Looting in New Orleans Because Ten Commandments Not in Schools

Sunday September 4, 2005

Lacking any basic moral decencies, some Christians are arguing that people are looting in New Orleans because the government didn't promote Christianity by teaching them the Ten Commandments in public schools. Apparently, it's not the job of Christian churches to teach such things, so only the government gets blamed.

Craige McMillan writes:

Do you think New Orleans would be better off right now if its public school system had taught all students the Ten Commandments as part of their secular education?

No, I don't. There's no evidence that teaching the Ten Commandments has any effect. Do you think that Christianity might be better of if, instead of focusing on the Ten Commandments, they spend more time in their churches teaching the Beatitudes?

The political left in America has never been able to overcome its touchy-queasy aversion to all things God.

That will probably come as a surprise to political liberals who are Christians — some of who are politically liberal because they are Christians. Then again, people like McMillan tend to deny that such people are "real" Christians in the first place. They have made Christianity into something that requires a political loyalty oath in order to join.

World Wide Rant reports that evangelist Franklin Graham is saying similar things:

[W]e see the crime in New Orleans because, damnit, we took God out of the schools! ... That's right - apparently we secularists (among others) were to blame for 9/11 and now we're to blame for this.

Imagine, for a moment, the chain of thinking that these Christians must be experiencing: secularists try to ensure that no one religion is promoted or favored by the state, so God comes along and murders hundreds or thousands of people — many of whom may not be secularists in the first place. Our response should be to turn around and worship this God. Why? Because it will kill us if we don't.

And they accuse secularists of not being moral?

Besides, how do we know that it was the Christian god punishing us for our secularism? Maybe it was a Hindu god that has gotten annoyed with us. Perhaps Zeus is tired of being ignored. Because the government is equally unsupportive of all gods and all religions, the same "argument" works for all of them.

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