Worshiping Religious Power

WHITE SUPREMACY arrived in North America in 1607, religious supremacy arrived thirteen years later, in 1620, in Massachusetts, when the "saints", freshly disembarked from the Mayflower, imposed their stridently religious will upon their shipmates, the "strangers", and, eventually, upon New England. By the late eighteenth century the secular scientific enlightenment had grown sufficiently ambient to oppose religious dogma with science and the ideals of secular representative government, and credit belongs to America's founders for having the insight to establish a secular government, and a constitutional barrier between church and state. Religion was to be neither encouraged nor prohibited, forbidden as a qualification for citizenship, with guaranteed freedom from religion. These ideals were largely respected throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries; even the most ardent Christian proselytizers acceding to the separation, claiming no political jurisdiction. That changed with the ascension to the presidency first of Jimmy Carter, a devout Southern Baptist, and Ronald Reagan, a reformed liberal Democrat whose belatedly acquired fundamentalist faith was accompanied by a new notion among the evangelical Christian community; that the time had come for the Christian faith in America to assert itself by insinuating itself directly into politics. A newly published monograph by Katherine Stewart: "The Power Worshipers: The Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism" is a lucidly researched and written account of how Roe vs. Wade inspired the Christian right to organize for the purpose of seizing control of the american political system, and imposing Christian values upon society, legislatively, or, if necessary, undemocratically. What began as and called itself a social movement to oppose abortion rights and same sex marriage morphed by degrees into a vast, highly organized political movement, and gained control of the Republican party. It was facilitated through a large network of think tanks, pastoral organizations, a Christian conservative media complex, and huge infusions of money from ultra conservative ultra wealthy individuals. The greatest threat it presents is to American democracy and secular government, as it seeks to impose its will upon all traditional institutions, particularly the public education system, the political system, and its favorite target, the judicial and legal system. It bases it attack on these fundamental American values upon the false notion that there exists a "war against Christianity" in America, and the fiction that the country was founded upon Christian values. The evangelical right wing movement is antithetical to science, to democracy, and to freedom of thought. It bears mentioning that if the country had been founded upon christian values, it would be a dictatorship; the Christian religion is certainly not democratic. This alarming goal of turning the United states into a theocracy has not yet abated, and, even more alarmingly, has perhaps not even reached its zenith. The movement is world wide, existing throughout Europe, Russia, and India. If modern secular democracy is to survive, this movement must be taken seriously, addressed, and defeated. Otherwise, civilization is as risk of returning to a very dark age.