It's Easter Sunday and today, those who believe in Jesus, commemorate his resurrection. It's a big deal for those among us who identify as Christian.
I was raised Catholic and, like the majority of Americans, I believe in the son of God, Jesus Christ. Yes, I consider him a master teacher who came to uplift humanity (aka "save us"). Sadly, as I see it, under the guise that we are a Christian nation, his message has been co-opted and manipulated to evangelize, eradicate, and erase whole swaths of the population.
Now, as a citizen of this country, I appreciate that I live in a place where right now, in April, Jewish and Muslim people are also celebrating and practicing their different religions. You see, I have faith in a higher power, but I also believe in the American experiment, which is principally founded on the separation between the church and the state. In fact, it's enshrined in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
What I find disturbing is how for all the progress we make generation after generation, we remain a glaringly naive nation. We preach about inalienable rights and people power and fall short when it comes to implementing laws that help the masses and actually matter. We talk a good game, but rarely deliver when it comes to our highest ideals.
We say that our founders, those responsible for our frequently referenced Constitution, were geniuses, but then we conveniently forget about what the Bill of Rights says. Or we twist the words to fit our exclusionary agendas and maintain the oppressive status quo. Why? Because we fear the demographic changes; we're scared of the unknown. Classic!
It's like we can't seem to fully grasp the lessons from the past and are constrained by our own willful ignorance. We can't move forward in wisdom toward 'a more perfect union' without backlash from those who claim to be guided by their faith when in reality they fear losing their place in the established social order more than anything. And that's how instead of expanding our rights, we revert back to our prejudices in service of what was; not what is or how much more it all could be. And thus we erode the foundational premise that we, the people, have the power to govern ourselves through our elected representatives.
According to a Pew Research Study, "the United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world, and a large majority of Americans – roughly seven-in-ten – continue to identify with some branch of the Christian faith. But the major new survey of more than 35,000 Americans by the Pew Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%. And the share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths also has inched up, rising 1.2 percentage points, from 4.7% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Growth has been especially great among Muslims and Hindus, albeit from a very low base."
Freedom of religion is supposed to be a core American value. As children, we're taught about the Puritan refugees who came to the New World fleeing the persecution from England. But we don't frame it that way today; we don't equate the past with what's happening now. Instead of finding common ground, we judge newcomers who seek to worship as they do. Then we claim that every effort to exclude others is not malicious; it's more about preserving what was or fighting against the latest enemy who are always those that don't look like we do or disagree with us.
I want our nation to do better and to do more to live up to the truth of the words in our most precious founding document. Whether we're more religious or more secular people, I wish we could all say yes to the idea of real unity and accept each other more often than we currently do in this country. After all, it's what, in theory, the American experiment is all about; free to believe whatever we wanted, but not free to impose our faith and religion upon one another. But instead of saying NAY to growing divisions on the basis of ideological identification, we dig our heals in and spread more hate. May we each learn that it's up to us to choose our national fate!
