gracchusdixit

The sight of the Governor of Texas pontificating from a pulpit would be ridiculous if it weren’t so revolting.  It is claimed by Rick Perry and his ilk that Christianity and Christian values have been shoved off the stage of our public life by godless liberals in government and academia, that “moral relativism” is the cause of all our troubles, that we have become a secular and immoral society estranged from the faith of our forefathers, and that only when we become a “Christian Nation” again, can we hope for salvation.

This paranoid rant has been with us for a long time, it has deep roots, and it shows no sign of letting up.  To one degree or another, it is responsible for the intolerant, unyielding, and vicious nature of our public debate about the most basic human rights and needs:  the worth of public education, the freedom of women to make their own decisions, the utterly natural desire of gay Americans to be treated like the citizens they actually are.  When one side believes that thinking differently  is “wrong,” that being different is “evil,” no civilized debate is possible.  There is only war.  And a war is what we have.

We are at war, not because Christianity has been banished from the public square but, rather, because it has been allowed to occupy altogether too much space in that square.  It isn’t the rest of us who refuse to make room for Christianity; it is those on the Christian right—fundamentalist, intolerant, backward-looking—who refuse to make room for us.

Where in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States does the word “Christian” appear?   Where does the Bill of Rights state that only Christians are entitled to the rights of citizens?  Where did the Founding Fathers avow that they conceived the United States of America to be “a Christian nation”?  The answer to all these questions is:  Nowhere.

How, then, does the Christian right dare to equate being an American with being a Christian—let alone their own narrow, distorted version of what being a Christian means?  How dare they impose their theology on others!  And how dare they talk about “moral relativism” when the only morality they recognize is their own!   Our problem isn’t “moral relativism;” it is the “moral absolutism” of those who have absolutely no understanding of what it means to be citizens of a free and democratic nation.

It is because we are a free and democratic nation that none of us has the right to impose his or her private beliefs on anyone else.  It is because we are a free and democratic nation that Christians—and Muslims, and Jews, and all Americans—have the freedom to worship as they wish and believe what they choose—even if they choose to believe in nothing at all.

Let us be clear:  freedom and democracy are the values of a secular, not a Christian, nation.  In such a nation, there is room in the public square for everyone and anyone—except for those who deny and would destroy the values that truly make us what we are.   Christians on the right, most of all, should get down on their knees and thank their God for being able to live in such a place.  They have done precious little to deserve it, but perhaps their God will be merciful enough to forgive them.