Is America Too Damn Religious?

Feb. 1, 2007 — -- As a minister, I certainly don't think people in the United States are too religious.

The United States is a remarkably diverse country where both nonreligion (atheism, humanism and freethinking) and religion have flourished, and people are proud of what they believe.

However, as someone who takes spirituality seriously, I do think that the fact that religion has tastelessly been overpoliticized, oversubsidized and overcommercialized is "damnable" and in my opinion there is certainly too much of that in America.

Let's use Christianity, at the moment the most statistically robust religion in America, as an example. I suspect that Jesus would be astonished by what Americans do in his name.

Many conservative Christians say that even committed gay couples should not have rights equal to heterosexuals because that offends biblical teaching. However, Jesus says in Matthew 22:35, that Christians must love their neighbors as they would have themselves be loved, without any sexual-orientation-specific caveats.

Jesus has become a poster child for anti-choice activists who fail to acknowledge that the topic is never even mentioned in the Christian Bible. By the way, all this does is demonstrate the temptation to cherry-pick Scripture, since the United States is not to be guided by biblical "truth" but constitutional doctrine.

Dec. 25, the day Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, has been overrun with tacky plastic Nativity scenes, "blowout" sales and playthings like Elmo and Wii. In one poll this year more respondents indicated they wanted to see a creche at City Hall than said they actually planned to attend services at Christmas.

That's tacky as well.

Religion has been wrenched from the personal and prophetic to the partisan and political. Once thought too sacred to spoil with politics, religious belief has become a de facto requirement for public office.

No politician dares to end a speech without "God Bless America," lest they be thought irreligious, if not downright demon-possessed. Presidential aspirants now hire religious consultants to show potential voters how devout the candidate is.

There is an affirmative effort to avoid using the words "separation of church and state" lest it be construed as "hostile toward religion."

The Rev. Barry Lynn is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. A longtime civil liberties lawyer and ordained minister, Lynn has a daily talk show, "Culture Shocks," which is heard on radio stations around the country. He is the author of the book "Piety and Politics: The Right Wing Assault on Religious Freedom," which was released in October 2006. For more information about the debate series, go to www.iq2us.org

Have we so quickly forgotten that then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy told the Southern Baptists in 1960 that he "believe[d] in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute" and promised to step aside from office if ever forced to choose between staying true to his faith or to the United States Constitution?

Government financing of religion now causes, as our founders predicted, significant strife.

Few religious groups, from Catholics to Scientologists, can resist a chance to visit the public trough, and the president's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has given religious organizations unprecedented access to Uncle Sam's pockets and the American citizens' tax dollars contained within.

As a result Americans have been forced to subsidize religious education, religious indoctrination and even religious discrimination in private schools, prisons, drug rehab centers and marriage counseling sessions.

Our Founding Fathers knew that religion was an intensely personal issue and wanted all religious funding to be strictly voluntary. Ironically, government financing of religion also puts religious groups in jeopardy.

Everyone knows that government money comes with some strings attached. Once a religious group accepts public funds, it can find that those strings have strangled the very vitality of its programs.

Even if not directly funded, many religious groups seem to affirmatively seek the "blessing" of governments by calling for the construction of icons, emblems, and monuments of faith in public spaces.

Many of our most well-known religious leaders can't help but commingle religion and politics.

Televangelist Pat Robertson has called for the preemptive assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and flatly asserted that Ariel Sharon's recent stroke was punishment from God. In an apparently solar-flare induced miscommunication, Robertson also reported in 2006 that God had told him that the Republicans would retain control of Congress in the midterm elections.

Religious Right zealot Jerry Falwell said on Sept. 13, 2001 that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were America's punishment for all the civil libertarians and feminists in the nation, and concluded we "probably got what we deserved."

The Rev. Barry Lynn is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. A longtime civil liberties lawyer and ordained minister, Lynn has a daily talk show, "Culture Shocks," which is heard on radio stations around the country. He is the author of the book "Piety and Politics: The Right Wing Assault on Religious Freedom," which was released in October 2006. For more information about the debate series, go to www.iq2us.org

Men like Robertson and Falwell who believe God's word is absolutely knowable and can infallibly be interpreted by themselves can create real dangers in a democracy. These men have regular meetings with administration and congressional leaders.

There is only small solace in the writings of one administration official who wrote recently that within the walls of Karl Rove's office these folks were routinely referred to as "the nuts."

What America needs is for the 1,500 faiths practiced here and the 20 million nonbelievers who are also first-class citizens to have vigorous debates between themselves about God and moral discourse. What she also needs is for governments to butt out of that deliberation. In that way, the separation of church and state will continue to "bless" America.

The Rev. Barry Lynn is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. A longtime civil liberties lawyer and ordained minister, Lynn has a daily talk show, "Culture Shocks," which is heard on radio stations around the country. He is the author of the book "Piety and Politics: The Right Wing Assault on Religious Freedom," which was released in October 2006. For more information about the debate series, go to www.iq2us.org