Our nation’s Religious Right cabal carps constantly about a lack of religion in the public square and promotes the wildly misleading notion that the nation’s Founding Fathers envisioned a government devoted to Christianity.
This morning an incident unfolded in the U.S. Senate that provided a glimpse of the nastiness that movement has wrought. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had invited a Hindu clergyperson to offer a prayer to open today’s session, and it was disrupted by angry howls from a gaggle of Religious Right protestors.
As Rajan Zed prepared to give his prayer, one protestor shouted that what was about to occur was “an abomination” and a woman protestor wailed something about the nation only belonging to Christ. Three individuals in all were arrested, according to the Associated Press, for disrupting Congress. Those protestors, the news service reported, called themselves “Christians and patriots” as they were being led from the chamber.
Intolerant, uninformed and rude are more fitting descriptors. But Religious Right activists, such as the American Family Association and “Christian nation” lobbyist David Barton, have spent decades fomenting such behavior. Indeed, when they got word of Reid’s invitation to Zed, they began prodding their followers to deluge the Senate with complaints about the planned prayer. The AFA’s news arm reported that Barton knocked Hinduism as having few followers in America and spouted drivel about prayer to a “non-monotheistic god” as being un-American.
As the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, noted to the AP, the disruption and complaints from the Religious Right revealed their intolerance and the fact that the only religion they want paraded around in the public square is their own.
Today’s flare-up over prayer in the Senate is also a clear example of why neither chamber of Congress should be praying on the public’s dime in the first place. Congress is not a house of worship, regardless of what the Religious Right pushes or hopes for. Before they engage in debate or deliberation, lawmakers can pray in their offices or visit the numerous places of worship surrounding the Capitol if and when they desire religious sustenance.
Regarding the Religious Right’s claim that the nation’s founders wanted a government devoted to God, one should look at the work of James Madison, often dubbed the “Father of the Constitution.”
In his “Detached Memoranda,” Madison asks “Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?”
“In strictness,” Madison wrote, “the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes.
“The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress,” he continued, “is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles….”
Madison warned that clergy from religious minorities are unlikely to be chosen as chaplains. He railed against the “evil” doctrine that “religious truth is to be tested by numbers, or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.”
The Religious Right has spent years working to re-write American history, and they’ve unfortunately influenced some people and inflamed others. The movement as today’s religious squabble in the Senate chambers shows is a divisive one. It promotes religious conformity, not religious liberty. Far removed from the nation’s constitutional principles, the Religious Right movement remains hostile to liberty for all.
© 1947 - 2008 Americans United for Separation of Church and State