A national poll of Republican primary voters conducted by Public Policy Polling finds that 57 percent of these voters support “establishing Christianity as the national religion.” The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”…. Only 30 percent of Republican voters believe that Congress should not make a law respecting an establishment of religion, according to the poll. The same poll also finds that 74 percent of GOP primary voters have a favorable opinion of former President George W. Bush. Two-thirds (66%) do not believe in global warming, and a plurality (49%) do not believe in evolution.
Reading through the above, I find myself angry, bewildered, and stunned. Angry that a majority of Christians (or at least those Republican primary voters who call themselves “Christian”) express a willingness to force their belief on me…because Jesus. Bewildered that so many seem so distressingly ignorant of the very Constitution they profess to revere. Stunned that George W. Bush, even after his eight-year Reign of Error ©, is still held in high esteem by those who profess follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. The preponderance of ignorance and arrogance inherent in the poll results speaks to a voting populace that simply doesn’t care- about decency, about honesty, about tolerance, or even about religious freedom…other than their own.
There’s a reason the Founding Fathers wanted to establish a strict separation of Church and State…and the polls results amply bear out their wisdom. If things were to be left up to Republican primary voters, we’d be a theocracy, a whiter, perhaps even more self-righteous and less tolerant system the Iran or Saudi Arabia. If you think I’m kidding, you really need to educate yourself. Listen to what some on the Rabid Christian Right are advocating for- killing gays, turning women’s reproductive functions into the purview and property of the State, mandatory conscription, rolling back workers’ rights…and the list goes on.
One thing I’m grateful for is that I can exercise my 1st Amendment rights…by saying that this is the sort of thing that makes me ashamed of my country. We really should be better than this. Instead, a significant portion of the electorate would be perfectly happy to turn this into an authoritarian Christian theocracy…which would at the very least be a recipe for tyranny of a sort these good, God-fearing Christian patriots can’t begin to imagine. A member of my own family is convinced that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and that this country’s problem can be traced back to abandoning God and pushing Christianity out of our public schools. THAT is the sort of lunacy that’s not far from being characteristic of the majority.
Then again, what could one reasonably expect from a nation in which a Right-wing propaganda generator is the #1 cable news channel? It’s not as if Americans are comfortable with the idea of critical or rational thinking; that would require effort on their part. No, most Americans are perfectly at peace with the idea of a “news” outlet telling them whom they must fear and whom they must focus their righteous anger on. Collectively, we’re certainly an ignorant lot, aren’t we?
If this is Christianity, I’m even better without God than I’d suspected.
