Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It by Sean Faircloth Read Free Book Online Page A

enshrined in our Constitution, which indeed constitutes a philosophy, a worldview. This worldview stands inherently and most essentially as evidence based. Contrast this Enlightenment philosophy with that of George Hensley, a Pentecostal preacher who, like many religious people, passionately adhered to selected portions of the Bible’s vast and contradictory texts. Hensley focused on Mark 16:18, which asserts the power to “take up serpents” and “drink any deadly thing,” because “it shall not hurt them.” This great theologian, George Hensley, died in 1955 of a snakebite. Hensley has thousands of followers to this day. His passionate preaching, like that of so many itinerant preachers, is part of a very significant American tradition, a tradition that stands in direct contrast to the views of our Founders. Back in Maine I found delicious irony in the fact that fundamentalists passionately pointed to those biblical passages condemning homosexuality, yet never mentioned the prohibition on eating shellfish, a biblical edict that would be none too helpful to Maine’s emblematic lobster industry.
    This à la carte reading of ancient texts is not unique to Christians. Osama bin Laden acted far more viciously than any viper, and certainly more viciously than Hensley. Yet, like George Hensley, bin Laden preached his selected scripture adamantly. I prefer the many religious people who purposely avert their eyes from the texts of their own scripture. Better to avert one’s eyes than believe, especially when scripture exhorts people to violence and endangerment.
    Just because I share a Jeffersonian skepticism about biblical literalism, I nonetheless assert that, by all means, the Bible should be required reading for public school children.
    Read Luke 19:27, where Jesus is quoted as saying: “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither, and slay them before me.” Read the Koran, too: “The unbelievers are your inveterate enemies.” Then read the Constitution of the United States. Which of these documents evolves? Which of them proclaim themselves perfect and unchangeable?
    When considering the sagacity of the Founders, remember that, in this century, women have been stripped, raped, and set on fire in the name of religion. Not in some ancient time. In this century, a pregnant woman has been cut open and her fetus impaled on a pike in the name of religion. In this century, two hundred men and women were hacked by machetes and burned alive in Nigeria—because women planned to wear bikinis! In 2002 in Saudi Arabia, fourteen girls burned to death in their school. Why? The country’s “religious police” blocked the schoolgirls from exiting their burning school building and blocked rescue workers from entering because the girls weren’t wearing proper Islamic dress! I completely disagree with those who stigmatize Muslims as a group, but we should also face unflinchingly the extremist and violent actions taken in the name of Islam.
    Think of all the hours that could be spent helping others that are now spent explaining why we should agree with, or simultaneously embrace or ignore, harsh sexual codes from ancient Middle Eastern peoples, regardless of whether those ancient sects adhered to the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Koran.
    St. Augustine wrote that torture was an acceptable sanction for breaking the laws of men and, therefore, it was an acceptable sanction for breaking the laws of God. Hitler was never excommunicated, but Galileo was. The Catholic Church only recently recanted Galileo’s excommunication. No word yet on booting Hitler from the fold.
    One of our present Supreme Court justices, Antonin Scalia, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, said, “The more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral.” Perhaps he’s right. Justice Scalia’s principle might also be applied to Muslim fundamentalist countries. In a