"Dear God, please save me from your followers."
That simple prayer, expressed on countless bumper stickers, articulates my general opinion on the matter of religion, and more specifically Christianity.
Throughout history religion has been an impediment to human progress.
In the late 4th century of the Current Era, Christian zealots destroyed the Library of Alexandria. At the time Alexandria was the repository of science in Western civilization. Hypatia, the mathematician and librarian, was tortured and beaten to death; her lifeless body was mutilated and burned. The library scrolls and experimental models, which included original works by Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and Plato, were burned out of existence but for references in scarce surviving documents. It has been estimated by prominent scientists and historians that the destruction of this library set back scientific development by a thousand years or longer.
With the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire, the West began its steady decent into the Dark Ages. The Crusades and Inquisitions drove science underground or into exile in the East. Unlike Christianity, early Islam embraced science and preserved knowledge.
Copernicus, the 16th century astronomer, worked in secret and only dared publish his "heliocentric" theories on his deathbed for fear of reprisal from Church authorities. In 1600 C.E., Giordano Bruno, a philosopher and mathematician, was brought to Rome and burned alive along with his works on orders from the Vatican.
Galileo was also brought before the Holy Inquisition and threatened with torture for publishing his scientific observations on the orbits of the planets. His life was spared only after renouncing his views.
With Christendom in disarray following the Reformation and science resurrected in the Age of Enlightenment, Western civilization began to emerge from the Dark Ages. Knowledge, originally discovered by the Greeks and preserved by the Byzantines, found its way into the new university system, which replaced the monastery as the repository of wisdom in Europe.
For more than a thousand years, Christianity divided the West and clashed with the East in countless religious wars. It would be no different in the New World.
After Columbus led Europeans to the America's, the Spanish Conquistadores embarked on a reign of Christian terrorism and barbarity to rival the Crusades. As Europeans settled in the American colonies, they demonized, persecuted, and exterminated Native Americans. Puritanism and superstition drove the "witch trials" and executions in Salem, Massachusetts. Colonial authorities established churches and religious taxes.
Africans were captured and brought by ship to America, where they were enslaved by Christian plantation owners. The Africans were often chained with their ears nailed to posts and rails (a biblical practice); children were torn for their mothers' arms and sold away into bondage. The Bible was read aloud at these slave auctions in an attempt to justify the barbarity.
Missionaries moved west, where they used guns and Bibles to convert "heathen savages" to Christianity. Those who refused to give up their own spiritual traditions were often maligned and killed.
As Christian soldiers conquered America, the missionaries moved onto the seas and began colonizing the Pacific islands. Along with their religion, they brought diseases that nearly wiped out the native populations.
In Hawaii, the missionaries established Christian laws and set about to destroy the Hawaiian religion, culture, language and traditions. Forced by missionaries to wear woolen clothing suitable for the cold climate of New England, the Hawaiian people were persecuted. Surfing, hula, and chant were banished.
Christendom spread around the world with the help of cannon, gun, and sword.
In the United States, religion continued to divide the new country. In the South, religious intolerance and racial hatred led to lynching and the formation of the White-Christian-supremacy movement, known as the Ku Klux Klan.
Like the Crusaders, the KKK chose a cross for its battle emblem. The Bible was read aloud as freed slaves were tortured and hung from the trees. White Christian men routinely raped African women. African children were subjected to the trauma of terrorism, as crosses burned outside their homes.
As immigration and the industrial revolution began to produce record population growth, religious bigotry and intolerance predominated: Catholics were not allowed to serve in public office; Mormons were chased out into the wilderness.
Religion had other negative effects on our developing nation.
The Millerites (today's Seventh Day Adventists) were obsessed with "end times" prophesies. Legions of devout followers sold or abandoned their property while awaiting the imminent coming of "Jesus Christ."
Faith healers and other religious charlatans discovered new ways to take advantage of the sick, the poor, and the ignorant. They traveled the country holding week-long tent revivals on the public green. Leaving town in a hurry as the money dried up.
It was about this time that P.T. Barnum wrote: "There's a sucker born every minute." Barnum was right, especially for the religious.
As populations grew and spread, churches organized along sectarian lines: Baptists in the South, Presbyterians and Methodists in the Midwest, Catholics in the East, and Mormons in the West. Religion and politics became synonymous in these regions and majority rule led to widespread abuse and discrimination.
In Tennessee, a teacher was arrested, put on trial, and convicted for teaching Darwin's "theory of evolution" in a public school science class.
Across the country, the Holy Bible was used in courthouses and schools. Children were forced to begin each school day by reciting the Lord's Prayer or some other Bible reading. Ministers were routinely allowed to preach from the lectern. Statutes of the Ten Commandments were installed outside municipal buildings and giant crosses were erected in public parks.
The organized churches opposed women's rights, including their right to vote and to own or inherit property. Women were not allowed to work outside the home. Family planning and health options were either restricted or prohibited.
During World War II, the United States and its European Allies defended against Nazi aggression and tyranny. Adolph Hitler was a fanatical dictator with deeps roots in Catholicism and Christian anti-Semitism. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: "I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." Not to be overlooked was and is the fact that Germany's government and citizenry are overwhelmingly Christian.
The United States claims its own divine authority to wage war. American military bands still play the "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," a religious anthem which includes such strains as:
Religion has been an instrument of war from the earliest Crusades to the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York.
In the 1950s, religion was used to support the government's "red scare" tactics during the McCarthy period of the Cold War. In the 1960s, organized religion mostly supported the Vietnam War against the "godless communists."
After Vietnam, religious institutions began to wage a new culture war in America. Women were most often the target, as the "moral majority" sought to impose its patriarchal-biblical world view. In spite of their efforts, however, abortion became legal, as did the pill and other safe and effective birth-control methods.
With cable television, came the "televangelists," like Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, Pat Robertson and others. These modern-day snake-oil salesmen used the new medium to pedal their various brands of Christian fundamentalism. With untraceable and underreported revenues in the millions, these charlatans began to push their Christian agenda into the political landscape.
President Richard Nixon and Billy Graham engaged in regular meetings where they discussed ways to control Jews in the media and Blacks in politics. Pat Robertson formed the Christian Coalition and spent millions to elect pro-Christian candidates to local, state, and national offices.
Today organized religion in the United States is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Churches do not pay taxes on income from donations, yet most of the money is used for sectarian political purposes. In the case of the Catholic Church, an untold amount of US currency is shipped out of the country to the Vatican (a foreign sovereignty) without the benefit of taxes.
Churches are not charities. The IRS estimates that only about 1% of church revenue is used for non-religious charitable purposes.
Christian churches continue to divide Americans along sectarian lines. And although more and more Americans are rejecting religion (there are 30 million atheists according to a recent survey), there is a growing movement of religious intolerance.
As our nation diversifies and religious pluralism magnifies our differences, many are asserting that "America is a Christian nation." These are the progeny of those who asserted that "America is a White nation."
Religious bigotry is the racism of the 21st century. The Christian-supremacy movement is alive and well funded. Christian political groups are mobilizing to turn back the clock against what one calls "a century of liberal thinking."
Christian supremacists are clamoring for exceedingly more religious influence in society.
They want the Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school and municipal building. They want organized prayer before school, athletic events, graduation, and other public assemblies. They want "In God We Trust" emblazoned on everything, from currency to government vehicles. They want every child to memorize and recite the Pledge of Allegiance "under God." They want biblical creationism or the so-called "intelligent design theory" to be taught as an alternative to biological evolution in science courses.
They want to overturn Roe v. Wade and deny women the right to choose abortion and other medical reproductive and health options. They want to ban fetal-tissue research and cloning. They want to outlaw all medical-assisted, end-of-life options for terminally-ill patients. They want to reinstitute sodomy laws. They want to amend the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. They want to mandate covenant marriages and discourage divorce.
These pious and arrogant Christians appear to prefer suffering over happiness, bondage above freedom, sadness before joy, and pain before pleasure.
The Christian supremacists have opposed almost every civil rights movement and today expend enormous resources in opposition to gay rights, children's rights, free speech, privacy rights, and religious freedom.
The Constitution is not a document that Christians revere. No, instead they revile it. They detest individualism and freedom, including religious freedom if it means respecting non-Christian religions, such as Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology, and so on.
Since its inception in the early 1st century, Christianity has opposed almost all scientific progress. Christian churches have always opposed religious freedom, diversity, and pluralism.
Christianity has attempted to disrepute knowledge at almost every turn in modern history. As we have seen, the Church has opposed discoveries of the astronomers and geographers, it has opposed medical science and non-religious philosophy, and it has especially opposed individual rights and freedoms.
In conclusion, I am hard-pressed to think of any human endeavor that has caused more death and destruction than religion. Although humans have many frailties, the propensity for religious belief and superstition is perhaps our greatest detriment.
Fortunately, we appear to have turned the corner. The separation of state and church, although good for all religions, has led to a new enlightenment of unbelief. Atheism, agnosticism, rationalism, and other forms of non-religious thought have spread to an estimated 1/5th of the world's population.
There is hope for the survival of human civilization -- and that hope is manifest in the consistent application of reason, in the ethics and values expressed through secular humanism, and in the constant evolution of human intelligence through scientific inquiry.