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Divided we stand: The cleaving of America
by W. E. Guman
December 24, 2004

When I was a little boy in occupied France, I saw priests sprinkling holy water on tanks, canons and other instruments of war so that Christians of one nation -- now divinely empowered -- could slaughter Christians of another nation. I never forgot the surreal spectacle. I owe it (and the extermination of nine-tenths of my family in Hitler's gas chambers) a healthy aloofness toward religion.

Sixty years later, as France, a nominally Catholic democratic republic readies to celebrate nearly 200 years of secularism marked by absolute separation of church and state, the U.S. the ostensible symbol of tolerance and egalitarianism, is unmistakably tilting toward theocratic governance.

When conservative Christian groups rocked the vote in last month's presidential election, We the People did not witness the triumph of democracy but the trouncing of popular sovereignty by an unyielding religious juggernaut intent on ramming religious values down America's throat. Implicit in this blackjack victory, is the ominous proposition that religiosity is an articulation of patriotism. For those of us who love America no less, this perverse inference brings fresh meaning to the axiom that there is no greater evil than that inspired by faith-infused convictions. Consider the Crusades, the "Holy" Inquisition and the hostility of Islamic extremism. Nor did President Bush's stunning victory at the polls signal the restoration of a "moral" America. There is no all-embracing morality in America -- only the aggregate interests of the dominant power bloc.

The reelection of President Bush and the litigious contest that preceded it have cleaved America. Americans are deeply and bitterly divided. Despite strict and clear constitutional proscriptions, religion has grafted itself onto the body politic. Intent on undermining secular values, the God Squad and an army of Bible-thumping foot soldiers are gaining alarming strength as they consign America to a formidable -- and outwardly forcible - mass Christianization.

More than ever before, Americans are rushing into Christ's arms. They come together at hundreds of "evangelical" rallies that draw thousands of people who cheer and pray with their eyes closed and weep ecstatically and throw their arms in the air and sway in trance-like unison like a field of wheat in the wind. It is with paramnesiac horror, I admit, that I recognize in the fervor of their collective hypnosis the same blind adulation, the same body-and-soul surrender that millions of Germans showed Hitler in beer halls, public squares and parade grounds. I am old enough to remember the visage, din and thrall of fanaticism.

"If you don't accept Jesus, you WILL go to hell," they warn me. "The only path to salvation is through Jesus," they assert. I recoil at such bigotry. And I know it is just as offensive to non-Christians, agnostics and non-believers.

It is ironic that the United States, with stunning arrogance and hypocrisy, continues to criticize friends and foes alike for failing to protect religious freedoms -- a charge it must face now that the Christian right is blatantly attempting to hijack secular America.

Absolute separation of church and state is not, as some suggest, a godless ideal. It is meant to guarantee, in addition to unfettered religious freedom, that one religion will not predominate over another and that the practice of religion shall in no way infringe on the rights of a secular, multicultural state.

Religion, at best, is divisive and exclusionary, despotic, self-absorbed and blinkered. Without safeguards, it becomes a menace. Because religion is so divisive, it ought to be restricted to the home and houses of worship. It has no business in civil society -- not in school, not in city hall, not in Congress, not in the White House and, least of all, in the shaping of a national psyche.

Inflexible dogma breeds intolerance. Intolerance begets persecution. We have all seen what religious extremism has done to ignite the fury of our enemies. Theocracy enslaves the body and subverts free thought. We must not allow its toxic fumes to pollute America's heart. __

W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist. He lives in southern California.

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