Letters to the Editor
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Nonbeliever suspicious of all the candidates
As a nonbeliever, I have trouble relating to any of the candidates of either party. Yes, Romney and Huckabee are at the extreme end of the religious spectrum and seem to want to move us more towards a theocracy than we already are, but the others are pretty bad, too. It's easy to point the finger at Republicans, but Obama, Edwards and Clinton constantly talk about their faith in God. Woe be to any candidate of either party who doesn't evoke a higher power, and woe be to any candidate who does not end a speech with God Bless You and God Bless America. It's both disconcerting and annoying.
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the writers of the mayflower compact and the virginia charter were not the founding fathers
Harpazo, they predate the founding fathers by over a 100 years, those sons of the puritan reaction to the renaissance, searching for a return to the provincialist orthodoxy of the middle ages in the case of the former, and merely moderate merchants in the case of the later, where a world apart from the Enlightenment foundations of our country. They also hunted witches, participated in the slave trade and stole from/massacred native american tribes...they were european colonialists, not indepedent thinkers and philosophers like are actual founding fathers.... way to rewrite history for your own purposes. All the founding fathers were Unitarians and Deists, it was only in the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s that returned religious feeling in any real way to the to the public discourse of the country.
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johnnyrandom
THANK YOU, for your straightforward, proud athiest posting. When I read the type of clear heading thinking you offer, it is like a breath of fresh air. It gets really hard being a rationalist / athiest in this world of "believers". So, just thank you, so much !
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harpazo, your complete misrepresentation of the original quote is typical wingnut MO
You begin by stating Conason's words, that the two candidates "are clearly seeking to impose the restrictive tests of faith that the nation's founders abhorred."
Then, in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE, you COMPLETELY misrepresent the meaning of that quote. You state that Conason said the founding fathers had an "abhorrance to faith."
It doesn't take a very careful reader to see that "restrictive tests of faith" is COMPLETELY different from "abhorrance to faith."
This is so typical of wingnut response. It's called the "smear." You flip the original meaning of someone's words by deliberate misinterpretation. Then you build an argument based on that misinterpretation. In other words, you tell a lie then build a case on that lie. That is the definition of a smear.
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WHY are we here ??
'A practicing Jewish psychologist I met recently said that the reason religion is important is that it provides answers to the question "why are we here?"'
I love it when these so-called "deep thinkers" pull this old question out of their tired bag of tricks. They always seem to think that is such a "profound" question. Jeez ! Dawkins often answers this inevitable question with asking another question, "Why are unicorns hollow" - which shows that you can phrase a question that does not make any sense, and it has (and deserves) no more of an answer than the one about the unicorn. Actually though, when I hear that "why are we here" drivel, I think there is actually a good answer, although not the one the questioner had in mind. WHY are we here? Because our planet happens to grow our particular type of life form. AND, let us not forget - there was a LONG period of time (like most of the existence of the universe) that WE WEREN'T here - and the cosmos went on without US very well, thank you very much.
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@Anonymous
Oooh! Dueling quotes. I love it. I got you some John Adams right here:
As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.
Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? [He really didn't seem to like Catholicism very much]
Way to cherry pick. And don't even get me started on Thomas Jefferson.
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Founding Fathers of USA did not look like Conason, Romney or Huckabee for the record
facts matter when faith is an issue. As usual Joe nailed it with his seasoned reasoning. Our country's original illegal aliens ( pilgrims & puritans) were no friends of people of color. Romney and Huckabee's both are faithful true believers and proud troops for thier twisted religions.....
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The Secular Myth of a Christian Nation
Too often "critiques" such as Conason's are as willfully unsophisticated and simple as those religious persons/religions they are critiquing, of which this monolithic presentation of Christianity is typical: "If he has studied the bloody history of the world's older religions, then he knows that the most devout Christians of all sects have not hesitated to suppress, torture and murder "heretics" throughout history."
1) Does Conason come from a history and a tradition that isn't violent? Is violence simply the domain of Christians or older religions?(and, yes, "Christianity" has been the language of empire for quite some time; but we should be diligent to make distinctions between form and substance)
2) If Romney, or Huckabee, or some other Christian, were to study the "bloody history" of Christianity and discover authentic Christian voices that didn't suppress, torture, or murder "heretics," would he then be willing to "pardon" the articulating of religion in their politics? A true reading of the Christian tradition would certainly defy Conason's easy, and convenient, reading.
This is the point: Conason does not offer a true engagement with his -- dare I say! -- fellow Americans. Simply a naive dismissal that only mirrors their own. It contributes nothing of value to the public square. Secondly, I think it is time the secular critique began to own up to the fact that it is often likewise bigoted: simple, monolithic discussions of the Christian tradition -- for which Romney! and Huckabee! (not Augustine, or Aquinas, or Jesus, or Yoder, or Neibuhr, or Bonhoeffer, or Barth) are offered as types -- is clearly beneath the intellect of someone like Conasaon. Rather, it is the easy deployment of this depiction that allows secular voices to continue to silence other, equally American voices in the public square. The subtext to Conason's argument is not the PARTICULAR expressions of Huckabee and Romney, but RELIGIOUS expression in general.
And the dismissal is often validated under the pretense that such figures want to theocratize America and make it a "Christian nation" -- a concept that is at least as much, if not more so, the product of secularists like Mencken than any actual Christian (and here Michael Kazin's recent work on the "liberalism" of William Jennings Bryan is important as well as Berkley sociologist Susan Harding). Like all people, Christians included, secularists like Conason have manufactured their own devil by which to justify themselves and, if one were to actually read modern American history, maintain their power.
Just like his assumed adversaries, Conason deploys "Christianity" and "religion" as ways of policing other voices. Here he acts like the other side of the same coin.Christianity -- even conservative, evangelical, American Christianity -- is as diverse as the America Conason portends to defend. Only by refusing to truly engage it can he find license to dismiss it. But to engage it requires a sophisticated reading of America, too. Something that, it seems, too few -- on either side -- cares to do.