I’m very concerned that religious freedom in this country is under attack.
No, not that religious freedom, the kind that Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are up in arms about. Not the freedom to discriminate because your pet hatred happens to dovetail with some scripture.
I’m talking about an actual, existential threat to people who want to practice their religion.
Follow me over the fold.
You see, a white kid with his head full of conservative—excuse me, white supremacist—ideology sat quietly in a Charleston, South Carolina, church, then pulled out a gun and slaughtered nine black members of its congregation.
You probably heard about that.
What you may not have heard is that in the wake of that sickening rampage, at least six historically black southern churches have been set ablaze. This includes Mount Zion AME church in Greeleyville, SC, which was previously burned down by the KKK in 1995, as well as houses of worship in Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina.
While a definitive link has not been announced, history tells us the same forces are at work as in prior church burnings.
Perhaps our 24/7 news channels have underreported these acts of arson because they put the lie to the comforting narrative that the church shooter was merely a deranged lone wolf. Indeed, the desperation to spin these incidents as unrelated to racist violence leads to stories with headlines that say “84% of Church Fires Are Accidental,” even as they admit that at least five per week are deliberately set.
The fires cast a lurid light on an undeniable fact: Dylann Roof imbibed the ideology of white supremacists and acted on it—and that at least several other people who sympathize with that ideology have followed suit by reducing historically black places of worship to ash.
I’ll get back to that. But let me elaborate on my first point: If you can’t worship in your church for fear of being shot, or because the church that shaped your entire life has been burned to a cinder, I’d say your religious freedom has been pretty seriously compromised.
But where is the “religious freedom” brigade of politicians? Shedding crocodile tears for florists forced to arrange peonies for same-sex weddings even if they think gay people are sinful.
If that’s your idea of a threat to religious freedom, but you can blithely ignore what’s going on in the south, then why should anyone care one iota about your beliefs?
Naturally the aforementioned politicos emphasize their concern for those who believe that homosexuals are hellbound because the Bible tells them so. But Leviticus, the go-to source for “proof” about God’s views on gays, also says that eating pig flesh is absolutely forbidden. So if you’re a dude and you put a hot link in your mouth on the 4th of July, from a strictly scriptural point of view, it might as well be another man’s member.
Then there are the lethal injunctions, in the Good Book, against divorce and adultery and, um, wearing different kinds of fabric.
Religious conservatives in the political arena take the Bible literally only when it suits their purposes. And their primary purpose, one is forced to conclude, is division.
Meanwhile, a church that welcomed all comers became a war zone, and a series of fires wiped out sanctuaries for the faithful in multiple communities. More division. More hatred. More despair.
But that, as I noted before, is the white supremacist message, as enunciated by Earl Holt III’s Council of Conservative Citizens. Holt has been a key influence on the Charleston shooter—and a generous contributor to several conservative politicians.
Which politicians, you ask? He gave thousands of dollars to Cruz, Santorum and Rand Paul, among othes (Huckabee actually addressed Holt's organization). They’ve mostly scrambled to return the money since this came to light. But one must ask why a committed racial ideologue, whose life’s mission is to portray black people as bestial and inspire violent whelps like Dylann Roof, saw in these candidates something that made him reach for his checkbook.
Perhaps because they’re such staunch defenders of religious freedom?
It’s hard not to reflect on issues of our liberty during this Independence Day weekend. What genuinely represents a threat to our religious freedom, gay people getting married or psychos shooting up churches?
One hopes that the promise of universal freedom symbolized by those July 4 fireworks will outshine the flames of hate.