By: DAVID RICE
Re: WHICH God Do We Trust?!

Freethought Today April 1996

In God We Trust: But Which One?
Praise The Lord And Pass The Amendment.
By Judith Hayes

A young friend recently acquired her first teaching job, as a
third-grade teacher, in our rural school district. Starry-eyed
and idealistic, she was bubbling about all of her glorious plans
for guiding these young, impressionable minds. When asked what
she would do if she were forced to lead those young minds in a
daily morning prayer, she looked stunned, then amused, then
quickly dismissed the whole idea with a derisive chuckle and
that supreme confidence found only in the young. It could never
happen here, she assured me. (Didn't Americans say that same
thing just before the McCarthy witch-hunts in the 50s?)

When pressed for an answer, though, my young friend responded
confidently that she would simply refuse to lead prayers in her
classroom. And if her refusal meant her dismissal? Her
confidence wavered, she looked thoughtful and puzzled, but she
had no reply.

Many of us forget the fact that teachers are not in charge of
their classrooms. School Boards are.  And these have been
systematically and successfully targeted by the Religious Right
all across the country. These Christian fundamentalists are
organized, they are determined, and they seem to be winning.
State after state is endorsing voucher plans for private,
religious schools, "creationism" is being taught in public
classrooms, and prayers are being allowed in those same
classrooms. If ever the phrase "slippery slope" could be applied
properly, this is it. To say that these examples are the
exceptions, not the rule, is the same as saying that there are
only a few ants on the picnic basket.

Many people have told me that such examples are rare and
isolated, so there is no need to worry.  Unhappily, the people
telling me this are freethinkers. But according to Americans
United for Separation of Church and State, there were 205
conflicts over church/state entanglement issues in 1995 alone.
We are in the middle of a quiet revolution, and most of us don't
even know it.

Unbelievable as it may seem, today, in 1996, the United States
Congress is considering constitutional amendments that would
provide for "student-sponsored prayer" in public schools, and
for the government to acknowledge "the religious heritage,
beliefs or traditions of the people" and would forbid the
government to discriminate "against religious expression or
belief." One of these amendments is disingenuously named "The
Religious Equality Amendment."

Equality? I think not.

The ego-blinded Christians pushing for this fail to consider
that there are other religions. Shall a Jewish minority be
forced to listen to Christian prayers in a public school? Shall
a Protestant minority be forced to listen to "Hail, Marys?"
Shall Christian minorities be forced to listen to Muslim
prayers?

Let's follow this through. To begin with, "student-sponsored"
prayers are a laughable smoke screen.  Most students don't even
want to be in school, let alone pray in it. But if "religious
expression" may not be discriminated against, then in a
multicultural school, Protestant students will have to be
allowed to offer their prayers, Catholics theirs, Jews theirs,
Hindus theirs, and Buddhists theirs.  Muslims must be allowed to
answer their many calls to prayer during the school day. Native
Americans must be allowed their forms of worship. And students
who worship Bob The Rain God must be allowed to do their rain
dances, twenty minutes before the hour, and twenty minutes
after, all day long, on alternating Thursdays. (Bob's a
demanding god.)

Does the word "chaos" spring to mind here? Even without Bob The
Rain God, schools will dissolve into madness if such a thing
ever comes to pass. One senator said this problem could easily
be solved just by letting the "majority" rule. Wait a minute
here. In a democracy such as ours, we are fond of saying that
the majority always rules. But that is not true. It rules, but
only up to a point. If a state were to decide, by "majority
rule," that slavery should be reinstated, the Supreme Court will
tell that "majority" just what it can do with its votes. The
same must hold true for school prayer. It flies in the face of
our Constitution, and I don't care if you get 100% of the vote
on the issue, you can't have it, any more than you can have
slavery. Why is this so difficult to understand?

Here we are, faced with a bankrupt Social Security program.
Medicare is struggling and facing more cuts. We have no national
health plan, and we aren't even close to balancing our budget or
reducing the federal deficit. Battered women's shelters can't be
built or funded quickly enough, and more money is being spent on
cocaine than on cleaning up the environment. Every single day,
all over the world, children are dying of starvation. And what
are our elected officials in Washington, D.C.  doing? They are
wrangling over the wording of not one, but two public prayer
amendments. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns. Am I the only
one who sees this as insane?

Tolerance is a funny thing. Like a lot of good things, it has a
price tag. "Live and let live" is tolerance at its finest; it is
also a form of apathy. As a rule, freethinkers do not tend to
band together in fervently committed groups, fighting
passionately for emotionally charged causes. Compare that to a
Jehovah's Witness. In fact, the only issue I can think of that
all freethinkers agree on is the separation issue. Other than
that, we're truly a mixed bag.

Picture a typical Billy Graham Crusade. That man could fill
Madison Square Garden if his promoters had only three days to do
it. He is a brilliant orator. If you get the chance to watch
him, or someone like him, do so. But don't watch the speaker.
Study the audience. There is a hypnotized, mesmerized look to
those people. Power is being wielded there.

This is the main difference between freethinkers and the
blind-faith-follow-like-sheep Christians. I can think of
nothing, outside of sporting events or musical concerts, that
could bring thousands of freethinkers together, and, further,
bring them to their feet in wild applause and tears of joy. Can
you? Even if you got the best freethinking orator around,
someone like Steve Allen, there is simply no way he could arouse
our passions to that extent. "Separation now!" just doesn't pack
the same wallop as "Soldiers for Jesus!" Does it?

The horrific abuses of power that always accompany theocracies,
from the Pharaohs to the Popes, have been clearly documented.
Yet this God/Government marriage is the obvious goal of the
Religious Right. But why? Do we never learn from history? And
how would the Christians feel if the God/Government marriage
turned out to be a Muslim ceremony?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Our secular democracy is the
most successful in history. Why can't we leave it alone? The
constant harping about returning to our country's "Christian
roots" is nonsense.  We were never a Christian country. Our
Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to leave God
out of our Constitution. And most of those early Fathers were
not Christians (Paine, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Allen,
Franklin).

They say that in order to win a battle you must know your enemy.
But the enemies of church/state separation are difficult to
"know." They come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Their only
common denominator, aside from their desire to put Jesus in our
public schools, is that, unfortunately, they visit their voting
booths more often than the rest of us.

So, while the Religious Right exhorts its members with cries of
"Onward, Christian soldiers!" we kind of just sit around.
According to a recent publication, there are close to 200
humanist groups around the country. This is fine, except that we
are not uniting our voices and demanding to be heard. We are not
rally-organizers. There are more of us than people realize, but
until we unite our voices, and sing more choral pieces and fewer
solos, we will not be heard.

However, in the meantime, there is one thing we can all do in
the privacy of our own homes. And that is to study our ballots,
paying careful attention to School Board races, and make sure we
vote.  It may not be enough to stop the Religious Right
steamroller, but it's better than nothing.

To paraphrase, all it takes for America to become a theocracy is
for freethinkers to do nothing.

Copyright 1996 by Judith Hayes


Judith Hayes is a freelance writer who lives in California with
her husband. She has completed her first book, based on previous
columns, which will be published by the Foundation. Any mail
sent to her c/o Freethought Today will be forwarded.


This page is maintained by Dan Barker of the Freedom From
Religion Foundation, Inc., and hosted by the Internet Infidels.


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