Democrats and Religion

For OffHisMeds' entire life, Secularists have been sounding the alarm bells over the dangers to American society of the imposition of religion upon government. And by Secularists, I mean Democrats. While the views of Secularists and Democrats are not entirely monolithic, they are enough so that there is substantially no difference; and, there are few Secularists on the Republican side of the argument, with the exception of a relatively tiny, whacky yet beloved fragment of Libertarians, who, only by a stretch, are identified as Republican.

So, Democrats own this issue, and fairly so.

I've always wondered why Secularists think it is wrong that religious folks - let's just call them Fundamentalists - would seek to impose their views, through our political process, upon their fellow citizens. Don't they have as much right as say, Environmentalists, Populists, Communists, Anarcho-Syndicalists and, well, Secularists? In fact, couldn't you argue perhaps that they have more of a right? After all:

- Fundamentalists - at least the ones that Democrats denigrate - generally contribute far in excess of their numbers the money that drives our bold experiment in Democracy.

- Given their self-sufficiency compared to the general populace, Fundamentalists generally receive little back in terms of governmental benefits relative to their contribution.

- Fundamentalists tend to be much more self-sacrificing than Secularists, inasmuch as that is a singular article of their Christian faith.

- Counterintuitively, Fundamentalists are far less the finger-wagging, hectoring Scolds than Secularists, whose raison d'être seems to be to flog America at every turn with their pungent constitutional insights.

- Finally, even while contributing the most and taking the least, Fundamentalists generally don't bitch about this state of affairs. They're happy to contribute more than their fair share, and they're fine with it being redistributed to those that make little or no contribution.

Couldn't one argue that them that makes the biggest contribution to the Commonweal but takes the least ought to get at least as big a say in policy making? Call OffHisMeds crazy, but those facts alone ought to qualify them for a seat at our Political Table, and arguably the best seat.

That this is something less than conventional wisdom would be an understatement. Poll 100 people, and very few of them - even religious folk - are going to suggest that they're entitled to some kind of primacy in the political life of the nation.

Time and again, I've asked three questions of my liberal friends on this issue, and never gotten satisfactory answers:

- What's wrong with religious folk imposing views through the ballot box that are instructed by their religious beliefs?

- How can religious folk be taxed if they are going to excluded from the political process?

- Why do you give Liberal Churches - and particularly Black Churches - a Hall Pass on the issue of mixing politics and religion?

The standard Democrat argument on religion in our public life generally begins and ends with an incantation on "the separation of church and state". Ask them to explain why that's necessary and a handful will rebound - triumphantly - with the argument that "it's in the constitution". My favorite part of this declaration on the part of my Liberal friends is that they frequently make the little "quotation marks" sign with their fingers as they say the word "Constitution", as if lending it - with hand jive - a legitimacy it would not otherwise enjoy.

That aside, when you tell them that the phrase is not in the constitution, they get fairly exercised. For the benefit of all, here's the actual words of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". Not only does the Constitution not address the separation of Church and State, it explicitly rejects the premise of Secularists that Religion ought to be restricted in any way. Thus, if I'm to believe the Constitution, Right Wing Fundamentalists - as long as they're paid up on their taxes and don't have any outstanding warrants - are just as entitled to impose their views on our government as say, Bill Maher, right up to and including imposing those views through the electoral process.

On the issue of taxing Religious Folk whilst excluding them from the political process, Democrats are generally dumbfounded. The elephant in the living room is, of course, that they allow untrammeled political activism by Liberal Churches, and particularly Black Churches, but more about that later. More to the point, not only have Democrats not pondered the inequity of taxing the Religious while imposing explicitly anti-religious views, they have used those taxes to explicitly persecute people of faith that don't conform to the Democrat's worldview. Just think of how institutionally deaf they have been on, say, the First Amendment, when it comes to Religious Folk and the public square. It was Democrats that used the RICO statutes to attempt to bankrupt Conservative religious organizations that did nothing more than protest in front of abortion clinics. You might as well ask an alligator why he desires to drag granny off the back lawn of her retirement home in Boca. He's got no moral qualms about it. Granny is a meal. Religious protestors must be destroyed for making Abortionists uncomfortable. End of conversation.

While we're on metaphors involving the animal kingdom, we come next to the proverbial elephant in the living room. Why is it that Black Churches have not only been granted a gigantic exception when it comes to involvement in the political process, but are enthusiastically encouraged to do so by the one half of our polity (Democrats) that get upset when others attempt to do the same? Liberal Black ministers - and particularly those representing the Nation Of Islam - have done for at least 40 years the kinds of things that would automatically cause Fundamentalist churches to lose their tax exempt status. They politic from the pulpit; they bring Democrat politicians in to politic from the pulpit; many of them openly agitate against White America as some kind of monolithic oppressor; some not only "damn America, but God Damn America".

Not that Black Churches are the only group that get a Hall Pass from Democrats. Episcopalians have been espousing the virtues of abortion and same-sex marriage for decades. Liberal Catholic churches likewise speak with impunity on any issues - but only those issues - that are offensive to Conservatives. Muslims preach of the Great Satan and their radical clerics call for the overthrow of the Great Satan and that's all fine - so long as their definition of The Great Satan does not include the Democrat Party.

Why the double standard? My own personal opinion is that all churches are entitled to political speech, however offensive it may be. Democrats clearly feel the same, as long as it is limited to churches that support their views. Another example of their hypocrisy is Barack Obama's support for the Faith Based Initiatives program begun by his predecessor, George W. Bush. I note with interest that he does in fact have at least one nice thing to say about what his predecessor has bequeathed him, albeit that - to date - no words of praise for W have sprung from his lips. While we wait for the compliment for W that will never happen, we will also watch intently to see the extent to which he funds - or overfunds - Black Churches, liberal Catholic Churches, Episcopalians, Muslims and other faiths that take the Democrat worldview.

Given my druthers, I'd settle for the opinion of St. Thomas Aquinas on the issue of government and religion before I would the word of your typical Democrat. In the Summa of Theology, he puts the whole concept of "Separation of Church and State" into its proper context when he notes that "only those who have received the faith can be governed by The Church. "Those that have not received the faith cannot be governed by the laws of the Church" and "those that have not received the faith are capable of governing, for Earthly governance is the province of man......"

Those simple sentence makes more sense to me than any of the miles of blather that are indignantly and forcibly expelled from the piehole of your typical Community Organizer. Aquinas clearly states that both Secularists and Religious Folk are capable of governance, and that Secularists should in no way be excluded for their lack of faith. This has been the official position of the church for millennia.

The fact that Aquinas can not only have more moral authority on this question but intellectual authority as well is instructive, since clearly he is a partisan on this issue. A Catholic philosopher in the most well-rounded sense of the word, he expounded not only on issues of faith and God, but the physical world as well. Were he alive today, the Left would attempt to read him out of polite society; you know, what with him being a religious bigot and all, and Catholic to boot.

And Aquinas was a fan of The Church having a say on those aspects of human conduct that involved morality, a notion that the Democrat Party recoils from in horror - as long as we're talking about Conservatives. Again, why? Do Democrats not differentiate "having a say" from "control"?

In fact, my typical Democrat Secularist friends would have only one rebuttal to Aquinas' statements, and it would be their Gotcha moment: "if those 'who have received the faith can be governed by The Church', how is that different from Islamism today"? They might then observe, correctly, that the faith of Islam is frequently received involuntarily, and if the faith was forced on them, then so too must be the laws of Islam.

How can we be certain that Christian Fundamentalism - unchecked - would evolve differently in the political arena?

There are a few essential differences between Christianity and Islam. One, Aquinas at least makes the case for Secular government; Islam does not. Two, when Aquinas wrote his theses 700 years ago, the official position of the Church was that they should not govern anything but men's souls. Now, it is clear that the Church was doing quite a bit back then to govern the Earthly kingdom, but over time, it also evolved away from that position and back to its original mandate. By contrast, Islam in its most common form embraces Earthly Governance and the forcible conversion of non-believers as a mandate from God. Third, the beliefs of all Christians on this subject are instructed by those of Jesus, who, through the example of his life made it clear that Earthly governance was not the role of the Church, so perfectly expressed when he said "give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's". In sum, you can neither embrace worldly things nor confuse your Christian mandate with worldly things without crossing Jesus. Islam has no such prohibition, and their major prophet Mohammed has no such admonitions. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

What you observe if you study the issue carefully is the grotesque extent to which Democrats have distorted not just the teachings of Christianity, but the role of Religion in society. For liberals, this debate has been over for decades. To them, Christian Conservatives - mostly Fundamentalists - are attempting to impose a theocracy on our Great Nation. Never mind that that notion has even the most ardent of Fundamentalists scratching their heads; this is the bizarre world in which Secularists live.

It is all the more ironic, then, that the most extreme examples of Secular society - those that are the least religious - are also those who live in the only Western society that has an official state religion. What kind of cognitive dissonance must my Democrat friends be going through to realize that their soulmates in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada - all bastions of Liberalism and Secularism, not to mention non-existent attendance at church - live under a Constitutional Monarchy that has an Official State Church, and that both government and polity are beholden to that Church? Never would they tolerate a "Church of America" as do all Anglophiles "The Church of England".

What a quandary for Democrats. Should they read their Brit, Canadian and Antipodean friends out of polite society? Ignore their thoughts on Earthly governance? And if they do not accept them and their customs, must they then also reject their Socialist policies, grounded as they supposedly are in Christian doctrine? And how do our Anglo cousins of a liberal persuasion reconcile these contradictions?

OffHisMeds has a theory on why Secularists tie themselves into such knots in the first place. It is not complex, it requires no deep thinking, nor the comparison of religions, doctrine and such: Secularists simply don't want to go to Sunday service, and they don't want to feel guilty about it. How better to accomplish this objective than to turn slackness into a virtue? Me, there's a lot of things I don't like to do, including take out the garbage every Saturday and Wednesday, but I don't rationalize it by trashing those who do, you'll pardon the expression.

So, if Religious folk are within their rights to use their numbers to influence public policy - and let's further assume that it is so on as controversial a topic as Abortion - what next? Can you imagine Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden trying to foist their Catholic-Secular views regarding abortion on Aquinas? What would happen to them at his hands rhetorically is surely as unpleasant as will be their eternal reward. And yet, in America there is no Thomas Aquinas - much less a movement based on his principles - that would forcibly argue for not only the inclusion of Christian values in the nation's political life, but some deference to them.

OffHisMeds would argue that Religious folk of a Christian background can lay a more legitimate claim to political power specifically because their doctrine cautions them against amassing Earthly power. Christians have a built in belief comparable to Originalism that makes them, from my perspective, the ideal ruling class, since to desire or revel in political power is contradictory to your beliefs, and gets you cross-wise with God. Do Secularists and Democrats have any comparable restraint?

That's one they ought to chew on before next they speak.