The Frankfurter School

It is Easter Sunday, and I am taking the opportunity to participate in the Blog Against Theocracy “blogswarm,” and draw attention to the perils of religion in our public life.

There are so many troubling things that have come about as a result of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story dominating the news, it is difficult to even catalogue them all, let alone to prioritize them. But as the New York Times notes today, Barack Obama’s speech this week on race in America has provided fodder for sermons across the country to address the issue on Easter Sunday. At best it was a meaningful and courageous moment for our country when a candidate is able to speak intelligently, honestly and directly to voters and challenge them to be honest and intelligent right back. At worst, it has unleashed a torrent of ugly racism and pent up anger by giving safe cover to attack the man who asked for the conversation in the most racially hateful language possible.

But today the discussion of race gets put aside to decry another problem, one which has gone far more undiscussed this week, the dangerous prominence of religion in our political discourse. Churches and pastors have crept so far inside our political debate that it now seems normal to debate and discuss the candidates spiritual leaders and advisors as closely as we look at the candidates themselves. Obama, Clinton, and McCain each associate very closely with radical clerics in their respective religious camps, although Rev. Wright is getting a disproportionate share of attention because Obama’s wide-ranging coalition is more uncomfortable with his preacher than McCain’s or Clinton’s coalitions are with their extremists.

Flaps like this do occur as a natural part of the political dialogue. But the amount of attention paid to religion in this campaign season is unreasonably high and is now largely taken for granted, and it should terrify anyone who still follows the US Constitution. Before John McCain secured enough delegates to claim the GOP nomination, that party’s primary was all-religion, all the time. From Mike Huckabee’s own Evangelical extremist campaign to Mitt Romney’s unacceptable-to-Evangelicals Mormonism, the Republicans were so far out preaching to their choirs as to substantively debate the theory of Evolution! And the Democrats were also forced to answer questions about their faith, and address hot-button issues for the religious right, all in the name of public affairs.

There is a growing resistance to this overpowering movement, and it needs you to join in. A new book, The God Strategy, documents the process by which the Reagan revolution cynically enlisted religion as a divisive electoral strategy to build its winning coalition and keep religion firmly planted in public life. Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are leading a radical atheist movement, and Chris Hedges is right there critiquing them, promoting a more moderate enlightened secularism.

It is time to step back and actively demand that the volume be turned down on religion in public life. This is a call to action for secularism. Write letters, make phone calls, demand that your newspaper and favorite TV station stop talking about religion and faith in connection with politics. Help re-draw the line. Quote from the constitution (here is one of my favorite passages from the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or preventing the free exercise thereof”).

Perhaps we need even more extremist secularists to call for all references to God to be stricken from our policy, our currency, and our buildings. The other side is no less extreme in their demands for a Christian Nation. We must do all we can to reclaim the middle ground, the re-focus the political center on our constitutional republic in which the church is most distinctly separate from the state.