I’ve written a new article for Progressive Renaissance, a new political blog (I’m doing away with my Obama blog for reasons that might be obvious to all at this point). The article is America the Progressive. Though it touches on Church-State its not primarily about that so I didn’t feel it proper to post it here; I’ll link it instead for those who might be interested. Most of my politically-oriented articles are going to NewsJunkiePost or ProgressiveNation these days, but I like to keep a little something back for myself.

(Author’s Note: I originally intended to publish this hear last night but host issues delayed it. It is cross-posted on God’s Own Party? with my permission, and I would like to thank Leah at God’s Own Party for reviewing the draft for me)

Mythical America

We’ve heard it all said a hundred times – that America is a Christian nation, that it was founded as a Christian nation, that the Founding Fathers were Bible-believing, God-fearing Christian men, that there is no Wall of Separation between Church and State.

The only problem is, none of it is true.

And the 18^th century’s own Evangelicals signed off on the system of government those very secular-minded Founding Fathers established.

Back in the 18^th century, you see, people were a lot closer to the events that shaped the new nation. They had close personal experience with the dangers of Church and State meddling in each other’s business. They knew what it was to be persecuted, not by a secular government but by a government under the control of another denomination.

They wanted protection. From each other.

And our new system of government, promised by the Declaration of Independence and come to fruition in the Constitution, gave them what they asked for.

Of course, none of these facts have stopped our own century’s Evangelicals from telling an entirely different story, one founded not in fact, not in history, but in wishful thinking, in history as it should have been – but wasn’t.

And they have big money backing them up. They have glossy websites, glossy publications, book clubs, brochures, even entire series’ of books, including the “Politically Incorrect Guide to…” series, which would be better named, “Factually Inaccurate Guide” or “Historically Inaccurate Guide.”

These books play to the base. Like any works of apologia – and that is what they are – they comfort believers, convincing them, reassuring them, that all is well, that the lies they’ve been told are safe to believe – and to go on believing.

But this mythical Christian America has no more solid a foundation than Creation Science – both are contradictions in terms.

It is true that most of the citizens of the new United States were Christians of one kind or another, many of them, especially following the successful conclusion of the War for Independence, refugees from oppressive religious environments in the Old World. They came here precisely because there WAS separation between church and state, precisely because here, they could be free of government-sponsored religion.

The problem for today’s Evangelicals is that the government itself was secular in nature, founded by men grounded in science and reason and disciples – and products – of the Age of European Enlightenment.

These men had the opportunity to form any sort of government they wished. ANY. They could have made a monarchy of our new nation – it was considered and the idea dismissed. They could have established a theocracy – but no one gave that idea any thought at all. It was never even a possibility. The motto of the new nation was, significantly, “E Pluribus Unum” – Out of Many, One. It was not, equally significantly, “In God We Trust.”

Instead, they gave us a nation founded on ancient principles of democracy, a product of ancient polytheistic Greece, and freedom of speech and thought – also products of the ancient polytheistic world – and human rights, a product of the European Enlightenment so heartily condemned by the Church. Nothing in the new nation was based on biblical principles. The Founding Fathers took more from the Iroquois Federation than they did Old Testament Israel.

There too, facts have not stopped today’s Evangelicals, who ardently insist that our nation was founded on Biblical principles. I would like to inquire where in ancient Israel there existed ideas of Democracy and Free Speech and thought. In ancient Israel, free thought and free speech got you stoned. Nor was there Democracy; there was monarchy and theocracy. There were no human rights. Exercising human rights would get you stoned. It was a society built on exclusion and enforced behavior. There was no liberty anywhere in sight.

So what we have today as the heart and soul of the Republican Base is a Mythical America, an American history of the imagination, one of wishful thinking but not of fact. Just as is much of the Bible, this Mythical America is pious history.

Look at some of the assertions made by the Mythicists:

• The American “revolutionaries” were actually conservatives
• The Puritans didn’t steal Indian lands
• The Bible promotes human freedom
• The enemies of the Bible are enemies of true reason and tolerance
• The Bible made modern science possible (which is why it started in the Middle Ages)
• The Middle Ages were the real “Age of Reason”
• The “Enlightenment” yielded tyranny and war.

It is no surprise that these “talking points” are aped on social networking sites, on FOX News and anywhere else conservatives gather. They’re said as if they’re true. The specious reasoning that goes behind them is repeated as if it even made sense (which it doesn’t).

• The revolutionaries were liberals. They founded our nation on the liberal principles of the European Enlightenment – not upon the conservative principles of the Old World.
• The Puritans did steal Indian lands. Shamelessly.
• The Bible nowhere promotes human freedom.  Evangelicals can repeat the myth of Christian egalitarianism and slavery all they want but the truth is, Christianity did not promote egalitarianism and it did not free the slaves.
• The statement that enemies of the Bible are enemies of reason and tolerance proves itself wrong.
• Science did not start in the Middle Ages. It started in the ancient polytheistic world – and, significantly, not in Biblical Israel but in Greece, which promoted freedom of thought and speech. When science saw the light of day again, it was not because of Christianity, but despite it, as the historical record clearly demonstrates.
• The Middle Ages were not the Age of Reason. One has only to look at the rampant superstition, the crusades, the wars against heretics, the inquisition, the witch-burnings, the anti-Jewish pogroms, the forced conversion of Pagan peoples in Northern and Eastern Europe…no, not much Reason but a whole lot of slaughter in God’s name.
• The Enlightenment did not stop war, but it did not yield war as a consequence. It did, however, put a stop to crusades, wars against heretics, the inquisition, witch-burnings, and rampant anti-Jewish pogroms. It was not quite able to stop forced conversion of Pagan peoples but at least we stopped slaughtering them in “God’s” name.

Our society is diverse and free to a degree that has never been possible before in history. Diversity and plurality are a blessing. But to the Evangelicals, it is a threat. It threatens the status quo. It threatens them with loss of power and loss of influence. The more diverse our society becomes, the more resistant they become. The more reactionary they become. They become more intolerant, more hateful, and more inclined to use fear as a weapon to browbeat others into servitude to “their” Bible.

And the more inclined they are to embrace an imaginary, Mythical America.  As a result, we are introduced to ideas that have no basis in historical fact, like the points discussed briefly above. We have conservative Christians making blind, unsupported assertions about this Mythical America as though it really existed, without a thought being given to the facts.

And why bother with the facts when talking points are so handy – when apologetic works abound, demonstrating these myths to be fact and denouncing fact as myth? It’s all very comforting to them, and all very damaging, not only for them, but for all of us. They want to impose on the United States a return to the 13^th century, to that imaginary “Age of Reason” they talk about, when they – and they alone – were free to do what they wanted – to everyone else. And let not a word be raised in protest.

Because as you all by now know, they can damn and condemn and it’s their God-given right, but should anyone raise a word in protest, it’s a “war against Christianity” or “hate” or “intolerance.” Because it isn’t freedom they really want. It’s the privileging of their myth, of their own beliefs, at the expense of everyone else. It’s the freedom to persecute, without apology or thought, everyone different from them, and like their 13^th century brethren, justify it in their god’s name.

But America didn’t exist in the 13^th century. It could not have existed in the 13^th century. It took a genuine Age of Reason to make America possible, and going back to the 13^th century would skip right over it. It’s pretty obvious to anyone living in an evidence-based world, but as the Politically Incorrect guide series of books make clear, their interest isn’t in evidence – it’s in wishful thinking.

I’m reading a nifty little book for the Amazon Vine program (they send the book, I review it). It’s called “The Ten Golden Rules” and it’s authored by M.A. Soupios, professor at Long Island University, and Panos Mourdoukoutas, PhD. This book is about “How to live the good life without being rich or religious.” It is based on the wisdom of the Greek philosophers and it “condenses the wisdom of the ancient Greeks into 10 memorable and easy-to-understand rules that, if lived by, can enable modern readers to have rich, meaningful lives.”

I’m very impressed by this book, not so much by the cost (suggested retail $15.95 for about 100 pages in paperback) but by the content. I’m reminded of Marcus Aurelius’ meditations, first given to me by my mother. They helped her get through my brother’s death and they helped me through my own hardships over the years. A Christian might turn for comfort to Boethius, but comfort can be had outside of Abrahamic faith, as these authors demonstrate.

The 10 rules are:

Examine Life
1. Worry Only about the Things You Can Control
2. Treasure Friendship
3. Experience True Pleasure
4. Master Yourself
5. Avoid Excess
6. Be a Responsible Human Being
7. Don’t Be a Prosperous Fool
8. Don’t Do Evil to Other People
9. Kindness toward Others Tends to Be Rewarded

Now clearly Christians will see some similarities here to their own beliefs. But they will be deceived if they think the Greeks took their wisdom from the Hebrews, let alone the Christians! And as the authors note, religion hasn’t been a happy solution to the troubles of humankind:

the varying religious prescriptions have given rise to violent factionalism. Rather than serving as a source of common spiritual insight, the different theologies have too often resulted in blood and mayhem. Religious conviction without consideration of rational potentials has oven proved an obstacle to scientific and economic progress and, eventually, to the spiritual state of humanity.

Too true!

And needless to say, these problems did not exist in polytheistic times. There was no gulf between reason and religion and there was no religious strife. If all gods exist, there is no cause for it. Obviously, we do not live in polytheistic times and so the old answers will not avail the mass of humanity today. So the authors offer up a path to the good life, based not on faith, not on the plurality, diversity and tolerance of polytheism, but on reason, which is itself a gift of our common polytheistic past.

This delightful little book is filled with quotes, beginning with Plato: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Each of the 10 chapters illustrates the point with a brief account of an individual, a very useful method of bringing the point home. Add to this little info boxes that condense the lesson. For example, in chapter 1 we find: “Examine life, engage life with a vengeance; always search for new pleasures and new destinies to reach with your mind.”

How can anyone find the Beatitudes more beautiful than anything the philosophers of Greece said? Such wisdom! As the authors point out, “Living life is about examining life through reason, nature’s greatest gift to humanity…To be human is to think, appraise, and explore the world, discovering new sources of material and spiritual pleasure.” And as they observe, “A properly examined life protects people against living life as spectators.”

Christianity, worshiping death as it does, abhorring nature, turns reason on its head, viewing humans not as participants but as victims of life, waiting for what is truly important, something not of this world. Polytheists, including our Greek philosophers, understood that it is this life that we live, not some future life nobody has ever come back to report on.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the “Meditation Grid” which sums up each chapter. This is the grid for the first chapter:

• Approach life with childlike wonder.
• Engage life with a vengeance without preconception.
• When the mind is engaged, the soul is most alive.
• Grasp life aggressively and squeeze from it every drop of excitement, satisfaction, and joy.
• Always search for new things, new pleasures…
• Something new is always waiting for you: a place you haven’t visited, a book you haven’t read, a friend you haven’t met, a meal you haven’t tasted.

Isn’t this better than waiting to die? To enduring life rather than enjoying it? To hoping this one ends so you can move on to something else? Be part of the world, not outside of it!

I think these are things our ancestors knew how to do. They weren’t trapped in the life-denying and world-rejecting reality bubble most of us grew up in. They were free to experience life, to enjoy it, to participate in it, to appreciate it, to find joy rather than sorrow and to worship life instead of death. These are the things the modern Christian worldview opposes, but as I’ve said before, Christianity has no universal truths to offer, no one right answer to give us. Our ancestors had other truths, other answers, that were right for them. It is up to us to reach back and grasp those, to pull them forward into our own time, to throw off the chains and find freedom in the wisdom our ancestors held dear.

I would urge every reader to obtain this book. Whatever form of Paganism they practice, wisdom is wisdom, and we do not have to reach for the Bible or other foreign sources of wisdom, including those of the Far East. We have it in abundance as part of our own cultural heritage. It was stolen from us long ago, but it is there for us to reclaim if we will but reach out and grasp it.