I was 12 or 13 years old by the time my lust for literature caught its first fire. I'm sure everyone has a story of this sort to tell (and I like to hear them, by the way). I can recall lying in bed reading one of the more absorbing chapters in all of fiction, "In The Cathedral" from Franz Kafka's
The Trial for the first time. It was my first physical interaction with a book: my body shook, the hairs on my neck and back raised, my stomach was doing flips during K's encounter with the priest in the rain-driven darkness of the cathedral. When the priest suddenly cried out "can you not see what is directly before you?" I
heard it: the trumpeting authoritarian voice rang off those damp, moldy stone walls, echoing through the dank air of institutional piety, and back into my bedroom.
So all right, my reading of the metaphor was a little thin (I was 12, after all); and I've experienced that scene differently over the seven or eight times I've read that book during my lifetime. But I've never
felt that moment as viscerally as I did then. It was my introduction to the calcifying force of group belief.
The moment came back to me this morning, when I read this story about a fellow who has been my favorite politician these past few years.
But the time for heroes is past. There is no back broad enough to hide behind anymore; no mind so embracing that it can think or speak for all of us. So I shouldn't have been disappointed to discover that Barack Obama is bowing to evangelicals and proclaiming, "It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase `under God.'"
Well, Senator, I personally don't think it's doubtful at all, but I've already written something on that point. By the way, the Supreme Court seemed to agree with me. Senator Obama, I'm still convinced that you're a good, true man who has much to give this nation. Error is the fuel of growth, for both politicians and anonymous working stiffs like me. Whenever we are open to the teaching voice of our mistakes, we grow. This, by the way, is the main reason why the Bush crowd has become mired in failure; for we only fail when we close our minds to the lessons of error.
So I think you've made a mistake, Senator. I feel that evangelism has no place in a democratic government, because it is, by definition, an invasive and occupying force. It says that the individual cannot hope for salvation or the knowledge of god except as a member of an in-group, a drone in a collective endorsed from the authorized pulpits and crystal cathedrals of a corporate God. In a free society, people must be allowed the liberty to join with such a collective, but it cannot be government's business to court them through their ideology.
Senator Obama, allow me to offer you a thought that you are, of course, free to discard or ignore. God is no more to be found in the church than the nation is to be found in the State. So, to my mind, the challenge for a society that wishes to truly grow is not merely to separate church from state (though that's a good first step); but rather to separate from them both.
I realize it's a lot to ask of a politician; but then again, you're a different kind of politician. Give it a little time and thought.
--Brian D., Daily Revolution weblog
