John Leland Religious Liberty Award Given to George W. Bush
Americans United comments on just how contrary Bush's actions have been to the beliefs of John Leland:
Leland was concerned about the free exercise of religion, but the ERLC award honors only half the man, therefore making it wholly unworthy of its namesake. Leland also resisted church-state unions, primarily government aid to religion. He insisted that religion is injured more by government favor than by government oppression.
Experience has taught us, he wrote in 1804, that “the fondness of magistrates to foster Christianity has done it more harm than persecutions ever did.”
Interestingly, and perhaps lost on or ignored by the ERLC, Leland abhorred politicians who flaunted their personal piety. He told a crowd gathered in Cheshire, Mass., in 1802, “Guard against those men who make a great noise about religion in choosing representatives. It is electioneering intrigue. If they knew the nature and worth of religion, they would not debauch it to such shameful purposes. If pure religion is the criterion to denominate candidates, those who make a noise about it must be rejected; for their wrangle about it proves that they are void of it. Let honesty, talents and quick dispatch characterize the men of your choice.”
In recent years, the John Leland Religious Liberty award has been given mostly to opponents of church/state separation — like senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum. This is rather like giving a Martin Luther King, Jr. award for civil rights activism to Strom Thurmond or the local Grand Wizard of the KKK. It seems clear that Leland opposed violations of church/state separation, recognizing that religion doesn't fare well when it is subjected to the official oversight and privileges, which means that he has more in common with atheists today than with Christians like Rick Santorum.
What about the award's praise of a person having been a "faithful witness" to faith in Jesus Christ? Well, it appears that the Southern Baptist Conventions considers launching an unprovoked war, deceiving people about the reasons for that war, creating secret prisons around the world, authorizing the kidnapping of foreign citizens and shipping them to prisons around the world for torture, allowing torture and abuse in American-run prisons, and more are all examples how one can be a "faithful witness" to faith in "the Lord Jesus Christ" to people around the world. Maybe the next secret American prison should have a plaque stating "sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention" put in the lobby?
Comments
I think my irony meter just broke.
Fantastic!! You don’t comment very often about “W” and I for one just wish he (and his whole administration for that matter) would up and die a gruesome death. The entire Bush saga needs to be taken far out into the woods and killed. And I am not a violent kind of guy, but I just hate that man to no end!
There’s really not much in the way of contradiction in this award if one remembers that George Bush has been a strong advocate of the form of Christianity, which is really a matter of identity and power, and not much of one for any of the hard parts of its substance, which might serve to indict a deceitful warmonger.
Corporate religiousity is primarily a quest for power and influence in this world or age, not a vehicle to prepare adherents for the putative next. Thus, the the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee was perfectly consistent in its choice of honoree.