology degree from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. She was appointed to a twelve-person task force at the Department of Health and Human Services to study how to implement abstinence education guidelines, had been invited to the White House and spoken at the United Nations. In other words, she was not some fringe personality (at least by Bush Administration standards) but was someone near to the levers and gears of Federal education policy.

Shift scenes to the 2003 Reclaiming America for Christ conference, hosted by D. James Kennedy, who is a theocrat's theocrat, of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. At these conferences, the attendees do such things as Pledge Allegiance to the Christian Flag (white with a blue field in the upper left corner with a red or gold cross). These conferences are, as Michelle Goldberg writes in her book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, the place "where the Christian nationalist movement drops its democratic pretenses and indulges its theocratic dreams."

Goldberg recounts Stenzel's appearance before the faithful:

... Stenzel told her audience about a conversation she'd had with a skeptical businessman on an airplane. The man had asked about abstinence education's success rate --a question she regarded as risible. "What he's asking," she said, "is does it work. You know what! Doesn't matter. Cause guess what. My job is not to keep teenagers from having sex. The public schools' job should not be to keep teens from having sex."

Then her voice rose and turned angry as she shouted, "Our job should be to tell kids the truth!"

"People of God:' she cried, "can I beg you, to commit yourself to truth, not what works! To truth! I don't care if it works, because at the end of the day I'm not answering to you, I'm answering to God!"

Later in the same talk, she explained further why what "works" isn't what's important -- and gave some insight into what she means by "truth." "Let me tell you something, people of God, that is radical, and I can only say it here:' she said. "AIDS is not the enemy. HPV [Human Papilloma Virus] and a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy. An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy. My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy. I will not teach my child that they can sin safely."

The crowd applauded.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Stenzel cares less about her own daughter's health and well being than she does theology. It matters not a whit to her that what she is preaching is sure to put her own child at greater risk of disease and premature death! She must first serve her unbending vengeful God ... like Abraham with his knife poised over Isaac ... but with no angel to stay her hand at the last moment.

Which is bad enough and evil enough ... but she wants to do it to your child, too.

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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:32 AM 3 comments

As previously noted, the ACLU was threatening to sue Slidell, Louisiana because a portrait of Christ holding an open Bible above the words "To Know Peace, Obey These Laws" was hanging in the City Court building.

The ACLU has now filed the suit. The City Court judge, James Lamz, consulted with a Constitutional law expert before refusing to remove the painting:

Douglas Laycock, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who has argued before the Supreme Court.

Laycock said he told Lamz that the legal issues in the case aren't clear-cut and could set legal precedent.

"I don't know how far the two sides will want to push things," Laycock added.

I expect that the advice was based on the change in the composition of the Supreme Court and the fact that Justice Kennedy is now the "swing vote" between the conservative and the moderate (not "liberal" in my book) wings of the Court. In the most recent case about religious displays on public property, McCreary County v. ACLU, Justice Kennedy joined in only part of Justice Scalia's dissent, indicating that he would not agree to do away with the Lemon test, particularly it's "purpose prong," altogether but neither would he go along with the most expansive version of Justice O'Connor's "objective observer" test. Just where Kennedy will come down between those two positions is uncertain.

On the other hand, the case in Slidell is rather blatant, with none of the "balancing" factors present in McCreary, where the 10 Commandments were joined by framed copies of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner, the Mayflower Compact, the National Motto, the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, and a picture of Lady Justice (the majority in McCreary found these items, only added later, were, in effect, a sham).

Quite aside from that, during this Blog Against Theocracy period, is the good townfolks' defense of this display. For example, Slidell Mayor Ben Morris claims the ACLU is an "American Taliban" out to "destroy our culture and heritage."

Now where have I heard that before? Oh, I know ... the equally good folks of Georgetown, Delaware. When Jewish parents there objected to Christian prayers at the public school graduation of their daughter, a local talk show host accused them of "interfering with our traditions ... interfering with our faith."

Included in those "traditions" was one of the local "faithful" telling the mother at a public school board meeting, after her son read a statement saying "I feel bad when kids in my class call me 'Jew boy,'" that:

If you want people to stop calling him 'Jew boy,' you tell him to give his heart to Jesus.

That's part of the "culture" I have no problem trying to destroy.
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Update: There is word from Professor Laycock through Professor Peter Irons about his actual advice to Judge Lamz. He told the judge "that with the split decision in the Ten Commandment cases and Roberts and Alito added to the Court and Kennedy all over the map, if they litigated it, it could come out either way, and that's what he chose to run with. It's left me looking a bit like the village idiot."

Don't feel so bad Professor! The reasonably knowledgeable crowd knows the village better than that.
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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 6:42 PM 0 comments

This is something I blogged before but which deserves a repeat during this Blog Against Theocracy period.

North is best known to Internet users for his prolific auguring that a Y2K computer bug would cause the calamitous end of civilization. In the days prior to the advent of this millennium, North urged subscribers to his delusional economic newsletters to go survivalist and prepare for the end. Many did so, dumping investments and life savings, a big oops.

"I lost a million and a half dollars when I sold off real estate," one of North's fans, a home-schooling advocate from Florida, told me during a lunch break between lectures touting creationism and damning secular humanism. But my lunch companion still anted more than pocket change to hear North make more prophesies in Toccoa. "I believe Gary North on Bible issues," he explained. ...

"I don't want to capture their (mainstream Americans') system. I want to replace it," fumed North to a cheering audience. North has called for the stoning of gays and nonbelievers (rocks are cheap and plentiful, he has observed). Both friends and foes label him "Scary Gary."

I don’t recall ever gleaning this concept of theocracy in any systematic way. Clarkson is referring more to the sensationalism of Dr. Gary North (a.k.a. "Scary Gary") rather than any single book. North admitted to using inflammatory rhetoric intentionally as a means of drawing critics out into a direct debate with Christian Reconstructionists. It is not my intent to defend the work of Gary North, but one need only refer to the long-standing division between North and Rushdoony to understand that there is hardly a monolithic agreement between Reconstructionists. ...

Without reading the full breadth of Reconstructionist literature, such isolated citations lose their context. For example, when Gary North questions the rightness of the Constitution, he is in no way organizing a coup to overturn it. More often than not, he believes it will be a very long time before Americans would ever return to a national covenant as modeled by the early American Puritans. What is central to understand about North’s perspective is that any constitutional or institutional transition is contingent upon the vast majority of Americans embracing a Reconstructionist theology.

... What do secularists mean when they say "democracy"? ...

If by democracy the secularists mean supporting gay marriage and public schools and that politicians cannot vote their faith, then yes, we theocrats would be opposed to that hijacked version of democracy. But that is not democracy -- democracy is not socialism. ...

Secularists will often engage in revisionism by suggesting that early American morality was shaped more by the Enlightenment and Greco-Roman social theory than Biblical law. ...

Why then did all states codify sodomy laws? They did it because of the direct influence of Biblical law on early America. ... The Supreme Court is only empowered to adjudicate in cases involving public leaders, maritime jurisdiction, and controversies between the states or between citizens of each state (Article III, Section 1). These are all matters of procedural law. These are all constitutional matters.

Sodomy laws are not procedural -- or constitutional -- matters. These are issues of substantive moral law that are derived from other sources than the Constitution. In most cases, the moral laws of individual states were based upon Biblical law.

Moral civil laws can certainly change, but only by the decision of the citizens of each state and their representative leadership. The cultural battle is an ethical conflict, not a constitutional conflict. Christians have every right to elect leaders that will rule in terms of Biblical law. Secularists have equal right to elect leaders that will seek to overturn Biblically reflective laws. That is the democratic process. That is what’s being denied to contemporary conservative Christians. Any involvement in the political process to push forward a Christian moral agenda is labeled as "dominionist" and a push toward theocracy.

George Grant, former executive director of D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries, wrote in his book The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action:

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.

But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish.

We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less...

Labels: Blog Against Theocracy

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 5:35 PM 0 comments

Judge Jim Lamz of the Slidell Louisiana City Court has now decided that he will not accede to the demands of the ACLU and order the removal of a 16th century Russian Orthodox icon called "Christ the Savior," that has a plaque below it reading "To Know Peace, Obey These Laws," that is hung high on a wall in the lobby of the court.

In addition to the plaque, the figure of Christ is holding an open book where is shown quotations from John 7:24 ("Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.") and Matthew 7:2 ("For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again").

Court officials have not yet determined who hung the picture or why but apparently one defense will be that it is an appropriate display of sources of civil concepts of justice:

A local Orthodox priest said the quotations are appropriate for a place of justice.

"The writing on those books (Jesus) is holding is about judging rightly," said the Rev. John Vieages of the Holy Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church of America, who holds services at his bookstore on First Street in Olde Towne Slidell. "It really does fit into a courtroom. Whoever put that there was well aware of what the writing meant."

That might be true if the icon was part of a display of numerous such sources, both religious and secular, but as the ACLU pointed out:

Whether the quotations are relevant to the business of a court has nothing to do with whether the display is legal, said Katie Schwartzmann, staff attorney of the Louisiana chapter of the ACLU. "It's a clear constitutional violation," she said Saturday, echoing her original letter to the court.

The ACLU's one-page letter to City Court Clerk Susan Ordoyne said the display "clearly gives the impression that only believers in the law of Jesus Christ will receive justice in that courthouse."

The local reaction is as expected:

Mayor Ben Morris said he was ready to fight. "I fight daily with FEMA for the recovery of our city, and now we must fight with these tyrants, this American Taliban who seek to destroy our culture and our heritage," he said.

Typically, the accused accuses the accuser of the very thing they are accused of. The ACLU is the Taliban for trying to stop this government from forcing one peculiar set of beliefs down everyone else's throats. And the beliefs must be peculiar, in all senses of the word, given how bizarre that "reasoning" is.

For the sake of the taxpayers of Slidell, let's hope that rationality returns to the city before they pay the price that Dover, Pennsylvania did.


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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

A good start against theocracy is a reminder of the sort of theology that lends itself to political dominance. Unthinking acceptance of sacred texts is de rigeur to initiate a theocracy. While many religions have the will to dominion, here in America it is a certain type of Christianity that threatens the secular pillars laid down by the Founders.

And there is no better corrosive against wooden literal readings of Genesis than the humanism of Mark Twain. The following is from "Passage From Satan's Diary," picking up as Eve has taken the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge:

Poor ignorant things, the command to refrain had meant nothing to them, they were but children, and could not understand untried things and verbal abstractions which stood for matters outside of their little world and their narrow experience. Eve reached for an apple! -- oh, farewell, Eden ...

It was pitiful. She was like one who wakens slow and confusedly out of a sleep. She gazed half-vacantly at me, then at Adam, holding her curtaining fleece of golden hair back with her hand, then her wandering glance fell upon her naked person. The red blood mounted to her cheek, and she sprang behind a bush and stood there crying, and saying --

"Oh, my modesty is lost to me - my unoffending form is become a shame to me -- my mind was pure and clean; for the first time it is soiled with a filthy thought!" She moaned and muttered in her pain, and drooped her head, saying, "I am degraded -- I have fallen, oh so low, and I shall never rise again."

Adam's eyes were fixed upon her in a dreamy amazement, he could not understand what had happened, it being outside his world as yet, and her words having no meaning for one void of the Moral Sense. And now his wonder grew: for, unknown to Eve, her hundred years rose upon her, and faded the heaven of her eyes and the tints of her young flesh, and touched her hair with gray, and traced faint sprays of wrinkles about her mouth and eyes, and shrunk her form, and dulled the satin lustre of her skin.

All this the fair boy saw: then loyally and bravely he took the apple and tasted it, saying nothing.

The change came upon him also. Then he gathered boughs for both and clothed their nakedness, and they turned and went their way, hand in hand and bent with age, and so passed from sight.

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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:59 PM 5 comments

As Ed Brayton has correctly warned on this Blog Against Theocracy weekend, we should avoid simplistic over-generalizing. To be against theocracy is not to be against religion. And not every person who supports what Ed describes as "non-coercive public propping up of religious belief" is a theocrat.

However, our American Constitution, for good or ill, has a particular, some would say peculiar, scheme for protecting against theocracy. You don't have to be a theocrat yourself to advocate actions that threaten that scheme. It follows, then, that fighting against the nibbling at the edges of our protections is a fight against theocracy, even when it is not against theocrats.

Speaking of nibblers, David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute is out with an opinion piece that is a fine example of the problem:

While the American cultural landscape includes many religions, it's still fascinating to watch closely when we have the chance to observe a new faith being born. Consider, for example, a religious phenomenon that has been dubbed the "new atheism," prominently represented by some bestselling books.

Calling a disbelief in God "religious," Klinghoffer goes on to make the not-so-suble trope of calling Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation "atheist gospels."

He complains about how "influential" atheism has become, citing to an article on the study of scientific evidence for the evolution of religious sensibilities that didn't take into account the "possibility that it developed in response to a living God." Naturally, being an article about science, which cannot say anything about gods, living or otherwise, such a mention would be merely paying cheap lip service to God that any intelligent believer would likely find offensive. Certainly, given that the Discovery Institute keeps denying that Intelligent Design is about God, they wouldn't be in favor of mixing science and religion ... right?

Klinghoffer's real aim, of course, is to identify science, particularly "Darwinism," with atheism:

The new religion has a scientific appeal, with orthodox evolutionary theory recruited to provide a rationalistic "proof" for atheist teaching. For this reason, Oxford University biologist Dawkins devotes the "central argument of [his] book" to an attempted refutation of intelligent design (ID), the alternative to neo-Darwinian evolution that has been spearheaded by Seattle's Discovery Institute (where I work).

Unfortunately, Dawkins does not grapple with the latest arguments for intelligent design as formulated by their chief proponents. Harris is similarly preoccupied by ID, which evidently provoked the new atheism's present evangelistic push.

Darwinism, of course, is hardly new. The novelty here lies in the new faith's missionary fervor. Dawkins writes explicitly about making "converts."

Blurring the lines between religion and theology (or beliefs about religion and theology, such as those Dawkins holds) on the one hand and science on the other is the raison d'etre of ID. As Judge Jones, a conservative Republican and devout Christian, found after an extensive trial, "ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."

The part about Dawkins and others not having grappled with "the latest arguments for intelligent design" is hooey. As I've noted before, ID "arguments" are nothing more than argumentum ad ignorantium layered over what Judge Jones rightly called a "contrived dualism." Their arguments all boil down to 'we don't know how this or that attribute of life could have evolved, therefore it must have been created by God.'

As Edward J. Larson pointed out in his book, Evolution (p. 19-20), Georges Cuvier was arguing against evolution (then called "transmutation"), in the 1790s, based on the "irreducible complexity" of the traits of organisms. The only "new" thing that Michael Behe did was to take Cuvier's already disproven argument from the macro world of the interdependency of bone and teeth and eyes and move it to the micro world of blood cascades, flagellum and the like. The only positive "evidence" that has been offered on ID's behalf is an analogy to human artifacts, such as the claim that DNA is like a computer program. In other words, they can do no better than William Paley's watch analogy that Kant was demolishing even before Paley uttered it. Far from being new arguments, ID is barely warmed over Natural Theology.

The rest of Klinghoffer's screed, consciously or not, reveals the real purposes of the Discovery Institute. Alleging that "God gives objective definition to our ideas of right and wrong, crucial for civilization" and "an atheist society [can] not survive," Klinghoffer demonstrates that ID is part of a political agenda that would put the state in service of supporting religion against "atheism," the definition of which is manipulated to include everything secular, such as science, that is not willing or is not able to serve one particular group's belief in "a living God."

Theocracy or not, that's close enough to be worth fighting.

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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:37 AM 6 comments

The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson, was the likely inspiration for the inclusion of the Establishment clause in the First Amendment. The Act contains a most interesting preamble. It suffers a bit from the habit we in the legal trade have of sayingitallatonceinonesentence, so I have broken it up a little to make it, I hope, easier to understand.

It begins with an invocation of divinely given freedom of conscience:

Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do ...

Jefferson's discussion of the Act in his Autobiography helps in an understanding of this passage. After noting that the opposition that there was to the Act was overcome through "some mutilations in the preamble," Jefferson notes:

Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.

Thus the "great majority" of the best men of Virginia, the largest and most influential of the states, did not consider this a "Christian nation." Returning to the Act:

... that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time ...

Here the Act is in the process of managing the neat trick of not only denying the state the power to force any religion on its citizens, but, at the same time, having the state declare that it is impious to even attempt to do so. As noted by Jefferson, the rejection of the amendment clearly showed that these legislators, at least, understood that Christianity stands equally among the possible "false religions" of the world.

Next follows a list of the evils of enforced religion that are, presumptively, forbidden to the state by the Act:

... to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves ...

... even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion ...

... the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion ...

... to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency ...

At the end of the list of evils comes this statement of the Enlightenment sensibilities of the authors of the Act:

... truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, ... she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition [she is] disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate ...

Then comes the actual proscription of the Act:

[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Jefferson, prescient as always, knew that there would be small minds snapping at the heels of any freedom. He ended his proposal with these words:

And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right.

There are few better statements against theocracy than this. I'm proud to be an infidel and to include every denomination within my scorn of doctrine. That may not be quite what Jefferson meant, but I do not doubt, if he were here, that his sympathies ... and his best efforts to secure everyone's freedom to believe or not as they choose ... would be on my side. .
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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:09 AM 0 comments

For this Blog Against Theocracy weekend there is little that could be better than this list of Establishment Clause Commandments taken, with only slight modification, from Justice Hugo Black's decision in Everson v. Board of Education, the case that has been convincingly said to be the event that kicked off the Culture Wars. Justice Black's eloquent explanation of what the Establishment Clause means is an excellent line to draw against theocrats. So here, fully suitable for placement in government offices and courts, are the:

10 Commandments of the Separation of Church and State:

1. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church.

2. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.

3. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will.

4. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can force a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.

5. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs.

6. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious disbeliefs.

7. No person can be punished for church attendance or non-attendance.

8. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.

9. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups.

10. No religious organizations or groups can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of a state or the Federal Government..

Labels: Blog Against Theocracy

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:30 PM 0 comments

Here is a post from the past that is very appropriate for Blog Against Theocracy weekend:

We must remove all humanists from public office and replace them with pro-moral political leaders. - Tim LaHaye, author of the "Left Behind" series of books

Time for another scary bit from Michelle Goldberg's book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, this time taken from an excerpt appearing at Salon.com.

In this section, she gives some of the history of "Dominion theology," which first arose out of the "Christian Reconstructionism" movement championed by the late Rousas John (R. J.) Rushdoony and his son-in-law, Gary North. Rushdoony advocated the replacement of all civil law with "biblical law," based on such strictures as the punishments set forth in Leviticus 20. Furthermore, he held that democracy is a both a heresy and "the great love of the failures and cowards of life."

Reconstructionism is "postmillennial," which is a view of eschatology (the theology of the "end times") that holds that the Second Coming of Christ won't occur until after a thousand year reign of the Kingdom of God by his servants on Earth. Naturally, this makes it incumbent on a believer to help bring about such a kingdom. Most American evangelicals, however, are premillennialists, a position that tended in the past to result in some measure of apathy because the timing is all God's choice and, at least in some versions, the believers are "taken up" in the "Rapture" so they even miss the seven years "Tribulation" before the establishment of the Kingdom.

Francis Schaeffer, the American founder of L'Abri, a Christian community in Switzerland, has been influential in creating the view that modern history is to be understood as a battle between the "worldviews" of Christians and "materialists." Drawing on Rushdoony's ideas, he wrote in his 1981 book, A Christian Manifesto, after warning about wrapping Christianity in American patriotism:

None of this, however, changes the fact that the United States was founded upon a Christian consensus, nor that we today should bring Judeo-Christian principles into play in regard to government.

Schaeffer was an early leader of the antiabortion movement among evangelicals and came out in favor of civil disobedience and even the use of force to end it, though he isn't a theocrat himself.

Thus, by mostly different routes, premillennialists and postmillennialists came to share the goal of dominion over the civil state and began to make alliances. One of these, the Coalition on Revival, brought together Rushdoony, North, creationist Duane Gish, D. James Kennedy, Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association and the above-mentioned LaHaye. Other familiar names associated with the movement are David Limbaugh (Rush's brother), former sitcom star Kirk Cameron, Chuck Colson and Tom DeLay. Howard Ahmanson, savings and loan heir and major funder of the Discovery Institute, the primary advocate for the Intelligent Design movement, has also been linked to Christian Reconstructionism.

The Right has come to learn the value of victimhood, as recently set out in the essay, "Right-Wing P.C.: How conservatives learned to stop worrying and love political correctness," by Jesse Walker. The Christian nationalists have absorbed the lesson too, resulting in the many claims of anti-Christian persecution we have heard of late, even if they ring hollow in a country where at least 76% of the populace identifies itself as Christian. Of course, many of those might discover, if the Christian nationalists get their way, that the nationalists' definition is different than theirs.

Just in case anyone might miss their real agenda, however, George Grant, former executive director of D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries, wrote in his book The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action:

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.

But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less...

Sleep tight.
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Oh, and you might want to visit First Freedom First.

Labels: Blog Against Theocracy

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 6:09 AM 1 comments

Someone by the name of Jim Hinckley has somehow gotten something called the Kingman (Arizona) Daily Miner, which is proudly billed as "Kingman's Only Daily Newspaper" (my sympathies to the people of Kingman), to publish his opinions on matters scientific, political and religious as if he actually knew anything about those subjects. It is close to being acceptance of money under false pretenses.

It seems, from the faint smell of scalded cat that emanates from his latest column, that the reaction to Mr. Hinckley's prior column about evolution was less than favorable. You can see the prior "effort" here and need no more commentary than what is provided by talk.origin's Gary Hurd in the comments section. Even Silas Stillwater, who went to the "defense" of Mr. Hinckley (and who merrily proceeded to quote mine Colin Patterson as a defense against quote mining) has to concede, clearly referring to Mr. Hinckley, "creationists make some of the worst arguments imaginable … [e]ven embarrassing."

(Gary responded to Mr. Stillwater but either Mr. Hinckley or the paper did not deign to post that response. Fortunately, you can read it here.)
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How would a society feel if laws were based on public opinion rather than the rule of law based on truth? If the government grants laws, could not that same government rescind those rights?

Labels: Blog Against Theocracy

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 1:38 PM 3 comments