Return to a Place of Godliness?

                                                                             

                                                                             

The following is from a NY times story:

 Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a woman posing as a Catholic conservative last week that compromise in America between the left and right might be impossible and then agreed with the view that the nation should return to a place of godliness.

“One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Alito told the woman, Lauren Windsor, at an exclusive gala at the Supreme Court. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised."

Ms. Windsor pressed Justice Alito further. “I think that the solution really is like winning the moral argument,” she told him . . . “Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”

“I agree with you, I agree with you,” he responded.

... Chief Justice Roberts, who was also secretly recorded at the same event ... pushed back against Ms. Windsor’s assertion that the court had an obligation to lead the country on a more “moral path.”

“Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” the chief justice said. “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.”

Ms. Windsor persevered ... “I believe that the founders were godly, like were Christians, and I think that we live in a Christian nation and that our Supreme Court should be guiding us in that path.”

Chief Justice Roberts quickly answered, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

He added: “I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that.”

Well, thank god (in whom I don't believe) for Justice Roberts.

I find this push from the right for a Christian nation completely terrifying. Particularly as this brand of Christianity has long since departed from the loving tenets of the one they say they worship.

 Christianity and organized religion lost me a long time ago as I learned about the history of the Crusades, the various Protestant/ Catholic bloody conflicts, the witch-burning, the Othering of various groups for their beliefs. It goes on today, in India, as Hindus increasingly target Muslims, in Muslim countries that target other religions and other versions of their preferred take on Islam. And in Gaza, as the nation founded as a result of Nazi genocide, embraces genocide as a final solution to the Palestinian problem.

I could weep.

But when religion is being wielded as a blunt instrument, when 'true believers' assign a messianic role to an individual as petty, vindictive, and increasingly loony as the felon/candidate, like Mrs. Alito, I find myself wanting to raise a flag-- but my flag would call for a wall between church (temple, synagogue, mosque) and state. 

And maybe some more flags: Tax the Churches! No Public Money for Religious Education aka Grooming. 

I could probably think of more. But we don't have a flagpole and, even if we did, no one could see it. 

So, consider this post, my flag.