Religious Freedom Isn't Free Either

It’s always amusing to hear the assertion that this nation was founded by people seeking religious freedom. That is correct to the point that the Puritans were seeking religious freedom for themselves, but not for anyone else. The Puritans were every bit as rigid and ruthless as any religious zealots of today. For example, consider Anne Hutchison, a woman who was persecuted because of her divergence from the Puritan orthodoxy. “Hutchinson preached that one could achieve salvation through a direct intuition from God. Puritan leaders argued salvation could be achieved only by obeying the laws of the church and government. To Hutchinson, the church’s view was a corruption of the true spirit of the Puritan movement and would produce a colony of hypocrites, pious only on the outside…” Both Hutchison and Roger Williams left the Massachusetts Bay Colony in search of the freedom of belief that the Puritan sect had forbidden.

Theocracy didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. True religious freedom in this country has meant that one is free to hold any religious belief, conservative, liberal or none at all. There are those in this land who seem willing to return to the days of reflex religious orthodoxy. Those who appear to prefer to have an established state religion perhaps should look to the recent events in Iran where an election was determined, not by the voters, but by the one vote that counted: that of the Grand Ayatollah.

The Puritans were seeking freedom to believe and worship their way. It should be remembered that belief in the right to religious freedom has been a steadily evolving concept over the life of our country. We should never allow it to be perverted or abandoned. It is worth fighting for.

Amendment I
 :

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

Remembering May 17, 1954

A new president was elected last November. For a day or two thereafter, I allowed myself the illusion that perhaps, just perhaps this country was at last growing up….then I remembered May 17, 1954.

On that day, I was a college student. The U.S. Supreme Court had voted 9-0 to end segregation in public schools. I had a friend who was not native to the South. We had a serious discussion in which she, as I allowed myself to do these many years later, thought that perhaps, just perhaps… the country was at last going to grow up, abide by the court’s decision and that everything would work out just fine. Sadly, I knew better and tried to explain that the troubles had just begun and that there was and would always be an element in the South as well as in the entire country that would never peaceably abide by such a decision. They didn’t. They still aren’t going to peaceably abide by a decision, not one by the Supreme Court this time, but one by the electorate.

If Barak Obama were as evil as the Tea Bagger/Klan class would have us believe, he would have already declared himself President for Life, ordered the silencing of the protests of last August and dealt with the march in Washington, D.C. in the same manner as that used against the WW I Bonus Marchers in 1932.

The progeny of those who fought integration is on the march egged on by propaganda that is dispensed with the apparent complicity and blessing of the movement that has taken the Republican Party. There’s a whole lot of lying going on from that source. And that’s the truth.