LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Common Dreams again questions the suddenly fashionable addition of religion into the government sphere.

Listen to us talk at each other, will you?

We Americans are actually debating in the public square not which policy is the most practical or most wise, or which leader is the more competent, but which is the most Christian. We have taken religion — the highest expression of human thought and spirit — and we have cheapened it by using it as a weapon to attack and belittle those with whom we disagree.

Religious leaders are even daring to instruct us in how to vote, and in some cases are suggesting that those who dare to vote contrary to their leaders' wishes risk their soul and standing with God.

This is America?

We know better than this. Or at least we used to. We used to understand that government and religion function best when they function independently, when the only link between them is the indirect link of human beings acting out their private faith through public service. We used to understand that if religion takes a direct role in government, government must inevitably take a direct role in religion, and that the long-standing wall between them was built for the protection of both institutions.

But I guess those are some of the traditional American values now under attack by the dominant political and cultural elite, the Christian right. Yes, that group still likes to depict itself as the most victimized group in American public life, but that's a mere pose, a sham designed to stroke its members' egos and satisfy their need to feel persecuted. That same group, after all, is also beating its chest, proclaiming itself as the nation's most powerful political group to which even the president and Congress must now pay homage. Logically, both self-images cannot be true.

It's too bad, really, because in a rough sense we already know how this story ends. We've seen it so many times before. There is no case in recorded human history, regardless of era or culture, in which religion and government have been intertwined without eventually compromising basic human freedoms. Inevitably, every time, that relationship gets out of control and people get hurt.