The Ming Report

ARTICLES OF FAITH

July 20, 2004 - Imagine living in a country in which every political decision is guided by a religious text written centuries ago, or at least the by interpretation of that text by the clerics currently in favor with those who hold the reins of power. Imagine that the children spend their school days learning to recite the approved passages from that scripture; learning from texts that reflect those approved religious teachings no matter what the subject matter; and interrupting their lessons to intone an approved prayer. Imagine that the goods you can buy; the leisure activities in which you engage; the books you can read; and the television you may watch are all determined by that same religious test. Imagine that while you may vote in an election you must choose only between candidates who have adopted that approved religious philosophy and that the laws that they pass are dictated by that orthodoxy. Imagine that the clothes that you wear; the opinions you express; and the most intimate relations of your family life are closely regulated by that body of religious teaching adopted as the country’s laws. Imagine that from the cradle to the grave the message is repeated that anyone, any nation that does not submit to the will of the God that the scriptures describe is the enemy and not fit to exist and that God demands the decimation of the unbelievers in a holy war. Does it matter whether that God is called Allah, Yahweh, or Jesus?

We take it as an Article of Faith that the first Americans emigrated from England to this continent seeking escape from religious persecution. Yet the government that they established, guided by Scripture as interpreted by Puritan preachers, was to enforce a religious intolerance more pervasive than any that had existed in their mother country. Only in Maryland and then in Pennsylvania was toleration of religious dissent from the established Church protected in the local law and often that protection was a thin reed upon which the dissenter might lean. Even in those provinces the prevailing orthodoxy was engrained in the laws regulating daily conduct. After a century and a half of experience the framers of our Constitution engrained enforceable religious toleration in the ban of religious tests for public office and even that was not enough and was corrected with the ratification of the First Amendment.

Today we give lip service to that bright line between Church and State. We still teach our children that part of the genius of America is its devotion to religious tolerance. Yet we engage in a faith based politics of intolerance in which religious orthodoxy is used as a wedge to divide the nation into two camps. Does it matter whether the orthodoxy is imposed by a collection of Ayatollahs sitting in Teheran; Catholic Bishops meeting in New York; a convention of protestant fundamentalists in Atlanta; or an assembly of Rabbis sitting in Jerusalem? Freedom is always at risk We seem to have forgotten the lessons of history; that Faith Based Government always overwhelms religious liberty.