Despite the best efforts of secularists of all stripes, religion often rules in world and human affairs. While the separation of church and state in the US has proved to be one of the most successful of our founding principles, the need to keep religion in the affairs of state has never receded far from the surface. The Yin of state and the Yang of church are in constant conflict. Keeping the balance is the algebra of the ongoing dialectics of political harmony.
Examples abound of the conflict between church and state. The Ten Commandments imbroglio in Alabama is one recent newsworthy example. In the end, state trumped church, as is usually the case. However, a more complicated case has presented itself in the form of the Pledge of Allegiance, recited daily in classrooms and civic clubs across the country as a sort of secular creed memorized by all Americans as our official declaration of citizenship and patriotism.
In the Pledge, as in our currency and our court and legislative procedures, God pops up in the text. Appearing to deny the existence of religion in our national political calculus, the 9th Federal District Court in California says the term under God in the Pledge violates the establishment of religion clause in the US Constitution. As 86 percent of Americans say they believe in God, this struck a negative chord with citizens who felt the decision went too far in its zeal to obliterate any mention of God at all.
I felt the same way until it became known that the phrase under God in the Pledge was added in the 1940s with little resistance by the usual secular activist suspects due to war raging around the world. In God we do trust and we live under God but arbitrarily adding the presence of the Almighty does violate the exclusion clause and should be removed simply because the yin and yang of church and state are artificially put out of balance. We cannot risk religious domination of secular affairs as we can never be sure just whose religion will prevail.
This came to mind in ruminating over the recent debate in Great Britain over the Act of Settlement of 1701 by which the English Parliament forbade the succession to the throne by a Catholic in order to end two centuries of violence caused by Protestant fear that a Catholic monarch would be subsumed by the authority of the Pope. If we in America allow religion into our political system would we find our leaders allegiant to the Bishop of Rome? The Patriarch of Antioch? The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem? The Mullah of Mecca? Latter Day Saints? Religious freedom and values, yes; religion in government, no.
It is the religious element in the current wave of terrorism gripping the world that has turned random violence for political attention into murder and mayhem for the hell of it. As Cambridge intelligence historian Chris Andrew puts it, this is Holy Terror and the operative word is Holy. Since it is inspired by religious zealotry, it is pan-national and owes its impetus to a higher calling than political goals or the operation of a rational society. As the British protect their sovereignty by disallowing political allegiance to the higher authority of the Pope, or as we won the war against allegiances to the higher authority of rule by the concept of world socialism during the Cold War, we are obliged to endeavor to keep the yin and the yang in balance.
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
If youve caught Jay Lenos Jaywalking segments, you have wept openly for America. The Tonight Show host chooses contestants at random and sets them up in a Jeopardy-style set and asks them questions. Question: What is this landmark (Central Park, surrounded by skyscrapers)? Answer: The Forbidden City. Question: The Sahara, the worlds largest desert, is located where? Answer: Las Vegas. Shown a picture of the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall, the contestants spurted out, The Great Wall of China. And the education establishment tells us all is fine.
***
NPR trumpeted breathlessly that the Black Bear population of North Carolina is restored and now numbers 11,000. Environmentalists, when asked about the danger to humans, smirked and said: Don't feed the bears or give them chewing gum. I wrote in this space (Animal Planet go to www.metronc.com and search for it) that we will not be safe to leave our homes if this insane policy of elevating nature to the detriment of human existence continuesFinally the New York Times.