With Barack Obama, we may soon cross beyond a threshold we have set our sights on for decades, one of racial acceptance. Someday soon, we hope to pass beyond the threshold of sexual equality. But there is another threshold looming in the distance, one of faith. These are all thresholds where we can leave our ideological shackles behind.
For all the current controversy with Barack's religious association, there are many more relationships between John McCain and offensive religious preaching yet to be explored - enough controversy to divert our attention from real issues of concern well into this election cycle. The question I pose is, when will we all no longer need to participate in this divisive construct? And I don't mean just the politicization of religion, I mean religion.
Divisiveness is an inherent construct of, and an inevitable product of religious dogma. Us and the others. Without religion, we are all much more familiar to each other. Like John Lennon, we should imagine that with no religion, the world will be as one. Our faith must reside in ourselves, not in religion.
I am happy to hear Barack distance himself from some of the comments of Pastor Wright, not because I have any particular view of the pastor's comments (in fact, I agree with many), but because I want a candidate for President to be free of the divisiveness that comes as an inherent burden of religious associations. Obama's thoughtful and decisive reaction to the criticism of this association is highly encouraging in the current atmosphere of unresponsive political leaders rationalizing their entrenched positions while ignoring the cries of public outrage.
But only when the world's leaders are no longer required by social standards to process into some god's house and humble their intellect before altars of symbolic trinkets, or respond in congregational unison with requisite phrases, or shout praise in contrived spontaneity, feign fainting while babbling incoherently, clutch holy beads while anointing their progeny with holy oils or waters, prostrate themselves in oriented unison, drink pretend blood or eat pretend flesh, confess sins for forgiveness without remorse, or profess a love that never passes beyond the vestibule with those of like mind-numbing rituals, will we have leaders whose minds are free to put the interests of their constituents above the religious dogma of their congregations.
By the time we arrive at that distant threshold of faith where we are free enough that an atheist can be acceptable as a viable candidate for our Presidency, the political divisiveness of race and sex may long have passed from our collective memories, and we can contemplate that next step towards unity.
Let's see if your comments here can leave religious divisiveness behind and hope to take that step beyond the threshold of faith.