The Phony War on Religion

I've noted before that there is no war on religion in America. Indeed, if there is any war going on its a war where Christian extremists and the pandering whores in the Republican Party are attacking the religious freedom of other citizens who do not want to subscribe to the hate, fear and prejudice based Christianist dogma. One need only look to what's happening in the Virginia General Assembly to see the efforts being made to enforce Christianist belief on a statewide basis. Standing up to this toxic agenda in any fashion has now been disingenuously labeled as an attack on religion and the religious liberty of zealots. Gay rights advocates not surprisingly are consistently labeled as the enemies of religious freedom. Eugene Robinson has a column in the Washington Post that examines this Christianist/GOP lie that religion is under assault. Here are excerpts:

At ease, Christian soldiers. There is no “war on religion,” no assault on the Catholic Church. A faith that has endured for thousands of years will survive even Nicki Minaj.

Among the loudest voices, predictably, are those of the Republican presidential candidates. Guess who’s to blame for the attack on all God-fearing Americans who go to church every Sunday to hear sermons about the sacrifice and triumph of Jesus Christ. Hint: He got in trouble four years ago, during his presidential campaign, for going to church every Sunday to hear sermons about the sacrifice and triumph of Jesus Christ.

President Obama is indeed waging a war on religion, Mitt Romney claimed last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Newt Gingrich said at CPAC that Obama plans to “wage war” on the Catholic Church if he is reelected.

But it is Rick Santorum who wins the award for histrionics. Progressives, he said last week in Texas, are “taking faith and crushing it.” From that ridiculous proposition, he went on in truly hallucinatory fashion:

“When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it.

Romney and Gingrich know better; they’re just cynically pandering to religious conservatives. Santorum, at least, is sincere in his pre-Enlightenment beliefs. But rejection of the intellectual framework that produced not just the French Revolution but the American Revolution as well does not strike me as an appropriate philosophy for a U.S. presidential candidate to espouse, much less a winning platform to run on.

The Founders wisely decided to institutionalize separation of church and state. The references to God, the Creator and Divine Providence in the Declaration of Independence mask the fact that the Founders disagreed on the nature and existence of a Supreme Being. They understood the difference between faith and religiosity.

[J]ust as faith somehow survived Nicki Minaj’s burlesque at the Grammys, it will survive the attempt by Republicans to create a religious war out of thin air.

The ultimate irony is that if anyone is wants to "tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it" it is the Christianists. Sadly, for far too long they have gotten away with this trampling upon the religious freedom of others.