The State Church Movement

In the US, those prominently abusing this tenet are the fundamental Christianist evangelicals and the conservative factions of the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches.

They have inserted their particular sect practices and beliefs in our laws, have interfered with the Constitution, and they are actively attempting to take over the control of the federal, state and local governments.

Goodling is part of a new generation of evangelicals ushered in by Falwell, who insisted that Christians get involved in politics. They are graduates of the exploding number of evangelical colleges, which no longer aim to create a parallel subculture but instead to train “Christian leaders to change the world,” as the Regent mission statement reads.

It used to be that being 33 and in charge of 93 U.S. attorneys would mean you’d been top of your class at Harvard or Yale or clerked at the Supreme Court. Now, Christian schools are joining that mix. Regent has had 150 of its graduates working in the White House; the school estimates that one-sixth of its alumni are in government work. Call them the Goodlings: scrubbed young ideologues, ready to serve their nation, the right’s version of the Peace Corps generation.

The opposition to abortion is one of their hallmark interference actions.  They do not recognize the individual’s right to decide, in partnership with a physician, what healthcare decision to make about reproductive health.

They have interfered with vital healthcare research and treatment.  Their beliefs have interfered with individuals’ ability to make unfettered and informed end of life decisions.

YouTube Defend the Constitution Organization’s Stem Cell Research Video

They inserted their dogma into the marriage between two consenting adults, mandating that their position of marriage solely between a man and a woman be legislated.  They have demanded that only their definition of a family be lawful and supported.  They cause harm to people not of their beliefs.  They cause real distress to those who don’t follow and accept their dogma.

They inserted dogma into science curricula around evolution, and they confuse students.  Students are not adequately prepared to compete and to pursue science education and careers.  This leads to an inability to compete in a global free market.  It directly causes harm to students and to the country which tolerates contaminating science education with religious dogma.

They teach abstinence only contraception, which is worthless, and they interfere with government funded reproductive health education on a programmatic scale.  This harms the recipients, and it leads to unintended pregnancies and higher and preventable incidences of sexually transmitted infections.  It leads to higher and preventable health care costs.  It leads to higher rates of neglected and at risk children.  It leads to higher chronic rates of poverty.  It directly causes increased and preventable suffering.

Fundamental evangelicals actively pursue war-like relationships with countries in the Middle East, believing that they are hastening an epoch in which their savior will return and rule the world.  This  belief is being translated into reckless disregard for environmental stewardship, using Jews as pawns as a means to their ends (they believe Jews must be returned to Israel as one of the presages to their big event), and in aggressive pre-emptive war foreign policy.  All of these beliefs as insinuated throughout the federal government have had devastating results.  The US has dirtier air, polluted water, contaminated ground, blasted away mountain tops, toxic lagoons, contaminated food, droughts, extreme reliance on fossil fuels, failure to maintain US infrastructure of roads, waterways and rail, and thousands of Americans who have lost their lives and tens of thousands who have lost their health and well-being.

The sects which have forced their beliefs on all of us also believe that theirs is the sole path to an eternal reward.  All others are condemned.  They condemn those not like them with contempt for science and reason, with intolerance, with bigotry, with discrimination,  with exclusion, and with derision.  They have changed civil discourse into wild and loud rants.  They out shout others.  They close their minds – and their hearts – to anything which doesn’t fit within their dogma.  They insist that their dogma must be codified and made into laws.

Well, they have thus far succeeded on many fronts.  We have lost habeas corpus, we now torture.  We deny the right of women to make health choices in partnership with their physicians.  We war with a country that did us no harm.  We insert members of those sects throughout the justice system, where they freely admit to practicing law from a sectarian point of view.  We treat everyone as a suspect, and we are rapidly throwing out the precepts of the Constitution.  We follow the demands of a ruler who states he is anointed by a higher father, instead of living up to his oath to protect and to defend the Constitution.

And now the Air Force and the Army are doing the work of this sect, too.

The Memorial Day weekend “Salute to the Troops” celebration at Stone Mountain Park is sponsored by Task Force Patriot USA, a private group that says its purpose is “sharing the fullness of life in Jesus Christ with all U.S. military, military veterans and families,” and whose Web site says “Christ is our Commander-in-Chief.”

In recent days, both the Task Force Patriot USA Web site and the newspaper of Robins Air Force Base, Ga., described the celebration as “an official U.S. Air Force 60th Anniversary event.” Along with speeches by evangelical ministers, church services and distribution of Bibles, the published schedule promised “hourly flyovers” by Air Force jets, performances by military bands, color guard presentations, a parachute demonstration by the Army’s elite Silver Wings jump team from Fort Benning, Ga., and exhibitions of Air Force equipment.

The promotional materials also said that an active-duty B-2 pilot, Air Force Maj. Brian “Jethro” Neal, would give Christian “testimony” during an outdoor worship service punctuated by a special flyover of B-2 “stealth” bombers.

There are now flurries of denials by both branches, and a last minute effort to wipe the slate clean. But the slate is smeared with many similar actions which have insinuated the sect’s beliefs into the military and have forced dogmatic beliefs on those who then are intimidated and coerced to comply. That is antithetical to the free expression of one’s beliefs and the free practice of one’s religion.

The problem with all of this isn’t that people wish to practice fundamental evangelism.  The problem is that they are forcing others to practice their dogma.

That isn’t American.  That isn’t patriotic.  That isn’t even Christian, if you really want to know.  That’s forced religion.  That’s state religion.

That’
s wrong.

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