Mailbag: Christian Right, Part 2
Subject: Re: Atheism
I am eager to see you, with all of your information and determination to do away with the “religious right,” get into some more research and learn who the real enemies of America are. I assure you sir, it is not the religious right. While you argue that this group is eager to eat up freedoms in America, I disagree. I argue that we are eager to see freedoms restored that have been taken away. We desire to see the freedom to pray in school returned, we desire to see the freedom for unborn children to be born returned, we desire to see the freedom to have heterogeneous families returned. These are freedoms that have been taken away from everyone, not just the religious right.
Thus far, Jennifer hasn’t identified any specific errors I have made in any of my writings about the Religious Right. She “resents” my implication that the KKK is connected to the Christian Right, but resenting it is a far cry from refuting it. There are connections: first, in that both are part of the Christian traditions and, second, in that the KKK relies heavily upon Christian Identity theology which has made some real inroads with mainstream Christian Right (perhaps even without their realizing it, which makes the situation all the more tragic).
Jennifer’s assertions about “freedom” here are simply laughable. She desires the freedom to pray in school returned? It never left. She says she is a high school teacher, but if that it true then she must know that no student is denied the right to pray so long as that prayer doesn’t interfere with classes. A quiet, personal prayer would never be a problem. A loud prayer that involves jumping around and dancing probably would — but I’m not aware of that being a problem anywhere.
Jennifer might be referring to the absence of state-written, state-sponsored, state-mandated, and/or state-endorsed prayers every day. Calling for a return to the “freedom” of such prayers, though, is a duplicitous tactic as well as an abuse of language. It’s like saying that you have “freedom of religion” when the government tells you that you should be a Methodist.
Jennifer desires the “freedom for unborn children to be born” returned, but that requires eliminating the right of mothers to make choices about their own reproduction. This is, then, not a question of freedoms but a conflict of rights (or at least potential rights, depending upon how things are defined). Using the language of “freedom” here misleads to the point of deception — much like the previous case.
Finally, Jennifer’s desire for “the freedom to have heterogeneous families returned“ sounds like an attack on gay marriage. This seems like she is saying that the effort to legalize gay marriage has somehow eliminated people’s freedom not to enter into gay marriages. I can’t find words that properly express how utterly and completely absurd that is. Even if gay marriage were legal everywhere, no one would be denied the right to heterogeneous marriages — on the contrary, a right to gay marriage would depend upon a general marriage right that would include heterogeneous marriages.
Perhaps Jennifer means the “freedom” to have her religious tradition define what marriage must mean and what it should look like for all Americans, regardless of their religious beliefs and affiliation? This would be consistent with her abuse of the word “freedom” to actually mean state control of people’s lives in the name of her religious doctrines — and it would also be consistent with the abuse of language so common among members of the Christian Right.
It’s strange how Jennifer wrote to me in order to critique my description of the Christian Right when, in fact, she exemplifies all of the criticisms I have made!
More selections from the Agnosticism / Atheism Mailbag...
Comments
I can’t believe Jennifer is a social studies teacher! I sure as heck would not want her teaching in the school district I attended (although I had a rotten S.S. teacher years ago for unrelated reasons)! With her beliefs and ideology, she belongs in a private (i.e. religious) school, not a public school.
Paraphrasing:
“We desire to see the compulsion to pray in school enforced, we desire to see the compulsion for fetuses to be born enforced, we desire to see the compulsion to have heterogeneous families enforced.”
“Enforced” sounds a little closer to the mark than the gently lullabic “returned”.
As Austin has pointed out, the author is free to pray quietly at any time and place she wishes - or is making noisy propaganda perhaps the most important part of prayer given that everybody knows it has no other objective effect?
The author is free to refrain from practising abortion. She is free to teach her daughters to do the same. What she wants is the power to force everybody else to do the same. She wants power because she needs it if she is to succeed in forcing her medieval morals down other peoples throats.
The Christian Right, it needs hardly be said, has shown great interest in the levers of power and continues to do so.
One might imagine that they would be content to exercise moral authority towards their ends in their communities and churches but somehow this does not seem to them sufficient : could it be that, at bottom, they suspect their empty message has no power to command it’s own respect?
The author is free to live in a heterogenous family the right to which, she says, she wishes to see returned. Others might wish to see the original
meaning of marriage returned to the people that undertake that state instead of pandering to the exclusive ownership of the concept which the church imagines itself to enjoy. People have been getting married to one another for far longer than Christianity has been in existence.
Real enemies of “America” aka enemies of democracy? Jennifer should read Michelle Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism”. The views about the recent accomplishements and the danger of the Christian Right movement expressed in this book are not only supported by atheists, liberals and secularists throughout the country but also by the majority of Christians!
What the Christian Right is trying to accomplish has nothing to do with regaining lost freedoms, quite the contrary. What they are trying to do is to turn this country into a theocracy that is run according to their narrow-minded and backward ideology where rational people who disagree will be second or third-class citizens.
I will only comment on one aspect of the argument:
I respect the right of all people to study and learn whatever they wish, when they have been given a chance to explore life and make educated decisions on which ethical model they wish to adopt.
I do not believe that any one organisation has the right to take young, plastic minds and to mold these into their exclusive view of the world.
To allow religion into schools in any way other than as an academic subject that covers all belief systems is just to permit brain-washing.
…we desire to see the freedom to have heterogeneous families returned.
As has been pointed out, the “freedom to have heterogeneous families” has never been taken away. The rescinding of that “right” has never even been suggested. However, it never ceases to astound me how often the Right needs to make up a problem in order to validate one of their positions. That, nearly above all else, convinces me the Right offers absolutely nothing of value.