George Washington, Rick Santorum and the Reason Rally

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiment in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy which has marked the present age would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination, so far that we should never again see their religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.

Who wrote that? Take a guess? Do you think it was Robert Green Ingersoll? Professor Richard Dawkins? Sam Harris? Daniel Dennett? Christopher Hitchens?

It was George Washington. The remarks are contained in a letter dated June 22, 1792 that Washington addressed to Edw Newenham. (Source: United States Government Print. Off., 1931 - 1944. Volume 32, page 73.)

I do not think our first, or any subsequent president, with the possible exception of George W. Bush, would approve of positions expressed by Rick Santorum, the ex-senator from Pennsylvania who is currently the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.

Santorum has been serving the farthest of the far right wing of the Republican Party a toxic brew of Dark Age philosophy. He makes frequent references to "the Devil" and biblical values. He  opposes many human rights (e.g., gay marriage, civil unions), contraception (!), stem cell research, prenatal tests, right to die laws, science in general (environmental protections, climate change) and secularism (church/state separation) in particular.

Santorum is great for comedians, but a potential disaster for the country. I can't imagine him as the nominee of the Republican Party, but then this is the Party that gave us George W. I certainly can't imagine that anyone not on the Far Side of the extreme right would vote for him, but one never knows.

As noted, he is a boon for comedians. The other night, Bill Maher said this: It just shows you how when someone is a nobody politically speaking -- as Santorum was in 2008 -- you can say any kind of crazy shit and it's not newsworthy. But when you are seeking the highest office in the land...in the world -- it really worries me that you believe in demons and a personified creature named Satan." Santorum, not Bill Maher in a comedy routine, declared that what Satan really wants is the demise of the United States. (Source: A 2008 speech at Ave Maria University in Florida. He did not explain how he came to this insight.)

Santorum has said that our rights trace not to the U.S. Constitution but from God, specifically the Christian god. He believes the American divide is not a culture war - it's a spiritual war: Our nation's way of life is falling to evil forces...If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? (Frankly, it has never occurred to me to ponder what I would do if I were Satan. But, now that I just perused the matter a bit, I think I'd vote for Santorum.)

Santorum wants to defund public education - better to school children at home, as the Founders did then and he does now. Why is Santorum so against contraception? According to Bill Maher, Because there's a line in Genesis about not spilling your seed. A random brainfart from some desert dweller 3,000 years ago, before people knew about germs or atoms or round planets, and it gets written down and passed down and in 2012 people like Rick Santorum ... believe it.

So, if you are not Satan and won't be voting for Santorum or a registered Republican qualified to vote against him in a primary somewhere down the electoral line, what can you do? Probably not a lot. Hoping for the best will do as much good as prayer, rain dances or tossing a coin into a wishing well. Of course you can write letters to the editor or write an anti-Santorum blog, but wouldn't it be nice if there were another option, in addition to the usual ways of trying to make a little difference in your own way? 

There is. You can gather with like-minded, sensible folks and commiserate, laugh, strategize and in many ways enjoy a day on the Mall in Washington, D.C. You can make plans now to attend the Reason Rally on March 24!

The Reason Rally is co-sponsored by all the leading secular organizations. The day-long event is designed to unify, energize, inform, embolden and entertain secular people from around the country and throughout the world. There will be music, comedy and talks by luminaries of the secular movement. Everyone is welcome, including those not-so-secular. I'm sure even Santorum would be welcome. 

It may be the largest secular event ever. And its free.

Details about the Rally are here.

I'll end this with an observation and knowledge and reason as contrasted with faith from Arthur Schopenhauer: Faith and knowledge are related as the two scales of balance; when the one goes up, the other goes down...The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience, compassion and finally every feeling of humanity...For, as you know, religions are like glow worms; they shine only when it's dark. A certain amount of ignorance is the condition of all religions, the element in which alone they can exist. (Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), cited in Who's Who in Hell compiled by Warren Allen Smith and Freethought of the Day compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor, February 22, 2012.)

Desired and Dreaded Daily Dose

“When the bones of prehistoric animals began to be discovered and scrutinized in the nineteenth century, there were those who said that the fossils had been placed in the rock by god, in order to test our faith. This cannot be disproved. Nor can my own pet theory that, from the patterns of behavior that are observable, we may infer a design that makes planet Earth, all unknown to us, a prison colony and lunatic asylum that is employed as a dumping ground by far-off and superior civilizations.” – Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Ah, the Yin and Yang. From the sublime to the ridiculous. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m referring of course to my morning Internet experience – a daily intellectual and emotional roller coaster running the gamut from the lofty heights of science, reason, and humanism to the vilest depths of right-wing ignorance, bigotry, and stupidity. “Why bother with the latter?” you might ask,  “It’s such a nasty job.” I know that, and I guarantee I would rather be doing just about anything other than reading, or reading about, the latest right-wing treachery. But the answer is I can’t help it – the threat from the right is so great, so imminent, that if at least some of us don’t pay attention, the bastards are going to get the best of us. Actually, they have been besting us for the past 30 years or more, for mostly apparent reasons (keep reading).

Yesterday, my morning Web fix began way on the high side with an hour of delightful YouTube enlightenment and entertainment from my favorite maestro of cosmology. But as they say, what goes up must come down, so after that I held my nose and choked down the obligatory dose of nastiness, malice, misogyny and racism from the Republican proto-fascists and their equally evil co-conspirators, the religious-right theocrats. You know, the coalition of ideologues who are hell-bent on destroying whatever is left of our crumbling democratic traditions, the psychopaths who want to reverse every last bit of humane social progress we’ve seen in the past 150 years.

In my previous column I wrote about the abortion/birth control “controversy” and promised to follow up this time; but then I had second thoughts: Haven’t Santorum and the other Republigoon fools already outdone themselves, shown their asses to such an extent that no further comment is necessary, at least not for now? I think so. The battle lines on these issues have been drawn for a long time, and most everyone knows where he or she stands. It’s not likely that the pandering Mitt Romney, the deluded Rick Santorum, or whatever new candidate crawls out of the right-wing slime is going to change anyone’s mind. In a rational, reality-based world, most of the right wing’s burning “moral” issues (e.g., abortion, birth control, homosexuality, church-state separation) wouldn’t even rise to the level of worth thinking about. Those issues would be seen for what they are, a toxic brew of selected bits lifted a la carte from an ancient and ignorant misogynistic text that approved of slavery and genocide and commanded the stoning of disobedient children as well as neighbors who picked up sticks on the holy sabbath. To mock the fool who may turn out to be their presidential nominee, “That makes me want to throw up.” And don’t even get me started on The Ten Commandments.

. . . . .   

Enough of that for the moment. Let me tell you, briefly, about yesterday’s Internet highlight, a wonderful talk on YouTube by the captivating theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss. On the slim chance you haven't heard of him, he is, unarguably, one of the most brilliant people on the planet, the author of hundreds of scholarly papers and several books, including the blockbuster, "The Physics of Star Trek." His new book, a New York Times' bestseller, has the provocative, science-based title, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing.

A Universe from Nothing is also the title of his mind-boggling YouTube video, wherein he takes us from the vastly remote origin of the universe to its astronomically distant future. I will never forget the quotation he opens with, which is usually but not definitively attributed to Kurt Vonnegut: "Things are going to get unimaginably worse, and they're never, ever going to get better again." Sound like Kurt Vonnegut to you, too? (I miss that man almost on the same level that I miss Carl Sagan. But it's scientists like Krauss and the equally inspiring Neil deGrasse Tyson who make me think that Sagan's death did not, after all, leave a void that will never be filled.)

In using that commencement-speech quotation, Krauss, a self-described optimist, was referring in jest to an unimaginably distant future trillions of years hence. Here's the spoiler: At some point all the galaxies will be moving away from each other faster than the speed of light; so, for example, astronomers in a nascent civilization somewhere in our galaxy will see no evidence of anything in space beyond our the Milky Way. It will look to them just as we thought it was as recently as the early 1920s, when Edwin Hubble finally settled the question of the existence of other galaxies beyond the Milky Way. That’s all I’m going to say about Krauss’s talk, except that I urge you to watch it.

. . . . .

Now for the ridiculous, the bad, and the ugly – the specter of a detestable near-future brought to us by the political and religious Reich. One thing that keeps me up at night is concern that the bastards are exponentially working themselves up to a point of critical mass where they will no longer play by the rules, no longer accept the verdicts of voters and the rule of law. Unless of course they gain control of the government, in which case the law will be what they say it is, and there will be no going back. Think theocratic fascism. People like Krauss and Tyson and my friends, Steve Jonas, Don Ardell, and Iris Vander Pluym won't have a voice in that world – not if they know what's good for them. Either of the two scenarios – the bastards do or don't get elected – has nightmarish potential, although not elected is by far the lesser of evils and still offers us a fighting chance against their remorseless advance. Think I exaggerate? Just consider how far to the right this country has moved since the 1960s.

So if you haven't been paying attention, it's time to check in on reality: those ignorant, malevolent ideologues are for real and they are motivated, much more than we are. And they are well organized and well financed. And for the most part they stay on message, march in lock step, like disciplined soldiers in the culture war they declared. How successful have they been? According to Sara Robinson, in her three-part series at Campaign for America's Future, we could very well be poised at the tipping point of fascism right now. You no longer hear people saying, "It can’t happen here." At least not with a straight face.

I have suggested that the wingnuts' outrageous public statements are nothing compared to what they believe and regularly say among themselves. But recently they seem to be abandoning caution, revealing more of their true nature. Even their historically "responsible" public figures, say, presidential candidates, are sounding more extreme, more like Rush Limbaugh, who has become the role model for the generic conservative personality. Increasingly reckless statements keep "slipping out." And, led by Limbaugh, they are ratcheting up the rhetoric to very disturbing levels.

I hate to have to point out again that the media responds to all this with a huge double standard:  With few exceptions, Republicans can say damn near anything and they get a pass – the underlying assumption being that that’s just who they are. I would argue that this tacit acceptance of bigotry and the politics of personal attacks is driven by numbers, by the  existence of a huge and increasingly belligerent  audience of “Dittoheads” that lends legitimacy to their most recklessly insane comments. Leaders of the religious right have been getting away with absolute insanity for, well, for as long as I can remember.

A recent example was Rick Perry's talk about secession being something Texans might have to resort to? That was said in public, for a national audience. And I don't think it was just some random brain fart on Perry's part: that's how those guys and their white supremacist buddies think and talk among themselves. These days everyone on the right is angrier than ever, if that’s possible, which is just what you'd expect, considering they are not in power and, mainly, there's a black man in their White House! So here’s my fearless prediction: If they don't win the presidency this time, or at least both houses of Congress, the angry rhetoric will escalate and lead to serious violence.

In such a short time politics have gone so far beyond Bush and Cheney, who were certainly scary enough. But these conservatives have taken things way past the psychological point of no return. They are so far gone there is no way they can make it back to participate in normative politics. Those days are gone forever, or at least until this culture war is resolved. And I’m saying it won’t be resolved peacefully. Of course I hope I’m wrong.

So what can we do? Get serious and organize, organize, organize. Our survival depends on setting aside our internecine differences and focusing our collective efforts on saving this country from impending fascism. That means defeating those proto-fascists at every level.

GOP Candidates Past and Present and Lies They Tell About Their Military Service (Part I)

On February 22, 2012 CBS ‘This Morning’ News ran a piece on the Supreme Court hearing a case about lying about military honors and service.  There is a law on the books that makes it a federal crime to lie about any medals or bogus awards claimed, but, in reality, false.  Point in case, if you never received any medals, but you said you did.  The law being argued before the Supreme Court is based upon just such a false claim. 

That’s right, if you did not show courage and valor while falling on a hand grenade to protect your comrades, you can’t say you did.  If you really did not win the Congressional Medal of Honor you cannot say you did!  Or if you never served your country you cannot say you did and claim to be a Veteran. Imagine that.  This law does promise to step on a lot of toes in high places, doesn’t it?  What a bugger.

For clarity let us repeat the premise and the law under scrutiny that has reached the Supreme Court.  Again.  To not be able to speak freely even if what you are saying is a lie, some civil liberties organizations say is a clear violation of free speech under the First Amendment.  Some groups even contend that in the interest of the First Amendment to the Constitution, a person should be allowed to lie about receiving the Navy Cross or the Congressional Medal of Honor, even if totally false, and that right to lie should be protected under the free speech amendment to the Constitution. 

Major Xavier Alvarez told persons in California that he had received the Congressional Medal of Honor and had been a Marine for 25 years.  It was all a lie.  Big fabrication.  He got a year in federal prison for his lie.  He is now appealing to the US Supreme Court.

CBS coverage on lying about military medals and awards

I have always believed in protecting the First Amendment Right of free speech, but this is carrying things a bit too far.  If a person is running for a political office should he be allowed to lie and embellish his military valor (real or imagined) perhaps to garner a winning vote and perhaps to be elected?  Is it in the interest of free speech to allow unchecked, a person to tell bald-faced lies about his military service and winning medals for valor?  When it never happened?  And should he be allowed to campaign on that falsehood, perhaps to fool the voters and get elected to high office? 

 Hey, and what if a person lies about ever serving in the first place, like when Bush II said he served under General Turnipseed, Commandant of the Alabama Air Guard?  Even when the good General himself said he never saw Bush at his command in Alabama?  According to the General who did his flight training in Corpus Christi, he said he certainly would have known about if a Texas pilot like Bush had been assigned to his command.  But the general had no knowledge of Bush’s service in his command in Alabama.  It still appears that Bush was AWOL. And got out of the Draft and foxhole duty in Viet Nam by joining the Texas Air Guard.  And nobody cared whether he had to perform his duties and report for muster during Reserve meetings?  Guess not.  It was not a hot news item then.  And even more obscure today.  But there really is a law on the books about lying about your military service.  Interesting.

In my opinion having to do some prison time for lying about your military service is a bit harsh.  I would favor a stiff fine, but I would be in favor of a punishment for such a dishonor to all the brave servicemen and women who did serve.

All free speech rights under the Constitution must have limitations just as it is in libel and slander offenses.  In exercising free speech there should be no injury to another person or government.  No one or no group should suffer because of the lie. The greatest concern should be the public good.  If you lie and get elected, in my opinion, you have wronged individuals who have instilled their trust in a you, a fiduciary candidate to tell the truth and serve them well.  Everyone knows that politicians lie.  But when it is provable that a politician lied to get elected by embellishing his military service he should be disqualified from that office.  Who knows, if he gets catapulted by those lies to governor or even president, he might just lie again about something big.  Like invading a sovereign country.  Like Iraq, maybe.

Corporations cannot make false claims about their products in order to sell them.  Such lies carry no free speech protection under the Constitution.  So should it be with candidates running for public office.  If it can be proven that they are lying to get elected, or to receive some other favor, they should be prosecuted under the law.

I used to care about Truth.  I even wrote a TPJ Column on Truth back in May of 2009, “Why We Should  Preserve Truth at All Costs”

I wrote another piece on the Master Liar of all time, Joseph Goebbels who helped Hitler ascend to a world power fueled with lies that almost destroyed the human race. 

Hitler’s darling, Joseph Goebbels (Hazardous to Humanity)

I guess one could say I was in my Truth Period back then.  Truth seemed so real and simple, that it was more than easy to believe that everybody wanted it, embraced it, and pursued it.  Thus, when was I ever not living in good faith, in short, embracing truth?  Well, I cannot tell a lie, and everybody can answer for themselves, but I, as 1 human out of (how many is it now?) 7 Billion on the planet as we speak, have been guilty of lying.  Every day.  You know, lies of convenience.  To avoid pain.  Or a painful decision.  Or like in making excuses for not going to have coffee or drinks with the new neighbors, the usual stuff.  In studying the anatomy of a lie we quickly realize, though, that we must qualify the lie and the types of lies of which we speak.  In my book harmless lies told when your business is none of anybody else’s business, all white lies told are fair game.  I would encourage one on such occasions to embellish to his heart’s content.  And one is permitted in telling oneself that it really is not a lie as long as you don’t say that to your inner self or believe it yourself.  Fair enough?  Being about Truth and Lies is a heady business, indeed.

We will not be spending time on lies of no importance, the lies that do not harm another human or race of humans or even city hall the entity that collects our taxes.  For purposes of studying the human race and why it lies like a cheap Persian rug is the topic.  We choose, I think, to lie when we can gain power, money, or position.  We also tend, as a species, to lie to avoid the pain of loss of power, money, and/or position.  There.

We tell our children to be honest, to tell the truth, and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Yet no one, adults or children on the face of the planet seems to be able to perform and live such a simple life.  Truth and preserving it is an arduous task many of our fellow humans consider to be a waste of time.  Why bother, they tend to snark and grouse, that, hey dude, there ain’t no money in it.  Now there’s a truth.  Out of nowhere.

Where lies really take a heavy toll is when rulers of countries abuse their power.  Hitler wantonly killed over 7 million Jews.  Stalin, put to death over 30 million of his countrymen during the purge and imprisoned even more.  Death and imprisonment often follow the big-scale lies perpetrated against fellow humans and countrymen that any given tyrannical leader feels a need to dispatch.  To the other world.  But wait, maybe Hitler and Stalin just got carried away with the sweet smell of power when it came to ruling their respective peoples.  Maybe the horrible end always began with little lies, told with a “wink, wink” and a smile the camera loves.  Perhaps that was the spark that enabled the big lie and destruction to follow.  Stay tuned for Part II where we shall explore how some charismatic presidents sold us the big lie and got away with it Scott free.

FFRF Advises Women: Leave the Church!

Many Catholic women are frustrated by the unrelenting campaign by church leaders (not of their choosing, please note) to restrict access to contraception services. This opposition also affects non-Catholic women, as well. The Church seeks to prevent health insurance plan coverage under the Affordable Health Care Act purchased by religious employers. The Catholic leaders and their supporters in Congress term such coverage "an assault against religious liberty." The only assault is the one being waged by the Church against women’s rights.

The Catholic Church has a history of pedophilia and opposition to gay rights as well as women’s equality. When might enough be seen as just that - enough?

In the eyes of one advocacy group dedicated to the separation of church and state, the recommended answer is "now."

In a new campaign headlined, "It’s time for you to quit the Catholic Church," Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation seeks to persuade female Catholics to consider leaving the Catholic Church.

Since I left at least 60 years ago, my first reaction was, the sooner the better.

Here is Ms. Gaynor's letter addressed to Catholic women. It will be further developed during the next few days while funds are raised for a full page ad in the New York Times. This text is available at FFRF.

It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church.

It’s your moment of truth. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?

It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you’re part of the Catholic Church, you’re part of the problem.

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers? When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church’s antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed.

A backer of the Roman Catholic presidential candidate says that if women want to avoid pregnancy we should put an aspirin between our knees? Catholic politicians are urging that the right to contraception should be left up to states? Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court upheld contraception as a privacy right, we’re going to have to defend this basic freedom all over again?

You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity?

No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith. As a Cafeteria Catholic, you chuck out the stale doctrine and moldy decrees of your religion, but keep patronizing the establishment that menaces public health by serving
rotten offerings. Your continuing Catholic membership, as a “liberal,” casts a veneer of respectability upon an irrational sect determined to blow out the Enlightenment and threaten liberty for women worldwide.

You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.

If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You’re kidding yourself if you think the Church is ever going to add a Doctrine of Immaculate ContraCeption.

It is disgraceful that U.S. health care reform is being held hostage to the Catholic Church’s bizarre opposition to medically prescribed contraception. No politician should jeopardize electability for failure to genuflect before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
(Question to ask your Bishop: Does he hold up an umbrella against the rain? Isn’t that just as “unnatural” as using a condom or diaphragm?)

Your Church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is “an assault against religious liberty.” You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the Church against women’s rights and health care. As Nation columnist Katha Pollitt asks: Is it an offense against Jehovah Witnesses that health care coverage will include blood transfusions? The Amish, as Pollitt points out, don’t label cars “an assault on religious liberty” and try to force everyone to drive buggies. The louder the Church cries “offense against religious liberty” the harder it works to take away women’s liberty.

Obama has compromised, but the Church never budges, instead launching a vengeful modern-day Inquisition. Look at its continuing directives to parish priests to use their pulpits every Sunday to lobby you against Obama’s policy, the Church’s announcement of a major anti-contraception media campaign — using your tithes, contributions and donations — to defeat Obama’s laudable health care policy. The Church has introduced into Congress the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, ” a bill to place the conscienceless Catholic Church’s “rights of conscience” above the rights of conscience of 53 percent of Americans. That the Church has “conscience rights” to deny women their rights is a kissing cousin to the claim that “corporations are people.” The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to oppose contraception now wants to use the force of secular law to deny contraceptive rights to non-Catholics.

But is there any point in going on? After all, your misplaced loyalty has lasted through two decades of public sex scandals involving preying priests, children you may have known as victims, and church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top. Are you like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go?

But we have a more welcoming home to offer, free of incense-fogged ritual, free of what freethinker Bertrand Russell called “ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men,” free of blind obedience to an illusory religious authority. Join those of us who put humanity above
dogma.

As a member of the “flock” of an avowedly antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet?

 

Please, exit en Mass.

The letter is signed by Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President of FFRF.

If you wish to contribute to FFRF's campaign to fun the placement of this ad in the New York Times and/or become a member of FFRF, go to their website and do it. I did.

Isn't freedom of speech wonderful? Let's not lose it to another theocracy.

All good wishes.

IS BRITAIN A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY?

“We are a Christian country and we shouldn’t be afraid to say so.” 
Prime Minister David Cameron on the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible, December 2011

“We are a Christian country with an established church in England, governed by the Queen.”
Eric Pickles, Conservative Communities Secretary in Coalition Government. February 10. 2012

“My fear today is that a militant secularization is taking hold of our societies.”
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Co-Chair of the Conservative Party. February 14. 2012

“The concept of our established Church is occasionally misunderstood and I believe commonly
under-appreciated.”
The Queen, at a gathering of representatives of 11 religious faiths at Lambeth Palace, to mark her diamond jubilee, February 15. 2012

“I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.”
Bertrand Russell. 1956.

“The so-called Christian state is the imperfect state and the Christian religion serves as a supplement and a sanctification of its imperfection. Religion therefore necessarily becomes a means for the state, and the state is one of hypocrisy….The democratic state, the true state, does not need religion for its political completion. Rather it can abstract from religion, because it realizes the human foundations of religion in a secular manner.”

Karl Marx, December 1843.

____________________________________________

One might be forgiven for thinking that there has been something of a coordinated effort of late by high representatives of church and state to persuade us that we are all in danger of  losing our hard won right to freedom of worship at the hands of a determined army of “militant secularists”. Religious freedom is supposedly under sustained attack. Fanatical atheists want to prevent us from saying our prayers. Ancient and cherished institutions are under attack; our very identity as a nation is in peril. What has occasioned this panic?

In 2010 a member of the council in the small North Devon town of Bideford objected to the practice of prayers being said at the start of council meetings as part of the formal business agenda. As an atheist he felt embarrassed and offended by it. He failed to persuade members of the council to stop the practice, or at least to exclude it from the formal agenda. His case was taken up by the National Secular Society and a few weeks ago a High Court judge ruled that the practice was indeed illegal. Local authorities had no statutory power under Section III of the Local Government Act, 1972, permitting them to hold prayer meetings as part of their official agendas. The reaction to this ruling in many sections of the media has been little short of hysterical. It is being claimed that Christianity is under threat, for, needless to say the prayer meetings in those council chambers where they occur, are invariably Christian prayers. Voices have been raised in defiance of the legal ruling, pledging to continue the prayer meetings. The mayor of Bideford has promised to conduct prayers before official business, but says that in his view “anyone who does not want to enter the council chamber until the prayers are over is being disrespectful to the mayor.”

The unholy fuss over this is at one with the outraged stance adopted by the tabloid defenders of the faith that periodically pretend there are sinister forces at large who want to “ban Christmas”, because to celebrate it may offend Muslims and members of other faiths. Britain, we are told, is a Christian country, something to be celebrated, not denied. It is worth taking a sober look at this claim. In what sense, if at all, can Britain today be considered a Christian country? No-one doubts that Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan, for example, are Muslim countries due largely to the fact that the great majority of their populations are devout, practicing Muslims. In this sense, Britain is not a Christian country. According to the most recent poll (Ipsos Mori) carried out for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, only 54% of Britons identified themselves as Christians. But, of those, 74% thought religion should not influence public policy: only 12% thought it should. Of the professed Christians, 58% hadn’t attended a church service in the past 12 months; 46% oppose the UK having an official state religion, as opposed to 32% in favour. 74% of those who identified as Christians did so because they were born into a faith rather than because of any belief. Only 32% believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus and one in five do not believe in the resurrection in any form. Interestingly – and rather crucially for the claims of Christian faith – 49% of those who profess to be Christians do not believe that Jesus was the son of God and 1 in 25 don’t believe he existed at all. Ipsos Mori interviewed 2000 people.

Given these results how is it still possible for the Church of England and its political defenders to continue to claim that Britain is a Christian country? At one level it has to do with the defense of entrenched privilege. Twenty six unelected Church of England bishops sit in the House of Lords. The Church of England is the established church in England and the Queen is its “Supreme Governor and Defender of the Faith” though her writ doesn’t run over the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The established church needs to keep up the pretense that its establishment rests on a solid foundation, so it has always seized on the evidence of earlier polls suggesting that about 72% of the population describe themselves as Christians, to claim that Britain remains a Christian country. But it is now clear that in any meaningful sense, this is nonsense. The findings of the Ipsos Mori poll are not, of course limited to those who describe themselves as CofE. Included must also be evidence about the increase since 2001 in the numbers of Roman Catholics, boosted by EU immigrants. When one also takes into account the far higher church attendance at African and African-Caribbean evangelic churches, it is inescapable that the decline in the numbers identifying as Christians would seem to be most marked in what were more traditional, white, “CofE” sections of the population.

Reluctance among the clergy to accept the hard reality of rapidly dwindling numbers of the Christian flock is understandable, if indefensible. One does not need to question the sincerity with which their beliefs are held. It is evident that very many practicing Christians are actively engaged in selfless work in Britain and worldwide, dedicated to combating inequality and achieving a better world. In this they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with non-Christians, atheists and others who are working in the same cause. But it is inexcusable that those in positions of power and authority in the Christian churches should use their positions to defend their privileges and the privileges associated with “faith”. The proliferation of “faith” schools in the state sector has undermined attempts to reduce inequalities in the provision of comprehensive state education by smuggling in an insidious form of selection. The main beneficiaries are the CofE and Catholic schools, but there is now a growing demand for Islamic schools. All such institutions seek to indoctrinate children into a religious faith with all the exclusivist and sometimes gender-discriminatory and segregationist practices that go with it.

The Church of England used to be described as “the Tory party at prayer”. That description no longer fits. Now the church is more likely to be the butt of sarcastic jibes from the Tories about “bleeding-heart liberals”. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is frequently singled out for this sort of treatment. Nevertheless, deep-rooted social-conservatism thrives in the Christian churches. Engrained hostility to the ordination of women priests and bishops, opposition to gay marriage and homophobia are widespread. Divisions over such matters run deep in both the Anglican and Catholic churches. But the CofE clergy and the Tory ministers speak with one voice when they denounce “militant secularists” who, they claim, want to prevent Christians from practicing their religion. The carefully orchestrated assault actually distorts the meaning of both terms. “Militant” denotes something warlike and combative; “secularism” simply means the separation of church and state, or the belief that religious practice should be separated from the public affairs of state and from state education. The use – or misuse – of terminology is deliberate. Although secularists may well be - and often are – people of religious faith, the terms “secularist” and “atheist” are often conflated and it has become increasingly common, particularly in the attacks on Richard Dawkins, to append the adjectives “aggressive” or “militant” to every reference to atheists or atheism. So secularists are now indistinguishable from atheists. Although the term does not have quite the abusive connotation it does in the United States, it still has a pejorative ring to it in Britain, suggesting that atheists must lack a moral compass.

What is really at stake here is the fear within the religious and political establishment that the call for the disestablishment of the Church of England may gain serious support. Britain is not a secular state and it is increasingly difficult for its supporters to defend the status quo. In view of the now obvious fact that the great majority of the population can in no serious sense be regarded as Christian – indeed no longer regard themselves as Christian - the existing set up is hopelessly anachronistic.

But perhaps the clearest evidence of the terminal weakness of Christian sentiment may be seen in the way in which religious festivals and holy days are celebrated. Muslims and observant Jews fast on Ramadan and Yom Kippur; Eid ul Fitr and Passover are steeped in religious significance. How many people in this supposedly Christian country now have any idea what Lent is about – let alone observe it? What does Easter amount to? The crucifixion (the holiest day in the Christian calendar) and the resurrection of Jesus means – if anything – for most people, Easter eggs and Easter bunnies. And what of Christmas?

If a committee had been established to come up with a way of expunging from this festival any and every hint of religious observance, they could not have come up with anything better than the rampant consumer-fest that it has become. However joyous, Christmas trees and mistletoe are pagan rather than Christian symbols. This not to endorse Scrooge’s charge of “humbug,” Christmas can indeed be a joyous time, despite having been high-jacked by a rapacious commercialism. But whatever is enjoyable about it has nothing to do with the birth of a deity. One cannot but feel a twinge of sympathy for the shrinking minority of true believers who must, at Christmastime, feel rather isolated from the multitudes who celebrate they know not what.

Recognize the Difference Between the Imposition of Religious Dogma and Freedom of Religion - and Do What You Can to Prevent the Former and Safeguard the Latter

The four Republicans seeking the Party presidential nomination, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, nearly all Right Wing broadcasters and others who lean more toward theocracy than secularism are promoting the idea that the Obama Administration is hostile to religion. This is absurd. Yet, a campaign is on to persuade voters that the Administration's support for pregnancy prevention benefits equates with hostility to religion - specificity, interference with Catholic dogma in opposition to family planning . Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner decried what he called an "unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country."

Nonsense. The Speaker, the Catholic bishops and the rest are demanding that religious institutions be exempted from a Department of Health and Human Services regulation that in no way abridges freedom of religion. The trumpted up controversy concerns an important provision in the implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act that simply insures that employer health insurance plans include services that women overwhelmingly need and want - such as no-cost access to contraceptive health services.

The Republican campaign is in support of the Catholic Church, an institution that is seeking to impose its religious dogma on their employees and the patients they serve, including those who are not members of their religious faith.

The Secular Coalition of America issued the following statement summarizing the difference between freedom of choice and religious barriers to choice: Almost every sexually active American woman has used contraception at some point in her life. To allow religiously affiliated hospitals, schools, and nonprofits to deny millions of women access to contraception would be a gross and unconstitutional infringement on their religious liberty. This regulation does not force Catholic or other religiously affiliated hospitals or care providers to actually provide care that runs counter to their deeply held believes. It only requires that they, as employers, make available to their employees access to contraceptive care if their employees choose to use it.

Please consider contacting your Representatives, writing a letter to the editor of your local paper and/or telling your friends why you do not support this grotesque attempt by the Catholic Church and the Republican Party to dilute your freedom from religion. Do not allow Right Wing Christian fundamentalists to deny millions of women access to contraception.