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Religion-Politics
Mix Gives Rise to Fear
By Naomi Schalit
11/01/08 "Kennebec
Journal" -- - - I grew up in a household where among our
many guests were older people with tattooed numbers on their
arms. They spoke with accents — Polish, German, French.
These were friends of my parents who had survived Nazi
concentration camps — the Holocaust — and lived to tell their
stories. And what they spoke of, over and over again, was the
danger that comes when government dictates which religion is
good and which religion is not (and thus which religion’s
adherents are good or bad).
They had lived in countries where the very fact that you were a
Jew meant you couldn’t hold certain jobs, live in certain areas,
attend certain schools — where, ultimately, in its most horrific
manifestation, being a Jew meant you were targeted for death.
I lived in a household where the memory and evidence of that
Holocaust was directly and powerfully linked to the belief that
America was a safe place because this country clearly separated
religion and the state.
But these days, I see that changing.
I’m a Jew and I’m scared.
It’s not just that Mike Huckabee, an Evangelical and
self-described “Christian Leader,” won the GOP Iowa presidential
caucus last week.
It’s the photos of his supporters praying and holding American
flags.
Jews don’t feel good or safe when flags and religion get all
mixed up. Put government and the Church or the Koran or Bible
together, and Jews usually lose. (You’ll probably say the state
of Israel — whose flag bears the Jewish Star of David — puts the
lie to that theory, but I’d disagree. The very theocratic nature
of the state of Israel has led to the current profound threats
to its legitimacy, both as a nation and a democracy. I know, I’m
half Israeli, daughter of two families that fought for Israel’s
establishment.).
But back to Huckabee.
My fear didn’t really start with him, but it’s flowered in the
last few days of a presidential campaign that’s been marked by
candidates shamelessly pandering to the Christian electorate,
falling all over themselves in the God stakes to demonstrate
who’s a better Christian.
It’s been growing, though, over the last decade, when the
principles that had kept me feeling safe and secure as a Jew in
America have been under attack.
In elementary school, I remember how awful it felt to sing
carols in our annual Christmas assembly — because singing the
words in praise of Jesus felt like I was doing something
terrible, for which I would be punished.
And how much of an outsider I felt when Christmas trees went up
in all our classrooms. And how really bad it felt when some boys
locked my brother in a classroom and forced him to push a penny
around on the floor with his “Jewish nose.” Or when I got such
anti-Semitic hate notes in my bookbag that I finally left the
school I’d been in for only five months.
But in the years since I was a child, through court battles and
the evolution of our consciousness as a democratic and
pluralistic society, our country seemed to be well on the way to
carrying out the promise of our founding fathers and the First
Amendment, that America would be a society where no religion
would be favored by government:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Christmas
trees and churches in front of city halls were banned, Hanukkah
and other religious minorities’ holidays found their way into
holiday celebrations at school, a Jew was selected to run for
vice president.
Yet along with this evolution came counter-revolution.
Just as societies being forcefully modernized in Africa, Asia
and the Mideast developed their own homegrown extremists, along
came America’s versions: the Moral Majority, the more violent
fighters of the abortion battles, the growing electoral power of
the Christian right, without whom, it seemed, Republicans felt
they could not win the White House.
And then came the presidential primary race of 2007.
My jaw dropped when Mitt Romney said that “freedom requires
religion just as religion requires freedom.” No, freedom doesn’t
require religion, Mr. Romney, and whoever has been giving you
history lessons needs to re-read the Constitution and the First
Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
What is it about “no” (as in “no law respecting an establishment
of religion”) that you don’t understand?
The otherwise rational and well-informed John McCain said he
thought the Constitution established a “Christian nation.”
Where does that leave folks like me and my children?
Hillary Clinton has a “Faith, Family and Values” team on her
campaign staff.
Can we please stop hiding behind euphemisms and call “faith”
what it really is: “religion”?
Democratic primary candidate Bill Richardson told a crowd of
Iowa voters that their state needed to maintain its
first-in-the-nation status “for constitutional reasons, for
reasons related to the Lord.” Oh, please. And the Lord wants New
Hampshire to vote second, right?
And while Americans rail against the Taliban’s atavistic
treatment of women, Republican caucus voters in Iowa just chose
a man, Huckabee, who has said that he agrees with the statement
that “a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership
of her husband.”
America is not on its way to forming concentration camps.
An African-American has just been chosen as winner of the Iowa
Democratic caucuses.
My children, both Jews, can largely join any club they want, go
to any school they like, choose any profession to which they’re
suited.
This is not pre-Nazi Germany.
But we are on a dangerous path — one that is fundamentally
anti-democratic and un-American.
The growing population of Bible-thumpers on the campaign trail
has distinct roots in American history, to be sure, but they are
not proud roots.
They are the roots of prejudice and discrimination, of
exclusivity and narrow-mindedness.
I have great respect for all this country’s religions — so much
so that I chose to study religion in college and raised a child
who has a master’s degree in divinity. Religion is is a deep and
profound part of our political culture in America and I have no
argument with that fact.
Yet it is the emphasis on one, favored form of religion, one
kind of belief that is so frightening to me.
Hand in hand with the growing public acceptance of professions
of Christian faith on the campaign trail is the implicit idea
that this is the one faith that is true and correct, and which
qualifies its holder for the presidency.
Like me, I do not think that the majority of Americans believe
this to be so.
Naomi Schalit is Opinion Page editor for the Kennebec Journal
and Morning Sentinel.
Copyright © 2008, Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.
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