If the United States was founded by Christian Europeans, the government established in the wake of the Revolution was secular. This was not only a protection of belief (or lack of belief) but a protection of government. The religious wars of the Old World were a recent memory for those people and they knew firsthand the dangers of government sponsored religion.

More than two centuries later, we live in the most pluralistic society in the world. There are not only Christians (protestant, catholic and denominations too numerous to count), but Buddhists, Hindus, Scientologists, atheists, pagans, and others. Every possible viewpoint is represented as never before in history in a single culture.

It is not always easy getting along. Christianity still dominates American culture. Christians are still a majority, though even defining what makes a person Christian is as difficult as it was in the first Christian century. The process of syncretism, which affects every religion, has had some positive effects. There are Christians who accept that there are other paths to “salvation” and who embrace more New Age viewpoints, such as reincarnation and past lives.

On the other hand, there have been some negative effects. There are those who do not want to lose their “dominant culture” status, who feel threatened by the loss of status in society, who ever more stridently insist that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation and who claim that atheists, feminists, pagans and secular humanists are to blame for all the ills of society, and not only that, but a danger to the country itself.

This argument is right out of the Old Testament. And for non-Christians of every stripe, it smells of rank superstition – a petulant, jealous, childishly angry deity punishing those who dare think for themselves. The Hurricane Katrina disaster is laid at the door of this angry god (punishing the sinful people of New Orleans) as is the recent quake in Haiti. This is what YHWH did to the people of Israel who “whored after foreign gods” we are told.

The irony is that those foreign gods were actually ethnic gods of the Jewish (Canaanite) people and YHWH himself was the foreign god – a god out of NW Arabia (Sinai) brought into the country most likely by Midianite merchants. But conservative Christians have built up a mythical past to which they can appeal at need, one which, while taking little cognizance of history, makes history conform to a system. This is not good history, but as Kierkegaard said, Christianity is belief in the absurd and it is certainly absurd to refuge to acknowledge the facts as they lay plainly before you.

The rest of us are trapped in this mythical world. And not only is ancient history mythologized but so is American history – the myth of a Christian Nation. And as rapidly as events happen in the real world, they are mythologized – re-interpreted to fit, to conform to the system. It is becoming difficult for the real world – and us – to keep up with the spin.

How does the majority of the population get along with a vocal, vitriolic minority who refuse to live in the same evidence based world in which we live? Though pagans and atheists and Buddhists and Hindus have many differences between them, it is far easier for these groups to coexist (along with more moderate Christians) than it is for any of them, singly or collectively, to get along with the extremist minority (whether we identify them as Evangelicals, Fundamentalists – or more pointedly, Talibangelicals).

The forces of reaction demand adherence to their myth. When we decline to play along, when we insist on our freedom of choice in these matters, we are told we are turning away from God. During the Bush Administration it was worse (if that’s possible): we were told that since God chose Bush (he apparently didn’t choose Obama?) if you opposed Bush you opposed God. Similarly, God chose the USA to continue Rome’s work in bringing people together (they’re easier to hammer into submission if you get them all into one place?) so if you oppose American policy you…yes, you see how this works now…you turn against God.

And you know what happens when you turn against God – hurricanes and earthquakes, Sodom and Gomorrah.

And for disagreeing, for embracing choice, we are accused of making war on Christianity, of persecuting them. If universal tolerance is a logical impossibility, we can still try to get along, can’t we? But how do you include somebody who sets themselves apart, who refuses to be included?

Look at it from the perspective of a little child (we’ll call him Tommy) who says, “I won’t play with you!” or “I’ll only play with you if you play by MY rules!” and who then says, when his demands are rejected, “They’re persecuting me!”?

But nobody is telling little Tommy who isolates himself in the corner that he can’t do what he wants. Tommy’s real problem is that Tommy insists the other children do what he wants. Tommy has the right to live and play as he chooses with like-minded children. He does not have the right to dictate to other children.

In the end, Tommy’s claims of persecution ring hollow. Nobody is persecuting Tommy. The other children are not insisting Tommy live and play like they do. They are just insisting he behave when in their company.

The Constitution is set up to deal with this. We do not have a true democracy; Madison understood that in a true democracy that the rights of minorities are trampled by majorities. The Constitution prohibits (in theory – but not in California?) such blatant abuses, which were thought of as the “excesses of democracy.” The rights of all are to be protected. The majority of the children and Tommy too. Each is free to seek happiness. None of them are free to dictate to the other. All are equal. None are privileged.

Tommy claims that his rights are being ignored, or trampled. But they’re not. And Tommy does not really want equal rights. He wants his views to be privileged. But for Tommy, not being free to dictate to the other children is an abridgment of what he sees as his rights – his right to dictate to others. Religiously, Tommy may feel he has that right, but those perceived rights must, in a pluralistic society (as ours is) take second place to equal rights for all. Because if one group has the right to dictate to the other groups, then only one group has rights. And you will find no support for Tommy’s  position in the Constitution. None at all.

Believe what you want, live how you want, we are told, but extend that same right to others. Ironically enough, this very attitude is enshrined in the Bible Tommy holds so dear: Do unto others  as you would have them do unto you.

But when you don’t live in an evidence-based world, you can ignore pesky little inconvenient facts like that, can’t you?

In the end, the rest of us – the majority as it happens – must insist on our rights; our Constitutional Rights. Our right to believe or disbelieve as we choose. As Jefferson said, “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” And he is right. It doesn’t. Tommy might be offended that the rest of us refuse to believe him when he says his god will punish us (and him) when we refuse to play by his rules, but the Constitution says (for very good reasons – grounded in centuries of religious conflict and terror) that Tommy doesn’t have the right to impose his rules on us, and that the government also lacks that power.

We have to insist on those rights, and insist loudly, as Tommy and others like him insist on making history – and us – conform to his system. It’s bad parenting, after all, to give into a child’s temper tantrum, and that is what this amounts to.