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When I was a little boy in occupied France, I saw priests sprinkling
holy water on tanks, canons and other instruments of war so that Christians
of one nation -- now divinely empowered -- could slaughter Christians of
another nation. I never forgot the surreal spectacle. I owe it (and the
extermination of nine-tenths of my family in Hitler's gas chambers) a
healthy aloofness toward religion.
Sixty years later, as France, a nominally Catholic democratic republic
readies to celebrate nearly 200 years of secularism marked by absolute
separation of church and state, the U.S. the ostensible symbol of tolerance
and egalitarianism, is unmistakably tilting toward theocratic governance.
When conservative Christian groups rocked the vote in last month's
presidential election, We the People did not witness the triumph of
democracy but the trouncing of popular sovereignty by an unyielding
religious juggernaut intent on ramming religious values down America's
throat. Implicit in this blackjack victory, is the ominous proposition that
religiosity is an articulation of patriotism. For those of us who love
America no less, this perverse inference brings fresh meaning to the axiom
that there is no greater evil than that inspired by faith-infused
convictions. Consider the Crusades, the "Holy" Inquisition and the hostility
of Islamic extremism. Nor did President Bush's stunning victory at the polls
signal the restoration of a "moral" America. There is no all-embracing
morality in America -- only the aggregate interests of the dominant power
bloc.
The reelection of President Bush and the litigious contest that preceded
it have cleaved America. Americans are deeply and bitterly divided. Despite
strict and clear constitutional proscriptions, religion has grafted itself
onto the body politic. Intent on undermining secular values, the God Squad
and an army of Bible-thumping foot soldiers are gaining alarming strength as
they consign America to a formidable -- and outwardly forcible - mass
Christianization.
More than ever before, Americans are rushing into Christ's arms. They
come together at hundreds of "evangelical" rallies that draw thousands of
people who cheer and pray with their eyes closed and weep ecstatically and
throw their arms in the air and sway in trance-like unison like a field of
wheat in the wind. It is with paramnesiac horror, I admit, that I recognize
in the fervor of their collective hypnosis the same blind adulation, the
same body-and-soul surrender that millions of Germans showed Hitler in beer
halls, public squares and parade grounds. I am old enough to remember the
visage, din and thrall of fanaticism.
"If you don't accept Jesus, you WILL go to hell," they warn me. "The
only path to salvation is through Jesus," they assert. I recoil at such
bigotry. And I know it is just as offensive to non-Christians, agnostics and
non-believers.
It is ironic that the United States, with stunning arrogance and
hypocrisy, continues to criticize friends and foes alike for failing to
protect religious freedoms -- a charge it must face now that the Christian
right is blatantly attempting to hijack secular America.
Absolute separation of church and state is not, as some suggest, a
godless ideal. It is meant to guarantee, in addition to unfettered religious
freedom, that one religion will not predominate over another and that the
practice of religion shall in no way infringe on the rights of a secular,
multicultural state.
Religion, at best, is divisive and exclusionary, despotic, self-absorbed
and blinkered. Without safeguards, it becomes a menace. Because religion is
so divisive, it ought to be restricted to the home and houses of worship. It
has no business in civil society -- not in school, not in city hall, not in
Congress, not in the White House and, least of all, in the shaping of a
national psyche.
Inflexible dogma breeds intolerance. Intolerance begets persecution. We
have all seen what religious extremism has done to ignite the fury of our
enemies. Theocracy enslaves the body and subverts free thought. We must not
allow its toxic fumes to pollute America's heart.
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W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist. He lives in southern California.
