It has become a habit of late for more than a few politicians — running smack-dab against what the founders intended for this country, the land of the free — to tell you and me and everyone in between how we’re supposed to worship, what religion we’re supposed to heed, what faith beliefs we’re supposed to hold dear, how we’re supposed to live.
America, they proclaim, is a Christian nation.
The problem with that proclamation is that America is not a Christian nation and was never meant to be. Just like Utah was not meant to be a Latter-day Saint state. (You can either laugh at that or shake a fist at it.)
It was meant to be a nation, a state, where people (all of us) were free to decide for themselves (ourselves) how and what to worship, the religion — if any — to choose, what beliefs to hold dear, what commandments to follow. Yeah, how to live.
Americans and Utahns can live and pray (or not) any which way they want as long as the way they live and pray doesn’t intrude on the way others live and pray. Live and let live, pray and let pray, or don’t pray. That’s the intended American way and should be the Utah way.
That’s just one of the reasons it was ridiculous — and anti-American — for Louisiana legislators to make it mandatory for the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. That violates the basic tenets spelled out by the really smart folks wearing the knickers and the powdered wigs, the ones who wrote and stood for the Constitution, and the rights it made fundamental from the beginning. On our money, it might read, “In God We Trust.” What it doesn’t say is which God, or “In God We Must Trust.”
Look up the statements by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and James Madison and Ulysses S. Grant and hundreds of others about the importance of the separation of church and state as a refresher course. They are plentiful. Even Ronald Reagan said, “We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate.”
Throw in what comedian George Carlin said on the subject: “I’m completely in favor of the separation of church and state. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.”
It seems easy to understand, but what some misguided lawmakers fail to grasp is that when one religion or one religion’s principles are dictated by the state to be implemented for everyone, that then infringes on the beliefs of other religions, and further on the nonbeliefs of those who choose to shun religion. Embracing that is then misinterpreted to be a call for a godless nation or a nation devoid of sound principle. That is simply untrue.
Whether you consider yourself to be a religious or spiritual person or not is no barometer of who is honest or honorable or decent or trustworthy or a good citizen or the opposite of all that. Some of the most stand-up, law-abiding people I know are agnostic and some of the most dishonest announce themselves to be fervently religious, and, in this particular case, devout Christians.
The same goes for politicians looking for ways to use religion — often Christianity — as a means to push forth a political agenda, essentially to force Americans to comply with their political beliefs by using the name of Christ.
Anybody who has studied what Jesus taught, and how he taught it, knows that is not in line with his ways and means. And when you see self-proclaimed followers of Christ either running for office or attempting to control the behaviors of others by passing silly laws or slamming their fists on the lectern and/or using unkind or even hateful speech, to quote the great John Lennon, who imagined no religion, “Don’t you know that you can count me out.”
Is there anything more off-putting than individuals calling down thunder from on high or trying to use compulsion, legal or otherwise, to force other citizens to believe the way they do, to act the way they do, to interpret God’s will not just for them, but for everybody?
That happens too often these days, people who see themselves as inspired and visionary and called by God to tell you, me, all of us, how to live, what commandments to follow, what version of the Almighty to worship. Too often, it’s a device that has its roots not in the love of God, not in the love of freedom, rather in that aforementioned political agenda that is just as likely to be off base as it is on.
If Christian nationalists or nationalists of any particular religion insist on fostering and forcing by political means a nation of Christians, a nation of Fill-in-the-Blanks, they are neither following the teachings of Jesus, nor the writings of America’s founders. So, whose teachings and writings, then, are they following?
Their own.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gordon Monson.
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