Un-Americanizing Atheists
This is nothing new, but once again religionists in Congress want to bolster their already-slobbering support for “In God We Trust” as the national motto of the United States. This latest rumbling, from the House Judiciary Committee, is the germ of Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia, chair of the Willful Ignorance Caucus (I mean “Congressional Prayer Caucus”).
Among its goals is to have the motto displayed more often, and more prominently (as if having it on all the money wasn’t enough) on government buildings, including, yes, schools.
As counterpoint, the particular piece to which I’ve linked quotes Barry Lynn from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who of course is always, always, always quoted in every church-state separation article written ever-ever-for-all-time-ever. Lynn says, ”This is all part of a silly season that usually occurs closer to election cycles,” and I’m tempted to agree. Passage of such a measure would be just taking one wrong (the unconstitutional invocation of a deity as though it were a sentiment shared universally) and making it wronger, and that’s bad. But substantively, it’s a hunk of red meat thrown to the country’s religionists who are under the bizarre and false impression that they are being oppressed. It’s absurd, it’s laughable, and it’s a waste of time.
But I think it’s important for folks in the secularist/atheist community to remember what results from all this otherwise-empty grandstanding for the pious mob: that we are implicitly excluded from this great big concept we call “America.” If the national motto, the aphorism to which all denizens are expected to subscribe, declares that we not only believe in, but trust an imaginary super-being, then atheists and our ilk are therefore not included. We are not part of the “We” in the motto. We are not of America.
Forbes is a run-of-the-mill hack theocrat. But today’s Congress is way over its quota on his type, and the president is really no help on these matters. So while this measure may just be another example of a ham-fisted pander to God-fearin’, gun-totin’ Real America, its codification also delivers a dark byproduct: further making nonbelievers aliens in their own land.