So, What’s The Big Deal About Religion in
’08?
By Frank Salvato
We have come to a point in the 2008 presidential election
cycle where both political parties’ candidates are fielding questions about
religion. While religion is a personal issue for an overwhelming majority of
Americans, religion in government has been frowned upon ever since the ACLU took
an active roll in purging it from the “public square.” So, it would seem at odds
with the dogma of the Secular Progressive Left that religion should be an
election issue at all. Yet each candidate has had to answer questions about
their faith, with Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney being literally scrutinized on
the issue.
If we are to believe there actually exists a “separation of
church and state,” a notion that exists nowhere in the Charters of Freedom (The
Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and The Bill of Rights, our
Founding Documents) then the issue of religion should be out of bounds when
Americans publicly debate the strengths and weaknesses of candidates for elected
office. If we are to believe this incorrect interpretation of the Constitution,
then religion should be a private matter, exclusive to the individual.
Why then is the issue of the candidates’ religions receiving
so much attention from the secular mainstream news media? What does it matter if
Mitt Romney is a Mormon or that Mike Huckabee is Evangelical?
The logical answer to these questions is that the Secular
Progressive Left – and especially the agenda-driven, “in-the-pocket,” secular
mainstream media – is trying to scare the American people into believing that if
a man of faith is elected to office he will defer to the tenets of his religion
over his constitutionally mandated duty to administer and follow the laws
of the land. They are trying to frighten the American people into adhering to
the politically correct secular ideology of purging all religion from the
“public square.”
The fact of the matter is this. In survey after survey it is
proven that the overwhelming majority of American people adhere to the tenets of
a chosen religion. A 2001 American Religious Identification Survey indicated that
approximately 80% of the American people adhere to the tenets of Christianity.
And the CIA World Factbook breaks the US religious demographic down as
being 78% Christian, while 12% of the population embrace other religions. 10%,
it reports, practice no religion.
When you take these facts into consideration, it would be an
unlikely event that our electorate would choose someone for the highest office
in the land that didn’t adhere to a specific religion’s ideology.
So, again, we have to ask, why is the issue of the
candidate’s religion receiving so much attention from the secular mainstream
news media?
Again, we have to lean on the obvious notion that the Secular
Progressive Left – and especially their toady mainstream media – is trying to
scare the American electorate into rejecting candidates that they deem “too
mired in faith.” It would appear that they would prefer the American people
choose someone who maintains the status quo; a candidate who gives disingenuous
lip-service to faith while glad-handing for votes.
Another facet to their motives might be found in the idea
that the Secular Progressive Left (valued at approximately 10% of the legitimate
US population) is religiously bigoted. This idea is bolstered when one explores
the Secular Progressive ideology.
Secularism holds dear the idea that government and the
“public square” should exist separately from religion or religious belief and,
in the extreme, that religion has no place in public life. Progressivism,
identified with Left-wing politics, places great importance on upholding a secular society dedicated to
social equality through collective rights, multicultural in nature. In
actuality, the Secular Progressive Left identifies man – humans – as the
ultimate authority. It is because of this that the Secular Progressive Left
deems the idea there may exist an entity, a higher power, capable of imposing a
“final judgment” for earthly actions, unsophisticated and “simple.”
Frankly, it gives me great comfort knowing that the person
entrusted with the ability to bring about nuclear Armageddon believes there is a
higher power to answer to at the end of times. The humility that this
understanding instills could very well serve to be the final barrier keeping one
from literally bringing a “judgment day.” Of course, this doesn’t apply to
genocidal maniacs like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who believe that bringing about the
end of times wins them a personal audience with an imam in a well and 72
rejuvenating virgins in the afterlife. It is precisely for this reason that
freedom of religion not be misinterpreted as freedom from
religion.
No matter how the Secular Progressive Left tries to remove
religion and faith from our lives, the fact remains they are in the minority on
this issue. With approximately 90% of Americans believing in one religion or
another we have the capability to embrace our Judeo-Christian heritage,
relegating the Secular Progressive Left’s attempt at bringing about a Godless
nation to the ash heap of time along with the failed ideologies of Socialism and
Communism.
Americans need to appreciate this reality. Just as there are
numerous mentions of God and The Creator in the Charters of Freedom, our nation
is one that overwhelmingly embraces its faith. And just as the Secular
Progressive Left hangs its hat on a single letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802, declarative
in its capacity, to the Danbury Baptist Association explaining there would be no
establishment of a national religion, they do so with a voice ensconced in the
minority.
“For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the
finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be
again, a Jew – or a Quaker – or a Unitarian – or a Baptist. It was Virginia's
harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's
statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim – but tomorrow it may be
you – until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of
great national peril.” – John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1960
Related
Reading:
Religion in the United
States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
John F. Kennedy: Address to the
Greater Houston Ministerial Assoc., Sept. 12, 1960 Excerpt)
http://members.cox.net/teewood/QuoteJFK.html
CIA Factbook:
US-People-Religion
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html#People
2001 American Religious
Identification Survey
http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_studies/aris.pdf
Secularism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism
Left-Wing Politics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing
Jefferson's Letter to the
Danbury Baptists
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
