THEN THEY CAME FOR ME
“First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.”
– Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
In the same way America’s CIA in the 1980s unleashed the violent
aspirations of the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, letting the terrorist genie
out of that bottle, the call to fundamentalist Christian movement in
American politics, encouraged by the current leadership of the GOP, holds
the potential to unleash consequences that diminish the open society
concept in America, perhaps irrevocably.
It is always a dangerous thing when a country’s government turns
increasingly fundamentalist around one particular faith, including
Christianity. Whatever the attacks on the liberal philosophy, which the
“Christian” right harshly condemns as the work of the devil on earth, the
notion of a secular, tolerant, open-minded society remains the best
possible way to democratic intelligence and truth in decision making.
We believe this to be a self-evident truth and one of the most genial of
all the foundational elements of the American republic. Formed socially and
intellectually from the social climate of the European enlightenment and
influenced by American Indian social and governmental examples, the
political thought of the U.S. founding fathers rode on some wonderful “new”
notions of human intellectual, social and personal freedoms. Dominant among
these was the freedom of intellectual, scientific pursuit of knowledge,
free, precisely, from the dogma of the major Christian churches, given as
these were to condemn all new knowledge that might contradict any of their
faith-based dictums and mandates.
This was the best of the freedom that America pledged to sustain. Indian
people early joined this debate over their own spiritual concepts and
traditions with Christian missionaries and what comes across from those
early documents is how versatile and free the Indian thinkers were relative
to the “black robes” who came among them. Indian people died in large
numbers to maintain their independence of culture and ownership of their
own lands, even as many chose to embrace the narratives of Christian
culture beyond or in addition to their own indigenous narratives of
emergence and Creation.
Reducing social truth to a literal interpretation of the Bible is a
surefire way to dumb down the American populace and diminish or retard the
many advances made in education and general public enlightenment (including
public policy) for several generations. There are those who are inspired by
the wish to manipulate others who are prone to homily as a political bloc.
The new Christian religious exposition is not benign – not because the
Christian faith lacks wisdom or compassion – but because those who would
manipulate these spiritual sentiments politically are usually political
activists bent on acquiring power irrespective of the proliferation of
ignorance.
The strategy, employed again and again, is to create national and
international crisis out of particular problems and complex social
situations. Howard Dean, with whom we had our differences, identified this
during the recent presidential campaign: “Guns, God and Gays are the
fear-factor issues.” When these are used and abused to trigger powerful
emotions in people, careful discussion becomes impossible and only tense,
browbeating argumentation follows.
We are encouraged that more and more voices are challenging this notion of
what represents the American republic. There is alarm, finally, that
religious faith-based belief is seriously challenging scientific method and
the diffusion of knowledge across many school districts in a wide variety
of states. The theory of evolution for one is widely challenged by
creationists dressed under the banner of “intelligent design.” What
concerns is not the challenge itself, as scientific assertion must always
be ready for ongoing challenge, but the fact that the challenge has no such
basis in the intellectually accepted scientific method of rigorous inquiry.
Rather, “intelligent design” is simply well conceptualized and crafted
ideological garbage.
It shocked many people recently when CBS polling revealed that 55 percent
of Americans do not believe in evolution. This jumps by 12 percent to 67
percent for people who voted for President Bush. But this should not
surprise, considering that, according to Gallup, one third of Americans
believe the Bible literally. Professing tolerance for the possible truth of
other religious points of view is nearly impossible for this mindset. In
the states of Wisconsin, Montana, South Carolina, Kansas, Arkansas and
Mississippi, organized parent groups of this persuasion have consistently
pressured against the teaching of evolution. Usually they substitute the
term “intelligent design” for creationism in their curriculums, but they
are really talking about the genesis of the Christian Bible as literal
truth – a position from which they will not deviate.
That “intelligent design” as euphemism for direct divine intervention as
science in public schools is a clear violation of the principle of
separation of church and state is apparently not much of an issue yet, but
it needs to be. As religious faith overlays public policy debate, the very
science of government, compromise and negotiation, become moot. The
principle that guides religious faith has no compatibility with the leeway
and tolerance required of legislators. Other recent research (Public
Agenda) points out that support for political compromise is diminishing
rapidly among American evangelicals of a literal-Bible persuasion, indeed,
among all Christians. These are people for whom, as columnist William
Raspberry wrote, “compromise between righteousness and sin is: Sin.”
The most ominous of all these trends is the “millions of Christian
fundamentalists,” as Bill Moyers the journalist-philosopher recently
remarked, who “believe that environmental destruction is not only to be
disregarded but actually welcomed – even hastened – as a sign of the coming
apocalypse.” America and the world do not deserve to be guided by such
ignorance.
Moyers reminds us this trend goes back to James Watt, President Reagan’s
first secretary of the Interior, who: “Told the U.S. Congress that
protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent
return of Jesus Christ.” In public testimony he said, “after the last tree
is felled, Christ will come back.” These days, the belief resonates
strongly, Moyers goes on, with “nearly half the U.S. Congress before the
recent election – 231 legislators in total – more since the election –
[who] are backed by the religious right.”
The Washington Post (Jan. 23) complains that a dumbing down of America is
the result of the faith-based government, warning that it can leave our
country’s science flank vulnerable to the new waves of scientists coming
out of Asia and Europe. We agree, but would add that a public bigotry
against science goes hand in hand with a public bigotry and ignorance
against other, non-Christian faiths. The underlying aggression of militant
missionizing, that is, the willingness to accost others directly in order
to proselytize and impose a religious view – this has been suffered greatly
by Indian peoples of the Americas.
And once before, as conquering saviors, they came for us en masse. Under
the notion of militant Christianity was institutionalized this country’s
greatest misguided social experiment: The Indian boarding schools of the
early 20th century, whose official intent was to destroy all that was core
in American Indian spiritual belief and ritual, in order to “kill the
Indian and save the man.”
Indeed, for American Indian tribal peoples, the experience of the Christian
mission has been difficult to digest. The good that it has brought is
shrouded in substantial darkness and abuse. Christianization often imposed
itself with the intent to fill the full glass of the Indian mind, intending
to drown out the indigenous intelligence, sometimes as an invention of the
devil himself. This was the general social premise of an imposed
“educational” experience where various Christian denominations bid for
“their Indians” region by region and reservation by reservation, until most
were divided for each particular brand of evangelism. This system (as
overwhelming force) lasted more than half the century in various ways and
it was accompanied by the formal criminalizing of Indian ceremonial
spiritual practices that reflected comprehensive and pragmatic religious
traditions.
We suggest that dogma and truth are completely different things. There is
religious dogma. There is scientific dogma. And there is truth.
Dogma – scientific or religious – is not truth. Truth is elusive. Dogma is
not elusive at all. Dogma is always concrete in the mind of the dogmatic.
While truth reveals itself sparingly, and best to those with humble
attitude, dogma is the brick that hits you in the head from both sides.
Dogma does not reveal but imposes itself upon all weary-and weak-minded
people, convincing all who will listen of their worthlessness and presumed
damnation, but for the power and the path of light offered only by itself.
Dogma seeks converts to justify itself. Truth is, and can be found, by
intuition and by method. Elusive, it will yield itself always to serious
intent and respectful treatment. It has huge natural power that directs
itself.
When dogma leads, times become hard and suffering increases. Truth is given
by the hand of nature to the open and curious mind of the human being but
it can only come to where it is sought, where it can be useful, where it is
appreciated.
Let no one be fooled. The religious fundamentalism that is sweeping America
poses a serious threat to the advancement of an American culture that
learns and grows from rationally applied inquiry and investigation. From an
American Indian perspective derived from cultural roots that reach back to
the earliest consciousness of these lands, we state clearly that what we
are witnessing in America is not American at all. The time has come for all
Americans of mature intelligence and courage to speak out against
fundamentalist religious doctrine and intolerance and those who would
benefit from America’s descent into ignorance.
