The Illinois legislature recently overrode Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s veto of what the newspapers are describing as mandatory-school-prayer legislation. Predictably, the state’s editorial pages are filled with denunciations of this arbitrary attempt to impose religion on the helpless children of Illinois, but in fact, the new law, requiring a minute of silence at the beginning of the public-school day, has nothing whatsoever to do with prayer. If public silence is a prayer, it can only be a prayer to the great nothingness that is at the center of the universe.
Although the law stipulates that “this period shall not be conducted as a religious exercise,” it does concede that there will be “an opportunity for silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.” The anti-Christians at the Chicago Sun-Times have ferreted out the legislators’ plot: It is an attempt to sneak religion in by the back door. In the future, presumably, “11:00, Plant Skills for Life; 12:00 Lunch” will constitute the time-management equivalent of the paternoster.
The editors of the Sun-Times published their editorial with a straight face, pretending to believe that the crooks, weasels, and ward heelers who sit in one of the most corrupt legislatures in the United States are sincere Christian men and women who want to restore religion to its proper place in our common life.
I have lived in Illinois for well over 20 years, and I have never failed to be astounded by the low civic, intellectual, and moral standards of our governors, senators, representatives, and state legislators. The typical governor has been as crooked as any politician in New Jersey, Nevada, or Louisiana, but their crimes are petty, in comparison with rival mob states, and they lack the panache of Earl Long or Edwin Edwards. On a recent trip to Louisiana, the lady who runs the tasting room of Feliciana Cellars winery in Jackson asked me where I came from. When I told her I live in Illinois, she told me of a friend of hers who had been forced to live up here for a few years. When he returned, she asked him how it was. His response: “Like Louisiana but without the food.” In other words, Illinois is as corrupt as Louisiana but lacks the redeeming charm of Louisiana’s cuisine, architecture, music, literature, and manners. Think of Chicago mayor Rich Daley, Sen. Dick Durbin, the convicted Republican governor George Ryan or the current Democratic incumbent, Rod Blagojevich, the only effeminate Serb I have ever seen. All of them are humorless and self-important political reptiles, whose only political principles are “look out for number one” and “don’t get caught, but if you do make sure you have more than enough for the trial plus a long retirement.”
These pious legislators are the same little busybodies who almost unanimously imposed an immoral and draconian no-smoking ordinance that, in effect, forbids me to have a cigar in my own home, so long as I use it, at any time, for business. Some years ago, they passed an absurd child-protection statute that puts “the best interests of the child” (as determined by social workers) above the rights of the family. They can and do receive fees from the utilities they are supposed to regulate, and their answer to the state’s fiscal crisis caused by their mismanagement is sell more lottery tickets and build more casinos. But now we are to suppose that they are also God-fearing Christian men and women. If any of them feared God, they would abandon Springfield and flee the coming wrath.
The hardest truth for conservative Christians to grasp is that we live in an anti-Christian country whose political leaders play pretend, every four years when they want the support of Pat Robertson and James Dobson, and once elected, with the support of Robertson and Dobson, act with complete indifference toward their supposed faith.
Some few Christians are beginning to suspect that the leaders of the so-called Christian so-called Right are nothing more than Republican Party hacks, lobbyists for their own special interest—namely, themselves. This may explain the high-and-mighty denunciations of Rudy Giuliani we are hearing, as if Giuliani is less of a Christian than, say, the cultist Romney, the crackpot McCain, or the actor (the word translated as “hypocrite” in Jesus’ denunciations of scribes, Pharisees, and actors) Thompson. This is a sucker’s game. Of course, the Grand Old Party has always betrayed its Christian voters. That is their assigned part in the scheme of things. “If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep”—the memorable line William Roberts gave Eli Wallach in The Magnificent Seven.
I understand the outrage over Giuliani, but loyal Republicans should not betray the GOP at this late date, simply because an immoral nonbeliever is the front-runner. It would be a frivolous act of a political independence they would not know what to do with if someone handed it to them. Conservative evangelicals are no better than the faux-Catholics who, in defiance of two Popes, have followed George W. Bush on his road to perdition in the Middle East.
As good Americans, we all know that we are supposed to keep religion and politics separate. This was the message of Jack Kennedy, that model member of the American ruling class. In 1960, Kennedy reassured the Southern Baptists that he believed
in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source, where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
What the future President did not tell the Baptists was that he had even less intention of paying attention to any Christian teachings on war and peace, truth and lies, fornication and adultery. I hardly think it is a secret that the only Christians who profess indifference to religious distinctions are post-Christians (like the Clintons and Bushes) who want to shed the last moral restraints imposed upon moral anarchy and their own sublime egotism. American political ecumenism was originally a Protestant thing, then a generically Christian thing, then a Judeo-Christian (a meaningless expression today) thing; now, it includes all religions. Where were the Christian Right’s denunciations, when George W. Bush was proclaiming Islam a “religion of peace” and inviting fanatical imams to the White House? If they can stand him, they can and ought to stand Giuliani.
The fictitious separation of Church and state is an article of faith in leftist America. Some years ago, I used to do a hostile radio talk show, on which the host, a leftist journalist, pretended to hate me on air. In fact, he was quite amiable and one of the very few competent journalists I have met in Rockford.
When religious conservatives called up periodically to protest the ban on prayer in public schools or the removal of a crèche from some piece of government property, the host would respond by shouting insults at the callers—“bonehead” was the mildest expression I can recall. (Comparing his outbursts with my own bad temper, I am now inclined to think he suffers from high blood pressure.) The Constitution, he reminded his callers, had established a Wall of Separation between Church and state. Freedom of religion meant freedom to worship in private, but the free-thinkers who founded the republic did not want to impose religion on anyone. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . Congress shall make no law!” he shouted until he got red in the face, adding, “What word don’t you understand, bonehead?”
This is the familiar argument used by the ACLU and People for the American Way. On a national talk-radio program, I once debated a high official of PFAW, and he claimed that Thomas Jefferson argued that the Constitution was intended to keep religion out of public life. There is only one way to deal with these people, so I replied—with a little exaggeration—that I had read every word of Jefferson in print and he never said anything like that. I defied him to tell me in what speech or letter Mr. Jefferson made such a remark. Of course, he could not because, as I knew, he was lying. Liberals always lie about everything, which is why you probably should forget most or all of the history you learned in school.
Six months ago in Chronicles, I explained that Mr. Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” existed only in his own mind, and that mind, as irrelevant as it is to the Church and state debate, has been deliberately and thoroughly misrepresented by liberal jurists, professors, and journalists. Sadly, all too many Christian conservatives believe that Church and state ought to be kept separate and that the Constitution has in fact built a so-called Wall of Separation between them. The only real problem, they say, is that atheist judges and politicians keep leaping over the wall and stealing the Church’s silver. Put another way, they want to argue, roughly, that the wall is not an impenetrable barrier, and just as civil laws against murder, theft, embezzlement, etc., must be obeyed by people in churches, so there is nothing wrong in reading a prayer in school or posting the Ten Commandments on the courthouse wall.
This argument is false not only because it preserves the false and atheist theory of separation but because it assumes an entirely unworkable and unchristian view of the relationship between religion and the commonwealth.
In today’s America, both prayer and the Ten Commandments can be outlawed from public places paid for by the predominantly Christian public, despite the fact that Congress has a chaplain who opens sessions with prayers.
The justification is a misinterpretation of the mischievous 14th Amendment that was never legally ratified and was never intended to apply to religion. I suppose no one will be shocked to discover that the Supreme Court has been lying to us for decades.
Although the federal government’s War on Religion is unconstitutional, it has become the law of the land, and the result is that the almost 90 percent of the population that is Christian is blackmailed and abused by a tiny group of militant anti-Christians who just happen to control much of the government, most of the media, all the major universities, and the entire entertainment industry. Christians have become strangers in their own land, with fewer rights than an illegal alien fleeing the scene of a crime.
Freedom of expression implies freedom from religion for people such as Voltaire and Jefferson and leftists today—and by leftists I am including not just Marxist-feminists but also libertarians and neoconservatives. For political intellectuals—that is, for people who make their living sounding off on subjects they know nothing about—freedom of expression is an all-important civil right. But is it really? To take only the case of religion, how many of us really have opinions worth holding, much less expressing?
Most of us picked up our theology the way we picked up our musical tastes—from family and friends or from goofy high-school teachers with an ax to grind or from something Britney said. Although I have increasingly devoted my time to the study of the Scriptures, Church history, and theology, my opinion on the procession of the Holy Spirit is about as significant as my opinion on black holes. The day I decided to accept the ancient traditions of the Church was the day I was liberated from the need to form opinions on cold fusion, global warming, and the conflict in Darfur—three subjects about which I am happy to say I know as little as Socrates did or does. Skepticism is the only healthy alternative to Christianity, and it is only when we begin to treat our own opinions with the skepticism they deserve that we can begin to be healed of this terrible disease that is sometimes called opinionism, though most of the anti-opinionists I have read are really extreme opinionists. (Check out Msgr. Donald Sanborn at traditionalmass.org.)
There are a few modern theologians worthy of respect, but almost none of them has made much of a name for himself. Most celebrated theologians are either ignoramuses who prate about religion in the public square or would-be cult leaders, such as the increasingly bizarre dispensationalists. Almost nobody over the past 100 years has had an original idea in theology, and the Greeks had a name for the people who did: They are called heretics.
I do not say there are no true or false theological doctrines; I am quite convinced mine are true and most of yours—if you are foolish enough to disagree with me—are false. But nothing has been more fatal to the Christian faith than the addiction of ignorant and vain people (myself included) to theological speculation. It was said in fifth-century Constantinople that you could not get your hair cut without getting into an argument over whether Christ was homoousios with the Father or only homoiousios. During the English Civil War, cobblers and tinkers lectured learned men on the theory of justification, and Praisegod Barebones, a leather-seller turned religious crank, actually sat in the Parliament. What’s next, a Mormon in the Senate? A dispensationalist in the White House?
This business of having religious opinions not only sets the stage for heresies, such as Praisegod Barebones’ crack-brained ideas about Baptism and the Fifth Monarchy, but it encourages dissensions and animosities even among Christians of good will. I had dinner once in Tennessee with several hard-core Calvinists who, in the course of the evening, consigned not merely Catholics and Anglicans to Hell, but every Christian on the planet who did not subscribe to Calvin’s simplistic theory of predestination, which is demanded neither by Scripture nor tradition. Unlike most Southern Calvinists of my acquaintance—tough men but gracious—these men were smug in their own sense of superiority over the rest of mankind. If they were willing to read the writings of a pope, I would recommend Gregory the Great’s Magna Moralia, in which Saint Gregory says that the sign of moral improvement is a humble acknowledgment of the magnitude of one’s own flaws compared with those of other people.
By now, you are probably suspecting that, if I could, I would restore the Inquisition—and you are right. I would, cheerfully, if only to shut up the blaspheming mouths of the fat, greedy, and gaudily dressed preachers who constantly blaspheme the Name of the Lord on TBN. But that is not, in fact, my point. What I want to suggest is that the whole idea of religious freedom should be viewed with suspicion. Christians have always wanted to impose their views on society: marital commitment, chastity, honest dealing in business—to name only three. Their opponents—atheists and libertines—are not honest enough, for the most part, to admit that they wish to destroy religion and prefer to couch their attacks in the language of objectivity, fairness, and freedom of conscience.
In adopting the language and strategy of their enemies, Christian conservatives find themselves defending Moonies, Mormons, and Muslims but incapable of exercising even the most basic right of men and women in any decent society: the right to rear their children as they see fit. Christians should recognize, as Christians in the first centuries of the Church recognized, that their rulers and government, whatever good they might be doing, are opposed to our religion, and they should never submit to the anti-Christian premise that the Church or churches should not take an active and public part in forming the conscience and manners of our people. To observe the results of that false premise, visit a public-school classroom or go to your room and turn on the TV. Where’s Torquemada when you really need him?
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