DOES THE MIERS' NOMINATION PRESAGE A DESCENT INTO BACKWARDNESS FOR OUR NATION?

Two interesting articles I read this morning come together in a way that bodes very badly for our country. One is an article in the TIMES OF LONDON about the Catholic Church and one is a Molly Ivins piece about soon-to-be Judge Harriet. Taken together (especially alongside the Scopes Trial 2005 being fought out now in Pennsylvania) one has reason to think that as the civilized world moves forward into the 21st Century, the United States is getting mired in the muck of primitivism, barbarism, superstition and the kind of reactionary backwardness that will doom our country to the status of a second rate place on earth.

Personally I saw Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court as a simple move by Bush to protect what matters most to him and his-- unfettered corporate dominance. Period. I don't think he really gives a rat's ass about the rest of the stuff, except as much as it unites the brain-dead rabble around the elitist visions for a quasi-slave-holding society. Ivins brings in an entirely different point of view.
She informs us that Miers "is enrolled in the Valley View Christian Church of Dallas, which she attended for at least 20 years before moving to Washington five years ago. Among that church's other members is Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court, considered second only to Priscilla Owen as that court's most adamant anti-abortion judge."

Texas-based Ivins tells us that she hears from Miers' friends that "she was pro-choice when a young woman, but later changed her mind as a result of a Christian experience of some kind. Those who spoke of this did not know her well enough to say whether it had been a born-again experience or simply a different understanding of theology." The church she belongs to has a website that believes in BIBLICAL INERRANCY and that salvation is dependent entirely upon accepting Jesus Christ. "Everyone else," says Ivin, "is going to hell." Oy.

Ivins doesn't feel that political pundits like herself should be writing about politicians' religions. "I consider it a most private matter. Separation of church and state is in the Constitution because this country was founded by people who had experienced both religious persecution and state-supported religions. I think John F. Kennedy's 1960 statement to the Baptist ministers should stand as a model of how public servants should handle the relation between religious belief and public service. Nevertheless, we are now beset by people who insist on dragging religion into governance -- and who themselves believe they are beset by people determined to 'drive God from the public square.' This division has been in part created by and certainly aggravated by those seeking political advantage. It is a recipe for an incredibly damaging and serious split in this country, and I believe we all need to think long and carefully before doing anything to make it worse. As an 1803 quote attributed to James Madison goes: 'The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.'"

Meanwhile, those residing today on that soaked soil seem to have learned the lessons better than we have. Ruth Gledhill's story in today's TIMES OF LONDON, entitled "Catholic Church Says Bible Not Totally Accurate," is about a teaching document published by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church which instructs the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true, something that conflicts directly with primitivist thoughts about BIBLICAL INERRANCY. While Catholic bishops over there are warning their flocks not to expect literal truth-- in terms of full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision-- from the scriptures, reactionary preachers in America are going in the exact opposite direction, AND BEYOND. Having turned out their obedient parishioners for the GOP machine and it's extremely un- (or even) anti-Christian agenda of ruthless corporatism and unjustifiable war, American religionist extremists are in a position to demand, which they are doing forcefully, that public schools teach a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis alongside scientific reality.

According to Gledhill's article "the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be 'historical.'" As the U.S. primitive and politically motivated fundamentalist churches march directly backwards into the 1600s, the Catholic Church has come a long long way since Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system.

Gledhill says that "in the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be approached in the knowledge that it is 'God’s word expressed in human language' and that proper acknowledgment should be given both to the word of God and its human dimensions.
They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways 'appropriate to changing times, intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries.' The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: 'We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters.' They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its 'intransigent intolerance' and to warn of 'significant dangers' involved in a fundamentalist approach. 'Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others.'"

Recently I was profoundly moved by the writings of a progressive Episcopal American bishop, John Sprong. I've talked about his latest book, THE SINS OF SCRIPTURE, quite a bit on this blog. One of the passages from the document in THE TIMES report could almost have been lifted from it. Gledhill writes, "Of the notorious anti-Jewish curse in Matthew 27:25, 'His blood be on us and on our children,' a passage used to justify centuries of anti-Semitism, the bishops say these and other words must never be used again as a pretext to treat Jewish people with contempt. Describing this passage as an example of dramatic exaggeration, the bishops say they have had 'tragic consequences' in encouraging hatred and persecution. 'The attitudes and language of first-century quarrels between Jews and Jewish Christians should never again be emulated in relations between Jews and Christians.'" Sprong goes much further and covers a lot more ground. I heartily recommend his book.

Meanwhile THE TIMES cites several examples of Bible passages the bishops are warning people not to take literally, like the early chapters of Genesis, which are clearly common legends that were prevalent all over the Middle East at the time they were written and clearly NOT historical in any way. They also refute the nonsensical, hysterical ravings that somehow got tacked onto the end of "The Bible," under the name "The Book of Revelations." Tiptoeing around Christian tradition that reveres the madman who wrote all this silliness and horror, the bishops say that the language is "symbolic," and should be "respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about when the end will come.” And yet, George Bush's foreign policies have been informed, or rather misinformed, by the lunacy behind these crackpot ravings.