God Squad Tells You What to Do

Religion has become a joke in this country. Otherwise, why would 274 members of the U.S. Congress follow that merry prankster of lunacy, Rep. Helen Chenoweth, a Republican from Idaho, in voting for her resolution to have the government lead us in a “day of solemn prayer, fasting and humiliation before God.”

What God in heaven worthy of the name would ever take seriously an act of devotion organized by the likes of these self-serving political hucksters? Hacks they are at best, these politicians, not even rising to the level of religious fanatics, to think they can ape the mannerisms of the world’s maddened theocrats who would order a free people on how to get right with their maker.

Can you even imagine such a day when our government--conceived by the founders in opposition to state-imposed religion--would instruct us in required forms of prostration before their officially defined vision of the deity? Should we bring our prayer mats, and in which direction does this Congress insist we supinely point while offering our spiritual devotions?

The glee of these followers of Chenoweth--giddy in their enthusiasm to pass a resolution of monumental pretension without a moment of committee contemplation, as if the explosive mixture of religion and politics is some game without serious consequence--defies comprehension.

The measure fell just short of the two-thirds majority required of bills that short circuit the regular rules, but Chenoweth promised to quickly re-introduce it. The hypocritical Republican majority that voted overwhelmingly for this stark intrusion of government into the most personal of matters is often heard to warn of the excessive power of the state.

Its claim here is that such a day of official organized public religion would curtail acts of violence. Are they not aware that the fervid ranting of those who claim to be holier than thou often informs the most desperate of acts against others? Surely Chenoweth herself is aware, if her lone liberal supporter Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) has forgotten, that many in the militia movement, which Chenoweth celebrates, cite divine inspiration for their espousal of violence.

Are not the Aryan white supremacists in her home state often so-called Christian proselytizers? Has Chenoweth herself not been lulled by the false righteousness of such people when she introduced legislation to hamper federal officials who would investigate these self-appointed armed guardians of our collective faith?

This leader that Congress has chosen to follow is a woman without a scintilla of righteous shame. She dared to accuse her congressional opponent of supporting adultery merely because he was a member of the same party as the president and she desisted from this line of attack only when it was revealed that she was guilty of that very sin.

“Perhaps it is time for us in Congress to preach a little less and practice a little more,” Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas) said in explaining why he, a determinedly devout Christian, would vote against this imposition of official prayer adding, “God doesn’t need Congress’ help. But may God help us if we ever use religion for our own political ends.”

Yes! What those politicians did last week cheapens the very idea of contemplation of the individual’s relation to a divinity by imposing the state as the agency of forced conversion. It opens the floodgates of cruel fanaticism against those whose view of God differs ever so slightly.

We have no shortage of examples of the mayhem produced by those who profane the profound, of charlatans who presume to lead where no politician has the right to take us. Which is precisely why Thomas Jefferson pointedly refused to publicly identify himself as a Christian, even though in private he had no such reservation. Jefferson was, as he wrote, “averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public because it would . . . seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed. It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others . . . to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself.”

From Jefferson to Chenoweth. God help us.