More thoughts on idolatry
Christine October 30th, 2007
Here is an essay authored by Toby over at Tanalore who has been working on a set of electronic history text books (he works for a software company) from the genre of which I discussed last week in this post. Check out his thoughts while working on the project.
The interesting thing about Toby’s perspective is that he views this work assignment through a window of faith and not liking at all what he sees. His is a strong witness: “It’s an ignorance of history and Christianity born out of abject fear, and its logical conclusion is hopelessness. The recent trend towards erecting monuments to the Ten Commandments is part of the same fear.”
For many, many years evangelical Christianity and the politics associated with it, has been on the offensive while feigning a defensive position. They have been taking a mock stance of being under assault, by advancing an aura of fear, and it works well for them. One of their big obsessions is in the public school where they claim real prayer is not allowed, or those houses of government where they have been pushed off the courthouse lawn – forbidden to erect a sign of the Ten Commandments. And I will add, they have a method of turning every important conversation into a tirade over the gay agenda.
A culture of victimization has been carefully erected, but paradoxically, they have enough power to wage a war consuming unfathomable resources in lives and money impacting generations to come. This Christian nation has also written a sanction to torture via Presidential signing statements. Incidentally, Bush has used signing statements more than Clinton and more than any other administration ever in US history. The only point where I would disagree with Toby in his post is that most Americans recognize this hypocrisy. I’m not sure they do. This government has been supported by “the Values party” for a very long time – either in the Congress or in the White House. When will others of faith, especially the younger Christians such as Toby, stand up and be heard?
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I think you’re right…most Americans probably don’t realize the hypocrisy, and the danger in the far right gaining more power to advance their agenda.
Every time someone says they want more prayer in schools, I always ask “to whom?” because they never think about the fact that if they let some kid pray a Christian prayer, there’s really no way they can get out of also allowing another kid to make a non-Christian prayer. I’ve even been known to point out that I used to be a teacher, and ask if they’d like *me*, heretic, synchretist, apostate as I am, to be the guardian of their child’s orthodoxy.
“Now, boys and girls, since today is Wednesday, I thought we should address our prayers to Odin, who hanged himself as a sacrifice to himself on the World Tree…” “Don’t forget to bring offerings of pound cake for tomorrow, when Marie has agreed to lead us in our devotions…”*
Yeah. I can just about guarantee that any school district that both had prayer in the classroom and someone like me as a teacher would rapidly get rid of one or the other.
* I chose the name Marie here in honor of Marie Laveau, the “Voodoo Queen” of New Orleans.
Oh, that used to be called: E PLURIBUS UNUM. But that is so last century… or century before last century… or before last, last.