Puffin’s Place

“I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling in religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must rest with the States, as far as it can be in any human authority.” (letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, Jan. 23, 1808)

Anytime you find yourself too hopeful that the far right rampage into civil rights will abate in 2008, check out the August 18 issue of Time and a piece on “The Global Ambition of Rick Warren.” Personally I give not a damn if folks want to see Warren as the new Billy Graham since BG was little more worthy of regard than is Warren. I give not a damn if some folks want to fill his coffers and his ego with money and adulation.

But I give a huge damn about one sentence in this report: “And on Aug. 16 he [Warren] will play the role of national inquisitor in a ‘civil forum’ featuring (consecutively, not in debate format) the two presumptive nominees for President, who will fly to Orange County, Calif., to be civilly grilled for an hour apiece.”

I would expect McCain to pander with the Warrenatics, but I hardly expected Obama to participate in the spiritual marblegame that marks America’s emergence as Taliban-in-Waiting.

And I am thunderstruck. Not myself religious, I have until late assumed that one’s beliefs are a personal matter and not subject to the curiosities of the world, much less to litmus tests by commercial enterprises. My sense of fairness is offended entirely by the fact that the privacy I would expect to extend to a believer in any religion is never extended to non-believers. And I am offended by beliefs becoming marketable among the political merchants.

And I am angry, disappointed, and despairing that our country means less to so many of us than does the fleeting satisfaction of making every public figure become a clown for a god he or she says is real.

If anyone find intellectual courage among our public figures, please post yur discovery here.