20,000,000+ reasons why separation of church and state remains a good idea

Sometimes I mull and navelgaze and don’t have the decency to refrain from posting. This may be one of those times. Indulge me if you will, or not, but if these musings strike you in some way, one way or another, I hope you’ll share where those musings lead you.

Before our most recent tragedy, Planned Parenthood and efforts to defund it were all the rage in GOP quarters, replete with Fiorina trying desperately to overtake Hillary as America’s most notable serial liar. So while we struggle through this unfortunate hiatus until the next government shutdown showdown, I got to mulling and gazing.

How many people in America actually oppose abortion? Well, and with the usual caveat regarding polls according to Gallup on May 29, 2015, it depends on how you parse it. Give or take 4 points, 37% oppose abortion in all cases, meaning anywhere from a mere third up to the losing side of a 51/49 split, and that’s if we can actually generalize to the total population from the sample of 1,024 18+ year old adults in the 50 states plus DC. One thing I gather is that if these numbers are indeed reflective of general attitudes, and more particularly, voter attitudes, it’s a close enough match that it’s impossible at this stage for either side of the issue to declare that they have a popular mandate.

This leaves me with my usually stymied position. There are those who feel, as a matter of faith, that it is absolutely a settled issue, evidence and reasoning be damned. Then there’s everyone else for whom the issue remains some combination of reason and faith (or no faith). Shall we say, a philosophical matter? As I understand it, there’s no such thing as a settled philosophical question. To settle on a certainty of this nature, as opposed to something like the value of pi, is the prerogative of faith alone. As far as I can tell, nobody on the philosophical side of the coin is trying to force abortions on anyone, and as has been noted before by Doc Slammy, nobody is pro-abortion, per se. The philosophically pro-choice advocates would do just about anything to mitigate the number of abortions performed while protecting the woman’s right of conscience to make that decision for herself.

That leaves the pro-life advocates under the lens for the moment. Unfortunately, the Gallup poll didn’t bother to collect faith demographics even though the pollsters did think to include partisan demographics, rather a slipshod oversight. So, for all we know, some percentage scalable to the overall 18+ population might have been Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or atheist, or unaffiliated, or other, and we’ll never know. But it does align rather well with estimates that evangelical Christians represent approximately 25.4% of Christians in the US (and only 13% globally), with Christianity being the majority religion here. Yeah, it’s squishy not-math, but that’s all that will fit in my navel while I mull.

So let’s take a moment to look at the raw numbers here.

US population: 318.9 million (2014)

US population under 18: 23.1%

Ergo, US population 18+: 76.9% or ~245.2 million

And by the by:

US Christian population (2014, loosely defined): 70.6% of adults or 173.1 million

US Evangelical Christian population: ~43.9 million or ~17.9% of the adult US population, or less than 1 in 5.

US Catholic population: 20.8% or ~51 million

Going back to Gallup, 18+ were polled, so if we generalize their results to the total 18+ population, we get 37% opposed to abortion in all cases, or ~90.7 million. Take the ~43 million evangelicals, add the ~51 million Catholics, and we’re right there in the neighborhood, give or take, but that’s still not the whole picture, as we’ll see.

Opposed in all cases strikes me as a rather fundamentalist position to take as “all cases” is pretty much absolutist in nature and supportable only by faith, as best I can reckon.

And when we see the most ardent pro-life advocates, they certainly put on a good show of piety.

And they certainly appear to make the most noise about having the only moral mandate and the sole legitimate religious mandate, as though they speak for all Christians. Why? Because, insofar as I conveniently keep sweeping allied forces together into a neat pile, half of them are the Bible-believing Christians. But which Bible, and why?

Well, I found this on the Internet, so it must be true. It certainly accords with a great many other Bible-believing sources I’ve tripped across over the years. The go-to version of the Bible, the truly inspired Bible (compared to all those other botched Bibles, dare I say, Satanically corrupted bibles with a lower-case b) is the King James Version. Why? Well, our Internet scholar (like me!) linked above explains it, regardless of the facts.

I also found another thing on the Internet recently, but since it includes a nasty ad hominem, and since it only addresses the New Testament, I’ll just recap with bullet points:

• KJV New Testament completed in 1611 by 8 members of the Church of England (Erroneous. The task of translation was undertaken by 47 scholars, although 54 were originally approved.[7])
• From no original texts
• Earliest manuscripts were written down hundreds of years after the last apostle died (bears fact-checking, but I find this point dubious at best as will be seen later).
• Over 8,000 of these old manuscripts with no two alike (hand copied, after all, and that’s the least of the issues)
• All of those were ignored by the translators (?)
• Instead they edited previous translations to meet with the approval of King and Parliament
• Thus:
• Some (but not all, by a long shot) 21st Century Christians believe the inerrant and inspired word of God to be a 17th Century edited translation of 16th Century translations of 8,000 contradictory copies of 4th Century scrolls that purport to be copies of letters lost in the 1st Century CE.

If you’re not one of those 25% (evangelical Christians), or fewer than 1 in 5 American adults, that might seem a bit odd, and if you’re Catholic, that’s just downright heretical. Let’s not forget the King and Parliament issue mentioned above centered around the fact that the Church of England was started specifically as a heretical end run around the sanctity of marriage.

Since the Catholic church itself seems to be undergoing some kind of transformation and, over long stretches, trends toward a more figurative understanding of Scripture, except perhaps on this particular issue, I want to focus on the go-to edition of the Bible used by most, if not all, evangelical Christians as the source of their absolutist view on abortion, but first, let’s consider as an aside that prior to 1979, abortion was a Catholic issue, only then appropriated by evangelicals for political advantage against one of their own, President Carter:

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

Strange bedfellows, indeed.

In 1975, there were 54.5 million self-identified Catholics in the US, out of a US population of 216 million. As I can’t find the data, I’ll do an admittedly sloppy estimate based on the current 76.9% 18+ population and assume the adult population of the day was ~166 million, thus, provided the Catholics polled in ’75 were adult, they were approximately 33% of the adult US population or 1 in 3.

Then: ~20% of those polled by Gallup in ’75 opposed abortion in all cases. There’s that 1 in 5 again.

Today: that 1 in 5 has joined with the evangelical almost 1 in 5 to form a not quite 4 in 10 (or 2 in 5) population adamantly opposed to abortion, and principally because a group dominated by white, working poor, under-educated evangelical Protestants, unhappy with a peaceful Southern Baptist, joined forces with the Catholics in an early iteration of the much-demonized “community organizing” ultimately because they didn’t think their white kids should have to learn what they never knew while sitting next to black ones.

That’ll never do as the kind of explanation that suffers daylight well, and might not even work from the pulpit in most parts of the country, so there had to be some serious soul- and KJV-searching for their new-found absolutist anti-abortion pro-war, pro-death penalty, pro-life policymaking apparatus.

That meme I rendered in bullet points earlier gave me an itch in that regard that demanded at least a little scratching. Where does that absolutism come from? Again, the belief in the inerrancy of a version of the Bible specifically rendered by members of the Church of England so as to gain the approval of King and Parliament.

Let’s reframe: eight members of a church that less than one hundred socially and spiritually turbulent years prior had Henry VIII appointed its head by an act of Parliament so he could get an annulment denied him by the same papacy that had recently declared him Defender of the Faith, cobbled together an English translation to meet with the approval of their current King and Parliament, then reigning over an England that had “come to esteem their church.”

Just imagine if an American politician or political group had the temerity to re-write Scripture to better fit their personal views. No, no, not Jefferson. At least he was a Founding Father. Maybe the Conservative Bible Project, perhaps, because the “best of the public is better than a group of experts” at translating ancient languages into modern, “real Christian” English? How’s your Hebrew, ancient or otherwise? And Aramaic? And Koine Greek? Keeping with my “some, but not all” approach (tip o’ the hat to Robert Anton Wilson, RIP), not even all Christians think this is a good idea:

The Conservative Bible Project is the work mainly of unregenerate men, using unreliable source texts, employing an ungodly translation philosophy. The result is an error-filled rendition of the Scriptures that can change literally every day.

Yet this isn’t so far different from the creation of the inerrant King James Version.

Now, since I’m just a dude on the Internet who has already had recourse to another “just dude” on the Internet to justify the conclusion that the KJV is the superior choice for modern Bible-believing Christians, it only seems right that I continue to refer to other “just dudes/dudettes” on the Internet courtesy of Wikipedia to peek into the KJV sausage factory. While some of the pro-life canon derives from the New Testament, the key scriptures tend to be from the Old Testament, so I’ll keep my emphasis there and let the discerning reader pick up the New Testament threads as they will. [Ed. note: bolding below is emphasis added by yours truly.]

For their Old Testament, the translators used a text originating in the editions of the Hebrew Rabbinic Bible by Daniel Bomberg (1524/5),[122] but adjusted this to conform to the Greek LXX or Latin Vulgate in passages to which Christian tradition had attached a Christological interpretation.[123]

Source: Wikipedia article – King James Version

That’s not exactly how one does translation, that’s more like something one might find in The Conservative Bible, but okay, so what is this source, then, this Hebrew Rabbinic Bible by Bomberg?

First published in 1524–25 by Daniel Bomberg in Venice, the Mikraot Gedolot was edited by the masoretic scholar Yaakov ben Hayyim. All of its elements – text, masorah, Targum, and commentaries were based upon the manuscripts that Ben Hayyim had at hand (although he did not always have access to the best ones according to some, Ginsburg and some others argued that it was a good representation of the Ben Asher text).

The Mikraot Gedolot of Ben Hayyim, though hailed as an extraordinary achievement, was riddled with thousands of technical errors. Objections were also raised by the Jewish readership, based on the fact that the very first printing of the Mikra’ot Gedolot was edited by Felix Pratensis, a Jew converted to Christianity. Furthermore, Bomberg, a Christian, had requested an imprimatur from the Pope. Such facts were not compatible with the supposed Jewish nature of the work; Bomberg had to produce a fresh edition under the direction of acceptable Jewish editors. Nevertheless, this first edition served as the textual model for nearly all later editions until modern times. With regard to the Biblical text, many of Ben Hayyim’s errors were later corrected by Menahem Lonzano and Shlomo Yedidiah Norzi.

The Mikraot Gedolot of Ben Hayyim served as the textus receptus for the King James Version of the Bible in 1611.

Source: Wikipedia article – Mikraot Gedolot (some citations evidently needed)

Let’s see. The translation produced for the approval of a heretical church, a church that itself resulted from schism over the sanctity of marriage, was translated from a biased translation for which the editor sought the approval of the very church from which the Church of England split in order to create a version that the Church of England, King, and Parliament would approve. This all makes sense now. Further, this work was so biased and so-Christianized as Jewish scripture that no self-respecting Jew of the day would use it, thus necessitating the same publisher to create a far more Jewish-friendly version, because, after all, the Old Testament was and remains their domain and who better to know it, critique it, and reject bastardizations of it than Jews themselves?

But what was that about a masoretic scholar? That was Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah, who later in life converted to Christianity:

Jacob’s name is known chiefly in connection with his edition of the Rabbinical Bible (1524–25), which he supplied with Masoretic notes and an introduction which discusses the Masorah, qere and ketib, and the discrepancies between the Talmudists and the Masorah. The value of his activity as a Masorite was recognized even by Elijah Levita, who, however, often finds fault with his selections.[2]

Hold on a moment. Wait. There’s a group of Jewish scholars who have discrepancies with another group of Jewish scholars on two key literary components of Judaism, and an editor from one, noted for his errors, was the editor of the biased translation used as the basis for the translation to meet with the approval of a heretical, schismatic Christian church established because sanctity of marriage? You mean even Jewish scholars didn’t always agree on their own texts?

The Masoretic[1] Text (MT, 𝕸, or \mathfrak{M}) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Tanakh for Rabbinic Judaism. However, contemporary scholars seeking to understand the history of the Hebrew Bible’s text use a range of other sources.[2] These include Greek and Syriac translations, quotations from rabbinic manuscripts, the Samaritan Pentateuch and others such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many of these are older than the Masoretic text and often contradict it.[3]

…

The Tanakh (/tɑːˈnɑːx/;[1] Hebrew: תַּנַ”ךְ‎, pronounced [taˈnaχ] or [təˈnax]; also Tenakh, Tenak, Tanach) or Mikra is the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The traditional Hebrew text is known as the Masoretic Text.

…

The Talmud (/ˈtɑːlmʊd, -məd, ˈtæl-/; Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד talmūd “instruction, learning”, from a root lmd “teach, study”) is a central text of Rabbinic Judaism.

The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (Hebrew: משנה, c. 200 CE), a written compendium of Rabbinic Judaism’s Oral Torah (Talmud translates literally as “instruction” in Hebrew); and the Gemara (c. 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. The term “Talmud” may refer to either the Gemara alone, or the Mishnah and Gemara together.

The entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. It is written in Tannaitic Hebrew and Aramaic, and contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of pre-Christian Era rabbis on a variety of subjects, including Halakha (law), Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law, and is widely quoted in rabbinic literature.

By now, only one thing remains clear to me. If I want to understand what the Old Testament says, I’m deferring to Jewish scholars, especially when the version of the Old Testament accepted as inerrant by KJV Bible-believing Christians is so evidently corrupted by biased “translation” (loosely so-called) under the editorship of a Jewish scholar so eminently beholden to the heretical Christian church of his day that he eventually converted. For that matter, given the cultural context of the translation, am I entirely amiss in detecting a whiff of anti-Semitism therein? After all, the primary source material for the KJV “translation” was so out of whack with Jewish scholars that a better edition had to be published. That would be a strange influence indeed, if the inerrant KJV had its roots in the existing bigotry against God’s chosen people.

Another major point to consider in the creation of the KJV “translation” is the historical context and how this translation came about. In 1604, three years before Jamestown was even settled, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference:

The newly crowned King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England.

Yet,

Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to limit the Puritan influence on this new translation. The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible).[6] King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive:[42] Exodus 1:19, where the Geneva Bible had commended the example of civil disobedience showed by the Hebrew midwives, and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous grandmother, Queen Maachah.[42] Further, the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of the Church of England.[6] Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church.[6]

Again, that is not how translation is done. For that matter, just how inerrant can the translation be when it was created with the specific instruction from King James to conform to the heretical church headed by the earlier King Henry VIII specifically to allow for what was scripturally forbidden?

Further, while I previously made much of the publisher Bomberg and the editor Hayyim, creators of the Mikraot Gedolot, which served as the textus receptus, or

“the succession of printed Greek texts of the New Testament which constituted the translation base for the original German Luther Bible, the translation of the New Testament into English by William Tyndale, the King James Version, and most other Reformation-era New Testament translations throughout Western and Central Europe,”

it must be noted that even that dubious work wasn’t the principle source of translation:

The text of the Bishops’ Bible would serve as the primary guide for the translators, and the familiar proper names of the biblical characters would all be retained. If the Bishops’ Bible was deemed problematic in any situation, the translators were permitted to consult other translations from a pre-approved list: the Tyndale Bible, the Coverdale Bible, Matthew’s Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. In addition, later scholars have detected an influence on the Authorized Version from the translations of Taverner’s Bible and the New Testament of the Douay–Rheims Bible.[43] It is for this reason that the flyleaf of most printings of the Authorized Version observes that the text had been “translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty’s special commandment.”

Translations of translations within translations wrapped in a crisp layer of regal imperative to adhere to the tenets of a heretical and schismatic church. Inerrant, you see.

So now I think we have arrived at a place where I can put the current political kabuki into some historical perspective.

England was ruled by a king who couldn’t get an annulment from the pope so parliament made King Henry VIII head of the state church. What’s all this, then? Heresy and apostasy? Decade after decade of bloody political and religious turmoil ensue. Less than a hundred years later, a few years before Jamestown is even founded, King James convenes a conference of translators charged with creating a new Bible that placates Puritans, but not too much, and that pays due diligence to the heretical church of state. Not thrilled with the lack of reform in this church, Puritans, a general pain in James’ behind, make their way to the New World in 1618, only to be co-opted centuries later by poor and lower middle-class under-educated white Protestants who would wither and wilt under the stringent social order of those same Puritans, the ones we can thank for being a “Christian” nation that could barely tolerate Catholics at first, except in Maryland. This historical re-write was all in the interest of preventing black kids from learning with their pure, lily-white white kids and drinking water from the same spigot because jigaboo cooties. Since they couldn’t make sufficient political hay out of not loving their neighbors, judging, and various and sundry anti-Jesus sentiments, they hitched their political horse back to the Catholic church under the banner of being anti-abortion, thus giving us a form of “community organizing” to make anything the future black, Kenyan, seekrit Mooslim socialist, communist dictator in chief did in Chicago before hitting his stride in politics to shame. To shore up their most ardent arguments, they make significant recourse to the above-described translation as the sole inerrant version suitable for the real Bible-believer, which, as we’ve seen, has all the tell-tale signs of itself being a political sham, and, failing to make a sufficiently strong case on the basis of that fudged Scripture now turn to all manner of false witness from footage likely taken as a criminal act and then taken out of context to candidate after candidate that would fail a come-to-Jesus meeting without some serious contrition and repentance for their lies, hatred, xenophobia, failure to love neighbors, failure to love enemies, and even blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Maybe I need to look for different spiritual guidance when it comes to the issue of abortion. So far I’m not sure I’m trusting my immortal soul to the cadre I’ve just described. And since I’ve already decided that when it comes to matters Old Testament I’d far rather trust Jewish scholars, I should probably see what I can find.

Oh, here we go.

Rabbi Raymond A. Zwerin & Rabbi Richard J. Shapiro have an article entitled, “Jewish Perspectives on Abortion” at the website for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Wait, what? Haven’t we been told by 1 in 5 adult Americans, 1 in 3 adult Americans, 2 in 5 adult Americans over and over again that religion is on their side?

The Legal Status of the Embryo/Fetus
According to Jewish law, a fetus is not considered a full human being and has no juridical personality of its own. While recognizing the potentiality of becoming human, Rashi, the great 12th century commentator on the Bible and Talmud, states clearly of the fetus “lav nefesh hu – it is not a person.” The Talmud contains the expression “ubar yerech imo – the fetus is as the thigh of its mother,” i.e., the fetus is deemed to be part and parcel of the pregnant women’s body.

The biblical foundation for this statement is Exodus 21:22ff:

When men fight and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life…

The Jewish legal interpretation of this passage states specifically that only monetary compensation is necessary for one who causes the death of a fetus. The unborn fetus is not worthy of the “life for life” punishment demanded if the woman herself is killed. This clearly implies that the fetus is not accorded the same legal status as the woman herself, namely that of independent human being.

Further proof of the Jewish legal principle that the fetus is to be regarded as part of the pregnant woman is contained in two examples from the Talmud. The first involves the sale of a cow which, subsequent to sale, is found to be pregnant. The legal determination is that the fetus in the womb of the cow belongs to the buyer, and that the seller can make no claim for further compensation. The second example concerns the conversion to Judaism of a woman who is pregnant. Jewish law regards the conversion valid for her future child as well, requiring no separate conversion for it after birth.

While all of the above is not totally sufficient to determine the Jewish attitude toward abortion, it does set the stage. Jewish law is quite clear: while the fetus in the womb is to be protected as a potential human being, it has no personhood; it is not a bar kayamah (a viable, living being), thus, it is not accorded any of the right or privileges of a human being.

There’s more, and there’s nuances, so it’s definitely worth the time to read the whole article and give it consideration. But surely this must be some kind of weirdo Jewish fringe, right?

From the next level up at the website, under A Matter of Faith, Conscience and Justice:

Faith traditions such as the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist Association, and Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative Judaism support reproductive choice as the most responsible position a religious institution can take on this issue.

Nope, not unless one considers three well-regarded forms of Judaism a fringe, that is.

But wait, there’s more:

Together, these religions represent over 20 million Americans. Religious and religiously-affiliated organizations from these and other traditions, as well as independent religious organizations such as Catholics for Choice, are also doing incredible work to combat the notion that all religious people or institutions are always anti-abortion.

Hold on a cotton-pickin’ minute here. 20 million? I don’t have the clarification that they necessarily mean “adult” here, but that’s the likely and most honest scenario (compared to inflating the number with children). So that’s ~8% of the adult US population. And in a rational, loving way, they’re saying:

There are as many viewpoints and beliefs about issues having to do with our reproductive lives as there are denominations, clergy, and faith leaders. One thing you should know is that there is broad consensus that the moral agency of human beings – especially that of a woman when making decisions about her reproductive life – is God-given. One narrow, religious viewpoint is not representative of what most Americans believe.

We believe that decisions about our reproductive lives (such as whether or not to terminate a pregnancy) should be left to the person, in consultation with their loved ones, trusted medical professionals, and their faith.

So, going back to that Gallup poll, 78% of American adults believe that abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances, 42% believe it should be legal in most, if not all circumstances, 36% believe it should be legal if only in very limited circumstances. Coinciding with that, 8% of American adults, by virtue of faith, agree with at least the 36% and quite likely the 42% and maybe the 78%.

Yet, somehow, the loudest crowd with the shakiest theology and a horrifying penchant for all manner of overlapping and publicly self-cannibalizing sins from racial and ethnic bigotry to false witness to hypocrisy to blasphemy to the only slightly less reproachable inability or unwillingness to show a little humility and admit that maybe God is actually bigger, more loving, and more compassionate than their wildest nightmare/fantasies run amok can admit, has the audacity to claim the spiritual high ground.

And here’s the thing. I love ’em. I support their right to free speech. I support their freedom of religion. But if I’m looking for spiritual guidance, I think I’m going to err on the side of love and compassion, my own harsh rhetoric notwithstanding. I’m going to err on the side of the distinct likelihood that Jews know their only holy scripture and what to make of it better than anyone else. And as a good, patriotic American, I’m going to err in favor of the way our constitutional republic was designed, if only as a matter of wishful thinking. We have a representative government. And when there’s one or two people in a room of five, those one or two simply do not get to dictate what the other three do. That’s not how our government is supposed to work.

If your faith, as laid out above, quite possibly chock full of error, and your ministers of faith, quite likely leading you into the sins laid out above, tell you that abortion is wrong, I respect that. That’s between you and your Maker. Don’t get one. Don’t bother telling us about the sanctity of marriage and family when you won’t look at your own Scripture and see the evidence in your face that the concept of marriage has morphed many times and make heroes of philanderers, pedophiles, sex offenders, and public servants and political candidates that treat divorce like a hobby. Don’t try to convince us of how very pro-life and pious you are as Texas breaks records for executions, the US breaks records for mass incarceration, and you rattle sabers for war as though the dead children and civilians we create overseas are any less worthy of life as a fetus that only has Scriptural protection in your tortured interpretation of a poor translation of poor translations. As for the rest of us across faiths and no faith, I think we’re going to take our chances. And please, if you’re rooting for the liars, the haters, the cheats, and the blasphemers in your own midst, spare us the holier than thou spiel altogether. Jesus might have dined with you, but he’s not of you, and the rest of us have grave, grave doubts you are of him. Get right with Him before you decide you’ve been divinely annointed to rule over the rest of us in all your corrupted glory.

This is EXACTLY why we have separation of church and state, and rather than lament our insistence on it, you should be thanking God, your lucky stars, and whatever else you thank, because we all share this country together. It’s not your country. You don’t get to take it back. We’re all here. And if you manage to tear us apart, you will have taken it upon yourselves to undo the peace that our first settlers up through our Founding Fathers managed to cobble together out of a social fabric born of the weariness of religious bloodshed. The rest of America, the 3 in 5, will gladly continue to extend amicable toleration to you and to all faiths, but not at the expense of cowing to your lust for power. And please, don’t pull a Puritan today. There’s no more new worlds ready for you to settle, and besides, you’re just not made of the same stuff. Oh, and if you think it’s the Christian thing to do to “take back America” by force, all 2 of 5 of you, please tell us which guns Jesus recommends killing people with first.