Fibre of the Brain: Vote God in 2000

By Kate Mason

For American politicians frustrated with trying to solve seemingly unsolvable problems, religion is becoming the simple solution to not-so-simple problems. All that angsty teens and welfare moms need are a few Hail Marys, a proper recitation of the Lord's Prayer, or—with the addition of vice presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman, MC '64, LAW '67Ņa Sabbath dinner on Friday night. Despite the Constitution's prohibition of government-established religion and the country's steadily rising population of non-Judeo-Christians, campaign speeches are now sounding more like church sermons and less like political addresses. And as the religious references mount, the differences between the candidates fade. The message from both sides is the same: God is great, God is good, God is going to solve all our problems.

It all began when George W. Bush, DC '68, asserted that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. Not to be left behind, Al Gore proclaimed that he often made decisions according to the maxim, "What would Jesus do?" This was all very endearing, except that Gore forgot one thing—in America, Christians can look to Jesus for guidance, but when it comes to making laws, they must put their religion aside. As a Jew, I don't care what Jesus would do. I only care what the Constitution would do.

This was one of the reasons why the sudden appearance of Lieberman on the scene excited me. Finally, I thought, there would be someone who would understand the importance of not injecting his personal religious beliefs into the political arena. That was before Lieberman suddenly became best friends with Jerry Falwell.

Speaking at a Detroit church, Lieberman quoted John Adams, saying the constitution "was made only for a moral and religious people." Of course, the framers also wrote that a black man was counted for three-fifths of a white man. It seems that Lieberman needs to get reacquainted with the 20th Century. Under every modern interpretation, the Supreme Court has guaranteed that a secular life is just as constitutional as a religious one.

Lieberman went on to claim that "the constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion." True, when the document was first written, it was intended to protect rival sects of God-fearing Christians from one another. But since then, that protection has been extended not only to those who are non-Christians—including Jews—but also to agnostics and atheists. Thus, it guarantees a freedom both of and from religion.

As a religious minority, Lieberman should understand the importance of that reinterpretation. Instead, he asserted that Americans should "never indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." This went straight to the crux of the matter: the growing belief that religion will make Americans more moral. This argument has been used over and over again by fundamentalists who push for school prayer as an antidote to violence and youth crime, ignoring 40 years of court decisions that clearly ruled that such a practice is unconstitutional.

Yet the statement that only religious people are moral is not only offensive and unconstitutional; it is also extremely ignorant. Almost all of the most infamous immoral acts in history have been motivated by religion: the Spanish Inquisition, the Native American genocide, and the Holocaust were all driven by religious beliefs. If religion breeds morality, why has it so often been tied so tightly to evil?

I am heartened that the Democrats had the courage to nominate a Jew for our second-highest office, but I don't want my religion governing my country any more than I want Christianity to govern it. Some of the kindest, most moral people I have ever met don't believe in that old bearded guy in the sky. I just hope that America continues to believe in them.

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