Christianity pervades all aspects of life in the United States even though we are by design a secular society. So why are the religious right so hell bent on denying our history and condemning our future by insisting we fully adopt a delusional form of theocracy?
The myth of the Puritan American character may have persisted in New England, but the rest of our young country was more in favor of free thinking. In 1631, Rhode Island was founded as an open society with the idea of separation of church and state after Roger Moore was banished from Massachusettes Bay Colony. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, even elitist John Adams continued that enlightened idea in writing the US Constitution. Jefferson strengthened that liberty in penning the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, enacted in 1786. Yet despite this founding principle, determined religionists began efforts to assure their idea of morality became embedded in our national character.
The so-called 'blue laws' were enforced during the colonial era initially covering believed sins, such as gambling, on the Sabbath. Then states began to expand them to cover business. In 1821, Connecticut decided that women's reproduction was left too much in female control and passed the country's first law prohibiting abortion after 'the quickening.' In 1879, the state bolstered federal law with its own banning contraception. Even discussing such things publicly were outlawed. The Comstock Law, passed in 1873, banned mailing material dealing with contraception. In addition to curbing pornography, it had the patriarchal benefit of keeping women from working. In all, 24 states passed similar laws.
The federal Comstock Law of 1873 made it illegal to sell or distribute materials that promoted contraception or abortion, to send literature or materials pertaining to these subjects through the United States Postal Service, or to obtain them from overseas. Legislators passed the law hoping to mitigate the influence of obscene materials on the morality of the general population as well as to stem the growing practice of couples engaging in pre-marital sex. In addition, using contraception allowed women greater presence in the workplace, which many felt posed a threat to both traditionally gendered spheres of influence and the institution of marriage. In the wake of the Comstock Law, Connecticut passed its own state law in 1879 that carried the anti-contraception movement further than any other state in the country.
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- Connecticut and the Comstock Law | ConnecticutHistory.org
Public schools remained relatively free from religious influence. Horace Mann, the Father of the Common School, Pres U S Grant and Pres Theodore Roosevelt were all against mixing religion and general education. By the 1840s religion was all but eliminated from schools with Massachusettes the hold out. The Catholic Know Nothing Party managed to pass a law in 1850 requiring Bible readings. Christianity crept back into and became ingrained in many public school systems. By 1913, 11 other states made prayers or Bible reading mandatory. That influence came to a head in 1921 in Dayton, TN as the state prosecuted John Thomas Scopes for daring to defy state law and teach his class about evolution. The ACLU, founded in 1920, wanted the constitutionality of prohibiting teaching evolution questioned. The trial captivated the nation, even Europe. Scopes was found guilty, though the conviction was eventually overturned on a technicality -- the $100 fine was deemed excessive -- but the law's constitutionality was upheld.
In 1940, an Illinois community group got the schools to invite religious leaders to instruct students to improve their moral character. Though described as voluntary, a resident challenged the practice because her 10-year-old felt ostracized when he opted out. McCollum v Board of Education, 1948 became the Supreme Court's first case on religion in public schools. It was followed by other landmark cases: Engel v Vitale, 1962 and the consolidation of Abington Twp v Schempp and Murray v Curlette in 1963 -- 'The Day God Was Kicked Out of School.' But religionists are persistant.
The despicable atheistic Red Menace threatened and provided opportunities. Righteous Christians petitioned President Eisenhower and Congress to establish America's superiority by embedding God officially in our national character. With their juggernaut of political allies, even the blatant unconstitutional, wholly religiously-based addition of 'under God' in the pledge in 1954 and changing the inclusive motto 'e pluribus unum,' chosen by the Founders and printed on the Great Seal, into the divisive 'In God we trust' the following year have been allowed to stand for so long that courts accept them as legitimate due to tradition. In 2011 Congress even affirmed the religiously favorable motto.
Freethinkers are also stubborn. Humanitarians, agnostics, atheists and others who question religion's influence gained credibility and won court battles that favored the sanity of keeping church and state separate. The school cases mentioned above were added to in Edwards v Aguillard, 1987 which banned the teaching of creationism in public schools, and Kitzmiller v Dover, 2005 which, though only a federal district court decision, was so definitive in establishing so-called Intelligent Design as just another form of creationism that it has not been challenged. Other winning separation cases have removed crèches from government grounds, removed Decalogues from courthouses and gotten atheism and Wiccan recognized in the military.
Just as we were finally breaking the religious grasp on the national character, St Ronnie allies with the radicals and a new, fully theocratic bulldozer starts plowing its way through long-fought for rights. Creationism battles in education continue. In Louisiana, the Bible is used as a text in science classes. The noble idea of religious liberty has been hijacked and twisted until it now more describes religious tyranny than freedom.
The 2016 field of GOP candidates is nothing more than a host of theocratic tyrants. And, worst of all, the supposed Christianity they bow down to bears virtually no relation to what Jesus taught. The first Republican to declare his candidacy was declared 'The Anointed One' by the ultra-theocratic Dominioists. Their goal is to control all aspects of society with draconian Biblical law. All levels of government are infested with those who subscribe to a perverse form of theocracy and display no understanding of or fealty to the document they took an oath to protect and uphold.
The Second Coming of the Dark Ages is nigh. Keep those liberty torches handy. Be ready to hold them high to light the path to the polls.
11:08 AM PT: Edit correction: Pointed out by Villanova Rhodes - text says "Catholic Know Nothing Party" when it should read "anti-Catholic." I regret tge oversight and thank VR for catching it.
11:09 AM PT: Edit correction: Pointed out by Villanova Rhodes - text says "Catholic Know Nothing Party" when it should read "anti-Catholic." I regret the oversight and thank VR for catching it.