
June 12th / 14th, 2009
"Church and State at Odds"
Late last month, Georgia Congressman Paul Broun proposed a resolution
making 2010 the Year of the Bible. The resolution contained the following
language:
“The President is encouraged …to issue a proclamation calling upon
citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of
the Holy Scripture which has profoundly influenced and shaped the United
States and its great Democratic form of government, as well as its rich
spiritual heritage, and which has unified, healed, and strengthened its people
for over 200 years”.
According to FoxNews.com several liberal members of Congress reacted
strongly to Broun’s resolution, charging that it violated the separation of
church and state, and that it, “advocated one book of faith over another”.
Broun’s resolution came on the heels of revelations (no pun intended) that
former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had approved the issuance of
Pentagon briefing reports laced with scripture passages in order to
influence President Bush to implement certain military strategies. Broun’s
proposal may be offensive to some people, but Rumsfeld’s actions are frightening,
and border on criminal, because he and Bush used the Bible to justify the
deaths and murders of hundreds of thousands of people in an illegal war.
It was GQ magazine that uncovered rampant Bible-thumping by the previous
administration, and since then, we are now able to better understand why
George Bush kept referring to the war against Iraq and terrorism as a “crusade”.
Some of the passages included in briefing reports were pasted over photos
of soldiers kneeling down to pray, and it instructs the military to “put on
the full armor of God”. George Bush, a man of limited intelligence,
bought into the crusade mentality, and startled some world leaders with his
off-the-wall explanations for why they should join him in his mission. In his
recently published book, French President Jacques Chirac recounted
statements that Bush made to him in 2003 while trying to get support for an
invasion of Iraq. Bush told Chirac that evil Biblical creatures Gog and Magog
were at work in the Middle East, and must be defeated. “This confrontation is
willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies
before a New Age begins”, Bush told Chirac. The French President was “
stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify”
the war in Iraq. Chirac “wondered how someone could be so superficial
and fanatical in their beliefs”.
And the Bush dogma trickled down the line. In 2005, Lt. General William
Boykin compared the war against Islamic militants to a battle against Satan.
It’s no wonder, then, that many peaceful Muslims feared that the war on
terrorism was really a war against Islam.
Fortunately a number of respected theologians have come forward to
criticize Bush and Rumsfeld for their tainted use of scripture. According to a
report in the Chicago Tribune, Scott Alexander, director of Catholic-Muslim
studies at Catholic Theological Union said, “As a Christian, I am deeply
troubled that (such verses) are being presented as a divine call for the U.S.
to invade Iraq”. And, the Rev. John Buchanan, pastor of the Fourth
Presbyterian Church where the Rumsfelds worshipped said, “It is a misuse of the
Bible to take passages out of context and employ them to support one side
against another”.
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld propagated an unjust war on the American people
which resulted in obscene death tolls. As such, a special prosecutor should
be appointed to try these men as war criminals. In the meantime Congress
should take a closer look at what really constitutes a violation of the
separation of church and state, and how such violations might constitute high
crimes themselves.
Surprisingly the Constitution only keeps the State out of the Church’s
business, but not vice versa. Moreover, the founding fathers thought that
Christian doctrine had a place in government. They were simply opposed to any
particular denomination becoming the official religion of the State. Even
so, the argument could be made that Bush and company did, in fact, attempt
to establish a particular denomination as the State religion, and that they
used that religion to justify and guide government policy.
I think back to 1960 when Republicans tried to smear John Kennedy by
arousing fear in voters that Kennedy, a Catholic, would report to the Pope, and
not to the American people. And while those fears were unjustified, we now
know that it is possible for a zealot to run the government based on his
own denominational leanings.
For those and other reasons, we should not support Representative Broun’s
resolution making 2010 the year of the Bible, at least not until Congress
and the Courts can clarify exactly what separation of church and state
really mean, and until we can establish a precedent for dealing with those who
violate that separation. After all, Gog and Magog might need defeating,
but there are other evil creatures we need to deal with first.
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