On the Contrary

I watched an interview on Wednesday between Rick Sanchez of CNN and Pastor Mark Holick from the Spirit One Christian Center who posted a sign outside his church that said, “America, we have a Muslim president. This is sin against the Lord.”  This was an interesting interview and it tells much about religion out of control, but it was also interesting to see Rick challenge this man in a polite and respectful way.  It was more than I could have done and Rick is a better person than I for his tolerance.  Anyway here are some snippets from Pastor Holick’s interview (CNN):

HOLICK:  “Well, let me start out by saying that as a Christian pastor, I believe that God’s word states “blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” And that America became the most blessed nation on earth not because we’re any smarter than any of the other peoples of the Earth, but because of the Lord and his laws.”

In other words we are chosen people.  Now right here are grounds for justifying all kinds of atrocities if you think your fellow man is a lesser human and only you have the right path. Does he remember the Inquisition?  He probably thinks the Crusades were fully justified.   But it gets better.

SANCHEZ:  …let me read to you what Barack Obama says, you know, himself.  He says: “I am a Christian, so I have a deep faith. I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place. And that is a belief that there is a higher power — a belief that we are connected as a people.”  So he’s saying he’s a Christian, but it sounds like he’s saying that he admits that there may be many paths to the same place.  Why not take him at his word?

HOLICK: Well, his very words that you just read to me is not a Christian belief. As a Christian, we do not believe there are many paths to the same place. In fact (INAUDIBLE)… In John, Chapter 14, Verse 6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the father but by me.”

In other words you either believe as I do or you are damned to hell.  When Rick raised the fact that Pope Paul II had also said there are many paths to Jesus Christ, I thought Rick really doesn’t get this guy.  These people don’t think Catholics are Christians. Rick also raised the tolerance preached by Billy Graham, but I don’t think in Pastor Holick’s rigid world Billy Graham is a Christian either.  Oh, but it gets even better:

SANCHEZ: Let’s talk, then, about your first point. You made a point about the fact that this is part of why we are the most blessed or cherished nation on Earth. But we’re also a nation whose forefathers were wise enough to make sure that we separated how we prayed with how we governed. It’s that old adage we’ve always heard, separation of church and state.  Do you not believe in that?

HOLICK: No. And our founding fathers didn’t believe in that, either.  Number one, separation of church and state is not found anywhere in the Constitution at all.

(Actually in the Establishment Clause it says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..” The phrase “separation of church and state”, which does not appear in the Constitution itself, is generally traced to an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists, where Jefferson spoke of the combined effect of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. It has since been quoted in several opinions handed down by the United States Supreme Court.  So it really is our established law although a somewhat porous wall, but let us not be dissuaded by the facts)

SANCHEZ: Well, but Thomas Jefferson had as much to do with that Constitution as anybody, sir. Both he and James Madison did.  Here’s Thomas Jefferson: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act the whole American people, which declare that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”

HOLICK: Well, what you’re quoting is not the Constitution. You’re quoting a letter. And the wall of separation was one way that the state would not interfere with the church. But certainly the church had every right and even a duty to its elected officials.

Okay, I will give that Jefferson was in France during the drafting of the Constitution and Rick is confusing the Declaration of Independence with the Constitutional Convention (Madison was a major player there however and he was writing Jefferson furiously), but it is clear what the Framers were trying to avoid, the 400 years of religious wars that had occurred in Europe.  The man is poorly educated on world history or what was the genius of progressive thinking of the day that separated out faith from reason that allowed us to establish a government based upon reason, peaceful disagreement, and compromise.  It was called the Enlightenment.  If you follow his logic, there is never room for compromise and government needs to reflect the one right truth and no others are tolerated.  Then you can do away with the Congress and just let the leader of the church who interprets the Bible with the one right word think for all of us.

Pastor Holick is not a bad man, he just wants to have certitude about his life and he got that by checking his brain at the door of rational thought.  Remember Jim Jones and the cool aid.  Same logic.  It is clear that the Bible was written in many voices, so which voices from the past do you think had the gospel, so to speak?  Speaking of Gospels, What about the Gospels they threw out?  Many of the passages can be interpreted differently so whose interpretation is the right one?  My favorite is the story of Job.  You can make your own judgment about a kind and just God from that one. There are some outright falsehoods in the Bible (like that 4000 year old stuff, or Adam and Eve and the talking snake) so what does that say about certitude?  Then of course why did we need a New Testament?  What was wrong with Old one and who decided?  Or as Lewis Black said, did God take anger management classes for an improved version in the New Testament?

Real religion is an intellectual trial to try to live the philosophy of your beliefs in an evolving and complex world.  Dogmatic beliefs unexamined by reason are an exercise in ignorance that simply denies the basic tenets of the Christian religion, tolerance and forgiveness.   Defining your faith by some set of dogmatic rules makes you less human, and your religion tyranny.  Poor Pastor Holick.  He has no idea what a constitutional democracy (republic actually) is all about or that the real gift of life is that there are so many different paths to enlightenment.  But he is in the judging business.  He who lives in glass houses……