Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/090792/0907640.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 120 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 72

Why the Religious Right Is Wrong


By Barbara Ehrenreich


    That low moaning sound in the background just might be
the Founding Fathers protesting from beyond the grave. They
have been doing it ever since the Republicans announced a
"religious war" in the name of "traditional values." It grew
several decibels louder last week when George Bush, at a
breakfast of religious leaders, scorched the Democrats for
failing to mention God in their platform and declaimed that a
President needs to believe in the Almighty. What about the
constitutional ban on "religious test[s]" for public office?
the Founding Fathers would want to know. What about Tom
Jefferson's conviction that it is possible for a nonbeliever to
be a moral person, "find[ing] incitements to virtue in the
comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise"? Even George
Washington must shudder in his sleep to hear the constant
emphasis on "Judeo-Christian values." It was he who wrote, "We
have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land . . . every
person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own
heart."

    George Bush should know better than to encourage the
theocratic ambitions of the Christian right. He has claimed --
to much snide derision -- that when he was shot down during
World War II and lay floating in the Pacific for four hours, he
meditated on "God and faith and the separation of church and
state." But there could be no better themes for a patriot to
address in his final moments. The "wall of separation" the
Founding Fathers built between church and state is one of the
best defenses freedom has ever had. Or have we already forgotten
why the Founding Fathers put it up? They had seen enough
religious intolerance in the colonies: Quaker women were burned
at the stake in Puritan Massachusetts; Virginians could be
jailed for denying the Bible's authority. They knew Europe had
terribly disfigured itself in a religious war recalled now only
by its duration -- 30 years. No wonder John Adams once described
the Judeo-Christian tradition as "the most bloody religion that
ever existed," and that the Founding Fathers took such pains to
keep the hand that holds the musket separate from the one that
carries the cross.

    There was another reason for the separation of church and
state, which no amount of pious ranting can expunge: not all the
Founding Fathers believed in the same God, or in any God at all.
Yes, the Declaration of Independence refers to a deity, but
only in the most generic terms -- "Nature's God," the
"Creator," "Providence" -- calculated not to offend the doubters
and deists (who believed that God had designed the universe,
then left it to nature to run). Jefferson was a renowned
doubter, urging his nephew to "question with boldness even the
existence of a God." John Adams was at least a skeptic, as were
of course the revolutionary firebrands Tom Paine and Ethan
Allen. Naturally, they designed a republic in which they
themselves would have a place.

    For this, today's Republicans should be far more grateful
than they are. Abe Lincoln, the patriarch of their party, did
not, according to his law partner of 22 years, believe in a
personal God, and refused to join a church, stating "When you
show me a church based on the Golden Rule as its only creed,
then I will unite with it." Ulysses S. Grant, another
Republican, exhorted his countrymen to "Keep the church and
state forever separate" and strongly opposed the use of any
public money to support parochial schools -- as proposed in the
1992 Republican platform.

    Yet another reason argues for the separation of church and
state. If the Founding Fathers had one overarching aim, it was
to limit the power not of the churches but of the state. They
had seen the abuses of kings who claimed to rule with divine
approval, from Henry VIII, who arbitrarily declared himself head
of the Church of England, to the high-handed George III. They
were deeply concerned, as Adams wrote, that "government shall
be considered as having in it nothing more mysterious or divine
than other arts or sciences."

    The government the Founding Fathers designed could levy
taxes and raise an army, but it could not do these or any other
things in the name of a Higher Power. We salute our flag, not
kneel before it; we pay taxes, not tithes. By stripping
government of supernatural authority, the Founding Fathers
created a zone of freedom around each individual human
conscience -- or, for that matter, religious sect. They
demystified government and reduced it to something within reach
of human comprehension, protest and change. Surely the
Republicans, committed as they are to "limited government,"
ought to honor the secular spirit that has limited our
government from the moment of its birth.

    The same fear of governmental tyranny kept the Founding
Fathers from prescribing anything like "family values."
Homosexuality was not unknown 200 years ago; nor was abortion.
But these were matters, like religion, that the founders left
to individual conscience. If there was one thing they did
believe in, to a man, it was the power of the individual,
informed by reason, to decide things for him -- or her -- self.

    Over the years, there have been repeated efforts to invest
the U.S. government with the cachet of divine authority. "In
God We Trust" was first stamped on currency in the 1860s.
"Under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance during
the McCarthyist 1950s. George Bush campaigned in 1988 to have
the flag treated like a sacred object. And perhaps every
revolution is doomed to be betrayed, sooner or later, by its
progeny. It only adds insult to injury, though, when the
betrayal is dressed up in the guise of "traditional values."