At his inaugural breakfast, Wisconsin Governor Walker said, “The Great Creator, no matter who you worship, is the one from which our freedoms are derived, not the government.”
This is a very strange formulation I hear many Tea Party and fundamentalists type make, but it makes absolutely no sense on several levels.
First, anyone who believes that our government cannot grant freedoms should talk to the descendant of a former slave liberated by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of OUR GOVERNMENT. The faith of the slaves was legendary, and to this day some of the most inspiring and truly Christian (if I can say that), heart-felt worship can be found in the gospel choirs and pews of historically African American churches throughout the South. But all that faith did not liberate them; a federal employee named Abraham Lincoln did along with a few hundred thousand other federal employees in the Army of the Potomac.
A century later, it was federal courts that insured African Americans had the right to vote. If anything, Christianity may have prolonged and justified the torment of slavery. Slavery, Jefferson Davis pointed out "was established by decree of Almighty God… it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation." Sadly, he is correct. Put bluntly, slavery is biblical, conservative, and traditional; emancipation is a secular, liberal, modern development.
(For a great contrast between this approach and the stodgy, white bread variety Bush's and Kerry's ancestors (yes, they were cousins and Mayflower descendants) imposed on Massachusetts, check out Bush's stony face at the funeral service for Coretta Scott King, and contrast it with the reminders from speaker after speaker about who was closer to the true message and spirit of Jesus of Nazareth.)
Second, throughout the revolutionary turmoil of the 18th and 19th Century, Christian conservatives were consistently on the wrong side of the barricades. (It was deists, after all, who founded our country, not religious fanatics, and the anti-clerical zeal of the French revolutionaries was legendary.) It is possible the Conquistadors would have been as cruel if they did not believe that God was on their side (and that indigenous people, as non-Christians, had no real rights not to be worked to death in their silver mines), but to really stick it to someone, it helps to have it in your head that God is on your side (and only yours).
Monarchy and Christianity went hand in hand; virtually every sovereign stated that his ability to rule his people and siphon off a portion of the loot for himself claimed God gave him that right. It makes sense, actually; there is nothing at all democratic in the idea of a Yahweh in the clouds, meting out eternal punishment for all but a tiny elect (and he's not telling). There is no appeal, simply an all-powerful executive, sometimes cruel, but always reliably in charge. Having a parallel command structure as your state religion can be a unifying force, which is why both Emperor Constantine and later the Prophet Mohammed found the idea of monotheism so appealing.
Parliamentary representative democracy, on the other hand, was not just pluralistic, but messy, unpredictable, and placed a power in the individual that none of the agrarian societies that wrote the Bible ever dreamed of. All of the hallmarks of liberal secularism - the end of slavery, universal male suffrage, representative democracy, limited government and the rule of law, women's suffrage, the abolishment of torture and then capital punishment (in Europe at least - we are still waiting in the United States) and separation of church and state - came not because of but DESPITE religious conservatives and their values. There is nothing in the Bible supporting any of these ideas and much against them. The Bible condones slavery, says women should be quiet in church, never approach the alter when menstruating, and if they have questions, ask their husbands later (whom they must obey). It says nothing about judicial oversight, parliamentary procedures, or the abolition of cruel and unusual treatment - in fact, it recommends quite a few, including stoning, drowning, eye-gouging, and hand-amputating for crimes such as talking back to your parents or working on Saturday (the Sabbath).
So, yes, we can have a Bible-based society or we can have a parliamentary representative liberal democracy, but we cannot have both. I believe this is the source of much tension in the United States between the religious right and the other 80% of the country: they have a formula that if rigidly followed is not only incompatible with democracy but antithetical to it. No issue today makes this issue more salient than abortion: how can you have a democratic process that demands compromise and submission to laws of men, even those with which you passionately disagree, while embracing a belief system that demands that one's ultimate obedience is to god as you conceive him? Unless theocracy were imposed, there would be conflict between these two models, and it's not just abortion. Quakers and other pacifists must support the Pentagon. Those opposed to the death penalty must nevertheless pay their state taxes that help pay for the lethal injection and the executioner's fee. Welcome to democracy, which will always be fundamentally at odds with the top-down, authoritarian absolutism of Mediterranean Monotheism.
There are of course many countries that have not instituted the liberal reforms of parliamentary democracy including separation of church and state, but I would not like to live in any of them. The Islamic Republic comes to mind, as does Saudi Arabia, and certain tribal areas of Pakistan and Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan. I would not like to live in any of them.
People of course have the right to advocate for whatever form of government they want, and to move to those countries where there is less daylight between religious and secular authorities. But it is historically and logically nonsensical to equate freedom and theocracy, especially if that theocracy is of the Mediterranean Monotheistic variety.
Yahweh is not interested in your freedom; he demands your obedience, absolutely, always, and without question. If he says kill your son, sharpen your knife and fire up the barbecue. If he says roast your daughter because she is the first to greet you after you have returned from the slaughter of your enemies, well, you better do that to. The god portrayed in the Bible casts Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden not for murder or stealing or war crimes but for eating a piece of fruit. Because it was low-hanging and tasted good. They were not obedient, so they were cast out forever, women were made to suffer labor pains during childbirth and men had to work. Or so it goes.
Yahweh allegedly drowned every man, woman, and child except for the Noah clan and the animals he could cram into his 450-foot (300 cubits) houseboat, not because the people had raped or plundered but because of the "imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). It seems such puny stuff for a mass extinction, but again, it is a violation of the cardinal rule running throughout this book: obey and submit, even in your innermost thoughts.
Jesus is a vast improvement over Yahweh, but the New Testament offers no Disney-like ending either. In fact, Jesus makes clear repeatedly that he has come not to replace the law but to enforce it, to gather lost sheep and point them back, presumably toward Yahweh. When his disciples asked him how to pray, he urged them to ask only for their daily bread, then that the will of God - not theirs - be carried out. Yes, he preached compassion, forgiveness, a radical redistribution of wealth that would make Karl Marx blush, and offered a new definition of adultery that included divorce and remarriage (allowed under Jewish law). When asked how to get into kingdom of heaven, his followers are given a set of rules that involve submission and obedience, not freedom. There is no evidence Jesus was particularly interested in democracy, although as an educated Jewish man he may have read about Athens, but there was (sorry, small government libertarians) lots of evidence that he preached obedience to the state, including the paying of taxes.
The sister faith of Judaism and Christianity, Islam advances a virtually indistinguishable set of dietary, social, and reproductive rules that have the same end: obedience. It is no coincidence that Islam means complete surrender to the will of God.
Again, this is not to say that these ideas are bad; there is some evidence that people might be happier if more choices were made for them, instead of leaving us in existentialist Angst (read Dostoevsky's the Grand Inquisitor for the most eloquent (but nakedly anti-Catholic) exposition of this theme). Certainly there are many problems in today's society resulting from people abusing their free will. Freedom gives us many choices, and not all of them are healthy. More people download pornography than Proust (even though both are available free online). Free people sometimes elect Republicans. Who tell them that their government does not have the power to grant (or presumably protect) freedoms.
No, apparently a government they head will not be granting people much freedom anytime soon.
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