Rick Perry's War On America

If you're living under a rock, then maybe you haven't seen Texas Governor Rick Perry's 'hail Mary' play for conservative voters, entitled "Strong".

Strolling through what appears to be a wooded park, wearing a suede jacket that has been ironically identified as a ringer for Heath Ledger's costume in Brokeback Mountain, Perry tells us:

I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian. But you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As President, I'll end Obama's war on religion, and I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong...it can make her strong again. I'm Rick Perry, and I approve this message.

Perry's video became instantly controversial, and it's easy to see why. It sounds homophobic (can we coin a new word for bigots like Perry? I propose homomisic, "gay hating"). It's ridiculous...who is stopping kids from celebrating Christmas? And it ties Obama to yet another atrocity he isn't committing, a "war on religion", and conveniently ties liberals to this fanciful war in one snappy sentence.

Perry's claims are alternately loathsome and absurd, but there's a more subtle message here that every American should be wary of. It's a popular theme with many conservative political candidates based on a fallacy of their own invention. That fallacy is the idea that the United States of America has a single religious heritage which has been somehow attacked, destroyed, or subjugated during Barack Obama's Presidency.

America does not now have, nor has it ever had, a single religion. Any schoolchild can tell you that many of America's first European settlers were fleeing religious persecution and settled here to worship as they pleased, but their own faiths were in no way compatible. They were Pilgrim Fathers (Brownist English Dissenters), Puritans (English Protestants), Quakers, Mennonites, Dunkers, Schwenkfelders, Moravians, Roman Catholics, Jews, and Anglicans.

The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof', ensuring not only that Americans will always be free to practice the religion of their choice, but that the United States itself does not and will not endorse any particular religion. Article Six provides that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States".

The forty-four Presidents of the United States represent no less than 12 different religious affiliations, the third most common being "none" (after Episcopalian and Presbyterian). Notable Presidents who had no specific religious affiliation include Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Jefferson and Ben Franklin are considered by many to have been more properly Deists than Christians. Deism became prominent during the Age of Enlightenment among Christians who believed in God, but could not accept supernatural miracles, the infallibility of scripture, or the Trinity.

The phrase "In God We Trust" has appeared on U.S. coins since 1864, but it was not adopted as the official U.S. motto until 1956, a full 169 years after the Constitution was written. The country's previous unofficial motto was the wholly secular E pluribus unum, "Out of many, one". The Pledge of Allegiance was composed in 1892, but was not officially adopted as the country's pledge until 1942...and the phrase under God was not added until 1954, just 57 years ago.

In recent surveys 83% of Americans claimed to belong to a religious denomination, 60-75% of them being Christian. Between 4 and 5.5% of Americans are non-Christian...and another 15% of adult Americans claim to have no religious belief, or no affiliation, at all. And despite this seemingly high level of religiosity, in a 2008 poll only 9% of American adults said religion was the most important thing in their lives, compared to "family" at 45%, and "money" and "career" at 17%.

In 2011, the National Council of Churches of Christ published the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, which includes data on religious bodies reporting 60,000 or more members. In the U.S., no less than 73 different religious bodies were represented. President Obama is himself a Christian, and was a dedicated member of the United Church of Christ for more than 20 years until the media's focus on Reverend Jeremiah Wright's controversial statements led to his leaving it.

In short, America has no single religion or religious heritage to attack. In order to accuse Obama, or liberals, or atheists, or what have you, of attacking America's "faith", it is necessary for Governor Perry to wax poetic about an idyllic, fading America that has never existed outside of his imagination.

What exactly is this vague America Perry is nostalgic for? And why does he claim Barack Obama is at war with it? Republicans of every stripe loathed Bill Clinton, but none claimed he was at war with faith or religion.

I propose that the religiously unified America Rick Perry reminisces about was the America in which white male Christians had a stranglehold on our political power, our media, and our public dialogue. This cheerful America was firmly in place in the early 1950's, until African-Americans began to throw off the yoke of second-class citizenship they had worn since the Emancipation Proclamation. Still, white Christian men were safely ensconced in the White House until 2008, when Barack Obama took the oath of office. Obama, to my knowledge, is also the only President whose religion has been openly questioned (including accusations that he is secretly Muslim), and whose birth certificate's authenticity has been repeatedly challenged, in a public dialogue led exclusively by conservative and Republican politicians and media pundits. Coincidence?

The widening reach and influence of social media platforms such as Facebook won't make Rick Perry any happier. No one religion, political party, or philosophical outlook can control the voices of 800 million people interacting globally every day. No significant percentage of 800 million people will agree that homosexuals should not be serving in the U.S. military, or that Barack Obama is waging war on faith, or that Christian fundamentalism is the appropriate mission of the United States or its presidents.

If America can be said to have a heritage, it can be stated quite simply, and, in words primarily drafted by (Deist) President Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, it is this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.

In the 235 years since those words were written, the citizens of the United States have been admirably, messily, and gloriously striving to make the promise of those words a reality. In 2011 a particular segment of Americans, gays, have achieved an equality never previously enjoyed, with 6 states and the District of Columbia legalizing gay marriage, and President Obama repealing the Clinton-era "Don't ask, don't tell" policy which prevented gays from serving openly in our military. This makes gays a prominent target of conservative religious politicians such as Perry, who are always looking for a new enemy to replace the ones which are no longer socially acceptable scapegoats: blacks, women, or what have you.

Rick Perry's already weak political star should fade fast in the wake of "Strong", but as it does, Americans must not only continue to reject Perry's portrait of an America where those who don't look, think, and pray like him are the enemy: we must reject this mythical America wherever it rears its ugly, divisive head. To paraphrase his now-infamous words, democracy is what made America strong, and it can make America strong again. Not Rick Perry's democracy, but our democracy...yours, mine, gays', straights', Christians', atheists', and everyones in between.