Warnings:
1. This post is quite long. Pee first, maybe get something to eat.
2. This post is an opinion piece, and may ebb a little more progressive than you're used to (because I'm just not your typical Conservative Christian) but I hope you'll hang with me 'til the end before formulating a scathing new opinion of me and my kooky politics ;]
US District Court Judge Barbara Crabb recently handed down a ruling stating that government sponsored prayer, ie. The National Day of Prayer, violates the Constitution. On the surface, I am as appalled as anyone, mainly because that’s simply not true. But I believe that this entire upheaval speaks to a deeper issue in this country that is worth addressing.
For now, let’s start with the basics. Why should anyone be upset about a government-endorsed National Day of Prayer? There’s no good reason, really.
First of all, acknowledging a National Day of Prayer does not endorse any one particular religion. We’re all welcome to pray to whomever we choose – it’s the not the “National Day of Prayer to the God of the Judeo-Christian Tradition”. Perhaps they’re abstractly promoting “spirituality” or “faith” in a general sense by encouraging prayer, but it’s quite a stretch to call that a Constitutional violation, and it certainly is not discriminatory against non-theists.
Second of all, the government’s endorsement of a holiday does not mandate any individual’s participation in said holiday. Every citizen maintains his or her freedom to completely disregard ANY holiday they choose, on any given day of the year. We are all free to choose NOT to pray at all on the National Day of Prayer! The government endorses a lot of holidays, and a lot of people for whom those holidays don’t mean much SIMPLY IGNORE THEM. If Presidents’ Day means nothing to you, you don’t even have to acknowledge it except to enjoy your paid day off of work if you’re on a government holiday schedule. Simple as that. If it irritates you, pretend it didn’t even happen. The bottom line is, no one is grabbing your hand and thrusting you into a prayer circle – just go about your business, people!
You know, I’ve never met a Jewish person who was personally offended at the government’s recognition of Christmas as a holiday. Perhaps you have met such an individual, but have you ever seen a coalition of Jewish people file a lawsuit and spark a media frenzy over it? NO! Do you know why? Because they just choose not to celebrate Christmas. And I’d venture to say that that Christmas is a much larger inconvenience to Jews than the National Day of Prayer is to non-theists, what with the mall traffic, school closings, and all that Christmas music playing everywhere you go for three months. Of course I don’t mean to be cheeky about Christmas itself, but practically speaking, am I right or am I right?
The main point of contention for the non-theists, as best I can tell, is based in the apparent “evolution” of our country toward a far more secular state of affairs than ever before in its history. Given this secularization, they apparently perceive such “official” acknowledgements of prayer and spirituality along a continuum from simply antiquated to outright discriminatory. It seems that they would prefer it if our government failed to recognize or address religion at all in any official capacity, as if we should just let the religious roots of our history slowly fall by the wayside until they’ve been long forgotten. Somehow “progress” should be gradually pushing religion “out of vogue”.
I disagree with them for two reasons; (1) religion is and always will be a majority sentiment – it’s not going anywhere anytime soon; and (2) Our history is important and it has already been written – it is what it is – and simply recognizing the religious component of that history should never be considered “unconstitutional”. That’s just baloney.
That said, I think that there’s more to this story and that there is a valid broader message to be gleaned from this upheaval amongst non-theists. This is the part where I start losing friends along the other end of the political spectrum and am left with… well, no friends. But I hope you’ll hear me out. While I certainly believe that the government’s promotion of “spirituality” and recognition of the Christian roots of our country’s founding are entirely defensible, there is a larger movement out there that seeks to broaden the influence of those “Christian roots” in government. And that, my friends, is where the non-theists have a point.
I believe that it is our Constitutional freedoms that set America apart and make us who we are as a nation, and that includes Freedom of Religion. I will never refer to America as a “Christian Nation” because I believe that that statement undermines those very freedoms that give me such pride in my country. The fact that our founding fathers were of Judeo-Christian faith themselves does not make us an intrinsically “Christian Nation”, in my humble opinion. In fact, I’ll even venture to say that the founding fathers just might agree with me, given the literal blood, sweat and tears that they poured into securing that very Freedom (of Religion) that we enjoy today. The American Revolution wasn’t about establishing a “Christian Nation”, it was about establishing a nation in which any religion (or lack thereof) could be practiced freely without threat of imprisonment or worse – where all citizens would be afforded “certain unalienable rights” without discrimination.
I certainly won’t deny that the God of the Constitution was intended as the Judeo-Christian God, but I simply don’t accept the idea that this fact somehow trumps the clear intent of the founding fathers to ensure equality of all religions under the law. I believe that this is where Conservative politics have steered our country wrong. The non-theists do not necessarily feel threatened by the National Day of Prayer itself, but rather the larger “Christianization” of our nation that it represents to them. Their response to this specific issue is a backlash against the larger Conservative agenda. The National Day of Prayer has never been a problem (on this scale) in the past. It has become a problem because non-Christians in our country are beginning to feel that their way of life is being threatened.
Let’s be a little more concrete about this. I am all for the criminalization of abortion, for example, but I am not “for” any law that is based purely on Biblical teachings. Yes, I’m serious. I am a Christian (and so I choose to live my life by Biblical teachings) but I live in a country that does not legislate based purely on religious principles, because our forefathers fought and died to ensure that our freedom to practice any religion that we choose would be upheld. Sure, many laws happen to coincide with a variety of religious teachings which is just fine and dandy, but legislation based purely on the teachings of any religion is unconstitutional in my book. I am for the legal criminalization of abortion because I believe that abortion constitutes infanticide, which is already a crime in this country. I believe that, scientifically, the definition of “life” (and in turn the spectrum of what constitutes murder) as beginning at any point other than conception is a bogus and arbitrary definition, and I believe that any legislation concerning abortion should be based in that reality – not on Biblical teachings, dear as those may be to my own heart.
But it’s not about what’s dear to my heart – that’s not how America works. The beauty of how America does work, so long as the Constitution is upheld, is that no matter what the religious majority may become in the future, the rest of us will never be forced to live our lives by its teachings. Just as we Christians would be appalled if Muslims became the majority and forced us to stop and pray toward Mecca on a daily basis, Muslim Americans (or Hindu Americans, or Buddhist Americans, or Non-theist Americans) should be appalled at the prospect of any purely “Christian” teaching being forced upon them as law. An American citizen is an American citizen, like it or not, and being a Judeo-Christian Anglo-Saxon white person doesn’t afford me any extra right to legislate my personal religious beliefs – I don’t get to claim any more “ownership” of this country than anyone else, because we are a country of immigrants. That’s just our reality (again, like it or not).
The point that I’m trying to make is this: Just as many Conservatives are in a state of backlash and upheaval over what they perceive as a new set of ideals being forced upon them by a new administration of which they do not approve, non-theists feel similarly toward the Conservative Christian movement. They feel that their Constitutional right to live their lives outside the scope of religious influence (as far as the law is concerned) is being threatened, not by the National Day of Prayer itself, but by the larger movement that it represents.
In my opinion, they have a point. I see our country headed in that direction if the Conservatives regain power, and while the ensuing course of events might appease my personal Christian values in many ways, it saddens my heart as an American. Of course my Christian values come first in my own life, but those values should NOT be imposed on any non-Christian American. Selfishly invoking our majority status to impose our beliefs is not the way to win others for Christ, it’s just a way to get what we want, and what we think is best. Given the Constitutional provision against religious influence of that nature, that simply is not the Constitutional way to govern.
No comments:
Post a Comment