Religion and Politics

I've been listening to various religious-oriented issues as they crop up recently. These issues in our public forum make me wonder if anyone, including Senators, Congressmen, and lawyers and judges around this country have ever bothered to actually read the Constitution and the writings of our forefathers.

The founding fathers of the United States wrote that very special piece of the Constitution regarding the establishment of religion and forbidding said establishment to prevent the United States from suffering the same problems the European governments, across time, suffered from. Consider the phrase: the establishment of religion. What does that mean? The definition of "establishment" is the creation of or validation of some "thing", in this case religion, through an act -- or, rephrased, the creation of a state-defined and state-backed religion.

So consider: how does talking about the concept that the universe was created by a specific and deliberate source, rather than the happenstance of science, become "unconstitutional" or threaten to create a state-religion? It doesn't. There are multiple theories out there regarding the creation of everything -- big bang theory (but what was there before the "core" that became the big bang, to have created that "core"?); creationism (someone or something that is self-creating thus created everything, usually referred to as God). Is it not better to discuss different perspectives, to encourage children to actually begin to think for themselves? How can they learn to assess varying perspectives and viewpoints, if they are denied specifically the option to learn about the other ideas? Or: how can we say that we deny children and teenagers the capacity to talk about creationism, but we push the idea of a supposedly-neutral scientific perspective -- thereby not just closing the door on anyone thinking for themselves, but denying the school the capacity to encourage children to learn not WHAT to think but HOW to think.

The call that talking about both things somehow would be "establishing" religion is utterly bogus. Is discussing Fascism versus Mercantilism an "establishment" of Fascism? The two are exactly the same, in principle: simply presenting the varying perspectives and then discussing them and pointing out the strengths/flaws of these perspectives doesn't establish anything... other than an open and informed discussion, which is what each and every school should not only encourage but have as its principle purpose. When we claim that we cannot talk about God, or anything remotely religious (which in the United States tends to be specifically anything Judeo-Christian, since we simultaneously argue for the rights of every other religion to be able to express itself, without even seeing the glaring hypocrisy of that), then we aren't protecting a non-establishment of religion but we are closing off discussion, a public debate, and informing people of varying perspectives.

I'd rather be presented with what National Socialism in Germany was about, and realise the evils that came with it, than just be told "can't talk about it" or "it's bad". Neither of those things does anything but create closed minds and encourage a closed thinking environment. I'd rather be shown the pluses and minuses across time of Islam, and Catholicism, and so forth, since those things were and remain a large motivation in history. How can we look at the creation of everything, without acknowledging the enormous and overriding influences of religion through the tens of thousands of years of human history?

The real focus of those who offer up "the establishment clause" as the reason you can't talk at all about anything that might be called "religious" by the self-appointed guardians of the government is far more aggravating. They don't want to let children/teenagers think for themselves, they don't want to present varying perspectives before them to encourage debate: they want to close the door on all such things and present only the perspective that they, themselves, approve of. They are part of an overall trend in U.S. history toward not simply avoiding a state-established religion but to push as much of the Judeo-Christian experience and history out of public life. There is nothing about teaching creationism in its own terms, side by side with other theories, that establishes religion or requires it to be the "this is the only right" perspective. But by denying the discussion, by refusing to allow for freedom of thought and refusing the debate, they are saying the exact and equivalent hypocrisy: that "the only right perspectives" are the non-creationism ones.

That serves nothing. It certainly doesn't serve the creation of a dynamic learning environment which encourages students to learn to think for themselves and assess information. It creates exactly the opposite environment.

And that's the saddest part of all. We have Cindy Sheehan as the darling of the left as she shreds Judaism and Catholicism as twin evils in the world, while she holds up as paragons of virtue such notables as Islamic Jihad and Iran and calls Saddam Hussein "a better option for Iraqi women than the Bush-imposed leadership". How can such vile, empty thought exist anywhere, but especially here? Because she's the product of a system that encourages not analytical thought but forced thinking, not debate along factual and philosophical lines but solely along ideological lines.

We need schools to discuss, side-by-side with other perspectives, those things that affect and affected human history. Religion, plus or minus, has played perhaps the largest role across the millenia in motivating and informing historical progression. To pretend otherwise, to refuse to discuss that participation, is simply close-minded idiocy.

The writings of our forefathers are rife with religious thought motivating their thoughts, informing their decisions, and helping fashion their conclusions. They certainly never intended the U.S. to reach a point where we claim the total rejection of anything religious-in-reference is "constitutional" and thereby in keeping with what they, the founders, wanted. The hijacking of the establishment clause is a pity and a travesty.