Obama’s recent push toward the Christian community, especially as it comes to a White House connection to something resembling Bush’s policies, has me a little edgy. The recent poll revelation that roughly 92% of Americans are believers in some form of religion (with Christians by far in the lead) puts me in a shaky 8% that misses the true separation of church and state that Jefferson enjoyed.
While riding in to work this morning and listening to public radio do a story on the Middle East, they gave up the statistic that over 80% of Arabs are convinced that the US’s position in the Iraqi and Afghanistani campaigns is to replace Islam with Christianity, therefor giving Al Quaeda it’s strongest recruiting message.
An article on Huffington Post this morning talked about Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s heir apparent) questioning Obama in public on whether or not he was a Muslim and trying to bring him to Christ in front of a group of clerics Obama was meeting with.
All of this is making me feel so far to the outside that I fear the worst happening both in the US and in the World.
Atheists rarely stand up proudly to declare their non-belief. More likely, they wish to be ignored by believers… left alone and unbothered. The organizations which have formed around atheism (The Brights, The Humanists, etc.) seem like they are competing more for membership and money than for the freedom from believing that everything is God-created and that we are doomed to hell for not taking part in the Jesus chorus.
It doesn’t matter, it seems, whether you support a Democrat or a Republican. Both sides want to tie themselves to pastors and priests who advocate the most outlandish things… and who, when these things don’t happen on schedule (you can look back for centuries and see the Rapture as having been expected and missed several times), simply revise the due-date. At all political levels we are seeing this stuff happening (the Governor of Louisiana, for instance, just signed into law a bill making creationism … excuse me, “intelligent design”… a subject being taught to the youngest of schoolchildren) and it is getting worse.
When I was younger I thought we were getting farther from religion as a culture, but we have actually swung the other way. I fear that my grandchildren’s grandchildren will never see a religion-free cultural climate. Perhaps they will be able to finally disengage at least elective politics from this bugaboo.