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Although the majority of Americans errantly believe the United States Constitution is the unchallenged law of the land, a substantial number of Christian fundamentalists still adhere to, and are enforcing, their firm belief that their almighty god directed the Founding Fathers to create a Christian nation and wrote a set of laws they would call “The Constitution of the United States.” In the Christian version of god’s Constitution, equal rights are an abomination on par with biblical god’s abhorrence of homosexuality, and religious freedom is Christian’s biblical right to subjugate the population under a Christian theocracy. Over the past five years, Americans have learned that, along with Republicans and teabaggers, the religious right hates the U.S. Constitution as much as they despise America’s African American President, gays, women, and Americans rejecting the Christian bible as law of the land, and the proof is another Republican-controlled state passing and the Republican governor signing into law, a religious edict voiding the 14th and 1st Amendment to make the Christian bible the law of the land in Mississippi.
Last week while Americans deluded that the religious right anti-gay movement is in its death throes celebrated the country’s entrance into the 21st Century as an all-inclusive nation, Mississippi Republicans passed an anti-gay “religious freedom” law. Religious right activists celebrated Mississippi’s biblical law as empowering businesses to reject the Constitution and enforce biblical law discriminating against same-sex couples in the name of Christianity, and shortly after Governor Phil Bryant signed the scriptural edict into law, head of the Family Research Center, Tony Perkins, issued a statement saying as much. The leading prospect to head a Supreme Christian Council to rule theocratic America said, “Whether it’s someone like Pastor Telsa DeBerry who was hindered by the Holly Springs city government from building a new church in the downtown area, or a wedding vendor, whose orthodox Christian faith will not allow her to affirm same-sex marriage,” the religious edict will “prevent government from discriminating against religious exercise.”
Religious exercise in fundamentalist Christians’ minds is freedom to dominate the population and void the Constitution most Americans errantly believed granted all Americans equality under the law. Perkins also elucidated the religious right’s belief that religious freedom means much more than freedom of worship and includes freedom to dominate the entire nation. He wrote that, “Those who understand the importance and cherish the historic understanding of religious freedom are grateful for leaders who respond to fact and not fictitious claims of those who are trying to quarantine faith within the walls of our churches or homes.” This idea that religious freedom means rejecting the Constitution, federal, and state laws by enforcing biblical edicts on the people was devised in early 2009 shortly after the newly elected African American President began serving his first term in office.
In 2009, over two hundred leading Christian conservatives joined to issue a statement, the “Manhattan Declaration,” expressing their rejection of democracy and their ire at being unable to rule by theocracy. The statement read, “Freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those whom would use the instrument of coercion (the U.S. Constitution) to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes (14th Amendment) to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral.” This theocratic confederation panted to transform America into a harsh Christian theocracy feared that adherents to, and defenders of, the United States Constitution were “the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.” Christians were angry their effort to subjugate the population to their bastardized Christianity was not aided by a Republican evangelical government that, with assistance from conservatives on the Supreme Court, would rewrite the 1st Amendment to transform “exercise of religion” into a means of imposing Christianity on the people with the full force of the government. That dangerous proposition will be the law of the land when Supreme Court conservatives rule in favor of Hobby Lobby and deliver religious freedom to dominate the nation to the religious right; a goal they have lusted after for thirty years. If any American thinks such an event will never happen in America, they only need to look at the preponderance of Republican-controlled states attempting “free exercise of religion” edicts to ignore federal, state, and Constitutional laws guaranteeing equal rights to all Americans; a condition that will soon be nothing but a fond memory of a freedom-loving democracy transformed into a Christian theocracy in a little over five years.
What should terrify Americans comfortable living under the current Constitution is that among those signing the “Manhattan Declaration” demanding “exercise of religion” and “rights of conscience” freedom to subject all Americans to biblical edicts is not the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), Family Research Council (FRC), United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), or leaders of Christian universities, colleges, and publications, but the head of the religious legal group who represented Hobby Lobby before the Supreme Court last week. If Americans believe the Hobby Lobby case is about whether or not a secular corporation worships, prays, and proselytizes ignoramuses into its religion can legally refuse to follow federal laws, they just need to look at the Manhattan Declaration’s primary impetus that is their rejection of “instruments of coercion” such as “anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral.” Gays, single mothers, women in the workforce, cohabitating couples, atheists, Buddhists, Heathens, non-Christians, and Muslims will all be “judged to be deeply immoral” and subjected to whatever action evangelicals “exercising religion” deem fits their religion’s biblical moral judgment with constitutional protection according to the Supreme Court.
If Mississippi Republicans had waited for Christian conservatives on the Supreme Court to set a major legal precedent in Hobby Lobby, they could have saved themselves time and energy of passing a biblical “exercise of religion” edict to justify violating the U.S. Constitution and federal anti-discrimination statutes the High Court will invalidate for Hobby Lobby evangelicals. Hobby Lobby’s legal team, like Arizona, Kansas, and now Mississippi’s ”license to discriminate” under cover of “free exercise of religion” law all cited the “rights of conscience” as justification to impose Christianity under their biblical version of “religious freedom.” Using religious freedom and rights of conscience to dominate America is a five year crusade that would have never been so close to fruition if not for Republicans and their Koch brother funding machine or voters who sat out the 2010 midterm elections to protest the African American President for failing to grant their every wish and whim. Soon, the entire nation will pay for their pouts and petulance.
The real tragedy is that despite the certain gnashing of teeth and wailing by Americans comfortable the anti-gay religious right movement is waning will soon find themselves at the mercy of every person “exercising religion” and ignoring the invalid Constitution, federal, and state laws “they judge to be deeply immoral.” Like the failed Arizona discrimination legislation that allowed any person or organization free reign to violate any law they claim violates their “free exercise of religion” and “rights of conscience,” the impending ruling for Hobby Lobby will subject every American to the will of Christian fundamentalists and no foolish petition, outcry from legislators, or protests in the streets will change what the religious right has yearned for since Republican man-god Ronald Reagan opened government to the moral majority; a Supreme Court ruling that all religious right biblical edicts are Constitutional.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
