I recalled in my last column that many of the earliest European settlers in the not-yet United States were leaving home in search of freedom: they didn’t want to be ruled by a King and they were willing to undergo terrible hardships in order to follow rules of laws that they made themselves.
In addition, these early immigrants sought freedom of religion and religious expression. This is why, when they were ready to draw up a Constitution to enshrine the freedoms they wanted to protect, they made it very clear that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
In other words, the inviolable separation of church and state is essential to our freedom. That is, if the Constitution means anything to you.
No single religion was to be favored, or excluded. Religious wars had been going on for literally centuries in Europe, and the new nation saw itself as a bastion of freedom and tolerance for all people (well, actually, all white people, but that’s a different column.)
Fast-forward to now, as the boundaries between church and state are beginning to look blurry, say for example here in Texas, where christian nationalism is on the rise. Evangelicals are unapologetic about their intentions to “return” us to being a “Christian” nation (which we never were); and they see no contradiction in the fact that the principals of domination and exclusion they espouse are things that Jesus never taught and would be horrified to see. It is for this reason that I do not capitalize the word “christian” when used in the context of christian nationalism.
Those of us who are actual Jesus-following Christians may find ourselves uncomfortable challenging the evangelical christians whose faith requires them to proselytize; after all, they just want to spread The Word, right? I suppose that depends on which of The Words they want to spread. After all, even the Devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose. We must be a bit more discerning about the motives of those who want to quote Scripture for their own purpose.
This is where the plot thickens, and where there is no “purity” of motivation simply because it’s about religion. Are you aware of the layers of control and influence that underlie such things as taxpayer-funded vouchers for religious schools and the stagnant state funding of public schools that is leaving many public-school districts facing funding deficits that harm the education of their students?
Using Texas as the example I am most familiar with, there is the layer consisting of our lawmakers, from the triumvirate of Governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton to the elected representatives who make up our Legislature. Here we may find a variety of motives for promoting the incursion of christian beliefs into state-supported institutions like public education.
Dan Patrick, for example, is an avowed evangelical christian who apparently thought the church-state separation in the Constitution was meant for churches other than his. Greg Abbott, on the other hand, seems quite secular in his desires, which have everything to do with hopping on bandwagons of popular trends to maximize his political power. Ken Paxton is mostly motivated by a desire to stay out of jail by acquiring the bodyguards needed to control the opposition.
Some of our legislators try to represent us rather than simply following one of the Big Three (Texas’ version of the Holy Trinity, perhaps?). For example, rural Republicans have typically opposed taxpayer- funded tuition for private religious schools because their counties didn’t have many, if any, of those; public schools were often the largest employer as well as the social hub of their towns. Their constituents would not be served by such funding. Makes sense, right?
Well, now that christian nationalism has picked a side, apparently rural Republicans who haven’t felt the calling are being kicked to the curb. The Big Three openly announced that they would use campaign contributions to defeat Republican incumbents who didn’t vote as they were told to vote. And now the plot thickens to the consistency of quicksand.
Whether you realize it or not, many votes are affected by campaign advertising, since too many people don’t read newspapers or educate themselves about who is running for office. So, you get something in the mail that has a lot of negative information about a candidate’s opponent, a bit of positive information about the candidate, and often some very inflammatory statements that may turn out to be factually untrue (also known as lies). Sadly, in Texas we don’t have any restrictions on individual campaign contributions, which provide much of the power to influence voters.
So who’s providing the massive amounts of money that have allowed many Republican incumbents to be ousted by hand-picked newcomers loyal to the Big Three? Among others, there are three West Texas oil and gas billionaires (Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks) who have contributed literally millions to PACs connected to the Big Three. Did I mention that they are also evangelical pastors who preach in their own churches and who have openly stated their desire to put an end to public education?
All you have to do is look at the nightmare that public education funding has become to understand that there are forces at work much more powerful than we could imagine. Even the Founders, who knew there was a risk of church and state getting entwined, could not have envisioned that some supposedly “religious” people would have their main goal be to circumvent, or possibly to eliminate, the freedoms promised by the Constitution.
Susan Hull is a retired clinical psychologist and an Independent voter who believes in the universal principal of the Golden Rule, as did Jesus and many other spiritual leaders in a variety of religious traditions.
