June 26, 2006
 
MANN TALK: The Threat of the Theocrats
 
By Perry Mann
 
Hinton, WV (Special to HNN) – “Modern Religious Right groups might not press overtly for writing their understanding of Christianity in the Constitution, but their agenda, if implemented, would force Americans to live under a system of laws based on fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.”
 
The preceding quote is from an article in the June 2006 edition of “Church and State” titled “The Religious Right and American Freedom.” This article is based on that article and all quotes are taken from it.
 
The Religious Right groups have an agenda. They oppose abortion for any reason, euthanasia and stem-cell research; advocate abstinence-based sex education; have pressured the FDA to refuse to approve the “morning after” pill; work to overturn Roe v. Wade and press to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down a law that banned the sale of contraceptives even to married couples. They want to rid the world of public education and replace it with “Christian schools.”
 
They consider homosexuals evil, insist that gays choose to be gay and quote St. Paul and other Scripture to support their homophobia. Their agenda include striping the courts of the nation the right to hear certain cases and working zealously to see that judicial appointments are filled with right-wing judges.
 
They are happy beyond measure that Bush has espoused “faith-based” initiatives and has poured millions of dollars into them, thus knocking holes in the wall of church-state separation and giving fundamentalists opportunities to make more fundamentalists through proselytizing and indoctrination. They will feel more secure when all mankind has the same faith as they have. The money spent from the U.S. Treasury to fund them is tantamount to a church tax, the use of which in history and even today is to establish a church, a violation of the First Amendment.
 
They are unhappy about what is published, what is filmed, what is televised, and what is on the internet and they are doing what they can to censor what they do not like. They have succeeded in getting Congress to act. There are now pending bills that would greatly increase fines on broadcasters for indecency. And they pressure to ban books that are not to their liking. They can’t fathom that indecency is in the eye of the beholder.
 
The greatest threat to democracy, to those of a sweeter faith and to those of no faith is their effort to make legal church-built and church-funded political machines, so that on Sundays fundamentalist preachers can advise the faithful which candidate to vote for and why, adding no doubt in the sermon that his choice is also God’s choice. At present, churches cannot do so owing a Federal tax law that prohibits non-profit groups from intervening in partisan political campaigns, the penalty for violation of which is the loss of tax exemption, which would be a formidable punishment for any church. It is the threat of that penalty that keeps such prominent preachers as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and D. James Kennedy from going over the top sermonizing politically.
 
Presently, U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) is the lead sponsor of a bill to overturn the Federal tax law. He believes he is on a divine mission: “In 2002, he told Focus on the Family, ‘The Lord has given me this energy; the Lord has selected me to be his foot soldier.’”
 
Well, the Lord has given me energy and I can say just as well as does Rep. Jones that I have been selected by the Lord to do all I can to prevent Jones and his ilk from overturning the tax law. I really don’t believe that the Lord, even if he exists, which I doubt, would care one way or the other about this issue. But I care about it, because I do not want to have to live in a nation whose laws are fashioned by theocrats nor do I want my children or grandchildren to have to live in a nation whose laws reflect the superstitions of religious zealots. My son is gay. He has suffered enough of fundamentalist ignorance and bigotry. And my daughter married a black and they have a son, a beautiful and intelligent child, who will undoubtedly one day feel racism’s sting, if not worse.
 
The Bible is the source of the beliefs and faith of fundamentalists. Here is an evaluation of the Bible and the culture it has spawned by Theodore Roszak professor emeritus of history at California State University: “Despite the undeniable philosophical value some sections of the Bible retain, the Bible as a whole was coming more and more to look like what it essentially is: the worldview of one isolated, intellectually restricted, largely superstitious, and vastly ignorant ancient society whose experience carries no more weight than that of any traditional culture.”
 
If everyone could know what science and scholarship have uncovered that subverts and contradicts Biblical beliefs, the only believers left would be those die-hards that refuse to hear, see or understand how flimsy are the premises of many of their beliefs. Those die-hards and dogmatists, pushing to breach the wall between church and state, are the ones which seek to establish a theocracy based on their faith. And it is those that provoke me to write this article.
 
That I belong to a minority is no reason to conclude that what I believe is less true than what the majority believes. If one studies and evaluates honestly the relative validity of the premises of faith-based beliefs and science-based beliefs, he can come to no other conclusion but that faith-based premises are mostly wish supported by hope. Once, no one on earth doubted that the sun circled the earth. Then came Copernicus. Now, no one but the insane doubt that the earth circles the sun.
 
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas Chronicle in Summersville and Huntington News Network. Born in Charleston, WV, in 1921, he lives in Hinton. The portrait accompanying this column is by Robert Shetterley from his book “Americans Who Tell The Truth.”