“You’re too damn cynical!” That was the total critique of a speech I gave back in high school in 1970, the critic a friend we called Pepper. I took that criticism to heart and in the decades since have tried to temper my cynicism in those areas where I am most jaded. With that in mind, let me continue where last week’s column left off.
While it is true enough to say, as mentioned in last week’s column, the framers of the Constitution fell short in the area of citizenship inclusion, where they did not fail was in recognizing their inability to see into the future. Realizing the document must be open to change if the fledgling nation was to survive changing times is one of the reasons they expressly forbid the formation of a national religion; no single religious belief system would be responsible for making the laws of the land. And this included the various sects who claimed to be followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; ultimately known as Jews, Christians and Muslims. The history of these three religions was enough to convince men of the Enlightenment to keep dogma out of the halls of government. Why, then, is there such a modern-day movement by some in America to push so vehemently for White Christian Nationalism?
I was raised a Methodist, baptized in the Greenfield United Methodist Church; the building on the southwest corner of Ninth Street and Palm Avenue is still an active church. I had no choice in the matter. My mother began taking my brothers and I to church before any of us had any memory of the first time; she did this because that church was as close to the Church of Christ she was raised in, as were her parents before her, and on and on. This is the experience of every church-going kid I knew grew up with, no matter if they were Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness, Pentecostal, Latter Day Saint or Baptist (First, Landmark Missionary or Freewill). None of us, to my knowledge, were offered education in the various religions of the world and then allowed to make our own choices. This sort of blind acceptance in childhood doesn’t engender any questioning of the religion itself, so most of us are ignorant of many things; most importantly, the origin of the texts which define the Christian religion.
In questioning the Christian religion, how many of us know what the Council of Nicaea was and its influence upon what are today known as the Scriptures? What were the languages of the original texts and how accurately were they translated? When Jesus of Nazareth, just one of many itinerant preachers of the time, delivered his Sermon on the Mount his audience was a populace of people few of whom could read or write, yet we are to believe the accuracy of his words as written by four non-Arab men named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John over 200 years after his death.
We were raised with a belief in the Trinity, but this God as three entities did not exist in Jesus’ day, that concept was added hundreds of years later (search: Comma Johanneum). The idea, one gathers, for this late addition to the scriptures was to establish Jesus as a deity making his words sacrosanct. Today this raises a problem with those who are convinced that transgender people are evil sinners because in believing in a virgin birth makes Jesus someone who claims to be a male, uses a male name and male pronouns yet has no male DNA, no inherited male genetics; you can’t get much more trans than that.
These questions, and many more regarding doctrine, are debated within the various sects of Christianity and among other religions all of which hinders effective political action. The genius of the writers of our constitution was knowing they weren’t geniuses and so they produced a document which can change with the times. Our problem today is too many of the positive changes have either been overturned or just flatly denied by this administration.
But the good news is the destructive and divisive ways of Mr. Trump and his sycophantic followers will come to an end and democratic minded people, women and men of both major and all minor political parties, will set things aright once more and we as a nation can get back on the right path. It will take months and in some cases years to undue what the White Christian Nationalists have done or are seeking to do; the exception being those physical places which have been destroyed by one man’s egoistic narcissism.
It is altogether fitting that politicians should be guided by ideals designed to better the human experience, to achieve the mission statement of the Preamble, and whether those ideals come from the words of Allah, Buddha, Jesus, Thor, Zeus or any of the many ancient writings, matters not just as long as the religions represented by these deities are not mandated by law. Gods and politics just don’t mix well.
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And enough of that for a while. I hold to the position in America today those who have a public voice, no matter the venue or how widespread, must speak our minds in this time of extreme politics. I want my grandchildren, who will have to deal with the results of these times, to know which side I was on. And if you have differing views and promote an opposite stance to mine, then you should speak out as is your First Amendment right. In the end, long after many of us now are gone, it will be known who was on the right side or wrong side of history. But America will continue.
In future, I will temper my political opines, after all they are only one man’s point of view, and seek to write columns less divisive and more unifying.
Take care. Peace.
Steve Wilson may be reached at sc**********@***oo.com.
