By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Like a good limbo dance, one wonders how low Santorum can go in bending over backwards to appease the unappeasable right-wing fundamentalist base, and, in this year’s Republican race to the bottom campaign, that’s saying something. We thought “Idea Man” Newt Gingrich was the show stopper with his kids janitorial corps, but we then looked on wide-eyed as Constitutional scholar, Rick Perry, revealed to us that everything from public schools to Medicare is unconstitutional in his book. Couple that with his call for Texas Secession and we thought we’d seen everything. Not hardly, we now have Rick Santorum, whose presidential campaign is beginning to look like a papal conclave. All that’s missing is some shiny red satin beanies and the “smoke watch” parties around the Sistine Chapel’s chimney.
You would think that a guy with both an undergrad and law degree from Penn State could find a copy of the Constitution or maybe just a book on Thomas Jefferson. Apparently, they are as scarce around Happy Valley as babysitting jobs for former Penn State coach and accused child molester, Jerry Sandusky. Let me help out. Article IV, Paragraph three of the U.S. Constitution provides that:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
This is a new movement, as embodied by people like James Dobson or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, who call for the creation of a Christian state, who talk about attaining secular power. And they are more properly called dominionists or Christian reconstructionists, although it’s not a widespread term, but they’re certainly not traditional fundamentalists and not traditional evangelicals. They fused the language and iconography of the Christian religion with the worst forms of American nationalism and then created this sort of radical mutation, which has built alliances with powerful right-wing interests, including corporate interests, and made tremendous inroads over the last two decades into the corridors of power.
Hedges sees the effort as a Mass Movement and one he deems “the most
I mean, essentially, when you follow the logical conclusion of the ideology they preach, there really are only two options for people who do not submit to their authority. And it’s about submission, because these people claim to speak for God and not only understand the will of God, but be able to carry it out. Either you convert, or you’re exterminated. That’s what the obsession with the End Times with the Rapture, which, by the way, is not in the Bible, is about. It is about instilling — it’s, of course, a fear-based movement, and it’s about saying, ultimately, if you do not give up control to us, you will be physically eradicated by a vengeful God.
Hedges echoes the Founders in his concerns about the threat of take over of secular government by theocratic factions. No less an expert on religious factionalism than Thomas Jefferson warned us about elevating ecclesiastical law over democracy:
[If] the nature of … government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope. (Thomas Jefferson, to Pierrepont, Edwards, July 1801, quoted from Eyler Robert Coates, Sr., “Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Freedom of Religion”)
In a sense, Santorum’s comments may be spot on. Obama does come from a philosophical position far different that Santorum and his ilk. While Santorum bases his politics in Biblical revelation, Obama comes from the perspective of the rule of law and reason. As most political observers over the centuries have noted, this is a collision course with religiosity. It was James Madison who deduced the antagonism in the American context:
I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them will be best guarded against by entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others. (Letter Rev. Jasper Adams, Spring 1832).
Amen, Brother Madison. Amen.
Can fundamentalist religion and secular democracy co-exist, or are they on an inevitable collision course? What do you think?
Source: New York Times
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger