It\u2019s war.<\/p>\n
At least according to some, President Obama has declared a war on religion.\u00a0 This is the latest attack designed to make the President look like an infidel. In the last four years, the President\u2019s opponents have branded him: 1) a liberal Christian; 2) a follower of liberation theology; 3) a secret Muslim; and now, 4) an anti-Christian bigot determined to destroy churches and freedom of religion.<\/p>\n
The \u201cwar on religion\u201d is interwoven, somewhat subtly in most cases, with an implicit charge of anti-Catholicism.\u00a0 When the Obama administration released regulations insisting that religious institutions that serve the public and whose employees come from diverse (or no) religious backgrounds must include access to birth control for those who choose to use birth control, the Roman Catholic hierarchy responded angrily.\u00a0 From their pulpits, prelates, priests, and pundits declared that the government has launched a war on the church and raised the specter of anti-Catholic bigotry urging the faithful to fight back.<\/p>\n
American Catholics can rightly worry about anti-Catholicism.\u00a0 In the 19th<\/sup> century, the Protestant majority discriminated against Catholics in often sensational, vile, or violent ways. \u00a0It is not, however, bigotry to point out that it isn\u2019t the 19th<\/sup> century any more. Since 1960, Catholicism has become mainstream in every aspect in American life.\u00a0 Indeed, Catholics make up the majority on the Supreme Court, Catholics hold a commanding number of seats in Congress, large numbers of Catholics teach at prestigious colleges and universities, whether they are religious schools or not. The media is chock-full of authors, professors, artists, filmmakers, analysts, and pundits who happen to be Catholic.<\/p>\n To be Catholic in 21st<\/sup> century America is to be part of one of the most successful immigrant communities in our nation\u2019s religious history.<\/p>\n Crying persecution when a group reaches the height of cultural influence is unseemly and perhaps disingenuous. \u00a0Catholics are not a persecuted 19th<\/sup> century minority group now, and the Catholic Church is hardly an oppressed institution\u2014Catholicism a massive social, economic, and political force.\u00a0 And Catholics have a big stake in the common good for all Americans.<\/p>\n However in-artfully the Obama administration unveiled the regulations, everyone knows that we now live in a fully pluralistic society\u2014and that religious pluralism raises some serious questions about the Catholic Church\u2019s plea to be exempted from providing access to birth control at institutions employing and serving the larger public.\u00a0 These questions go to the heart of what is means to be a faithful believer and a good citizen.<\/p>\n There are millions of religious Americans who pay taxes or follow government regulations that support something to which they morally object. Quakers and Mennonites pay taxes for the military and often serve in non-combat settings during war.\u00a0 Jewish and Muslim taxes support subsidies for pork farmers and shrimp fisheries.\u00a0 Mainline Protestants provide public funds to faith-based groups who convert people away from liberal Protestant churches.\u00a0 Christian Scientist taxes go to Medicare and the National Institutes of Health.\u00a0 Fundamentalists support student loan programs for future ministers at Harvard Divinity School.\u00a0 Atheists fund military chaplains.\u00a0 LGBT Christians and Jews pay the salaries of judges who rule against their desire to marry.\u00a0 Is the government trampling upon the religious liberties of all these people, too?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 All these groups practice their faith in tension or tandem with ethical commitments without accusing others of bigotry.<\/p>\n Catholics might think that they are being singled out having their money go to something that offends them.\u00a0 They are not.\u00a0 The success of American Catholicism means that Catholics are not special and they get to be treated like everyone else.\u00a0 We all pay for things we like; we all pay for things we don\u2019t like. Everybody is offended by something, somewhere, by some program, somehow.\u00a0 The American ethical conscience often bends like a reed in a complicated, diverse society.<\/p>\n Americans put up with the offense for a very good reason: The government is not a church.\u00a0 The government attempts to represent the interests and well-being of the whole public by providing military defense, helping farmers, assisting those who serve prisoners and the poor, caring for the elderly, fostering scientific research, supporting students, and giving soldiers someone to talk to or pray with on the battlefield.\u00a0 And yes, part of the public good is that women get to choose if and when they have babies.\u00a0 The government funds all this with a common pool of tax money and a mix of public and private services without theological tests available to all Americans\u2014no matter what Quakers, Mennonites, Jews, Muslims, Methodists and Episcopalians and Lutherans, Christian Scientists, Southern Baptists, atheists, or even Roman Catholics think, teach, and proclaim in their traditions and congregations.\u00a0 Everybody participates.\u00a0 And everybody works out the tensions in creative, faithful, and theologically rich ways.\u00a0 Indeed, the tensions are the source of American religious vitality.<\/p>\n It is easy to accuse the government of violating religious freedom.\u00a0 But what, exactly, is a secular government to do? \u00a0Set up the Governmental Office of Theological Ethics to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whose taxes go for what programs, develop a strategy for exemptions, determine which institutions serve the public and which do not, adjudicate between conflicting moral and religious systems, punish those who step on another\u2019s ethical prohibition? \u00a0Do only the biggest religious groups get the government to assuage their ethical qualms?\u00a0 Or, should we bag secular government altogether and become a theocracy?\u00a0 Should government services be earmarked on a percentage basis toward the religious affiliation of taxpayers? Perhaps all religious groups should become sects and provide services for only those who share their theological views.<\/p>\n Or maybe we should keep working at the restless and ever-evolving tension between being religious freedom and<\/em> separation of church and state in our wildly diverse nation.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a war on religion.\u00a0 It is just America.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s war. At least according to some, President Obama has declared a war on religion.\u00a0 This is the latest attack designed to make the President look like an infidel. In the last four years, the President\u2019s opponents have branded him: 1) a liberal Christian; 2) a follower of liberation theology; 3) a secret Muslim; and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n