America's Founders weren't perfect men by a long shot. But they were well educated in the context of their time and some of them were deep thinkers. When they separated church and state in our founding documents and declared that there should be no state religion, there were already centuries' worth of examples of why this was necessary for a stable government.
Jefferson's interpretation of the first amendment in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (January 1, 1802): "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
In 1785, Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments: "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." "What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
Separation of church and state was one of the few areas where Jefferson and Madison wholly agreed. I know I'm preaching to the choir here to be advocating the separation of chuch and state on DKos, but for the last thirty years we've been heading down a very dangerous path in the US- Allowing religion to be less a private matter, as was common in the past, and seeing it become not only more visible in public life, but allowing it to become an increasing power spilling over into politics.
The way things are coming to a head, it's difficult to know how much time we have left to get a handle on things before the right wing extremists launch their own brand of jihad on the rest of us and finish what Jerry Falwell, Randall Terry, Eric Robert Rudolph and Tim McVeigh started.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is reporting the biggest uptick in militia and rightwing extremist activity in over a decade, gun stores can't keep ammunition in stock, Dr Tiller and law enforcement officers have been targeted and murdered. We have a lot of trouble brewing and not very far off. As Crissie pointed out last week the neocon/evangelical/rightwing extremists consider themselves oppressed when they are prevented from proseletizing and forcing their ways on everyone else. They aren't just poor sports, they are violently poor sports and act in bad faith as a matter of course because they've made an excuse of exceptionalism.
They feel they're special and deserve special privleges, are exempt from the rules that everyone else should live by and just generally should be allowed to do whatever they like.
'The Family', the way off-the-beaten-track religious cult that owns the C Street house in Washington DC that Jeff Sharlet exposed in his recent book, is a prime example. This cult has been deliberately and insidiously infiltrating the upper levels of our government with people indoctrinated to give their loyalty first to the cult and it's members rather than the electorate who sent them to Washington or the Constitution that they swore to uphold.
Ataturk banned the fez, (a type of hat that was strongly identified with Islamic identity and showed support for the Caliphate, the Sunni mechanism for Sharia law), and founded Turkey as a specifically secular state because the countries that he was using as models for his 'modern state', the western European countries and America, were stable governments and societies which did not allow religion to destablize government.
Religions will always develop new schisms, they will always scrap amongst themselves, and without a territorial outlet for the pressure, it will almost inevitably escalate to bloodshed.
Religion is and needs to stay a private matter if we want a stable government and society. Virtually everywhere that religion is a rallying point of public life it destablizes society, it represses differing views, (and I recognize that there's a knotty, possibly intractable dissonance here, we need to repress that which is inevitably going to repress others, but that means that we're repressing someone's free speech to some degree. Where and how to draw the line? Part of the problem is that they don't recognize or respect boundaries and do not or will not perceive the differences that make those boundaries reasonable ::sigh::)
Europe earned its way, slowly and painfully, to secular governments with lessons learned from centuries of wars, bloodshed and other religion based oppression. America and Turkey were both founded as secular governments based on those lessons. America and Turkey have both struggled to maintain their secular nature against conservative religious factions that try to reassert themselves as 'true foundations' of their cultures.
We need to find a strong enough leash, (or choke chain) to keep our religious fanatics and potential fanatics from shredding and destroying our country. The push back has to be societal- It needs to be considered rude again to volunteer or push one's religious views without specific invitation.
We need to deploy all our resources, satire, PR, education, holding up examples of bad behavior, (like Rudolph and McVeigh) and keep reminding people of how fast the combination of religion and politics can spiral out of hand. Point out how long Northern Ireland and the Middle East have been fighting bloody battles over religion. Point out that Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia had been stable for decades until a religious conflict left over from 700 years prior flared and engulfed the region.
Northern Ireland is finally stabilizing, it can happen, but it takes work and it takes a lot more work if it's allowed to blow up into violence in the first place. We have the makings of a first class holy war brewing in the US. If we don't rebuild and reinforce our levees between church and state, that flood could very well swamp our country and find a path other than nuclear bombs to end up in A Canticle for Leibowitz's world.
Ignorance is King. Many would not profit from his overthrow for they enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court and under his aegis they defraud and govern for their own benefit and to perpetuate their power. They milk and shear and butcher the flocks that they maintain on bread and circuses, herding and stampeding them at their whim. Communication and education they fear, for the written word and the ability to think are channels by which the subjects may lift themselves into the light of reason, there to see the glaring flaws of the reign and rise up to throw off its yoke. The minions of Ignorance have weapons keen-honed and they use them with skill. They will press battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble and we are left among the ruins. Adapted from the 1959 post-apocalyptic cautionary tale ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ by WM Miller Jr .
The separation of church and state needs to be seen as patriotic again. We need to somehow take control and inform, if not actively shape, public opinion to reinforce the very sound reasons that the Founders had for making a secular government one of the most basic tenets of our country. The neocons, evangelicals and other extremist conservatives are the enemies of the foundations of America, of freedom and liberty. Ignorance, fear and hatred are their tools.