It's been a minute since I last wrote here. Life has moved on, relentlessly forward, and as the saying goes, "Time waits for no man...." - and that is certainly true for me. In late May, I ended my HD dialysis, had my CVC catheter removed from my neck, and am now doing peritoneal dialysis at home, while I sleep. That works very, very well, and a lot of quality of life has returned to me. (at least I got the 12 hours a week I spent sitting in a chair back.....) Unfortunately, now that I have a lung that doesn't work right as well as an extremely compromised right leg, I am pretty much disabled and not able to do my day job anymore.
In order to pass the time, I've done several things here at home- I've automated a good chunk of my house with Raspberry Pi's and automation software; set up a home lab network with a 3 node Proxmox cluster and a scad of VM's doing various things and been boning up on one my earliest passions of philosophy and its relationship with religion and politics.
(Who needs running and exercise to get the cardio-vascular system to work hard, right??)
George Santyana once said, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it", which, besides being a rather coy thing to say is also 100% true. As such, I have always tried to stay up on current events and how events of the past can coincide with them. While we, as a society, have made great strides to make ourselves better (and have succeeded in some ways) the things we miss and constantly get wrong seem to present themselves daily with no end in sight.
What I'm talking about here is (at this point) is the rise of Christian Nationalism. It's something that has bothered me for a long, long time, way before I started this new "season" (yuck- I hate that word) of Deconstructionism. (or, as I like to call it, "Reformed Reforming of Reformation") If you haven't heard of this before, I will try to explain.
Christian Nationalism is the idea that government should be influenced directly by those who are the keepers of the traditional Christian faith, because it was God who created governments in the first place. This viewpoint is almost exclusively held by people on the far, far right political spectrum. The government (especially the US) should be a direct reflection of the Judeo/Christian beliefs and conduct instead of what it is now. This means to outlaw same sex marriage; degrade the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and women; remove the idea of gender affirming healthcare; outlaw abortions and birth control, to name but a few. Further, Christianity would be the "official" religion of the country, in keeping with what the Founding Fathers original intent for this country was.
However, there is a HUGE flaw in this idea.
What is that flaw, you ask?
Well, it's pretty simple. The Founding Fathers never once said that it was a Christian nation. In fact, one of the preeminent authors of the Constitution put this entire topic to bed in his letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1794:
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."
- Thomas Jefferson
This same sentiment was echoed by all the other authors of the Constitution, most notably by James Madison. The Christian Nationalists, however, disavow this. In a speech given to the congregation of a church in Colorado, Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) said:
"The reason we had so many over reaching regulations in our nation is because the church complied. The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our founding fathers intended it. And I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk that's not in the Constitution. It was in a stinkin' letter and it means nothing like they say it does."
-Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado
And yet, the very first amendment to the US Constitution reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So, clearly, Boebert is wrong. I'd like to believe that she doesn't know what's in the Constitution, but I'm really not sure that makes it better or not, since she took an office to uphold and defend the document against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It's gonna be a bad day for her if someone challenges her in a life of death situation on this, when she has to say, "Geez. I didn't know that!".
Now, granted: there's a lot that can be interpreted/misinterpreted over a single sentence that contains only a single restrictive clause element. One can hardly say that this one sentence has completely and exhaustively stated and exposed the topic to a mike drop and a statement of "full stop".
Or does it?
Ah- here's where this topic gets really interesting.
As Christians, when presented with statements like, "you know, the Bible says that if a man rapes a woman, she must marry her rapist" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) we'll say, ""that was a long time ago" as historical context is the argument to sweep that away. I mean- yeah, you're right- that was a long time ago, and Christ came to fulfill the Law of Moses, blah, blah, blah. There is a context to the First Amendment that darned near everyone in this day and age have forgotten about, and it's something that, if you consider it, there really is no question as to the meaning of that sentence.
Ready?
If you had paid attention during history class instead of sleeping or wondering what this class had anything to do with you some 200+ years later, you'd know that the men who had written the Constitution were either directly affected by or had immediate family members who had been directly affected by the fact that they been forced to come to this part of the world (North America) because of religious intolerance and persecution in Europe. They were literally told by (as an example) the Church of England that since they weren't obeying that church (the only allowed denomination in England) that Puritans would have to leave or face execution. Hence, Roger Williams and Puritans landed in Rhode Island. The same was true for many, many others- the Amish, the Pennsylvania Dutch, the French Protestants, etc. The Founding Fathers were determined not to let the sins of Europe and the causation of a lot of death and disease repeat itself, and they instead put legal measures into place to make sure it never happened again.
Quite literally, the Christian Nationalists are trying to make sure that this discriminatory practice happens again, only with a slightly different set of marginalized people such as transgender, LGBTQ+, and women. There is very little difference between this sentiment and the Back To Africa movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, or the beliefs of Margaret Sanger. Remember, too- the Nazis were originally founded as a "christian" organization as well.
If you don't see the danger here or think I'm making a lot about nothing, well I hope you're right and that I am extremely wrong. But, again, we are preparing to repeat a piece of history that not only has happened in the past, but the Christian Nationalists are attempting to rewrite the narrative through deceit and inaccuracy, and while their actions to this end might not be dangerous, forgetting it definitely will be.
This is why it is so crucial to have at least a semi-working knowledge of history. Both of the US and elsewhere, because in trying to suss this stuff out with critical thinking, you need to understand where we've been so we can figure out how to get where we are going in a constructive way. You need to know the past to identify the future, plain and simple. And, if you stand idly by and think "this doesn't affect me", please try not to look surprised when your rights are eventually eroded away by people who think they know best. Make no mistake- Christian Nationalism is not a slippery slope. It's more like pulling carpet, the foundation and all the earth simultaneously out from under your feet.
If you are one of the people that is espousing the idea that this was originally a God-founded country and that's where we should be, I invite you to contact me. I would absolutely love to converse with you about this. But bring your A-game.