Scriptorium Daily
Nothing makes an ideologue madder than actual people.
People have the obstinate desire to live their own lives, refusing to fit into the neat little patterns of the ideologue. The rest of us know, as Aristotle taught, that all human institutions have to be left a bit messy at the edges or they become unbearable. One size does not fit all and for any society to work, especially a diverse society, there has to be room for different practices and perspectives.
Practical people understand that different institutions in our society need different rules to work. Ideologues never understand this. They have a fever for conformity and long to banish ancient and gentle costumes so that all of society will be fit into their dogmas.
The Founders were not this way. The genius of our federal system is that it allows different public institutions to be different. Utah is not forced to have all the same laws as California. Houston need not have the same civil practices as Santa Monica. Americans have always preferred messy compromise to the inhuman perfection of ideological absolutism.
This is especially true regarding the religion in public life and always has been. The vast majority of Americans know religion is important, gives valuable knowledge about how to live a good life, and has been part of most of the great moments in American history.
In a crisis most Americans want to pray, like it when their leaders pray with them, and don’t like the government telling them they cannot. Americans are so thankful to God for His goodness that we started a national holiday to do so. The public celebration of Thanksgiving each November has not, so far as I can tell, led to a theocracy.
Americans reject theocracy for good reasons. Theocratic ideologues wish to simplify the complex problem of religion in a pluralistic society by making everything about religion and everyone practice their own religious beliefs.
Americans also reject the simplistic idea that a minority of adult citizens who do not pray are deeply harmed when the majority engage in public prayer. Public prayer is, after all, not new to our nation. Congress has been doing it for some time without imperiling the rights of secularists.
While the rights of a minority group must be respected (in terms of allowing them their own space), there is no reason for the majority to bow to the tyranny of the minority at every moment. In terms of religion, this means that people should never be forced to practice a religion, but the majority should also be allowed to bring their faith and the practice of their faith into the public square.
This has long been the tradition of our nation. Presidents have placed their hands on the Bible as they are sworn into office. The Constitution was signed “in the year of our Lord.” Washington D.C. is full of Biblical and other religious references on official buildings. One cannot read the majestic Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln, carved in stone on his government memorial, without being awash in Biblical and Christian imagery and argument.
Americans have never wanted an official religion, but they want and allow their officials to reflect the general religious beliefs of the majority. Coercion is out, but so is a public square stripped of every religious reference. From prayer at the inauguration of the president to the chaplain in Congress, such public religious practice is not unusual or weird. Every piece of American money after all says, “In God We Trust” without bringing on the dystopia of the Handmaid’s Tale.
Most Americans are happy when a minister from a religious tradition different from their own offers thanks at a meal or opens of a government or political ceremony. There will be such prayers said at both the party conventions this summer.
It is a profound reflection of the character of the American people and part of the messy (but workable!) compromise that allowed an overwhelmingly Christian people to allow space for religious minorities and the nonreligious without being forced to pretend to be something they were not.
Now the ideologues of the ACLU have decided to tamper with tradition and with the culture of the fighting men and women of our nation. It is evidently of grave concern to them, in a nation presently at war, that official prayers are said at some meals. That this has been done since 1845 without destroying our liberty is of no concern to the ideologues of the ACLU.
It does not fit their Utopian ideology of how everything must be, so it must go. Consistency to public secularism is the hobgoblin of their little minds. Too much “official religion” is dangerous, but the ACLU are ideological extremists in seeing danger in old and workable public accommodations to the overwhelmingly religious desires of Americans.
Like all ideologues history does not matter, tradition does not matter, and there is no sense of proportion. Every public act must fit their cherished scheme. They are theocrats in reverse and just like the theocrats the pursuit of their ideas of perfection threatens to unravel the careful compromises that make our culture work.
The ACLU would apply to a service academy the same rules it applies to an elementary school. The military, an institution that deals with immanent peril and death daily, is not just like any other institution in our society.
Our Armed Forces have chaplains, because fighters from a very religious nation like America need and want them. The Armed Forces have always prayed, because we are a praying nation and men who fight are uniquely interested in speaking to the Deity. Secularists don’t agree that this matters, but then there are not enough secularists in this nation to defend it.
Unlike school children, the men and women of the Armed Forces are mature. If their leaders choose to lead them in a general prayer of thanksgiving, as they have always done, then these future leaders are not likely to be swayed from deeply held unbelief, as courts worried children might be with school prayer.
If you think these secularizing ideologues are reasonable ask them this: Should we stop singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic at state events? This song claims that we see the “glory of the Lord” in camps of our fighting men. Prayer at lunch is nothing compared to the frequent repetition of “Hallelujah!” This dangerous ditty also asserts that as Christ died to make men holy, we should die to make men free. When the Battle Hymn is performed at the next inauguration, as it almost surely will be whether McCain or Obama wins, using taxpayer dollars, is a theocracy imminent?
Only ideologues are worried. Theocrats worry there is not enough religion in government all the time and radical secularists that there is always too much.
Practical people know that we can accommodate a religious people without setting up a theocracy. Practical people are content to leave good things alone. Here is to hoping the courts recognize the historic right of different areas of civic life to have different rules regarding the appropriate amount of public religious display.
