Main Page

Views & Rants

I got another crazy Christian Reich [Christian Right] e-mail forward from my Mother, once again demonstrating her inability to refrain (as an intelligent person would) from giving her contact information to the crazy religious fanatics amongst her peer group. I made this article an addendum and kept it short because the majority of the assertions in today's e-mail were pasted directly from the previous one. One of the new ones was worth mentioning, however, because it shocked even me. I say "even me" because I'm from the heart of the Bible Belt, where unfaltering faith in God & the GOP without intelligent doubts, questions, or debate is ubiquitous and compulsory. I didn't think there was a single "support for a particular God/GOP belief or policy in spite of all common sense, concrete evidence, and logic pointing to the opposite conclusion" statement out there that I hadn't heard. Alas, I was mistaken.

Though the names and circumstances change slightly from parable to parable, these Christian Reich e-mails are essentially identical. They use a parable or even just a list to bring up one or several social reforms that have occured since the 19th century, be it allowing rape victims to get their abortions in sterile ORs from licensed MDs using properly sterilized instruments rather than in back alleys under the cover of darkness from their neighbors using the kitchen shears, no longer forcing non-Christian schoolchildren to stand up and say the Lord's Prayer every morning and no longer ostrasizing them for not wanting to, or even insisting that African Americans be paid for their labor. The document will then go on to give some ridiculous, 19th century, Bible-thumping, defies-all-logic reason that these reforms are negative.

Despite this uniformity of purpose, I'm going to describe the specifics of this e-mail for the sake of clarity. It's one of those silly made-up parables. It's a high school football game, and the principle is on the loudspeaker whining that "The Supreme Court will not allow me to lead you all in prayer, but here's what they will let me do." As I said, I've already written about most of the things the principle lists, but one statement stands out:

"I can designate a school day "Earth Day" and involve students in activities to worship religiously and praise the goddess "Mother Earth" and call it "ecology.""

There have to be some sane, realistic, well-intentioned religious conservatives out there who are beginning to wonder who these lunatics they go to church with really are. Earth Day was organized to teach children about the Earth, how it works, and how to protect it. The personification of the incredibly complex systems, events, and forces that make up the global environment as "Mother Earth" is just a teaching tool for the younger children. No-one is trying to prop up this characterization as a False God or Idol, and no-one is teaching schoolchildren to worship it. Furthermore, it's really frightening that there are people out there who needed to be told that.

I think the problem is the people out there who unable to live their lives because they spend every second praising God. They're fanatics: telling friends "prayer" instead of constructive advice, handling fights with significant others by "giving it to God to solve," even having a prayer session with a significant other on Friday night and calling it a date. No secular life exists for these people and they project that on others. When they encounter someone engaging in the secular world (doing something other than praising God) they de-secularize it; they view it as the worship of something other than God. This is, of course, blasphemy. It's how holistic medicine (stupit as it may be) became "witchcraft" and got people burned at the stake. Unfortunately, this lifestyle which serves as impetus for the demonization of so many aspects of the secular world is anything but righteous devotion. It's just a fear of personal responsibility; a cop-out on life. The sad irony is that this has to be the last thing God wants from us.