Today is the Fourth and NPR is broadcasting callers addressing this question.
My response is that America represents freedom of mind, body, and freedom from oppression.
We have different terms to describe these, and their development fills volumes, but that's a fair statement of what they boil down to.
To make us secure on our patch of ground from the rest of the world, we establish government. To protect individuals from our own government, we insisted on a Bill of Rights. To protect members of smaller groups from the tyranny of the majority, we've adopted an amendment guaranteeing equal protection of law. It protects against improper classifications in a world where all legislation acts on classes of people who fall within the designated classification. All people who make a will, or drive a car, or attend school, or who work, or who own property, or who save, or who spend, are subject to legal rules regarding the conduct. All people who make friends, live with each other, marry, have children, or decide not to, are subject to laws regulating the class of people in the particular category regulated.
We also have liberties. Liberty in the constitutional law sense means having the power to make a choice. You either have the power (meaning legally enforceable right) to marry the person of your choice or you don't. You want to marry someone of your own race, ethnicity, or religion? You have that choice. At least now, you do. Previously you didn't. You want to marry someone of a different race, ethnicity, or religion? Now you have that right. Previously, you didn't. What about gender or sexual preference? You don't have that right. Maybe someday you will.
Freedom from oppression? This is what the Old Testament is about. Persecution of Jews, the people who wrote the Bible, from Egyptians, Babylonians, other neighbors, themselves, and even from God. Remember? He planned to slaughter ALL of the people of Sodom for practicing, well, sodomy. Abraham challenged: "You mean, Lord, that you plan to kill the innocent, including women and children, because you want to reach the bad people?" The Lord had to re-think his plan. Abraham was the first civil rights lawyer. A Jewish guy. Tradition!
The Lord had failed to narrowly tailor his kill-'em-all plan, let the Lord sort them out, an expression that appears on placards in souvenir shops outside the Marine base near Camp Pendleton, California, but goes back to the Crusades. This was their motto. Kill all suspected infidels and let God sort out the innocent from the guilty, after they've been slaughtered in the name of religion.
Religion comes from the root "to bind together," as in ligature, as I was recently reminded at a wedding by the (Episcopal) preacher who approached and said, "Your brother-in-law says he's a born-again Episcopalian. Your other brother-in-law, he said, is a born-again Catholic. And he says that you're a born again atheist."
So we had a nice chat, good-natured and filled with laughs, actually.
At the wedding, my Catholic brother-in-law reminded me that about a decade ago I referred to his belief system as "fairy tales," for which I apologized for my rudeness on the ground that much truth is told in fairy-tale form.
Later he told me of how his faith helped him. He described a situation involving the sale of his boat, which was troubling him as all sorts of problems arose about whether it was functioning properly and how to deliver it if it weren't. So, bro-in-law described how he prayed to be extricated from this nettlesome situation that caused loss of sleep.
The next morning he was much relieved to have completed the sale of the boat to the satisfaction of the buyer who was able to take delivery at a discount for the trouble and necessary mechanical attention that would be required.
Voila! Proof of the existence of God.
St. Thomas, are you listening?
I am incredibly impressed and may have to reconsider my attitude towards some religion, the tie that binds, and slaughters.
What a country!
We are such a big tent.
All sorts of people, having all sorts of belief systems live under it.
I noticed at the reception dinner that when it came time for grace, my super-Catholic bro-in-law, next to whom I was seated, joined with his immediate family in holding hands. How very nice that he didn't offer to hold hands with me. He simply held his vacant hand up as though giving a blessing. Years ago one of his daughters would hold my hand. I said nothing.
I did say something, in private, when they roped my aged mother into this.
She's Jewish.
Holding hands around the table to thank Jesus for the food she went out and bought and prepared is not one of her things.
So I spoke to my sister, the one who married the born-again Catholic (the other sister married the born-again Episcopalian).
Now, anyone who wants to pray, prays.
Anyone who wants to eat, waits until the brief ceremony ends, then eats.
Who winds up in hell will be determined later, but let's not ruin the meal, okay?
America.
Freedom of mind.
Constitutional law is all around you, even at the dinner table.
One of the Catholic fellow's daughters, when young, had been taught by them that she could save souls by tracing the sign of the cross on the forehead of people she encountered, such as other family members, many of whom do not share this belief and object to being subjected to it.
We would say, no thank you, and try to wave her off, but she'd been taught by her parents that this was a good thing to do. She won approval from them for doing this, but disapproval, in silence, from others, as she was a child and no one wished to make her feel that she'd done something improper.
She finally grew out of the behavior, thank goodness.
Freedom from religion is a wonderful thing.
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