Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

Many’s the time I’ve dropped the quote above into Internet flame threads dealing with church and state issues. It does no good, of course, because those who hold as a matter of faith that the United States was meant by the Founders to be a Christian nation cannot see evidence to the contrary. I mean that they literally cannot see it; it is quite remarkable. You can hold it under their noses; you can fan it in front of their faces; they cannot see it. They will blink at you and act as if the evidence did not exist. I wonder if some part of their brains is switched off.

In one of the few circumstances a Christian theocrat actually responded to the quote, he grabbed hold of the “Infidel” part and interpreted the passage to mean that governmental discrimination against “Mohammedans” and “Hindoos” was OK with Jefferson.

So, you see, we have a problem.

Thanks to the ongoing Terri Schiavo drama, we’re seeing a lot of willful blindness these days. Most obvious is the willful blindness of the “save Terri” faction, who cannot be made to see the facts of Mrs. Schiavo’s medical condition. Right now Michael Schiavo and his supporters are hoping an autopsy of Terri Schiavo’s brain will eventually settle the matter of her persistent vegetative state beyond a shadow of a doubt. It would, in a rational world. But we know what’s really going to happen, don’t we? Release of the autopsy results will just touch off a new round of conspiracy theories. The coronor might as well not bother.

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

Through the Daou Report, I have found a more sophisticated example of willful blindness in the form of an essay by Edward Feser titled “How to Mix Religion and Politics.” It begins:

We are constantly told by liberals — or “progressives,” or “the reality-based community,” or however it is they are marketing themselves this week — that religion and politics ought never to be mixed. Religion, it is said, should be confined as far as possible to the private sphere. In the public square, it is secular considerations alone that ought to get a hearing. The problem with these claims is that there is absolutely nothing serious to be said in their defense. We can of course readily concede that the Constitution forbids the establishment of any particular denomination as the official religion of the United States; I know of no one who denies this. But the question is not whether membership in some church or synagogue or other ought to be compulsory. The question is whether religious arguments should have the same standing in public life as secular arguments, and the answer is that there is no good reason they should not.

The author begins by framing the church/state issue in a dishonest way in order to strengthen his argument. Although I assume that by public versus private he means matters of law versus matters of private conscience, the implication is that liberals want religion to be kept so entirely private it is never seen in public, and that opinions influenced by religion may not be considered in debates on public policy. And this is a lie. Religion and political liberalism have a long history of working together, from the Abolitionist Movement through the Civil Rights Movement. One of the most prominent liberal philosophers of the 20th century, Reinhold Niebuhr, was an evangelical minister.

And, truth be told, I am a very religious liberal, and my opinions on all matters, including public ones, are heavily influenced by my religious practice. Mr. Feser assumes I don’t exist. Well, I do. Here I am. However, I am not inclined to have my religious practices enshrined in law so that everyone in America is forced to practice them, nor do I think decisions such as the disposition of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube be made based on my understanding of life and death. I don’t feel an urge to march around demanding that everyone in America accept my religious beliefs as the only legitmate religious beliefs. (Doing such would violate my religion, anyway; the Buddha taught us to respect other religions, even if we don’t agree with them.)

Mr. Feser goes on to say that, because religion can be based on reason and not just faith, religious arguments regarding public policy can be perfectly reasonable arguments. He gives “Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and Newton” as examples of religious people who were also famous for rational thought. Feser evokes the illustrious tradition of “rational theism.”

That’s fine, Mr. Feser, but Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and Newton ain’t here. And “rational theism” is to today’s Religious Right what a bag of hammers is to chickens.

Don’t see the analogy? Neither do I.

Wading through considerable verbiage, we finally reach the end of Mr. Feser’s essay:

Now, some liberals might object that it is one thing for religious intellectuals to weigh in on matters of public policy, but quite another for redneck Bible thumpers to do so. Yet why should the educational level of a person supporting a particular policy matter to the evaluation of the policy itself? If a policy can be supported with serious arguments made by serious thinkers, what does it matter whether someone who is uneducated also supports it for less sophisticated reasons? Do liberals and secularists think twice about supporting their own favored policies simply because some uninformed and inarticulate rock star or Hollywood starlet might favor them too? Why does the liberal always judge his own creed in terms of its most sophisticated representatives, and yet insist on judging rival creeds — conservatism and traditional religious belief, for example — in terms of their least sophisticated representatives?

Let’s think about this. No, seriously; somebody’s got to. Mr. Feser appears to be advocating some sort of weird affirmative action/political correctness doctrine applied to policy arguments, so that poorly reasoned and unfounded arguments are given the same respect as well reasoned arguments based on facts.

Mr. Feser, wrap your head around this: As a liberal — and a flaming, five-alarm liberal at that — I have no problem at all with religious people, members of the clergy, even, coming forward to advocate changes in law and public policy. But their arguments have to stand or fall on their own merits. If their argument consists of waving a Bible in my face and yelling about what God wants, I am not persuaded. I respect any rational, factually based arguments about public policy, including religious ones. The problem is that these days religious people in the public sphere rarely make rational, factually based arguments. Too often they’re not even making good theologically based arguments.

Just yesterday, I wrote this on my blog:

But where are the religious moderates who might speak up? Maybe we need to add another verse to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” There are many religious moderates in America, but I can’t think of a single moderate religious leader who is reasonably well known and widely respected.

Awhile back I wrote about the way the two biggest Christian denominations in the U.S. — the Catholics and the Southern Baptists — have been deliberately purging themselves of moderate and liberal members. And the rate at which allegedly Christian ministers have ignored Matthew 7:1 (Judge not, lest ye be judged) and piled on the let’s-smear-Michael-Schiavo scrimmage is downright alarming. Last night on some bobblehead show I caught a bit of Robert Schuller, whom I had considered fairly innocuous, explaining that Michael Schiavo’s love for his wife is not genuine, but just selfish. ‘Scuse me, Reverend Schuller, but how the hell do you know that?

These guys flatter themselves that they’re on a crusade to fight evil, and thus they’ve been co-opted by evil. This is how evil works. The Bible thumpers should stop thumping Bibles and read them instead.

And here I talked about how Buddhism influences my opinion of the Terri Schiavo controversy. So, you see, I make religious-based arguments, too.

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

Alas, Mr. Feser continues:

It will not do either to try to justify the liberal double standard concerning religion by regurgitating tired and tiresome clichés about religion’s tendency to lead to wars, persecution, Inquisitions, Crusades, Galileo’s house arrest, etc. For one thing, most of those who appeal to such clichés know very little about the actual history of the Inquisition, the Crusades, or the Galileo episode, and about how beholden the simpleminded popular image of these events is to Reformation and Enlightenment era polemics rather than to serious and objective historical inquiry. For another thing, the body count generated by such committed metaphysical naturalists and secularists as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and other acolytes of the Marxist counter-religion is far higher than anything even the most fanatical jihadist has been capable of.

I actually know quite a bit about the Inquisition, and knowing about it doesn’t make me think better of it, and I am not impressed by “yeah, but Marxists are worse” arguments, but let’s continue … I do run into liberals who are hostile to religion. In talking to them, I find that most of them have little experience with religion, and what experiences they’ve had are negative ones. Frankly, if I were a space alien and knew nothing about religion except for what cable news presents, I’d probably be hostile to it, too. I was raised in the Bible Belt, and in my life for every aggressively anti-religious liberal I’ve encountered in my life, I must’ve dealt with at least five aggressive fundamentalist proselytizers who told me I was going to Hell because I wasn’t Born Again.

I say to you what I say to anti-religious liberals: This is life in a pluralistic society. Deal with it.

And let me say that a “liberal” who tries to oppress religion is no liberal, and if you ever run into someone like that, let me know. I will smite him personally.

Finally, it is no good either to suggest that since we live in a pluralistic society, religious believers ought to keep their convictions off the table where public policy is concerned. For this point cuts both ways. Traditional religious believers have far more in common with each other, after all — at least on questions concerning abortion, euthanasia, sexual morality, and the like — than they do with secularists, and they are more numerous then secularists, at least in the United States. So why, if we are going to play the “pluralism” card in the first place, shouldn’t the secularists be the ones required to keep their deepest convictions to themselves and out of the public square? And if it is legitimate to mix secularism and politics, pluralism notwithstanding, how can it be any less legitimate to mix religion and politics?

You might have noticed that in the previous paragraph, Feser identified “Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and other acolytes of the Marxist counter-religion” as “secularists.” Mr. Feser uses the words secularist and secularism frequently in this essay, but he does not define what he means by this word. I infer that, to him, it refers to someone who is hostile to religion, or who follows a creed that is anti-religous.

Mr. Feser, what about someone who thinks that the Constitution of the United States, which does not once mention God, founded a secular government, and that religious practices and beliefs should not be codified into law so that all citizens are coerced into following those practices and beliefs. Is that a “secularist”? If so, there have been a whole lot of religious Americans who are secularists.

Also, note this sentence: “Traditional religious believers have far more in common with each other, after all — at least on questions concerning abortion, euthanasia, sexual morality, and the like — than they do with secularists.”

This tells me that Mr. Feser has a limited experience with religion. There are many sects and denominations in this nation whose doctrines and practices differ a great deal from that of the Religious Right. Unitarians, Quakers, Reformed Jews, Eastern Orthodox, etc. etc. etc. all have long and deep roots in American history, yet they are often out of agreement with the Religious Right. And I am personally aquainted with politically liberal evangelicals. However, these days liberal evangelicals are keeping their heads down and not speaking out much, lest they draw the tender concern of their politically conservative brethren, which is getting dangerous these days.

For that matter, there have been Buddhists in America for at least 150 years, and we’re about as different from the Religious Right as a bag of hammers from chickens.

They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

Mr. Feser continues:

This is not to deny that the fact of pluralism poses a serious political problem: it does, and I frankly confess that I have no idea how to solve it.

We already solved it. It’s solved in the very first clause in the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

And, as most liberals know, this limit on the power of the federal government was made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Look, Mr. Feser, this is not difficult. Laws are not to be made that are based only on one sect’s beliefs, even if that sect is a majority sect. Because, if a law is made based on the doctrine of Religion A, then citizens who are followers of Religion B are being forced to follow a religious belief against their will. And that violates THEIR free exercise of religion. Therefore, such laws are unconstitutional. If, on the other hand, a believer of Religion A can argue that the proposed law would have a benefit to citizens that is evident even to people who don’t subscribe to Religion A, then go for it. The Abolitionist Movement and the Civil Rights Movement provide lots of examples.

But then, neither does the liberal, whose favored “solution,” as I have argued elsewhere, basically amounts to the proposition that all views in a pluralistic society can be tolerated only so long as they submit themselves to the liberal’s own idiosyncratic and highly contestable conception of justice. That this peculiar brand of liberal intolerance ought to be regarded as superior to the religious variety is a proposition the liberal seems strangely uninterested in trying to justify. Perhaps he bases it on faith.

If being a liberal and standing up for freedom of religion makes me evil in Mr. Feser’s eyes, so be it. But if someday the Religion Police haul him off because of a breach of doctrine, maybe he’ll see the light.