The God Glut

[stilltrucking]

Bob Kerrey’s political career spanned four years as the governor of Nebraska and another 12 as a United States senator from that state, during which he made a serious bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. In all that time, to the best of his memory, he never uttered what has become a routine postscript to political remarks: “God bless America.”

That was deliberate.

“It seems a little presumptuous, when you’ve got the land mass and the talent that we do, to ask for more,” he told me recently.

But there was an additional reason he didn’t mention God, so commonly praised in the halls of government, so prevalent a fixture in public discourse.

“I think you have to be very, very careful about keeping religion and politics separate,” Kerrey said.

We Americans aren’t careful at all. In a country that supposedly draws a line between church and state, we allow the former to intrude flagrantly on the latter. Religious faith shapes policy debates. It fuels claims of American exceptionalism.

And it suffuses arenas in which its place should be carefully measured. A recent example of this prompted my conversation with Kerrey. Last week, a fourth-year cadet at West Point packed his bags and left, less than six months shy of graduation, in protest of what he portrayed as a bullying, discriminatory religiousness at the military academy, which receives public funding.

The cadet, Blake Page, detailed his complaint in an article for The Huffington Post, accusing officers at the academy of “unconstitutional proselytism,” specifically of an evangelical Christian variety.

On the phone on Sunday, he explained to me that a few of them urged attendance at religious events in ways that could make a cadet worry about the social and professional consequences of not going. One such event was a prayer breakfast this year at which a retired lieutenant general, William G. Boykin, was slated to speak. Boykin is a born-again Christian, and his past remarks portraying the war on terror in holy and biblical terms were so extreme that he was rebuked in 2003 by President Bush. In fact his scheduled speech at West Point was so vigorously protested that it ultimately had to be canceled.

Page said that on other occasions, religious events were promoted by superiors with the kind of mass e-mails seldom used for secular gatherings. “It was always Christian, Christian, Christian,” said Page, who is an atheist.

Mikey Weinstein, an Air Force Academy graduate who presides over an advocacy group called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told me that more than 30,000 members of the United States military have been in contact with his organization because of concerns about zealotry in their ranks.

More than 150 of them, he said, work or study at West Point. Several cadets told me in telephone interviews that nonbelievers at the academy can indeed be made to feel uncomfortable, and that benedictions at supposedly nonreligious events refer to “God, Our Father” in a way that certainly doesn’t respect all faiths.

Is the rest of society so different?

Every year around this time, many conservatives rail against the “war on Christmas,” using a few dismantled nativities to suggest that America muffles worship.

Hardly. We have God on our dollars, God in our pledge of allegiance, God in our Congress. Last year, the House took the time to vote, 396 to 9, in favor of a resolution affirming “In God We Trust” as our national motto. How utterly needless, unless I missed some insurrectionist initiative to have that motto changed to “Buck Up, Beelzebub” or “Surrender Dorothy.”

We have God in our public schools, a few of which cling to creationism, and we have major presidential candidates — Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum — who use God in general and Christianity in particular as cornerstones of their campaigns. God’s initial absence from the Democratic Party platform last summer stirred more outrage among Americans than the slaughter in Syria will ever provoke.

God’s wishes are cited in efforts to deny abortions to raped women and civil marriages to same-sex couples. In our country God doesn’t merely have a place at the table. He or She is the host of the prayer-heavy dinner party.

And there’s too little acknowledgment that God isn’t just a potent engine of altruism, mercy and solace, but also, in instances, a divisive, repressive instrument; that godliness isn’t any prerequisite for patriotism; and that someone like Page deserves as much respect as any true believer.

Kerrey labels himself agnostic, but said that an active politician could get away with that only if he or she didn’t “engage in a conversation about the danger of religion” or advertise any spiritual qualms and questions.

“If you talk openly about your doubts,” he said, “you can get in trouble.”

To me that doesn’t sound like religious freedom at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/opini ... .html?_r=0

[Arcadia]

Last sunday was finally the "first communion" of my sobrino Bruno at San Patricio.. In my brother´s words "with only one year of catequesis he didn´t understood anything", (let´s pray to God that he´s right...! ... yeah, it´s a fact that he didn´t have our complete six or seven years of full indoctrination... ).
As I could see Bruno was mostly bothered by dressing with a tie and long trousers in a summer like day and excited about the party in a swimming pool after the ceremony, but who knows?. The ceremony included to renew the baptism promises like "quitting the devil" and to be fiel to the Church, rising candles saying "I´m a Christian and I wont let this light vanish", and songs -some the same we chanted thirthy five years ago- and things like that ... for moments I felt like a child myself ... it was moving somehow.
Talking with the presents after the ceremony & lunch lots of critics to the Church (I mean Catholic church) were made: the still medieval style, dogma & vocabulary, the politics of the church, the church and the politics, etc... everyone remembered their Catholic "experiences" -all ex or semi-catholics now- and a but.... reminded hanging somehow ... it was highlighted the need of some kind of spirituality in some and the need of community-feeling in others, and the fact that nowadays there aren´t too much other institutions that give place to that. A second "vuelta" was about the feeling of being part of a sort of vacant-era where you can only be an user or a buyer and around the most specific topic " when was the Church horizontal and not highly jerarquic?, do we need institutions for spiritualy or whatever?... (the kids were playing on the other side of the pool...!)

Now, commenting your post...!

“If you talk openly about your doubts,” he said, “you can get in trouble.”

that´s sad ... the spirit of that phrase reminds me more of our nowadays Government than to the Church ...

[mnaz]

very nice post. a spot-on article.

we should have a rule-- you mention "God" more than once in a political speech (or even just once in any part of a speech about war), then you're disqualified.

[stilltrucking]

we should have a rule-- you mention "God" more than once in a political speech (or even just once in any part of a speech about war), then you're disqualified.

Would this be a disquailifer?
In God we trust so we bless war.

... for moments I felt like a child myself ... it was moving somehow.

Santayana

I saw the claw of Satan strike that child´s soul and try to kill the idea of God in it.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=ca ... uimfIDMaeg

[Arcadia]

"... le braccia dell´uommo l´hanno fatto..." , very cinematographic scene ... in both a neorealist and denirean way ...

no idea about Spinoza (except for a Borges´s poem) and Leibnitz ... nevertheless some Santayana´s and commentator´s notes questions & wanderings got my attention ... gracias for the article s-t!

[stilltrucking]

When Einstein was seeking political asylum in the USA a congressman was holding up approval because he heard a rumor that Einstein was an atheist.

The congressman did not want no stinking atheists in the USA so he asked Uncle Albert if he believed in God. Einstein said yes he believed in God. He believed in Spinoza's God.
That is all I know about Spinoza.
As I understand it Spinoza's God tells me I got everything I need. The universe lacks for nothing.

Interesting show on God In America