Pastor Dennis Terry and Santorum

Pastor Dennis Terry of the Greenwell Springs Baptist Church has blessed Santorum this past week. Religious figures blessing and endorsing political figures is a relatively normal occurrence. They are very interesting when they happen though as they can be a window into the candidates 'private' religious beliefs as they, after all, are accepting their blessing/endorsement. Thus Pastor Terry should be of major concern for all Americans, as he embodies and reflects certain fundamentalist religious viewpoints that Santorum agrees with.

About the LGBTQ community, Terry said, "As long as sexual perversion is being normalized, somebody needs to stand up and say, 'God have mercy on us! God, forgive us!'" This should come as no surprise. The LGBTQ community are second class citizens, they are not normal and any effort to 'normalize' them is a threat to him, his community, his religion and his ideal vision of this country. This is typical us versus them, in-group/out-group, bullshit. He of course is speaking for all Christianity and all Christians, as his limited view of religion of course is the one and only correct version. Arrogant and hateful. If you are not with him, you are against him.

He also said, "I don't care what the liberals say, I don't care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation." This isn't an uncommon statement, many people share it. However, the history is just false. There is exhaustive historical evidence to suggest just the opposite. I won't go into this here, but i will build up to writing a future blog post about it.

"There's only one God, and his name is Jesus," he says. "I'm tired of people telling me that i can't say those words. I'm tired of people telling us as Christians that we can't voice our beliefs or we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me. If you don't love America, if you don't like the way we do things, i have one thing to say - get out!" The crowd burst into applause. He continued. "We don't worship Buddha! I said we don't worship Buddha, we don't worship Muhammed, we don't worship Allah, we worship God, we worship God's son Jesus Christ." He received a standing ovation, which included Mr. Rick Santorum.

Terry can say whatever he likes. One of the actual cornerstones of this country is free speech. He can say whatever he likes, even if it's hateful. As long as it is private! And of course, not involved in the political discourse! If you don't love America, he says, then get out! If you don't do thing the way we do things, then get out. From this vantage point, there is one way that we do things, or one way that we should do things. Pluralism is itself the enemy, which Terry and Santorum call "liberal".

Terry and Santorum embody a very dangerous ideological worldview. An intolerant and arrogant worldview. The fact that he has gotten so much support from the religious right will hopefully show to the rest of us that the time of tolerating the intolerant will come to an end.

Santorum's Religious Fundamentalism Part 2

Santorum’s so-called religious values permeate all of his social policies. I’d like to focus on a few of these social policy areas: Abortion, sex and contraceptives, and the environment.

Lets start with a salacious quote: “A society that says that sex outside of marriage is something that shouldn’t be encouraged or tolerated.” This is a good one. Have you ever met anyone who thinks that sex outside of marriage should be discouraged and shouldn’t be tolerated for any other reason than religion? I haven’t. What other motivation or justification could there possible be for sex outside of marriage? This indicates a few things about Santorum. First and foremost, he is waaaay out of touch with the reality of the vast majority of human beings on this planet. People have sex before marriage. People have sex with other people while married. People have sex for pleasure. But the more important aspect of this quote is that Santorum is opposed to encouraging sex outside of marriage, through public policy, which has made him oppose contraceptives. This is not just anti-sex and anti-pleasure, but it’s anti-woman. He is completely out of touch with women’s health issues and family planning. Surprisingly, Santorum is opposed to a society that tolerates sex outside of marriage. His religious “values”, in this case, are completely motivating his positions on social policy. And these “values” just happen to be reflective of a radical, fundamentalist Christianity that is dangerous to himself and others.

Lets shift to abortion. Santorum has gone so far as to make pseudo-scientific claims condemning abortion. He said, “I don’t think you’ll find a biologist in the world that will say that that [a fetus] is not a human life.” For Santorum, life begins at the moment of conception. Where could he get this idea? It couldn’t be a religious perspective could it? Have you ever heard anyone claim that life begins at conception who wasn’t saying so because of their religious orientation? I haven’t. Santorum has even claimed that he would “advocate that any doctor who performs an abortion should be criminally charged for doing so.” People who are performing a health service are now somehow criminals, but not by civil law, by Santorum’s version of “higher law”, to which we must conform. 

This isn’t the first time the religious right has tried to use pseudo-science to back their fundamentalist viewpoints. Lets take a quick example about the environment. Santorum’s view on the environment is as such: “we were put on this earth as creatures of god to have dominion over the earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not the earths benefit.” It logically follows that Santorum doesn’t believe in global warming. But this quote illustrates a complete misunderstanding of the interconnected nature of the global system; that what it is in the earths benefit is in fact in our benefit. The healthier our environment, the healthier we will be. Environmental issues usually go in one ear and out the other for many religious fundamentalists. My own brother even said in light on environmental problems, “What does it matter anyway? Jesus is going to come down and fix everything anyway.” This abnegates all human responsibility in caring for our planet and our finite resources. I wouldn’t count on Santorum as acting in the interest of any environmental concern. And why? Because of his religious “values”. 

Santorum's Religious Fundamentalism Part 1

I would like to devote the next few posts to GOP Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum, as he is now a contender for being the GOP front-runner. There are many things that trouble me about Santorum. His social policies on homosexuality, contraceptives, abortion and sexuality should all be extremely troubling to anyone who is not a religious zealot. Speaking of religion, his views on religion are especially problematic as they infuse his positions on social policies ranging from marriage to the environment. Here are a few of his positions:

In the realm of religion and worldview, he has said that Obama’s worldview is a “phony theology,” that its “not an ideology based on the Bible.” This is very concerning statement for many reasons, the first being its arrogant exculsivist attitude. For those not familiar with the term exclusivist, allow me to briefly introduce the idea. Exclusivism is the attitude that “my community, [my nation], my tradition and set of values, are the only correct ones, excluding all others” (Grazer, 1999). This unfortunately is the most common perspective amongst fundamentalists and extremists. My way is the true way and all others are false. This attitude of course brings all sorts of other issues such as truth claims, but I’ll speak about it more in another post. For these purposes, it is sufficient to say that Santorum believes that any ideology not based on the Bible is thus somehow inferior, invalid or false, as it is not wanted in the public sphere. This naturally creates an issue, as this view is not only dangerous for other people of faith, it’s a view that is also un-American. Santorum has said,

“I’ve taken the position that the moral values reflected in the laws should be the moral values that built this country. Which is the Judeo-Christian values, and the laws should try as much as possible to comport with a higher law.”

This quote illustrates a few things. First, that there is a higher law, in this case, Judeo-Christian law, and second that those arbitrary, dangerous, and exclusivist laws should be the basis of our laws and public policy. (Also extremely un-American.)

He has also said, “No other country in the world has its rights based in god-given rights, not government given rights…if rights come from the state everything government gives you it can take away. The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away.” This is a juicy quote. First it embodies an American exceptionalism that I have little patience for. There are plenty of countries that base their laws and public policy on God and those countries tend to be Muslim.

But Santorum says there is a difference, although he doesn’t really elaborate it: “Unlike Islam where the higher law and civil law is the same. In our case we have civil laws, but our civil laws have to comport with the higher law. As long as abortion is legal, at least according to the Supreme Court, in this country, we will never have rest. Because that law does not comport with god’s law which says…that all life has value. [Because God said] ‘I knew you in the womb’”. So what’s the difference? We cannot allow abortion because it is against God’s law. First of all, it is the pure embodiment of arrogance to say that you know what God’s law is, as there are millions of religious people worldwide that have a different idea of what God’s law is. Second of all, that shows no difference whatsoever between civil law and “higher law”. Civil law, in this case, and in the cases of homosexuality, contraceptives and marriage must conform to his own fundamentalist and exclusivist interpretation of what this higher law states. Going back to the first quote of this paragraph, our rights are in fact outlined in our government. And yes, the government does not always protect these rights as exampled by cases with slavery, race, the equality of women, and state sanctioned discriminations of every kind. But these laws change and adapt, as they must to suit the ever-evolving moral zeitgeist. All rights can be taken away. The role of government is to protect its citizens, to protect the rights that protect its citizens. Never has there been a time in history when more human rights have been elucidated and protected, all due to modernism and secular ideology. Religion, which has had millennia of dominance in state affairs has never been able to come close to this record of human rights protection, in fact, the modern human rights protections come largely in spite of historical religious dominance.

Santorum says we need to understand who we are as Americans. However, once again, the religious right, championed by Santorum forget to recall the Treaty of Tripoli signed by President John Adams in 1797 that says, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”