The Godless Constitution

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The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness

By Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore

 

Chapter One: Is America a Christian Nation?

 

Americans seem to fight about many silly things: whether a copy of the Ten Commandments can be posted in a city courthouse; whether a holiday display that puts an image of the baby Jesus next to one of Frosty the Snowman violates the Constitution; whether fidgeting grade-schoolers may stand for a minute in silent "spiritual" meditation before classes begin. Common sense might suggest that these are harmless practices whose actual damage is to trivialize religion. Otherwise they threaten no one. Not children, who ignore them as the incomprehensible designs of absurd grown-ups. Not atheists, who may find them hypocritical and vulgar but hardly intimidating. Not Buddhists and Muslims, who in these small areas of daily practice can demand equal access to the public landscape. So why do they raise ideological storms?

 

The answer lies in what history has done to us. Some Americans have inherited extravagant hopes about what religion, specifically Christianity, may accomplish in solving social problems through moral instruction. Others look to a different legacy, one that suggests how easily partisan religion in the hands of a purported majority can become a dangerous form of intellectual and political tyranny. Both groups have become masters of hyperbolic language. However, their quarrels are not about nothing. If Americans have learned to make constitutional mountains out of religious molehills, it is because crucial principles may become endangered. The creche or the menorah on public property becomes the nose of the camel sneaking into the tent where Americans have carefully enshrined the constitutional separation of church and state.....

 

More at WashingtonPost.com: The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness