The secular-religious divide

Today's KQED Forum discussed the issue of whether there is a secular-religious divide in the USA. The conclusion was clearly there is, however beyond that not much progress was made regarding what can and should be done to heal that divide. As I just pointed out in my previous post, I simply cannot believe that those who seek to increase religious influence in government policy would stop just at overturning Roe vs. Wade, banning same sex marriage and permitting prayer in schools. These are simply sticking points on the start of a long and slippery slope towards an extreme that is quite simply un-American. Indeed it would be very, very far from what the majority of this country really want - even most of those who align themselves with a Christian religion of any sort, let alone those non-Christians and atheists amongst us.

I recently watched the documentary "Voices of Iraq" which features interviews and video footage of Iraq filmed by hundreds of Iraqis during the last year. One interview in particular struck me, a Moslem man was stating how his religion had suffered under Saddam's regime. He said words to the effect of "In the USA you worry about keeping your government free of religious interference. In Iraq we worry about keeping our religion free from interference by the government."

Its a subtle but important point and I think its one that Americans will soon be able to experience first hand if the American government keeps down the path of defining what is right and wrong from a religious perspective. If the government is using religious values and faith based initiatives then the question will soon become "Which values" and "Whose faith?", is it those of Baptists, Evangelicals, Methodists, Catholics, Mormons? Presidential candidates will be campaigning based on which particular church they come from and which particular laws and faith based principles they will enforce.

At that point we'll have many people like that man in Iraq wishing that the government would leave their religious beliefs and practices well alone - maybe then they'll understand the true importance of separation of church and state. They will find that they have to fight as hard to keep the state out of their churches as we now fight to keep the church out of the state. Good luck to them - as a godless atheist I'm afraid I'll be long gone.