These threats are not imagined. There is a war on faith in America today. In our lifetimes, did we ever imagine that in the land of the free and home of the brave we would be witnessing our government persecute its citizens for their faith?… It’s not enough for these advocates to tear down marriage. Now the Washington elites want to silence those who believe in the biblical definition of marriage. Their goal is to keep people of faith from being able to live by the dictates of their conscience.
- Ted Cruz, in Iowa 8/2015
The idea that there’s a war on religious faith and freedom in America today is every bit as ridiculous as it is self-serving. We’re talking about a country in which churches don’t even pay taxes, where taxpayer subsidies of such institutions, many of whom are religious in name only, add up to BILLIONS of dollars. Those dollars could be used to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, shelter the homeless, but instead go to institutions whose day to day activities have little, if anything, to do with religious teachings or actions that could be even tangentially associated with reaction.
Faux Christians like Cruz use their faith as a bludgeon with which they attempt to force their narrow morality and world view onto all Americans. In their minds, there should be no separation of Church and State (the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause be damned). The American Taliban fervently believes their God should be our government; anything running counter to that conviction is by definition denying them their religious freedom. Their faith is the One, True, and ONLY faith, and those who don’t recognize that “truth” have sworn fealty to a false god…and are destroying America through their idolatry. Their evangelical zeal makes them just arrogant enough to believe they- and only they- have been ordained by God to turn America into an earthly Paradise designed to glorify Him.
The stunning, epic arrogance and intolerance of those who, like Cruz, fervently claim the “right” (nay, obligation) to force their flavor of religion on all Americans is as dangerous as it is anti-democratic. It also runs counter to the teaching of the religion they profess to follow. I don’t believe in God, and I eschew religion as just about the worst thing imaginable, largely because of hate-addled, self-righteous zealots like Cruz and the American Taliban. I remember enough from my Sunday School days to know that the Jesus Christ of the Bible taught love, tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion…concepts clearly not in Cruz’ vocabulary. He’s all and only about hatred, intolerance, discrimination, and exclusion in the name of Jesus Christ- the conviction that being the “right” kind of Christian makes one a superior moral being, and therefore blessed with the right to reject those whose lifestyle, politics, and/or sexuality disgust them. God help you if you’re gay, atheist, and/or liberal.
As stunning and arrogant as it seems, there really is a class of people who believe with every fiber of their being that their God is a righteous, all-powerful deity who must, if America is to be truly great, be granted dominion over our government. These people clearly slept through American History in high school. They neither recognize nor acknowledge the self-interested, cherry-picked nature of their cafeteria Christianity. In the final analysis, it’s about “putting God back into government” only insofar as it serves their lust for political power.
America deserves better than Ted Cruz and his base of ignorant, intolerant American Taliban xenophobes and zealots. We ignore the risk they present at our own peril.
