I think being a Mormon can sorta heighten one's senses concerning religious freedom. Maybe not, maybe I'm just weird. Perhaps all of the Sunday School classes about the saints in Missouri and Nauvoo are stuck on repeat in my brain.
So thought #1: There's been a subtle switch of phrasing over the last bit that is interesting. What once was Christian men set up a nation has turned into Men set up a Christian nation. One word switching place has had far-reaching repercussions. I tell you what, Christian men (with some very differing views) setting up a nation is what really happened and it's significantly safer to our religious freedom to think of it that way. Any other way is no bueno and dangerous and is false history.
Thought #2: There's an undertow of "not-in-our-nation" that is kinda the flip of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Oklahoma, for example, passed a law banning Islamic or international law as a basis for decisions in courts. (This, thankfully, has a permanent injunction on it by a federal judge.) But what's really going on there is they're setting up an establishment of religion by piecemeal.
If you start defining what the US is or isn't by religion, especially as a means of exclusion, that's a religious test by default.
The reason why I think about this a bunch is because if this continues, Mormons are excluded. We like to think that we've made huge inroads, but if we allow people who are using religion as a weapon in elections to win and don't stand up for what the Constitution plainly says, we're in for a world of hurt. The people that do things like this do not love freedom of religion, they fear it.
Lots of Mormons like to walk hand in hand with socially/religiously conservative people thinking that they're in on the party. They're not, in the end, and they're going to find themselves out in the cold.
Whatever the reason, religious freedom has been on my brain for months and months and I wanted. throw a couple of half-formed ideas out into the blogosphere.
Friday, June 10, 2011
I'm not jumping in with these guys.
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3 comments:
"Lots of Mormons like to walk hand in hand with socially/religiously conservative people thinking that they're in on the party. They're not, in the end, and they're going to find themselves out in the cold. "
Amen to this. And I agree with the rest too. But mostly with this. :-) I got really interested in revisionist history thanks to an American Studies course I stumbled into as a PhD student. Loved the prof, loved the questions, scared the living daylights out of me when I realized what was happening.
Revisionist history is scary. The funny thing is that there are a bunch of Mormons out there in the gig, fomenting it all. They foment, then they get left out in the cold.
I really don't think a bunch of Mormons in the U.S. have any idea of how we're really perceived.
Another thing that gets me, but that I didn't wanna put directly in the post, is that a lot of Mormons think that we have to take the actually deeds and vamp them up so that the Founding Fathers become the Founding Brethren, as though they were prophets. I think that's where a lot of Mormons get revisionist-y and it is so very dangerous.
A lot of books that have been written by Mormons ignore what really happened and sorta turn the Founding Fathers into pre-Mormon Mormons. Yikes.
I totally, totally, totally agree. But you already knew that.
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