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The Left Needs to Put a Leash on the Secularists
I read this article on Salon.com awhile ago entitled "Getting Religion" and had kicked it around in my head for a couple of days but soon forgot about it. Since I woke up early this morning I decided to snoop around Salon and remembered the article so I decided to see if there were any letters in response. Sure enough there were, and, thankfully, most of them were against the opinion of the author, save one. Since it's a little late to send a letter to the editor in response to this article I'll just comment on it here, I need an entry for today anyway. So consider this also...

A Letter to the Editor of Salon.com in Response to Francess Kissling's "Getting Religion"

Unlike many of my fellow secularists I am not spiritually bankrupt. While the closest thing to my spiritual beliefs is Buddhism I make no claim on a particular religion, some say I'm an atheist, others an agnostic, and the ignorant claim I'm a right wing Christian covert operative. The latter are the people who are most damaging for the left, as are many other secularists who can't speak of Christianity without becoming egomaniacally elitist that they're some how better than Christians because they don't believe in an invisible man. How would I know? I was one of them.

While I'm still a secularist who believes in the seperation of church and state, over time I've learned that religion has it's place in politics to appeal to people's better nature, as well as their most vile, but the good usually wins out, when it can be heard. The problem is the left refuses to allow the good to be heard. Case in point in response to a female senator's proclamation "What I want to do is get on the floor of the Senate and ask, 'What would Jesus do about the budget? What would Jesus do about poor children? What would Jesus do about healthcare?'" Francess said "What I wanted to respond was that the floor of the U.S. Senate is not the place to invoke Jesus Christ." Her excuse for this is because she doesn't want to offend the Muslims, the Jews, the Buddhists, the atheists, etc. Francess, let me give you some advice, stop worrying about who will be offended, infact, most people don't like political correctness and hate being talked down to and treated as if they're weak. That's what's most condescending for most people.

However Francess you do have a point, but at the sametime you don't. There's a mighty big difference between "What Would Jesus Do" and "Jesus Says To Do", one does not demand that Jesus be listened to and the other does. There's a big difference there. The Senator in question could just as easily add Buddha, Muhammed, Yahweh, etc in place of Jesus or right alongside him, but you ignore this point because "the hair on your neck stood up." Shall I tell you why? Because people like you don't have a problem with every religion, only Christianity. You won't find many "atheists" who will denounce the faiths of Buddhists, Muslims, Taoists, Jews, etc, but they're on Christians like white on rice. "Atheist" or "secularist" is not a proper name for those of you with this problem, "Anti-Christian" is far more fitting, and you make the rest of us look bad.

Imagine if Martin Luther King Jr was alive today and said what he said back in the 50s and 60s, y'all would shit a brick and try to silence him. "No we wouldn't!" The fuck you wouldn't, because there are many of us who say similar things to MLK that you fuckers sneer down at. I've seen Christian Progressives degraded and insulted simply because they're Christian and don't agree with the methods of the Anti-Christians. I've seen secularists who say that we should be understanding of the Christians and use their own beliefs to further our cause get personally attacked by the Anti-Christians. And for what reason? Prejudice and bigotry, reactionary forces created in response to reactionary forces, and the rest of us get caught in the middle.

Are there radical evangelicals who pay lip-service to the Christian belief and are total assholes? Yes there are, but they're a minority, so why is the secular left taking the position of lumping all Christians into the same boat? We're supposed to be the side of understanding but in the case of Christianity we attack it, ignorantly, and wonder why we do so bad at the polls. When is the left going to realize that we are in Christ's image, that every core belief we hold is spawned from our progressive fore fathers who held similar beliefs to Christ? Beliefs like every man's relationship with God is his own and only he can decide what that relationship is, beliefs like "let Ceasar's be Ceasar's and God's be God's" (thus the first seperation of church and state spoken by Christ), beliefs like helping the poor, the sick, the homeless, the weak, where do you think all that shit came from? It came from religion, and not just Christianity, but most religions.

I've been called an enemy of the left because I have no qualms with pointing out the hypocrisy of my fellow leftists, particulary the anti-Christians. They say I must be a right wing operative because I "attack" my allies, apparently they don't see the hypocrisy in the fact that they continually attack and degrade Christian Progressives and the most influential progressive of his day, Jesus Christ. If my sin is defending progressives from bigots in progressive clothing, if this makes me a traitor to the left, I gladly await my stay in hell.

I'd rather be a traitor to this facade than an enabler.