In his “Why should God bless America?” News and Views article in the Record-Bee, Al Duncan displays a remarkable propensity to use a single conservative source, WorldNetDaily, to show how our country is going to Hell without Christianity and the Bible in our classrooms. May I suggest to Al that he read the Federalist Papers, the very discussions on which our country was founded, and find in Madison”s Federalist No. 51 the desire to guard society from oppression of its rulers, and also guard one part of society from the injustice of the other part and Jefferson”s “Statute for Religious Freedom,” in which he writes, “…fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time…”
Al, our country was not founded as a Christian nation as Justice Brewer states in a 1905 book, “The United States: A Christian Nation”: Christianity is not our established religion, our people are not compelled to support it, the constitution prohibits establishment of it, all our citizens are not named as Christians, and all religions have free scope within our borders.
The “discovery” of a previously unrecognized wall of separation between church and state did not occur in 1962 with Engel vs. Vitale. Both Madison and Jefferson argued that the government favoring one religion over another would trespass on the rights of the minority and argued that freedom of religion would end the long night of ecclesiastical bondage religion had over the state. The founders believed that government should keep its hands off religion, lest Europe”s deadly sectarian strife be transported across the Atlantic.
Al, the problem with conservatism and fundamentalism in our country is that they want to define democracy in their way, their religion will be the religion of America, law will be a euphemism for scripture, scripture will be liquid, easily poured into the right-wing believers for the long march to freedom which is just another word for no questions asked. Finally, evil doers are Christian and non-Christian. With or without religion good people behave well and bad people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion. Steven Weinberg said that.
Greg Blinn
Kelseyville
