I was just thinking about the confluence of two trends of religion in the public square: the banning of expressions of religion in public (e.g. Ten Commandments in courtrooms, Nativity creches on public property, etc.) and the accusation that a cleric telling a member of his flock who happens to be a politician that they are a poor adherent of the faith.
First, what exactly was the intent of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment? To protect religion from government interference or to protect government from religious interference? Obviously, the intent was the former, but we’ve come to the point where the courts say the latter.
Second, which is more dangerous to the democratic rule of law and our great republican form of government: religious belief or the myriad of other belief systems engaged in pressuring politicians to vote their way (e.g. Pro-abortion activists, radical leftists, strict libertarians, and so on)? In fact, isn’t religion actually an aid to democratic republican rule of law?
So why is that religious belief is singled out as a particularly pernicious danger? Why aren’t the courts telling schools to stop teaching Marxism or radical environmentalism? Why isn’t NOW told to stop pressuring politicians to vote the way they want them to, rather than “representing the will his constituents”?
Those who hold firm religious convictions are now protrayed by the elite secularists as akin to the slavering hordes battering at the gates of civilization, trying to drag us back in into the Dark Ages of ignorance and superstition. This is the culture war we are really facing, the one in which all the individual battles have their source.
Dom, you answered your own question: they (PP, NOW etc) are waging the war and are attacking and “we” are refusing to engage in active response and counterattack. Sorry for the martial tone, but that is the reality.
As someone said (I am pathetic for remembering sources of quotes) we should stop defending Christianity and should start assailing the world with it.
I am sure that all intelligent beings can translate the essence of the idea in non-bellicous terms.
It gets even crazier—and maybe this should be a different topic, I don’t know—when “Christian religions” pretend to be Christian Religions. I refer to the ad, rejected by CBS and NBC, created by the “United Church of Christ.” In it, faiths that condemn legitimizing homosexualty are flagrantly bashed. Fox, incredibly enough to me, accepted the ad.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/12/02/two_networks_bar_church_ad_welcoming_gays/
The “reasons” for rejecting the ad are wacky, to say the least.
In a letter to the denomination, a CBS official said, ‘‘Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations, and the fact that the Executive Branch [the Bush Administration] has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast.”
So, in essence, CBS puts the onus on the Bush administration for rejecting the ad, thereby turning a potentially piece of good judgment into nonsense.
Whenever I meet with secularists, atheists and agnostics, there is always a nervous undertone to their hostility and sarcasm against religion. Deep down, I sense that they are quite nervous that they, indeed, are wrong. But in order to maintain their facade of intellectual superiority against those of us among the Christian and devout Jewish hordes, they project their own intolerance against us.
What makes these folks both compulsively antagonistic and arrogant is their deep-rooted fear of God. When you scratch below the surface of their sophisticated personas, you’ll find quivering children. I wonder what their dreams are like?
Pity that they waste their lives on emptiness. More pitiable is that they want us to do the same.
RP Buke.
(1) What was the first Supreme Court decision which made the establishment clause into a de facto suppression of religious freedom?
(2) What part of “Congress shall make no law…” constrains the acts of any religious body?
“Whenever I meet with secularists, atheists and agnostics, there is always a nervous undertone to their hostility and sarcasm against religion. “
I have found this to be true with an athiest buddy of mine. He can be sarcastic at the same time there is a note of seriousness.
Oh they’re concerned about their salvation alright. My buddy joked about doing a death bed conversion…that was 2 mins before a business meeting. I barely had time to talk.
Somehow the message of Divine Mercy needs to get in there. They see it as hypocrisy…but they just need to take that little step.
Athiests have fear of God which is good but they also have some pride ,too, because when you are a Christian the slander follows ….and they cannot take that…(especially here in the Northeast….Mecca for Athiests.)
The history of the Catholic Faith is the history of the human race. They are the ignorant ones, caught up in the consumerist or political fads of the day.
A reply to Patrick Sweeney.
Here is a well-documented history that should answer your objections to my statement.
http://www.theology.edu/journal/volume2/ushistor.htm