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Sunday, September 30, 2007

No Jeebus, no presidency
Posted by Jill | 7:39 AM
Thus spake John McCain in an interview with BeliefNet:

BeliefNet: A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?

McCain: I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn't say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.


And if you don't like it, you will be stoned to death.

It's sad that John McCain has so little knowledge of, or cares so little for, the facts of American history. What are "Christian principles", anyway? Gay-bashing? Punishing women who become pregnant? Hmmmm....it must be the principle of proseletyzing and conversion (by force if necessary). That's a strong part of Christian principle, isn't it?

Does John McCain ever wonder why the name "Jesus" never appears in any of the founding documents? For that matter, why the word "God" in the "Jehovah" sense never appeears? The only place the word "God" appears in the Declaration of Independence is in the first paragraph, and then it could just as easily refer to any deity, including a female one:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.


Nature's God? Sounds kind of pagan, doesn't it?

The opening to the second paragraph reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


Christians may assume that this refers to "Jehovah" (it sure as hell doesn't refer to Joshua of Nazareth), but that doesn't make it so. In fact, I would say that these oblique references were worded this way for a reason, that reason being to avoid any implication that it refers to a deity of ANY religious tradition.

If we go to the United States Constitution, nothing about God or religion appears at all. Not "God", not "Creator", not "deity". The Bill of Rights addresses the issue of religion only in Amendment 1:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.


The notion of "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" has been what the Christofascist Zombie Brigade has latched onto in their efforts to force Christianity down our throats in every area of public life, because of their mandate to "spread the Word." Well, your right to "spread the Word" ends at my right to not be subject to coercive conversion efforts.

That John McCain doesn't understand the great care the Founding Fathers took to put language into both of the founding documents that doesn't embrach ANY religious tradition -- not even the so-called Judeo-Christian one -- disqualifies him for the presidency, as it does anyone who in trying to throw red meat to the Flat Earthers in a quest for the Ignorant Vote.

(h/t Matt Ortega, who has more.)

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