Catholic Theocracy

At first, I thought this video -- which calls for restricting the vote to faithful Catholics and installing a Catholic monarch -- must be satire. However, Real Catholic TV is genuine. Watch it for yourself... and be amazed.



Notably, Real Catholic TV posted a non-clarifying clarification here.

Quite often, I've heard from my fellow atheists that talk of theocracy in America is absurd. Is it? I think not, and here's why:

• Much grassroots political activism is driven by religious dogma today, as we've seen up close and personal in Colorado. For example, every group pushing for Colorado's "personhood" amendment is deeply religious: Colorado Right to Life "commits to never compromise on God’s law, 'Do not murder.'" Personhood USA seeks to "honor the Lord Jesus Christ with our lives and actions," and they do so by acting as "missionaries to preborn children."
  
• Fundamentalist Christians and their mouthpieces like the American Family Association claim that America was founded as a Christian nation and that the Bible is the foundation for our laws. They do that, even though the Constitution is a thoroughly secular document, even though the 1797 Treaty with Tropoli denied that the US was a Christian nation, and so on. Their strategy of evasion seems to be effective. A 2007 USA Today article reports that "55% [of Americans] believe erroneously that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation." (75% of evangelicals and Republicans thought so.)
  
• A slew of well-funded and deeply-motivated Christian groups actively seek to reform America's laws in keeping with the will of God. So the basic mission of Concerned Women for America, for example, is to "bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy."

So should we dismiss a call for Catholic theocracy as too looney to take seriously? I think not. For too many Christians, the only problem with it is that the culture must be forced to be thoroughly Christian too... oh, and they would vastly prefer their sect to be in power. That's hardly comforting.

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Christian Indoctrination in America's Military

I heard about this disturbing case via the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Here's part of the initial report posted to Truthout:

Pvt. Anthony Smith is the type of guy who stands up for what he believes in. That's why he decided to hold his commanding officers accountable for punishing him and fellow soldiers after they refused to attend an evangelical Christian rock concert at the Fort Eustis military post in Virginia.

After a day of training at Fort Eustis, Smith and other trainees were normally released to have personal time, but on May 13, Smith and dozens of others were "required" to march in formation to a concert headlined by an evangelical Christian rock band. Smith spent six months training at Fort Eustis before moving to Arizona to serve on active duty with the National Guard.

"No option was presented to us off the bat," Smith told Truthout about the required concert.

The Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concert that Smith and others were told to attend was headlined by BarlowGirl, a "band of tender-hearted, beautiful young women who aren't afraid to take an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God," according to the group's web site.

Even worse, soldiers were discouraged from filing a complaint about the incident. Even apart from the coercion of these soldiers, why oh why is our military hosting and paying for a "Spiritual Fitness Concerts" promoting evangelical Christianity? Here's a bit on that:

The brainchild of Maj. Gen. Chambers, the Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concert series was created at Fort Eustis when he was the commanding general there. In June 2008, Chambers brought the Christian concert series to Fort Lee, when he became its commanding general.

The point behind the concert series was to connect to young soldiers. "The easiest way to get to Soldiers today is through a phone or music," Chambers told Fort Lee Public Affairs back in 2008. "Through those means, you can change behavior, and that's what I'm looking forward to more than anything else."

There isn't much doubt that the concert series promotes religious belief. Chambers admitted as much to Fort Lee Public Affairs. "The idea is not to be a proponent for any one religion," he said. "It's to have a mix of different performers with different religious backgrounds."

But Smith says he hasn't heard of any act performing who wasn't Christian. "I never once heard of a Muslim event or an atheist event," he said. "The vast majority of them have to be Christian events."

According to MRFF, the DoD has spent at least $300,000 on Christian musical acts for these events. For instance, since 2008, the DoD has paid $125,000 to the Street Level Artists Agency, which describes its mission as "Christian radicals ... bringing the Gospel into the rock 'n roll vernacular of the common man," for performances at Forts Eustis and Lee since 2008, according to records on USASpending.gov. The agency represents Christian performers like David Phelps and Phil Keaggy, both of whom have played the concert series.

I hate to say it, but our military seems to be operating under the motto of "onward Christian soldiers." That's seriously disturbing.

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Conservative Deceit about Christian Liberty

[From Ari Armstrong's blog:] Some of my fellow Coloradans wish to outlaw the birth control pill and subject my wife to the death penalty if she takes it, yet today David Limbaugh dismisses as "paranoia" concerns about "the intersection of Christianity and the public square." Limbaugh is amazed by "how much [critics] fear something that represents such a little threat to them."

Let us review, shall we? Many Christians in the United States advocate the following political goals:

• Outlaw all abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, fetal deformity, and risk to the woman's health, from the moment of fertilization, with criminal penalties extending to execution.
  
  
• Outlaw all fertility treatments, birth control (including the pill), medical research, and medical treatment that may involve the destruction of a fertilized egg.
  
  
• Impose mandatory waiting periods and ultrasounds before a woman may obtain an abortion. (This is a marginal step toward the goal of complete prohibition.)
  
  
• Outlaw all expression involving consenting adults that is arbitrarily deemed "obscene." (Various Christians want to outlaw all material deemed pornographic.)
  
  
• Force Americans to subsidize religious institutions for "faith based" welfare.
  
  
• Expand welfare (the forced redistribution of wealth) because of Biblical principles of helping the less-well off.
  
  
• Imprison American adults for consuming various drugs, including marijuana taken for medical purposes, regardless of the level of police powers necessary to achieve this goal. (Some Christians even want to return to alcohol prohibition.)
  
  
• Require religious prayer and religious instruction at tax-funded schools.
  
  
• Deny equal protection under the laws to homosexuals, including the right to form romantic contracts and adopt children.

A few Christians want to execute homosexuals and adulterers and explicitly call for theocracy (see Christian Reconstruction or the comments of a Christian radio host.)

No, nothing to worry about!

Limbaugh makes a couple of basic mistakes in his article. First, he pretends that the only relevant issue is freedom of expression. Second, he pretends that the only debate is between "the left" and Christian conservatives. Obviously the left with its campaign censorship laws and media controls at least matches conservative Christianity in its hostility toward free expression. Unfortunately, as seen with President Obama's expansion of President Bush's "faith based" welfare, the left increasingly mingles politics with religion as well.

True, many Christians fight for liberty in at least some areas. Whether that effort flows from Christian doctrine, or is ultimately incompatible with it, is a debate for another day. But for Limbaugh to dismiss as "paranoia" concerns about the efforts of many Christians to base politics on religion is ludicrous.

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Christianity and Totalitarianism

William Stoddard recently posted the following remarks in a comment thread on NoodleFood.

When you say that "If the Church had the weapons of the 20th century, God (metaphor) only knows how many they would have killed," I would go further than this.

We have, shall we say, a Christian myth about how God runs the world and what he intends for it, one that many Christians believed was literally true. And what it says is this:

God is a self-appointed dictator who cannot be voted out of office, and who makes the law by unilateral decree

God constantly watches everything human beings do, both directly and through a secret police corps of angels appointed to watch over us

At any time, we can be taken into God's hands by death and called before him to be judged

Under his law, we are automatically guilty and cannot defend ourselves against his charges

When found guilty, we will be sent to a concentration camp where we will be tortured forever, without hope that death will release us

Those who affirm that these actions are signs of God's justice and love, and plead for mercy, will be let off and assigned to join a propaganda corps that spends eternity praising God, and that is permitted to see the tortures of the damned perfectly in order more fully to enjoy their own salvation

If someone you loved on Earth goes to Hell, your salvation entails rejoicing both at their being in Hell and at your being in Heaven apart from them

In sum, Christianity envisioned all the horrors of totalitarianism, millennia before human dictators achieved the technological capability to realize them on Earth. And said that they were desirable; indeed, it called them the Good News.

These striking parallels between the theology of Christianity and the practice of totalitarianism make clear -- yet again -- that political freedom cannot be founded on the Christian faith.

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The Christian Ideal: Suffering

I'm simply overwhelmed to read Tony Judt's account of a single night stuck in the prison of his body, ravaged by ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gherig's disease). Here's how he describes his basic condition:

By my present stage of decline, I am thus effectively quadriplegic. With extraordinary effort I can move my right hand a little and can adduct my left arm some six inches across my chest. My legs, although they will lock when upright long enough to allow a nurse to transfer me from one chair to another, cannot bear my weight and only one of them has any autonomous movement left in it. Thus when legs or arms are set in a given position, there they remain until someone moves them for me. The same is true of my torso, with the result that backache from inertia and pressure is a chronic irritation. Having no use of my arms, I cannot scratch an itch, adjust my spectacles, remove food particles from my teeth, or anything else that--as a moment's reflection will confirm--we all do dozens of times a day. To say the least, I am utterly and completely dependent upon the kindness of strangers (and anyone else).

Please, go read the whole thing. While I don't know what Mr. Judt's own religious views are, I regard his life as a clear demonstration of the life-hating brutality of Christian doctrine. To wit:

Christianity regards suffering like that of Mr. Judt as not merely noble and elevated, but positively divine. It's not good to live fully, happily, robustly according to Christianity: it's good to suffer and die. That's what Jesus taught -- and then he lived and died by that ideal.

Christianity regards the body as a vile, despicable prison that leads a person's divine soul astray into the dark depths of sin. Mr. Judt is positively lucky, as his body really is a prison: he cannot indulge pleasures of the flesh, not even the seemingly minor ones like scratching his own itches.

Christianity regards Mr. Judt's life as God's property, not as his own. So Mr. Judt must be forbidden by law from ending his own life, if and when it becomes intolerable. If anyone attempts to help him end his life, that person should be imprisoned as a murderer. As a bonus, if Mr. Judt manages to end his own life somehow, the loving Christian God will consign him to the torments of hell for all eternity.

Of course, many Christians do not live by such dark principles. They are kind, decent people, loathe to see anyone suffering from such a tragic condition. They might even support stem-cell research, and even assisted suicide. To that extent, their values are more American -- loving science, seeking happiness, and upholding individual rights -- than Christian.

As Leonard Peikoff states in his essay Religion Versus America:

It is time to tell people the unvarnished truth: to stand up for man's mind and this earth, and against any version of mysticism or religion. It is time to tell people: "You must choose between unreason and America. You cannot have both. Take your pick."

If there is to be any chance for the future, this is the only chance there is.

Amen, brother!

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Biblical Inscriptions on Gun Sights and Kant Speaks from the Grave

Last week, a story broke about how the gun site manufacturer, Trijicon, has been for years placing subtly-imprinted biblical references on the gun sights of standard issue combat rifles used by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military, explained that this practice should be stopped because, "It's wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws. It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they're being shot by Jesus rifles."

The company has agreed to discontinue this obvious attempt at proselytizing the Christian view to U.S. soldiers, and that it will provide kits to remove the inscriptions---a victory for MRFF and anyone concerned with separation of church and state.

But what is more menacing about this story is the response by an influential member of the American intelligentsia, columnist Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald. In his January, 23 national column he took a superior-attitude pot-shot at the company president's little work for Jesus by asking, "But is that really faith, when you reduce God to a bigger version of you?"

In other words, how dare that company president show a glimmer of self-expression of his beliefs--albeit a misguided and totally inappropriate action violating the separation of church and state.

Pitts shows by comparison what REAL faith should be, best exemplified by nonetheless than the two most saintly figures of the 20th century: Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mother Teresa's faith drove her to foreswear material riches and spend half a century working to uplift the wretched poor of Calcutta. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s faith drove him to gamble his very life in a dangerous campaign to win human and civil rights for African-American people... [T]he point is that truest faith is not seen in a secret code on a gun sight.....Rather, faith is seen in the substance of a life lived in service to others, lived as if God were "not" in fact one's personal echo chamber in the sky. [emphasis mine]

Well, my oh my. Isn't 19th century philosopher Immanuel Kant alive and well and speaking to the opinion-makers right from the grave.

In explaining Kant's philosophy, Ayn Rand says,

Kant's expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice.....As to Kant's version of morality....it consisted of total, abject selflessness. An action is moral, said Kant, only if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort, neither material nor spiritual; a benefit destroys the moral value of an action.

Who better than Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. to demonstrate for us duty of sacrifice without regard to themselves? To Pitts, Trijicon's little slipup with the Constitution to advance the cliche, "there are no atheists in fox holes," is simply a trivial waste of morality. In his view, what society REALLY ought to be striving for is a deeper, broader, truer test of faith: total abnegation of the self in a life dedicated " in service to others."

That is in fact President Barack Obama's mission: to be the next Mr. Mother Teresa as our President.

(Violins, please.)

"His story is the American story -- values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others."
(This is from the White House website, introducing Mr. Obama as our 44th President.)

(Stop the violins, please.)

When a member of the intelligentsia is trying to upstage another Christian, we are having a cultural war. Not only must we continue to fight the puritanical and rights-violating agenda of the Religious Right, we also have a more-focused and committed Religious Left whose altruistic, socialist agenda is already invading our liberties.

Little do these ostensible opposites realize they were already married in a shotgun wedding many decades ago, presided over by preacher Immanuel Kant.

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Deism in the Declaration

My husband Paul Hsieh (of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine) recently pointed me to an essay by Eric Raymond entitled Deism and the Founding Fathers. I'd definitely recommend reading the whole essay, but I wanted to except a few critical passages:

Religious conservatives are fond of replying by pointing excitedly at the references to "Nature's God", "Divine Providence", and the "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence.

Raymond then quotes the relevant passages of the Declaration:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights;

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Raymond then cites some other passages in Jefferson's writings where he displays as obvious hostility to Christianity. So Raymond asks, "Of what 'God', if not the Christian one, was Jefferson speaking?" He replies:

The answer to this question -- which also explains the references in the Declaration of Independence -- is that Jefferson, like many intellectuals of his time, was a Deist. The "Creator" and "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence, and the God of Jefferson's altar, is not the intervening Christian God but the God of Deism.

Deism was an early attempt to reconcile the mechanistic world-view arising from experimental science with religion. Deists believed in a remote sort of clockmaker-God who created the universe but then refrained from meddling in it afterwards. Deists explicitly rejected faith, revelation, religious doctrine, religious authority, and all existing religions. They held that humans could know the mind of God only through the study of nature; in many versions of Deist thinking, the mind of God was explicitly identified with the laws of nature.

Thus "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God"; in Deist thought these concepts blurred together. The phrase "endowed by their Creator" could be rendered accurately as "endowed by Nature". In modern terms, this is an entirely naturalistic account of human rights.

That's exactly right. Finally, Raymond notes:

Jefferson’s "altar of God" quote and the references in the Declaration of Independence are easy to misconstrue today because Deism did not long outlive the Founding Fathers. In their time it functioned as a sort of halfway house for intellectuals who rejected traditional religion but were unwilling to declare themselves atheists or agnostics. As the social risk of taking these positions decreased, Deism waned.

Given the bravery of the early Americans in opposing the British Empire, I doubt that intellectual cowardice was the reason for their deism. I suspect -- although I've not much researched the subject -- that they accepted some version of the Argument from Design. Absent a solid grasp of the fact that physical laws are the necessary expression of the identity of entities and absent an explanation for the great diversity and complexity of living organisms, the Argument from Design would seem quite plausible. It's still flawed, purely on philosophic grounds, but the mistake was understandable in the 18th century. Deism was the rather benign result of that mistake.

Today, people have far less excuse for believing in God's existence on such grounds, as the scientific and philosophic objections to the Argument from Design are well-known and devastating. They have no excuse for leaping from such arguments to claims about the truth of Christianity. The Argument from Design, even if sound, could not lend the slightest bit of support to the myths and dogmas of Christianity.

For more, see my three podcasts on the Argument from Design: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Part 4 is forthcoming.

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In Defense of Secularism

Fellow OActivist Amesh Adalja recently published this letter in defense of secularism in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

Theocrats more harmful
Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Despite Brad Tupi's protestations to the contrary in his letter "Secularism harms U.S." (Dec. 25 and TribLIVE.com), secularism is inherent in this nation and it is Christian theocrats like Mr. Tupi who have done more damage to this nation than any secularist.

While it is true that the Founders often uttered conflicting statements regarding religion, they chose to make the U.S. Constitution and the nation's currency entirely devoid of any reference to a deity -- proof of their desire for a separation between government and religion.

It is the religionists who have taken the Christian idolization of sacrifice to new heights by creating a welfare state where each is his brother's keeper, women are castigated for exercising the right to their own bodies and people fear openly expressing their sexual orientation.

As Thomas Paine aptly stated, "mingling religion with politics, may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America."

Amesh A. Adalja
Butler

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What Have the Personhood Folks Been Up To?

I'm taking a break from my investigation into the Religious Left and have decided to focus on what the Colorado Fertilized Egg Gang has been up to lately.

And those Fertilized Eggers have been really boiling and rockin' and rollin'!

They've been working on their public relations campaign to come across as... more, more... well... well... better at expropriating intellectual property rights as well as attempting to violate individual rights. In particular, they have a YouTube announcement of their intent to try to get another constitutional amendment on the Colorado ballot for 2010.

In their attempt to grovify themselves across a broader spectrum of the electorate, they've selected the works of singer/songwriter "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers" as their rallying really-cool song. Playing loudly in the backgroud, Tom Petty's, "I Won't Back Down" introduces their rejuvenated attack on the culture. They are going to try again in 2010 to get another Personhood Amendment on the ballot in Colorado.

Because I really dig "Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers" and really disagree with the Personhooders, I sent an email to the record company informing them that Mr. Petty's song was being used to advance "Colorado Personhood USA's" agenda to grant full legal rights to fertilized eggs. If the rock group is in agreement with this agenda, then that is their own business and their right, and I acknowledged as much in my email. But I would be very surprised if this Colorado Religious Right activist group had obtained proper permission to propagandize with this incredibly groovy song.

So, who are the players now, and what scrambled eggs get rights in the next election?

Let's be clear: these activists are not to be underestimated.

They have studied very carefully why their amendment failed by about 75% in the last Colorado election. They are not going to make the same mistakes twice.

So they've altered the language of their proposal. Previously, the key wording referred to rights of "any human being from the moment of fertilization." Now, they have altered the wording so it is more palatable to the general electorate:

An amendment to the Colorado Constitution applying the term 'person' as used in those provisions of the Colorado Constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law, to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.

The key phrase is: "from the beginning of the biological development," rather than from "from the moment of fertilization," which is easier for many mainstream religious Americans to accept.

The next step is to get enough signatures, around 76,000 registered Colorado voters, to place the measure on the ballot.

Let us not underestimate these people. They may be your next-door neighbor, or the person in line at the supermarket, or your coworker. These are Americans who believe that those "at the beginning of biological development" have rights; and because of their religious beliefs, they maintain that somehow fetuses are people and the right to abortion is wrong.

Let me bring us back to the fundamentals of human existence in a rational way. The right to life only applies to the living, born human being. Ayn Rand, the genius novelist and philosopher of Objectivism cogently writes:

Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the non-yet-living... Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has "right to life. A piece of protoplasm has no rights--and no life in the human sense of the term... To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable...

We must watch these people because they are evil. Our true right to life is at risk.

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Merry Christmas!

Onkar Ghate published an excellent essay on the joy of Christmas in US News and World Report. It begins:

I'm an atheist, and I love Christmas. If you think that's a contradiction, think again.

Do you remember as a child composing wish lists of things you genuinely valued, thought you deserved, and knew would bring you pleasure? Do you remember eagerly awaiting the arrival of Christmas morning and the new bike, book, or chemistry set you were hoping for? That childhood feeling captures the spirit of Christmas and explains why so many of us look forward to the season each year.

That joyful spirit of Christmas, Ghate argues, is part and parcel of a commercial Christmas. It's nowhere to be found in a truly Christian Christmas.

So ... May you enjoy all the delights and pleasures of a secular, capitalist Christmas!

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Conservative Sees the Light on Pragmatism

Crossposted with permission from The American Individualist.

Conservative Sees the Light on Pragmatism
By Joseph Kellard

Over at the conservative commentary site townhall.com, I was intrigued to read "Principle vs. Pragmatism," a column by Ken Connor, who is unknown to me.

Halfway through reading this column, I thought that perhaps a conservative has come to see the light about the destructiveness of pragmatism. Heck, he even invokes Aristotle:

"The truth of the matter is that when it comes to the most fundamental questions about human society, culture, and government, the middle ground is not a sensible place to occupy. When it comes down to the fundamentals, things are either right or they are wrong; to suggest that they may be right for me and wrong for you is nonsense. Moral relativism comes into conflict with the Law of Non-Contradiction when operating at the level of fundamental values."

But, alas, the light this conservative was seeing came from Heaven.

"There are, as our forefathers recognized, certain universal and self-evident truths. Human beings, for example, have been endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life. It is, therefore, wrong to murder an innocent human being, regardless of whether they are in the womb or in a nursing home. The act of murder is wrong regardless of who makes the decision to carry it out (mother, doctor, family) or how it is denominated (abortion, mercy killing, euthanasia). The character of an act is not changed by the rhetoric that accompanies it or the person who performs it. Such an act cannot be both right and wrong--right for you and wrong for me. It is either right or wrong--period.

"There are certain principles that define the world view of Christian conservatives, principles that we are unwilling to budge on …"

Connor goes on to invoke God and "other principles" that he and other Christians will not compromise on, without noting what those alleged principles are exactly.

Since Connor's basis of morality is God's arbitrary commandments and not the one-and-only reality from which principles are rationally derived, Lord only knows what those "other principles" of his may be, but you can safely bet that they are not a proper foundation for freedom.

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The Religious Left: Obama and Black Liberation Theology

New Home Church is Politically Correct for Religious Leftist Obama

President Obama finally found a home church last June after breaking his 20-year-old spiritual ties with his former pastor, the venom-spewing Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The First Family now belongs to the same non-denominational Christian church attended by former President G.W. Bush, Evergreen Chapel at Camp David. It was probably more politically palatable for Obama to align with a church open to hundreds of military personnel with sermons delivered by a Navy Lieutenant chaplain, than to join another church that proselytizes Black Liberation Theology.

As we know, for decades the Religious Right has been bludgeoning the wall separating church and state. Now the Religious Left has made its national debut, with President Obama as the poster child. While leftist Christianity may seem like an oxymoron because of the Marxist influence on the American Left, it's actually a perfect marriage of irrational ideas. Defenders of capitalism and freedom have at least as much cause to worry about the Religious Left's agenda as the puritanical obsessions of conservative evangelicals.

The newly-empowered Religious Left is egalitarian, tribal, anti-reason, and deeply anti-capitalist. And unlike the Religious Right which focuses on the soul and the glory of heaven, the Religious Left promotes activism in Jesus's name in the here and now. In examining Black Liberation Theology, which has been our President's spiritual bedrock for over 20 years, it becomes very clear where he will take America -- despite the eye-rolling stunt to appear more worthy of the title "Commander-in-Chief."

Foaming at the Mouth: What the Reverend Wright Says to America and Obama

Months before the 2008 Presidential election, the media let a spitting, scratching cat out of the bag: Reverend Jeremiah Wright. YouTube videos of his pugilistic, outrageous sermons shocked many Americans, ultimately leading to Obama disavowing his relationship with the fire-breathing Reverend.

You may remember Reverend Wright's infamous sermon in the late fall of 2001 in which he blamed American friendship with Israel for the 9/11 attacks by Islamic terrorists:

Last year's conference in Africa on racism, which the United States would not participate in because somebody dared to point out the racism that still supports both here and in Israel. I said that dirty word again... Don't be skerd! Don't be skerd! You don't see the connection between 9-1-1-0-1 and the Israeli-Palestinian?! Something wrong?! You wanna borrow my glasses?"

Or how about the "chickens come home to roost" sermon in which the Reverend expands his sphere of contempt for American foreign policy and his blatant multiculturalism to imply that America deserved 9/11.

... We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We want revenge, we want paybacks, and we don't care who gets hurt in the process. Now, I asked the Lord, "what should our response be, in light of such an unthinkable act?" ... I heard Ambassador Peck on... Fox News... This is a white man... and an ambassador! He pointed out that what Malcolm X said ... was in fact true: that America's chickens are coming home to roost! We took this country, by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers, and hard-working fathers! We bombed Qaddafi's home and killed his child. Blessed are they that bash your children's head against a rock! We bombed Iraq! We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living! We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for their attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of unarmed people ... We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon. And we never batted an eye... We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans. And now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism.

And then there is Reverend Wright's best example of what he thinks the American political system and capitalism are all about:

Who cares what a poor, black man has to face every day in a country and a culture controlled by RICH, WHITE, PEOPLE. ... Jesus was a POOR, BLACK man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture controlled by RICH, WHITE, PEOPLE. ... It just came to me within the past few weeks why so many folks are hating on [candidate] Barack Obama. He doesn't fit the model. He ain't WHITE. He ain't RICH. He ain't PRIVILEGED. ... Hillary fits the mold. Europeans fit the mold. ... Hillary ain't never been called a nigger. ... I'm so glad that I got a God who knows what it is like to be a poor, black man in a country and a culture controlled by and run by RICH, WHITE, PEOPLE. ... [Jesus] never let [his enemies'] hatred dampen his hope.

When the Reverend is not at the pulpit arousing the envy and resentment of his mostly-black congregation, he credits Black Liberation Theology in forming his views. The founder of Black Liberation Theology in the 1960s, James Cone, explains that it is essentially about doing Jesus's work for the poor and oppressed in the here and now, as applies specifically to black oppression in America. In a 2008 NPR interview he said:

Black Liberation theology sees God as primarily concerned with the poor and weak ... in society. It's not just for black people. ... Justice for the poor is the very heart of what God is about. ... The white church didn't talk about blacks struggle for justice. ... The gospel isn't about going to heaven; it's about justice and peace. ... Salvation in the Bible means being delivered from bondage. ... Jesus was crucified ... because he disturbed the consciousness of the people.

He also explains that it is blacks who don't love themselves, and that the justice Jesus fought for is for them too, in this way merging Malcom X's Black Power with Martin Luther King's Christianity.

Now decades past the Civil Rights era, Reverend Wright has exploded the tenants of "Jesus Justice" into a tirade of rage against what he considers the symbols of an evil America: war (regardless of the reasons for it): cultural repression (regardless of American ideals of freedom and individual rights); and racism (regardless of the fact that America has eliminated the evil of slavery and made quantum leaps in correcting past legalized oppression of blacks).

Yet still, proponents of the various permutations of Black Liberation Theology profess that America should be transformed into a society characterized by:

1. Mysticism: That Biblical Scripture, not a Constitution, should be the law of the land.

2. Socialism: That taking care of the "poor" and "oppressed," rather than promoting capitalism and the freedom of individuals, should be the social mandate.

3. Racism: That identity is based on race, rather than on the metaphysically given primary, the individual; and

4. Multiculturalism: That we should consider as morally equal to America all societies, such as World War II-era Japan and Germany, Palestinian terrorists, primitive tribal societies, dictatorial Libya, etc. etc.

Obama Disavows Wright but Not the Ideas

If there is any doubt about whether or not the Reverend Wright had a profound influence on Obama's present-day thinking, there should not be. In a 2007 interview, Obama said:

During this holiday season and during this political season I'm continually reminded that the values that I learned at Trinity (Wright's church) and as part of the UCC (United Church of Christ) community are values that can't just stay in church but have to be applied outside of church. ... I realized that Scripture and the words of God fit into the values I was raised in... [W]hat was intellectual and what was emotional joined, and the belief in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins, that through him we could achieve eternal life -- but also that, through good works we could find order and meaning here on Earth and transcend our limits and our flaws and our foibles -- I found that powerful.

As a poignant summary of Obama's creed: "Race is a central test of our belief that we're our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper ..."

How the theology of Obama translates into the policies of his Administration will be the subject of my next post.

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Religious Right Takes a Deep Philosophical Breath

For two decades, the Religious Right has reveled in the successes of their crusade to erode the wall separating church and state. Since America's sharp Left turn in 2008, they have not been so quick to gloat. Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said, "I'm not grieving over Barack Obama's victory, but over the loss of things that I've fought for, for 35 years," particularly concerning abortion rights and advancement of the so-called homosexual agenda. The Religious Right itself seems to be taking a soul-searching sabbatical, to get back in touch with its deeper mission: to live by the rule of God.

In October over 500 evangelical Christian leaders attended a conference at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary on "renewing the evangelical mission." Many felt that evangelicals had veered from the mission of Jesus. As one pastor put it: "The missing ingredient is not the primacy of the mind and doctrine. It's the willingness to suffer."

To this point, attendees sang a hymn with the words, "We spurned God's way and sought our own, and so have become worthless." I'm not sure if in this context "worthlessness" pertains to human beings or to evangelism's usefulness to society. Indeed, one pastor lamented, "We've become useless in a society that desperately needs us."

Another theologian urged pastors to talk less about fulfilling individual potential and teach more from Old Testament prophets like Prophet Joel, who urged repentance before God. Others argued for embracing Christian Reconstructionism, a movement emphasizing the total reformation of society according to God's Law. Yet another pastor, spoke of his frustration in getting evangelicals of differing perspectives to collaborate on goals such as fighting abortion rights.

But in the end, all conferees agreed that Scripture should be the foundation for whatever direction Christianity is to take.

In a well-publicized coming-together, another prominent group of Catholic and Protestant leaders announced in November their joint document called The Manhattan Declaration: a Call of Christian Conscience. It states:

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good and to call upon our fellow citizens...to join us in defending them. These truths are: the sanctity of human life; the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife; the rights of conscience and religious liberty.....We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

As defenders of Christianity's 2000-year-old legacy of "proclaiming God's word," they claim that it because of Christian "obedience to the one true God...who has laid total claim on our lives..." that the moral good has manifested in society (e.g., babies being rescued from ancient Roman trash heaps, and the emergence of modern democracy).

It is in this spirit that the Christian leaders have drawn their philosophical line in the sand:

(W)e will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.

These two events, the writing of the Manhattan Declaration and the Gordon-Conwell conference, have made it clear that the Religious Right is getting back to its philosophical roots: that truth and human society should be "grounded in Holy Scripture."

Contrast this with Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Ayn Rand integrated the inescapable axiom that "existence exists" with the fact that humans rely on their faculty of reason to survive, validating that the moral good is the pursuit of human life-enhancing values.

In direct opposition are the Christian beliefs of a dual universe consisting of a mystical God ruling over humans, the reliance on Scripture as the source of truth, and self-sacrificing service to God's laws as the moral good. These fundamentally irrational ideas are anti-life in the most profound sense of the term, and can lead only to tyranny.

The Christians are returning to their philosophical roots. It is time for rational individuals to follow the religious right's example of philosophical introspection. But let's become grounded in a philosophy that holds as absolute--not God--but reason, reality and rational egoism.

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A Terry Schiavo Case in Italy

Remember in 2005 when then-President Bush rushed back to Washington to get the Republican-dominated Congress to intervene directly in the Terry Schiavo right-to-die case? Terry Schiavo had been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, alive only because she was receiving nutrition through a feeding tube. Her husband and legal guardian--who knew she would never want to live like that--fought Terry's staunchly Catholic family in the court system for years over her right to die in such a circumstance. A Florida state appeals court agreed with Terry's husband and allowed the feeding tube to be removed in spring of 2005.

Out of all legal options, the family went to the top of the political ladder, and got President Bush and his religious-right powerhouse in Congress to counteract that ruling. Congress passed, and Bush signed, emergency legislation, sending the case back to the federal court. But wisely, the federal court did not overrule the previous decision. The feeding tube was not reinserted, and Terry was allowed to die.

The case was a sickening display of not only the breach of the separation of powers as well as the separation of church and state, but also of how quickly and deeply one's personal life can be penetrated by a government. A federal appeals court judge in Atlanta quite eloquently admonished Congress and the White House for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”

Fast forward to 2009, and there is an eerily similar kind of family nightmare in Italy. A 37-year old woman, Eluana Englaro, has been in a coma since a car crash in 1992. Her father, who claims that her daughter would not want to live in such a vegetative state, has spent years petitioning the Italian court system to allow her to die. Finally, doctors were allowed to implement a medical protocol for withdrawing Eluana's artificial nutrition--that is, until Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, after consulting with the Vatican, issued an emergency decree stating nutrition cannot be withdrawn.

Magnifying the absurdity of the Italian government's and Vatican's interference in the private lives of these citizens is the Prime Minister's justification for his decree: physically at least, Eluana was "in the condition to have babies."

Allow me to elucidate. Irregardless of the comatose woman's inability to consent to anything, the Italian Prime Minister and the Vatican are in effect saying that it would be acceptable for someone to impregnate this woman, have her body incubate a fetus, then deliver it; but to allow her to die a natural and dignified death by withdrawing artificial nutrition would be immoral, despite what Eluana would have wanted.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who pleaded with Berlusconi to not permit Eluana to die, told him "We have to stop this crime against humanity." (I must say, I find it ludicrous and ironic that the religious institution responsible for the horrific crimes of the medieval Crusades and the systematic enabling of pedophilia in the priesthood has the audacity to say anything about crimes against humanity.)

In these two right-to-die cases, Terry and Eluana were young when they suffered their irreversible brain damage and had not made their wishes explicitly known in writing. But those closest to them and legally responsible for making decisions on their behalf have a better idea than the government or the Church about whether or not they would want to linger for decades in an unconscious state.

Even more fundamentally important than the ethics of proxy medical decision-making is the right to die. I think this right is a corollary of Ayn Rand's concept of the right to life: "There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life."

In their quest to take away the right-to-die, the Vatican and America's Religious Right are basically taking away the right to life, claiming your life belongs to God, not to you. This religious view is the reason the Schiavo family fought Terry's right to die; this was the reason they took their case to a President who actively promulgated religious initiatives; and this is what the Italian father is fighting.

Your right to life includes your right to end your life according to your values. If you would not want to be kept alive for decades in a comatose state--and your proxy decision makers know that--then they have the ethical and legal obligation to carry out your wishes. And any governmental or church interference with that right is an immoral and egregious offense to the citizens of a society obligated to uphold their Constitutional rights.

An update: Eluana died Monday Feb. 9 as the Italian legislators debated her case. The Italian government plans to continue to push for an anti-right--to-die law.

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Vatican Cites Environmentalist Objections to the Pill

Another news item of interest from the iFeminists news feed:

Vatican newspaper slams 'the pill'
January 4, 2009

The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said on Saturday.

The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report. "We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further. "We are faced with a clear anti-environmental effect which demands more explanation on the part of the manufacturers," added Castellvi.

The article was promptly dismissed by several organisations. "Once metabolised, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones," said Gianbenedetto Melis, vice-president of a contraceptive research association, quoted by the ANSA news agency. The hormones contained in the pill such as oestrogen "are present everywhere... in plastic, in disinfectants, in meat that we eat," added Flavia Franconi, of the Society of Italian Pharmacology. ...

The alliance between capitalism and religion in the 20th century in America was artifact of the rise of atheistic communism. It's not a sustainable union: a religious worldview cannot ground the rights of the individual to pursue his own happy life by his own rational judgment as required by capitalism. (On that point, see Ayn Rand's essay "Faith and Force" in Philosophy: Who Needs It.) More particularly, the Christian scriptures preach disdain for this world, blind obedience to the whims of God, abject sacrifice for the sake of the poor and weak, acceptance of sin, the positive value of suffering, and the moral corruption of wealth. A person who takes those values seriously cannot preach or practice capitalism. (See this LTE and this one.)

Consequently, I'm not surprised to see supposedly "conservative" religious institutions abandon their marginal respect for individual rights in favor of statist causes like the welfare states and environmentalism. Of course, the Catholic Church has never been a defender of individual rights, particularly not reproductive rights. But its embrace of environmentalist arguments to further that end is something new -- and ominous.

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Evangelicals Leverage Downturn

(Reposted:) An article in the New York Times verifies what many of us suspected: economic downturns are good for certain churches. The paper notes that "evangelical churches around the country... have enjoyed steady growth over the last decade. But since September, pastors nationwide say they have seen... a burst of new interest..."

There seem to be two main reasons for this. As one pastor told the paper, "When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors." The article also discusses an economist who sees the increased attendance as more related to economic concerns: churches provide a safety net, and people without jobs aren't busy on Sundays.

The article mentions "Good Sense," a church-based financial management program. A downloadable document reveals some of the details. It praises "avoiding consumer debt and saving for the unexpected" -- good advice -- but it also advocates greater political control of the economy, demonstrating yet again that evangelicals hardly advocate economic liberty as a rule. The document states:

On a macro level, increased regulation of certain sectors of our financial markets, about which some have warned of excesses for some time, will become reality and will hopefully prevent repeats of the abuses that have led to the situation we are in now. Capitalism must have moral restraints and while those can’t be legislated, regulations can at least make it harder to do wrong and easier to punish those who do.

Most significantly, we are reminded that earthly treasures can succumb to rust, moths, thieves and to economic upheavals and that it is our treasures in heaven that are safe for eternity.

This also shows the tension within the Christian movements for financial planning. I've heard claims that God wants us to be rich, that the Bible counsels hard work and the prudent accumulation of wealth. Yet the stronger Biblical strain is egalitarianism and the call to renounce wealth. One televangelist told the Times we're living in a "time of fear and greed." Yet this fails to distinguish the "greed" of political manipulations and wealth transfers from the self-interest of free markets and individual rights.

Thus, the evangelical movement offers two conflicting messages: be responsible in how you accumulate wealth, but realize that wealth doesn't matter relative to an eternity in heaven.

I did find this line from the Times humorous: "At the Life Christian Church in West Orange, N.J., prayer requests have doubled -- almost all of them aimed at getting or keeping jobs." Yes, all we need is a divine stimulus package.

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A Profile in Influence: The Family Research Council

The next in my profiles of religious right organizations is the Family Research Council, founded by James Dobson of Focus and the Family and headed by Tony Perkins.

The Family Research Council (FRC) doesn't even pretend to be an "educational" organization. Its intent has always been to change the culture to comply with their religious perspective through passing legislation at the federal and state levels:

Since its inception in 1983, Family Research Council has been shaping public policy, as it relates to our nation's families and our religious freedoms, in Washington D.C. and in state capitals across the country. We have successfully crafted and promoted policy initiatives..

There is so much going on with this organization, that I almost don't know where to begin. But let's start with their "25 Pro-Family Policy Goals."

Before the 2008 election, he FRC encouraged pastors to pass around their 25-point proposal for a new America. This booklet contains so many proposals to regulate our most private lives, that it's beyond the scope of this post to describe it in detail. Needless to say, it is worth reading to get the impact of how broadly the Family Research Council is targeting their efforts. Below is a sampling of some of the FRC's goals in summary form:

• Prohibit embryonic stem-cell research.
  
• Prohibit women from voluntarily donating their eggs for research or to infertile couples.
  
• Ensure that pro-abortion judges (whom they call "activist") are not appointed.
  
• Further restrict access to abortion.
  
• Support "faith-based" programs in prisons.
  
• Require the teaching of "creationism" in the schools as a companion to the teaching of the facts of evolution.
  
• Censor the publication of adult pornography to "protect children."
  
• Require the teaching of "abstinence before marriage."
  
• Pass and uphold state and federal constitutional amendments defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
  
• Promote the maintaining of a marriage through the manipulation of divorce laws.
  
• Prohibit gays from joining the military.

What is striking about the Family Research Council's approach in selling their plan is the scare tactics and disinformation they use to justify their proposals. For example, in their recommendations that restrict access to abortion, they claim that women are not being given proper informed consent before their procedure:

The failure to provide information concerning the risks of abortion for women's reproductive and overall health represents a major gap in the promotion of true health care.

This is just a laughable and flagrant falsehood, as there are already very strict regulations and ethical requirements concerning informed consent about any surgical-type procedure. And Planned Parenthood, enemy number one at the FRC, educates its clients about all their options concerning pregnancy, including those preferred by the religious right.

Another example is the FRC's distorting claims about embryonic stem-cell research:

The claims made for embryonic stem cells are wildly oversold and exaggerated, and cruelly give patients and their loved ones false hope. Meanwhile, the real facts about their potential are ignored or distorted. In 27 years of embryonic stem cell research, not a single patient has been treated.

This is a ludicrous statement. There is absolutely no false promises being made whatsoever. The science explicitly brands itself as being in the "early stages" of basic biological research in the field.

And as a science-based, fact-based education will teach you (as opposed to one based on mythical stories like creationism), it is a long, arduous road from basic biological research to actual application of treating disease. Moreover, President Bush implemented one of the religious right's favorite policies by restricting federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research back in the early 2000s, slowing the whole process down.

Besides the FRC's basic 25-point framework, this organization has begun to change its strategy. Not deterred by the underwhelming support for religious candidates and initiatives this November, the FRC has already begun to broaden their base of support beyond the Republican Party. The FRC's plan is stated in a new book, "Personal Faith Public Policy," by Harry R. Jackson, Jr. and Tony Perkins:

While some argue that evangelicals lose influence when they fail to vote as a bloc for a particular political party, the ability to seed both parties and operate as a political 'free agent' could prove to have a much greater impact on actual public policy.

In their book, they advocate expanding FRC's influence beyond the traditional so-called "pro-family" activities to: "immigration policy, poverty and social justice, racial reconciliation, and global warming."

The Family Research Council is soliciting a $250,000 matching donation. They have the money -- they have the determination -- they have the networking -- and they have a broadening political strategy to foster a new America in their religious image. Let's keep our eyes and ears out for this group, and counter their influence with pro-reason and pro-reality values.

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Dobson Insists on Faith-Based Politics

(Reposted:) James Dobson of Focus on the Family makes two main argument in a recent posting that was brought to my attention by 5280 magazine. First, the religious right didn't really lose in the last election, and second, the religious right should continue to make explicitly religious arguments to advance their faith-based politics.

As I've pointed out, the religious right got trounced in Colorado. Voters rejected McCain and his evangelical running mate, picked a United States Senator who penned a particularly eloquent defense of the separation of church and state, ousted a House member known for her faith-based views, rejected an anti-abortion candidate for state senate, and defeated the "personhood" initiative (which Dobson endorsed) by 73 to 27 percent. The religious right hardly could have taken a worse beating.

To "refute" this obvious fact, Dobson points out that voters in "California, Florida and Arizona voted to define marriage in their constitutions as the union of one man and one woman..." But that hardly proves Dobson's point. Defining marriage as heterosexual is hardly the same thing as endorsing the religious right's vicious anti-homosexual agenda. It is common to want to restrict "marriage" to heterosexual couples and still confer full legal rights to homosexual couples. In this case, many voters side with the religious right by coincidence.

Dobson simply ignores all of the other electoral outcomes.

But here is the more substantive point: Dobson calls on Christians to attempt to enforce their distinctly religious views through politics. Dobson rejects Barack Obama's stance that political policies must be based on "some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.” Dobson calls on Christians to reject the "invitation for believers to show up, but then only to be allowed to make arguments that are not based in their deepest beliefs."

And what are Dobson's priorities? "We will continue to stand up for the sanctity of human life, the sacredness of marriage and the right to have a say in the principles that will continue to guide this nation founded on biblical principles."

Banning abortion is his first priority; discriminating against homosexuals is his second. (No serious person protests Dobson's right of free speech; that's hardly the issue.) And Dobson frankly admits that both these causes are particularly religious in nature. With an agenda like that, it's no wonder that most Americans (particularly in the Interior West) have rejected the faith-based politics of Dobson and the Republican Party.

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Focus Offers Obama Nightmare

(Reposted:) Westword pointed to a document from Focus on the Family titled, "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America." I figured I'd take a peek.

The document purports to describe events that could happen. "Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate," the letter predicts. How might this happen?

Obama could select three Supreme Court justices who are "far-Left, American Civil Liberties Union-oriented judges." (Apparently the ACLU is still a scare word in some circles.) What is the harm in that? Does Focus on the Family worry about eroded economic liberties? Eroded personal liberties? After all, the purported concern of the letter is freedom.

The answer is no:

The most far-reaching transformation of American society came from the Supreme Court's stunning affirmation, in early 2010, that homosexual "marriage" was a "constitutional" right that had to be respected by all 50 states because laws barring same-sex "marriage" violated the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The first thing to notice is that such a ruling would in no way restrict "our freedoms" in any way, unless by "freedom" Focus on the Family means the freedom for the majority to impose controls on the minority. Such a ruling would expand the freedoms of some. My freedom is in no way restricted if my gay friends get married. This hardly raises a blip on the Scarometer.

I am not much concerned whether gay couples go the route of "marriage" or "domestic partnership." But what is interesting is that this is the top concern of Focus on the Family, even though such a ruling would have no practical significance for the day-to-day lives of most Americans.

The Court might also further violate rights of contract and free association in the name of anti-discrimination. Obviously I'm against that. However, conservatives have hardly taken a consistent position on the matter.

Government-school training on the virtues of homosexuality? I doubt it. If it were a problem, the solution is to separate school and state. But, generally, evangelicals have been more interested in capturing tax-funded schools for their own purposes, not restoring liberty in education. Those who want school prayer and the tax-funded teaching of creationism can hardly whine when their opponents want to capture the same system for their own purposes.

"There are no more Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant adoption agencies in the United States." It's unclear to me why religious organizations should have the "freedom" to place children according to religious doctrine. Those organizations don't own the children.

Outlawing "offensive" speech from the Bible? Well, if the justices are ACLU types, we hardly need to worry about that. The irony of the evangelical movement whining about censorship is palpable. The evangelical movement poses the much more dangerous threat to free speech.

Controls on doctors? Again with the hypocrisy. Hello! Focus on the Family wants to throw doctors in prison -- or worse -- for performing abortions. I share the concern about controls on association and contract. But the religious right hardly offers a better alternative than the left.

Focus on the Family's concern with fertility treatments is especially laughable. Remember that Focus praised Amendment 48, which would outlaw most fertility treatments because they involve the destruction of fertilized eggs.

Focus on the Family then tries to argue that outlawing abortion and censoring pornography is somehow consistent with freedom. Notice that, in the same document, the same organization laments censorship of religious speech even as it advocates censorship on religious grounds.

For demographic reasons -- evangelicals tend to be more rural and suburban -- the religious right sides with gun ownership. Well, that's great. But in the general context of faith-based politics, such a right is practically meaningless, as the greatest threat to our liberty is the government.

Focus on the Family worries about Obama's foreign policy and health policy. But of course George W. Bush, the evangelical president, was a complete disaster on both fronts. (Bush did allow Health Savings Accounts, but at the cost of a massive expansion of health entitlements.)

The letter's closing paragraph states, "I still believe God is sovereign over all history, and though I don't know why he has allowed these events, it is still his purpose that will ultimately be accomplished." In other words, all of this concern expressed by Focus on the Family about freedom is merely a front. The organization doesn't fundamentally care about freedom; it cares about seeing God's alleged will imposed on earth.

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Is the U.S. a Christian Nation?

Sociologist Dr. William Martin -- the author of the excellent history of the rise of the religious right, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America -- recently debated the question Is the US a Christian Nation? on Opposing Views.

Dr. Martin's careful approach to the debate is exemplified in his first comment -- What Do You Mean By That? -- in which he clarifies the question and his position.

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