Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It

by Faircloth, Sean

  The fact that fanatical parents may not recognize their own actions as torture does not by one iota diminish the torture that these children experience. This torture of children, justified on religious grounds, is worse than anything that occurred in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Yet, relatively speaking, there is not a peep of protest. Following his election, President Barack Obama proclaimed, “Waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it’s torture.” When will the same be said about the torture of innocent American children that is justified in the name of religion?

  This legal imprimatur for “faith healing” violates the very nature of our form of government, and the separation of church and state. The statutes used to excuse these actions give the stamp of “morality” to immoral actions. This “moral” stamp results from the concerted efforts of religious extremists.

  The Fundamentalist-Industrial Complex

  The hideous deaths of Amiyah White, DeMyreon Lindley, and Jessica Crank represent human horror stories. But they also represent something much more insidious. Their deaths, and the deaths of all other children as a result of laws that privilege religion, are emblematic of a much broader violation of—and attack on—the secular values of our Founders and our Constitution. As John Witte of the Center for the Study of Law and Religions at Emory University states, “Separation of church and state is no longer the law of the land.” This change has gone largely unnoticed by the media and the American public in general.

  You will hear Rush Limbaugh complain about “special rights.” Fundamentalists tell us to fear the specter of special rights for gay citizens, though of course gay Americans aren’t after special rights—merely equal rights. The irony is that special rights actually do exist in this country—for religious groups. Just as the described horrors suffered by children have all occurred under some form of legal imprimatur, some statutory form of recognition, so too have countless other injustices and instances of harm been authorized by many other forms of religious bias inscribed in law. These laws aren’t unenforced blue laws from the time of the Salem witch trials. They are laws that grant special rights in twenty-first-century America to religion and that are justifed by ancient texts.

  There is no comparison between calls for basic equal rights among all Americans no matter one’s gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion and laws that elevate one class of people over another on the basis of religion. Rush Limbaugh would likely point to affirmative action as “special rights.” Yet whether one agrees or disagrees with affirmative action, one must concede that, in the case of African-Americans, centuries of slavery and many decades of violations of civil rights constitute a reasonable argument for it. What similar historical injustices or disadvantages have religious groups in the United States suffered to justify the special status they enjoy in law today? Why give people like Billy Graham, Rick Warren, and Ted Haggard affirmative action for religious affiliation?

  You might be asking, surely Billy Graham’s multimillion dollar organization doesn’t get special rights, does it? This would be the Billy Graham who complained to Richard Nixon of “synagogues of Satan” and who, encouraging a militaristic policy during the Vietnam War, quoted Jesus as saying, “I am come to send fire on earth” (Luke 12:49) and “I am come not to send peace but a sword” (Matthew 10:34–36). Billy Graham may be retired, but yes, his multimillion dollar organization, now run by his son, Franklin Graham, gets special legal rights that average businesses do not.

  Surely Rick Warren doesn’t get special rights, does he? This would be the Rick Warren who preached at Obama’s inauguration and who, commenting on the famous Florida legal battle over Terri Schiavo (the woman who had been in a persistent vegetative state), compared her husband to a Nazi. Preacher Rick Warren is worth something approaching $10 million. Yes, Warren and his organization benefit from special legal rights.

  Surely Ted Haggard’s former organization doesn’t get special rights, does it? You remember Ted Haggard, the Colorado Springs megaminister who preached against gay sex while having gay sex jacked up on meth. His former organization still controls many millions. Yes, religious organizations like his old one get special rights.

  What types of special rights do these individuals and groups enjoy? To begin, nonprofit organizations must apply for tax-exempt status; religious groups are tax exempt by a less rigorous assertion of religious status. Nonprofits get audited by the IRS whenever the IRS chooses; churches are not audited without a special IRS decision.

  Perhaps more insidiously, religions enjoy legal privileges that corrode our most basic American values. In most states, religious groups can say in one of their child-care centers: “You’re a Jew? You’re fired.” Similarly, in one of their charitable organizations, they can say to the administrative assistant or janitor: “You’re gay? You’re fired.” This is true even in states that generally prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. You’re agnostic like Albert Einstein? Fired. You’re atheist like Brad Pitt? Fired.

  These same businesses, like the ones run by megachurches, can exempt themselves from many land-use laws other businesses must obey because federal politicians chose to exempt religious organizations from those laws in the 1990s.

  Where’s the investigative journalism on the scandals I’ve described above? Pat Robertson said that he believes Jesus is currently the Lord of government, business, and education and wants his version of Jesus to be the “Lord of the press.” Robertson needn’t be concerned, because religious ideologies and bias are too often treated with kid gloves in the media.

  Although I like to think this is not the case, there is a tendency in journalistic writing to treat religion with timid deference, even when the situations or public conduct would otherwise set off alarm bells for reporters in any nonreligious context. This timidity is so pervasive it is sometimes hard to notice. In a February 2, 2011,New York Times article, for example, a Muslim religious leader in Afghanistan was depicted rather like a moderate because he favored stoning with small stones rather than big stones as punishment for sexual activity. In any other context, the big-stone versus small-stone barbarism would be unequivocally labeled as such, but, when it comes to religion, reporters back gingerly away, swaddling even the most extreme statements in words like “faith.”

  But fundamentalist Muslims have no real political clout in America. No, the real political power is held by fundamentalist Christians. Give Christian fundamentalists their due. They organize. They meet. Their supporters give money to the cause. And they have been hugely effective in electing their own. Indeed, at no prior time in American history have so many politicians with such expressly theocratic views held high public office.

  Here’s a sampling: Congressman Tim Walberg, who chairs the work-force protection committee, which oversees labor laws, embodies much of what America has become in the twenty-first century. Congressman Walberg is the one who objected to a law prohibiting discrimination based on religion within Head Start programs because of his concerns about the threat posed by Wiccans and Muslims. Senator Marco Rubio embodies our times too. He has dismissed Jefferson’s “wall of separation of church and state” and supports teaching creationism in school. Then there’s Congressman Ralph Hall, chair of the science and technology committee, who has worked to undermine science. These and other like-minded politicians are not on the fringe. They are at the center of power in America today, and they do not represent the judicious views of Jefferson or Madison.

  The Strategy, the Plan, the Vision

  In mid-twentieth-century America, rationalism and separation of church and state were ascendant. The playwrights who penned Inherit the Wind expressed the clear majority view. John Kennedy, the strongest advocate of separation of church and state since Madison, was highly popular. What happened?

  Churches have always been powerful and influential in this country, but in this century many individual churches are major business enterprises, boasting child-care centers, ice cream parlors, addiction
treatment centers, fitness clubs, broadcasting facilities, and powerful lobbying enterprises, often with a proselytizing mission. Special rights for religion create a largely unregulated, separate business universe that leads only to more special rights for these increasingly powerful organizations. As a result, religious groups experience very little oversight of their statutorily created special rights.

  This book is meant to create awareness about the damage that is being done to our country and to our Constitution in the name of religion, and to offer a plan to do something about it. This book calls upon Secular Americans and all Americans of good will to participate in returning America to its true secular heritage, to the ideals of Madison and of Jefferson. In chapters 2 and 3, it provides an overview of the most basic principles of our Founders—the heritage that we must reinvigorate. The book will not only show how theocratic laws are destroying our country’s secular heritage, but also discuss the myriad ways in which our present descent toward theocracy and the privileging of religion in law unjustly harms us all in multiple ways.

  Chapter 4 examines how a bizarre, unhealthy, and theocratic attitude toward sex has undermined the rights of women and sexual minorities, and has made sexual trivia an insidiously central focus in American life and politics. Chapter 5 juxtaposes the great dueling American traditions of religious hucksterism and scientific innovation and entrepreneurship. These two traditions offer a defining choice regarding the future of our Republic.

  Chapters 6 and 7 contrast the unprecedented number of theocratic politicians in high elective office today and their worldviews with those who speak for the traditions of people like Jefferson, Madison, and Darrow. Chapter 8 describes the dramatic growth of the secular demographic despite the still pervasive power of theocrats in America.

  Chapter 9 presents my plan for returning America to its secular heritage, and chapter 10 presents a vision of what a secular America will look like once we return to the heritage of our founding. It’s a vision of a patriotic, secular government informed by strong moral values.

  As will be made clear in this book, I believe in flag and country. I believe in the values of our nation’s founders. That is why I am a Secular American. It is the patriotic duty of all Americans to stop fundamentalist extremists from controlling our laws. Sadly, they have been effective at doing just that. The intent of this book is to demonstrate that the theocratic attack on America is real, to expose theocratic injustices that should be of concern to all Americans, and to offer a strategy for rejuvenating America’s patriotic secular heritage.

  2 Our Secular Heritage

  One Nation under the Constitution

  I think we should keep this clean, keep it simple, go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant. They’re quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments. It’s pretty simple.

  —Sarah Palin

  Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven . . . it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

  —John Adams

  In recent years we’ve heard a lot about “American exceptionalism,” the idea that America’s place in world history is not only unique but also uniquely positive. To many on the Theocratic Right, the concept carries with it a divine element. When asked about the idea of “American exceptionalism” in April 2009, President Barack Obama responded, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Although Sarah Palin and others attacked Obama for not being forceful enough in support of this concept, President Obama wisely avoided interpreting American exceptionalism through a jingoistic or theocratic lens.

  That said, one can find Palin jingoistic and theocratic and still embrace the concept of American exceptionalism. I do. The exceptional nature of American civil liberties and the enshrining of minority rights in our Constitution do indeed make the place of our nation in world history distinctly valuable and praiseworthy.

  The separation of church and state, enshrined in our First Amendment, is central to America’s unique and unprecedented civil liberties. While I fully admire and recognize the many vitally important individual liberties protected by our Constitution, I agree with the importance and emphasis that Thomas Jefferson placed on this foremost principle.

  Jefferson directed that his three most important accomplishments be engraved on his headstone. Serving as President of the United States didn’t make his cut, but his authoring of the Declaration of Independence, his fathering of the University of Virginia, and his crafting of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom did. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom served as the basis of the separation of church and state in our Constitution. That separation remained central to Jefferson’s values—and is central to American exceptionalism. Had Jefferson consulted me, I might have suggested chiseling his stellar presidency on the gravestone, but Jefferson had a point. There have already been more than forty U.S. presidents, but the separation of church and state stands out as a singularly brilliant accomplishment in human history. And we have Jefferson and Madison (Jefferson’s key collaborator) to thank for this world-changing concept.

  Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state” created one of the great steps forward for rational thought and civil discourse. Like the invention of the wheel, Jefferson’s wall made not only our country but also our world a better place. Thus, when Ms. Palin and other theocrats focus on American exceptionalism in the divine sense and propose or adopt policies based on their particular interpretation of scripture rather than our Constitution, they in fact undermine that which truly makes America exceptional.

  The Political Price of Independent Thought

  The Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial stand steps from each other on the National Mall in Washington, DC, and Washington’s Mt. Vernon and Jefferson’s Monticello remain the two most visited presidential homes. These sites symbolize the tremendous pride we feel in our nation’s founding, but what kind of nation are we today in comparison to the days of our nation’s birth?

  Let’s engage in a little mind experiment. Let us pretend that we are political consultants. Let us assume a young politician preparing to run for Congress enters our consulting firm. How will we help this candidate? As Majority Whip of my legislature, I helped recruit candidates. A smart first step is to vet candidates. Google the heck out of them. See what they might have said that the opposition will inevitably dig up.

  What would we advise an aspiring politician if we were to uncover that he’d made these statements on Facebook:

  Quote one: “The hocus-pocus phantasm of a god like another Cerberus with one body and three heads had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs.”

  Quote two:The clergy dreads “the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.”

  Quote three: The candidate hopes that “the human mind will get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2,000 years ago”—that is, before the advent of Christianity.

  Quote four: “Religions are all alike—founded upon fables and mythologies.”

  Quote five: “I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.”

  Quote six: Christianity is “our particular superstition.”

  In the real world of politics, how would we political consultants advise this aspiring candidate? Having spent ten years in elective office, I’ll tell you what we’d say, “Sorry, Thomas Jefferson. Have you considered accounting?” Then we’d say, “That’ll be $5,000 for our consulting fee.” Any one of the above quotes would land a candidate today in boiling hot water, but all six quote
s are Jefferson’s.

  Just imagine, Thomas Jefferson, one of our greatest thinkers, one of our greatest presidents, might be lost to us if he ran for office today—because the author of the Declaration of Independence dared to think independently.

  Particularly in the last three decades, a candidate of Jefferson’s views would face almost insurmountable electoral odds. Consider the words of W. A. Criswell, the man selected by President Ronald Reagan to deliver the benediction for the 1984 Republican National Convention. Criswell said the separation of church and state “is the figment of some infidel’s imagination.” It was Criswell who introduced Reagan at a giant gathering of fundamentalist preachers in 1980 to whom Reagan made this pivotal declaration: “I know you can’t endorse me, but . . . I want you to know that I endorse you.”

  Now what if we political consultants uncovered the following set of quotes from another aspiring politician:

  Quote one: “In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.”

  Quote two: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”

  Quote three: “During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”

  Quote four: “Religion . . . has been much oftener a motive to repression than a restraint from it.”