In the name of God (Polly Toynbee: Must Oust Religion From Public Life)

The Guardian (U.K.) | Friday July 22, 2005 | Polly Toynbee

[nickcarraway]

Blair has appeased and prevaricated. Now, as the death cult strikes again, he must oust religion from public life

Two weeks on, London is stricken once more. The death cult strikes again, unstoppable in its deranged religious mania. This time no deaths but a savage reminder of the unknown waves of demented killers lining up to murder in the name of God.

Whatever they intended, the message was loud and clear: they can and will do this whenever they want and it does indeed spread very real terror. The police have said there are many more of them. The security services have already revealed that they know absolutely nothing. In the growing fear and anger at what more may be to come, apologists or explainers for these young men can expect short shrift. This is not about poverty, deprivation or cultural dislocation of second-generation immigrants. There is plenty of that and it is passive. Iraq is the immediate trigger, but this is about religious delusion.

All religions are prone to it, given the right circumstances. How could those who preach the absolute revealed truth of every word of a primitive book not be prone to insanity? There have been sects of killer Christians and indeed the whole of Christendom has been at times bent on wiping out heathens. Jewish zealots in their settlements crazily claim legal rights to land from the Old Testament. Some African Pentecostal churches harbour sects of torturing exorcism and child abuse. Muslims have a very long tradition of jihadist slaughter. Sikhs rose up to stop a play that exposed deformities of abuse within their temples. Buddhism too has its sinister wing. See how far-right evangelicals have kidnapped US politics and warped its secular, liberal founding traditions. Intense belief, incantations, secrecy and all-male rituals breed perversions and danger, abusing women and children and infecting young men with frenzy, no matter what the name of the faith.

Enlightenment values are in peril not because these mad beliefs are really growing but because too many rational people seek to appease and understand unreason. Extreme superstition breeds extreme action. Those who believe they alone know the only way, truth and life will always feel justified in doing anything in its name. You would, wouldn't you, if you alone had the magic answer to everything? If religions teach that life after death is better then it is hardly surprising that some crazed followers will actually believe it.

Moderates of these faiths may be as gentle as the carefully homogenised Thought for the Day preachers. But other equally authentic voices of religion, the likes of Ian Paisley or Omar Bakri Muhammad, represent a virulent intolerance that is airbrushed out by an official intellectual conspiracy to pretend that religion is always or mainly beneficent. History suggests otherwise. So do events on the streets of London. Meanwhile the far left, forever thrilled by the whiff of cordite, has bizarrely decided to fellow-travel with primitive Islamic extremism as the best available anti-Americanism around. (Never mind their new friends' views on women, gays and democracy.)

It is time now to get serious about religion - all religion - and draw a firm line between the real world and the world of dreams. Tony Blair has taken entirely the wrong path. He has appeased, prevaricated and pretended, maybe because he is a man of faith himself, with a Catholic wife who consorts with crystals. But never was it more important to separate the state from all faiths and relegate all religion to the private - but well-regulated - sphere.

Instead David Blunkett said he wished he could spread the ethos of religious schools everywhere and Labour has done just that. The 3% of the population who are Muslim may well feel excluded in a country that makes so many special allowances for Christians when slightly more Muslims go to the mosque than Anglicans attend a church once a week.

A third of all state schools are religious. The National Secular Society, a lone voice in monitoring their onward march, reports that Labour has let 40 more nonreligious state secondaries be taken over by the Church of England in the last four years, with another 54 about to go. The Office for the Schools Adjudicator said in a recent report that the only reason faith schools often achieve better results is because of "their practice of selection from churchgoing families". That attracts the pretend churchgoers, but selection, not religion, is the magic.

In the face of this hypocrisy it seems a small thing to let Muslims have more schools too. Only this week Ruth Kelly (devout herself) announced plans to go ahead in her autumn white paper with more Muslim schools. Bombs, she said, would not stop her policy of offering more "choice" and allowing more faith groups, including Muslims, to run schools. A Hindu state school will open soon in Harrow.

But this is not choice. Only yesterday an angry email arrived from a parent on the south coast protesting that the only choice of primary school was a C of E, a Catholic and an oversubscribed ordinary school. Disqualified from the first two, failing to get into the third, their child is sent miles across town; three nonreligious schools would have been genuine choice. A YouGov poll shows that more than half of voters oppose this. While Northern Ireland struggles with sectarianism festering in religious schools, this is no time to foster yet more segregation.

So what do we do about the madmen? Bombs do change things, maybe not in the extremists' favour. A great shift in attitude seems to have swept through many Muslim groups who signed the full-page newspaper statement yesterday headed "Not in Our Name". Many were equivocators on the fatwa that had Salman Rushdie locked away for years. At the time Iqbal Sacranie himself said: "Death, perhaps, is too easy for him ... his mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks forgiveness to Almighty Allah." Nowadays Sir Iqbal is a leading moderate, showing how tolerance grows, given a chance.

The statement read: "We will not allow our faith to be hijacked by a few extremists. British Muslims should not be held responsible for the acts of a few individuals." Entirely right . Yet - like members of the same family - like it or not they are stuck with responsibility for rooting out wild men hiding in their midst and questioning what elements of their religious practice have proven so lethal. But no one can police minds and no new draconian laws to silence thinkers and preachers will ever stop dangerous ideas.

All the state can do is hold on to secular values. It can encourage the moderate but it must not appease religion. The constitutional absurdity of an established church once seemed an irrelevance, but now it obliges similar privileges to all other faiths. There is still time - it may take a nonreligious leader - to stop this madness and separate the state and its schools from all religion. It won't stop the bombing now but at least it would not encourage continued school segregation for generations to come. And it might clear the air of the clouds of hypocrisy, twisted thinking and circumlocution whenever a politician mentions religion.

polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk

[PaxMacian]

"killers lining up to murder in the name of God. "

"Allah" is not the name of God!
It is the name of a pagan cult moon god of war
appropriated by a mass murdering demon possessed
heretic which has been responsible for the horrible deaths
of millions of human beings.

[redgolum]

I was itching to say something like this all day. You got it, man. Now go hide

Nah, I prefer to be the one making the noise than the one hiding in the corner. Quicker that way!

[porkchops 4 mahound]

This tripe reads best to the tune of "the International", as does most of the Guardian's Commie blather.

[antiRepublicrat]

Baptist Christians ended slavery!

In this country. The English had already started that long before. A court ruling eliminated slavery within the Isles in the 1700s, they banned the slaved trade in 1807 and abolished slavery throughout the Empire in 1833 (which, unfortunately for the slaves, we were no longer part of).

Every freedom that is being lost today is being lost because of the demands of socialists and because of the attacks on Christians.

That's quite over-arching. It was Christians who gave us Kelo, Christians who passed the DMCA, Christians who expanded the WOD with the attendant loss of freedom. Don't look at everything through a religious lens, or in those cases you could claim Christianity is responsible for those losses. That is, unless you wish to redefine everybody who does something you don't like as a non-Christian.

Violent crimes are occuring at about 4x the rate of the 1960's and about 10x the rate of 100 years ago when this nation had far, far more Christians (as a percentage of population).

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. I'm sure you're reporting statistics you saw, but the BJS says violent crime rates are way down from '73. You also ignore other possible factors.

Atheists do not believe it better to die for liberty than suffer tyranny because death for them is the end, the ultimate confinement

Simply, factually wrong.

"The Christian Religion,... brought to the original purity and simplicity of its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind." -- Thomas Jefferson, Mar 23rd, 1801 letter to Moses Robinson

You left out what's in the ellipsis: "... when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and ..." Given their track record in securing personal freedom, Jefferson was none too fond of institutions founded upon Christianity, although he had great respect for Jesus and his teachings.

[steve-b]

Unpersuasive -- the availability of mass production is not adjusted in.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

An absurd rant. Equating Islamic terrorism with religion and Christianity in general is ludicrous. The author makes religion the cause of evil as if atheism and secular humanism offer immunity from mass homicide. History has demonstrated otherwise.

[ladyinred]

See how far-right evangelicals have kidnapped US politics and warped its secular, liberal founding traditions.

What history book has this nut been reading?

Looking at what goes on in this country these days, I hardly think those" nasty far right evangelicals" have much say here anyway. /sarcasm

[qam1]

Our society has never been more depraved or evil than it has become in the last 10 years. Violent crimes are occuring at about 4x the rate of the 1960's and about 10x the rate of 100 years ago when this nation had far, far more Christians (as a percentage of population).

But what a bunch of tripe, true enough the country is trending away from Christianity

From 1991 to 2001, The Number of the non-religious doubled in number while at the same time the number calling themselves Christians declined by 10% this decline in Christianity is especially seen in young people.

However,

Yet the even though the younger generations are the most unchristian violent crime rate has declined through this period, as well as The pregnancy rate for unmarried women has continuously declined through the 1990s and the abortion rate dropped by about 25 percent for both married and unmarried women through the 1990s , The teen Pregnancy Rate Reached a Record Low, More Teenagers are saying no to sex and Drug use by teenagers continues to decline.

If Atheism leads to great evil and poor morals wouldn't the trends be the going the other way?

Here is two articles for ya' on how the morailty of young people in our country is improving greatly

Rush Limbaugh on the Next Generation and It's the Morning after in America

You will notice 1 thing missing from both articles, Religion.

and let's not forget Atheist/Agnostic are ~15% of the population yet make up just  0.2% of the prison population

and

Born Again Christians are more likely to divorce than Non-Christians

Born Again Adults  - 27%
All other adults - 24%

Non-denominational Protestant - 34%
Jews - 30%
Baptist - 29%
Mormons - 24%
Catholics - 21%
Lutherans - 21%
Atheists/Agnostics 21%

So sorry, Christianity doesn't equal morality and as Christianity continues to decline the country will be no worse off for it.

We are under attack. The US Constitution is under attack. Right now a group of secular humanist academics are engaged in writing a new Constitution that they will promote as being necessary in this day and age. It will drop the 2nd Amendment and will be loaded with secular humanist values.

Really, can you name some of them?

How many of the 42 presidents have been "secular humanist"? How many members of congress? How many Supreme Court Justices?

Become enlightened and join us in the war for freedom. Join the only people to have ever created a free nation.

uuumm. The Roman & Greeks which we base our government on

You do not have to convert to Christianity to support liberty. We welcome people of all faiths who will help us and demand that the US Constitution be re-established and enforced.

No thanks, I know your definition of freedom which has little to do with actually being free and I have no desire to be your Dhimmi

[MattDillon]

You are correct about the Constitution. That's what I meant when I said separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. However, the courts have absurdly expanded the definition of the establishment clause far beyond what the framers intended.

My central point remains the same, however. The idea -- whether it's in the Constitution or not -- that church and state should be separate has not driven Americans away from religion in droves as fundamentalists fear and secularists hope. Rather, it has freed churches to be nimbler and more entrepreneurial than the state can ever be. This has had the effect of making Americans feel closer to their churches than to their state.

Thus when federal authorities go down to some little town in "Red State" country and force it to remove the Ten Commandments from a public venue (or discontinue school prayer, as happened some decades ago), the effect of that action is not to make the population more secular. Rather, it is to change those people's relationship to the federal government. Now they are even less inclined to think the state represents them.

I'm convinced this is something secular liberals don't understand. They are so accustomed to thinking in terms of "top-down" policy, they think they can secularize the culture by secularizing the state. This strategy has backfired in multiple ways. By weakening Americans' identification with the federal government, liberals have undermined their ability to build support for a whole host of statist ambitions.

[Mark Felton]

You arer already a "dhimmi". You are a slave to your own ignorance.

You quote crime statistics from 1991 to 2005? LOL How corrupt you are. The problem really began in 1960 with the influx of socialist insurgents as part of the hippy movement.

Now go quote crime statististics for the last 50 years, or 100 years.

source:Hypertextbook.com

I demand a seperation of government from the religion of secular humanism. Since the 1960's it has been destroying our nation.

Socialists cannot tolerate Christianity, that is why they must destroy it before they can take full control. Christians do not worship the State, Thank God.

[Mark Felton]

BTW: The Federal government was far,far smaller and far less intrusive 75 years ago than today. heck, even drugs were legal back then (alcohol prohibition didn't last long).

Guns were also much, much easier to acquire. (I remember when i was 8 years old walking to the hardware store with my g-fathers .22 rifle and buying shells. No questions asked. i went plinking by the creek.)

Crime was far lower in those days. Guns are not the problem. Secularism, atheism is the biggest problem.

Source: Crime Atlas 2000

[Mark Felton]

" Really, can you name some of them?"

From the Boston Globe;

" at a conference at Yale last month, many of the nation's top left-leaning law professors met with more than 600 activists, lawyers, and law students to imagine the day when Democrats and liberals emerge from the wilderness. The Yale confab, organized under the (optimistic) title ''The Constitution in 2020,'' was sponsored by key elements in the not-so-vast left-wing conspiracy: the Yale Law School, the Center for American Progress, the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute, and the American Constitution Society (ACS), a fast-growing organization set up four years ago to counter the work of the influential Federalist Society, which has been at the forefront of the push for a more conservative judiciary since its launch in 1982.

The Yale event kicked off a multi-year ACS project on ''The Constitution in the 21st Century,'' which is intended to advance ''a progressive constitutional vision - though organizers admit they are a long way from full agreement on what that vision is. The brainstorming will continue in Washington in July at the ACS national convention, with three days of panels on such topics as ''The Future of Election Law,'' ''Interrogation, Torture, and the War on Terror,'' ''Moral Values and the Constitution,'' and whether there should be new limits on ''the commander-in-chief power.'' Former North Carolina senator and possible 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards is scheduled as a featured speaker."

[Lancey Howard]

All the state can do is hold on to secular values. It can encourage the moderate but it must not appease religion. The constitutional absurdity of an established church once seemed an irrelevance, but now it obliges similar privileges to all other faiths. There is still time - it may take a nonreligious leader - to stop this madness and separate the state and its schools from all religion. It won't stop the bombing now but at least it would not encourage continued school segregation for generations to come. And it might clear the air of the clouds of hypocrisy, twisted thinking and circumlocution whenever a politician mentions religion.

Spoken like an American Democrat.

[Mark Felton]

The philosophy, ethics, morals and laws of Christianity are very well defined. When followed closely they foster peace and prosperity and liberty.

When a person violates those laws he cannot be said to be acting like a Christian.

If a socialist votes for capitalism and liberty he is not a socialist, no matter what he calls himself.

We should be acting more like Christians, not less. When we were more dominated by the Protestant spirit we were a better nation in many ways, crime was much, much lower. There are plenty of statistics to prove that, overwhelming data. (Just look at the behaviour of children in schools today versus 40 years ago)

It is amazing that when it comes to failed, destructive government programs the leftist solution is to expand them and give us even more of the same failed programs.

Yet when Christians fail individually the leftists want to discard Christianity entirely. (they want Christianity suppressed to allow for the growth of their socialist religion of secualr humanism)

I have far more sure validation of the relationship between freedom as a product of Christianity than there is a relationship between global warming as a product of man-made effluents.

The fruits of Western Civilization are indisputable. That those individuals of that civilization were overwhelmingly Christian, or lived in Christian founded societies, is no coincidence.

""In the United States the sovereign authority is religious,...there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nations on earth." -- A. de Tocqueville, "The Republic of the United States and its Political Institutions Reviewed and Examined", 1851, Vol 1, pg 331-332

[Mark Felton]

"I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." -- -- A. De Tocqueville

[qam1]

You quote crime statistics from 1991 to 2005? LOL How corrupt you are.

And how corrupt of you to only go back to the 50's

The problem really began in 1960 with the influx of socialist insurgents as part of the hippy movement.

Yep by big time socialist like FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But guess what, They weren't Atheist they were all Christians.

Now go quote crime statististics for the last 50 years, or 100 years.

with pleasure

From the U.S. Department of Justice

There goes your theory right out the window.

Crime was far lower in those days. Guns are not the problem. Secularism, atheism is the biggest problem.

**sigh**  I guess every cult needs a scapegoat

But the facts don't back up your hatred.

1) The % of the population that is Christian now is about 76%, the % back in the late teens's, 20's and 30's was in the upper 90s. The murder rate was significantly higher then compared to now. Fewer Christians today vs early 20th century = lower murder rate, draw your own conclusion. 

2) Your whole notion is just plain silly. Before the 1990's Atheist were less than 10% of the population. How in the hell can such a small group of people be responsible for most of the crime in the country.

and again you dodged these

3) the number of people with no religion doubled from 1991 to 2001, ~14 million to ~29 million. If Atheism causes crime, and there are more & more Atheists why has the crime rate significantly dropped instead of massively increasing the last 10 years

4) Christians make up 76.5% of the general population yet 83.8% of the prison population. Atheist/Agnostics make up 14.1% of the general population but only 0.2% of the prison population.

I demand a seperation of government from the religion of secular humanism. Since the 1960's it has been destroying our nation.

And I demand to government follow the 1st Amendment and stay out of religion all together

Socialists cannot tolerate Christianity, that is why they must destroy it before they can take full control. Christians do not worship the State, Thank God.

Yeah right, whose trying to use to government to decide what we can/can't watch on cable TV, who wants the government to put their symbols all over the place, who wants to use the government to protelyze other people's children?

So whose really pushing for the government to promote their religion?

From the Boston Globe;

How about a link please, but your excerpts don't back you up unless you want to tell me what laws George Soros has exactly signed into law?

"I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." -- -- A. De Tocqueville

Oh yippee, Quote war

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise....During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.” -- James Madison

[Mark Felton]

Since you quote Madison then I may presume you are a devotee?

Then you must surely agree with Madison on these most important and overarching concepts which are not taught in modern secular public schools;

" Religion is the basis and Foundation of Government" -- James Madison, June 20, 1785

and this....

"Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe" -- James Madison, "Religious Freedom, memorial and Remonstrance"

Yet even the "enlightened" Madison was "forced" by a Baptist Preacher to adopt the 1st Amendment and the Bill of Rights, to which he was originally opposed, and would have lost his office had he not come around.

Do you comprehend? It required a devout Christian to enlighten Madison.

Without that Christian, and many, many more like him the entire world would not have benefitted from the spread of "freedom of religion" and individual rights.

Without Christian charity the rest of the world would be orders of magnitudes more impoverished and despairing.

As much as you despise the notion, we are predominantly founded upon Christian principles, thank God.

BTW: How interesting that once again you rely on an extract of a subset of data regaring murder rates in an attempt to prove your point rather than responding to the irrefutable fact that overall crime rates are way up, as true christians become fewer by comparison.

Madison also had this to say;

"...it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forebearace, love and charity toward each other." -- James Madison, (who studied the ministry before he took up law)

Besides disagreeing with Madisons philosphy above, You and Thomas Jefferson would certainly not see eye to eye either.

"My views...are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus Himself. I am Christian in the only sense He wished anyone to be; sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others..." -- Thomas Jefferson, April 21 1803 to Benjamin Rush

"I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion, and if I was siting as a juror upon its authenticity I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favour. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man." -- Alexander Hamilton, "Ratifier of the Constitution"

With regard to thos men like LBJ, FDR, Clinton, Carter and Kennedy; Christians are known by submission to JEsus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour and measured by their subsequent works and deeds. Of all of the above, only Jimmy Carter could be said to have remained faithful to Christian actions. The others did not behave Christian at all.

God sends unrepentent adulterers and liars to hell, but that is not for us to judge. Christians are sinners and not perfect, but good Christians abide by the Bible and in so doing make society better.

Finally;

"Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered." -- James Madison.

Our liberties were at their peak when this nation was under practically 100% authority of Protestant Christians. As Baptists in particular gained more power and influence liberties increased, slavery ended under their pursuasion, MArtin Luther King, a Baptist bible-thumper, helped win the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Today though when the influence of Christians has plummetted to new lows it is no coincidence that our liberties are rapidly deteriorating. Christianity is under assualt by those who wish to enslave the population with socialism and corporatism (both products of atheist belief systems).

We are free because we are/were Protestant Christians. There is no other reason. History shows the truth of this. Liberty worldwide has sprung from Protestants. Atheists, Muslims, Catholics, secular humanists and other popular creeds have only ever created tyrannies, monarchies and other forms of authoritarian states.

I am a bible-thumping evangelical, and I would die to preserve the Constitution and it is I that believes the government is too large by over 70%. Our government today is far, far too powerful and tyrannical yet othere is no "atheists for a smaller government movement" is there? There is only "socialist atheists for a larger government" movement since the 1960's.

Know your friends by their deeds. Christians are your allies for liberty.

[antiRepublicrat]

When a person violates those laws he cannot be said to be acting like a Christian.

There's the age-old problem: the laws according to whose interpretation.

they want Christianity suppressed to allow for the growth of their socialist religion of secualr humanism

Secular humanism does not necessarily have anything to do with socialism any more than Christianity does. True, there are secular humanists who have socialist agendas, just as there are Christians who do.

[Mark Felton]

" There's the age-old problem: the laws according to whose interpretation"

Not really. The "laws" are very clear. The method of worship is not, but the actual laws are crystal clear by any translation.

There is no dispute about the meaning of the 10 Commandments.

There is no dispute about the greatest Commandments;

Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” -- Matthew 22:37-40

You must love the Lord, and you must love your neighbor no matter what religion, race or class he/she may be.

Those who fail to follow those 2 commandments have failed Christ, failed humanity and failed themselves.

[Mark Felton]

" Secular humanism does not necessarily have anything to do with socialism any more than Christianity does."

Secular humanism supposes mankind to be the supreme beings of the universe, thus they support only governments that put man at the top in full authority.

Secular humanists do not believe individual rights come from God, and therefore do not believe that individual citizens have rights superior to the authority of the State. They believe all rights come from the State, thus the State has the supreme authority as it does in socialism, marxism, authoritarianism.

Christians know that all individual rights are the gift of God and should not be taken away by the State. With God as the Supreme Authority Christians are mandated to overthrow any government which would deny such God-given rights and impose a tyranny.

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" -- Thomas Jefferson