“Blessed are you when
people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you
because of me.” –
Matthew 5:11
There have been few better
places to be a person of faith, any faith, than the Unites States. This is not
quite so wonderful as it might seem given that world standards have been pretty
horrific. But a glance at China, the Middle East, Ireland, Somalia, and
Afghanistan provides a sobering reality check as to what we have here. There
will always be lunatics and ragtag groups, but systematic state-sponsored
religious persecution has been largely absent.
Not everyone is happy about
that. Strip away the righteous rhetoric over the nomination of John Ashcroft as
Attorney General and what’s left are objections to his religion. Still, the
controversy is just a symptom of a larger struggle.
The line being pushed is
that it is acceptable to base one’s views on anything except faith. Oh you can,
if you’re willing to be precluded from any part in public policy. Or give it
lip service if you must, but don’t try to live it.
I am suspect of proclamations of faith on the
part of politicians unless it’s visible. And I don’t mean lugging a Buick-sized
Bible to church when the cameras are on. I mean something deeper than
high-profile faith advisory councils and speeches ending in “God Bless
America.” As Matthew wrote, “Everything they do is done for men to see: They
make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love
the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues …”
If a public figure hasn’t been harassed for
his faith, it’s likely not deep. If it is deep, it’s probably hard to dig up
much dirt. Ashcroft’s detractors have been working overtime to gin something
up, and frankly, are sounding a bit desperate.
Much is made of an Ashcroft speech in which he
said he had “no king but Jesus,” twisted to imply that he won’t enforce the
law. Given the inability to find an example of this in a decades long public
career, suspicion will apparently suffice
Ashcroft’s leadership against the confirmation
of a black nominee to a federal judgeship is portrayed as racist. This should
surprise no one in modern America, where race politics is the new Salem and only
the accusation matters. That Ashcroft appointed several black judges as
Missouri’s governor, voted for confirmation of 26 of 28 black nominees in the
senate, signed into law the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in his state, and led
the fight to keep open an historic black university is somehow rendered
irrelevant.
More odious is the melding of unrelated
comments and events. The aforementioned judge began his Senate testimony with
stories of racism suffered as a child. Lacking evidence of bigotry by Ashcroft,
he wove his childhood experiences in with his political grievances, presenting
the two as one and the same.
This tactic has been too common to be a
coincidence. For instance, a column in a large California paper interspersed
Ashcroft comments from a print interview with quotes from unrelated articles
that periodical had printed over the years, entwining them as if all the
statements were Ashcroft’s. The writer’s point (graciously assuming it wasn’t
just good old-fashioned deception) was that by agreeing to be a particular
magazine, Ashcroft took responsibility for everything it had ever printed.
Ironically, this journalistic brain burp
adjoined a piece praising hate-rapper Eminem, frequently a subject of gay and
feminist protests. By his own standard the author has thus declared himself a
homophobic misogynist.
As this is written the confirmation process is
not complete, however a recent poll shows most Americans oppose the nomination.
My question is this: How many of those polled had heard of John Ashcroft a
month ago? His public perception is a newborn, successfully manipulated by
anti-faith movement.
The Constitution’s simple guarantee against
official establishment of religion has already been warped into “separation of
church and state.” Let’s not allow its further corruption into separation of
the faithful from the state.
© 1997- 2002 Brent Morrison
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