Sunday, June 11, 2023 | 2 am
We live in interesting times.
This statement, by itself, is not news. It is both a blessing and a curse to civilizations throughout the ages, which, I should think, would much prefer the uninteresting, boring, soothing sense that people all over the world have of a world at peace and a nation full of of tranquility
Alas, this is not the world we live in where even relative calm seems to be as elusive as Mike Pence’s ability to square an orange. (I refer you to his most recent interview in which he unsuccessfully tried to explain the most basic principle of American jurisprudence that “no man is above the law” unless that man is a former president.)
As we approach Father’s Day next week, I realized that among the fathers we should celebrate the most are those who founded this democracy, the men who wrote the US Constitution, which created this great experiment of self-government, almost two and a half centuries ago.
I’m going to focus on the First Amendment to the Constitution and the incredible wisdom the framers had when they wrote it, not the part about freedom of the press and speech, which would be a natural place for me, but the part about religion, which is somewhere far out of my comfort zone.
But I do notice things. And what I see bodes very interesting times ahead.
We can start right here in Nevada, where our Governor, Joe Lombardo, recently tried to force the Legislature to pass his plan to use public money to fund non-public education. He thinks it’s okay to use our tax dollars to pay for religious school education.
That’s right, if the governor had his way, our taxes, the money most Nevadans pay to improve public education, would have been used to fund students who want to receive a religious education. And it doesn’t matter if that religious school might not be one that other taxpayers are interested in supporting (people may differ on which of their own favorite religious educations they want to promote), but the government would say, “Too bad, your dollars are go to that other church, synagogue or mosque.
I realize that in and of itself doesn’t sound too dangerous unless you read the First Amendment which says very clearly that Congress (you should read that to mean a state legislature) “shall make no law respecting the establishment of the religion…”
You see, the founding fathers and all the other settlers of the time were well aware that the government was forcing them to follow a state’s preferred religion over the one they preferred for themselves. They didn’t like that idea.
That’s why all those pilgrims showed up at Plymouth Rock in the first place, in 1620! And since then this country has done everything possible to keep government at any level away from our religions.
But that didn’t stop Nevada’s governor from trying to use our tax dollars to establish or support religious schools. He tried to use our government to disrespect our freedom of religion.
But, that’s not the worst thing about this story by any means. Let’s go a little east to Oklahoma, where that state’s legislature just created the first Catholic charter school that was funded by, you guessed it, taxpayer money. I guess the part about “no law respecting…religion” escaped the good folks pushing the Good Book in Okie country.
On the other hand, it is true that far from America but close to the seat of the three major religions, Saudi Arabia, a place not particularly known for religious freedom, is making significant strides in untying the people of that country from their religious fanaticism in order to grow their people in the modern world where both men and women have a place and a future.
And, just around the corner in Israel, a place where religious freedom is the essence of its existence, the government is doing its best to look and act more like the religious autocrats of neighboring lands than the place where God gave the laws to his own. people to be a “light unto the nations.”
My memory of religious history may not be perfect, but it is perfectly clear to anyone paying attention that we are moving in a direction away from religious freedom, while those we have long loathed because of their religious intolerance are moving to fill the void that we are. creating through our own action.
By the way, this does not only happen in the field of religion. Autocrats all over the world are raising their heads and challenging individual liberty and freedom all over the world.
It just baffles me how we can forget the very essence of America to create some political advantage.
When people have never had or enjoyed religious freedom, they don’t necessarily know what to do when it comes to it. But once we have enjoyed the freedom to worship as we please while respecting our neighbor’s right to do the same, it seems unthinkable to me to believe that we would give that up to pursue the false god of political opportunism.
And yet here we are in the United States of America willingly following those who say they support our freedom of worship while doing their little thing at a time to strip us of our God and Founding Father. .. given the right to worship as we please.
Those who were here at the beginning would not recognize the mess we are making of ourselves in 2023. Our mess is leading to some very interesting times.
Personally, I’d like to be bored right now.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of The Sun
