Written by Don Byrd
I posted earlier this week about some of the troubling views related to religious liberty and the separation of church and state expressed by Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. Most concerning are suggestions that Christians should hold a privileged place in the law, a dangerous notion that runs directly counter to the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty for all.
In an important op-ed in today’s Washington Post, conservative columnist Michael Gerson explains the challenge to American democracy posed by Moore’s views. Here is an excerpt:
He holds to a particularly rigorous vision of a Christian America, ultimately ruled and legitimated by “biblical law.” In his conception, the freedom of “religion” in the First Amendment is limited to the Christian (and presumably Jewish) version of the creator God. So the protections of the Constitution do not extend to, say, Buddhism and Islam. “Buddha didn’t create us,” explains Moore. “Muhammad didn’t create us. It’s the God of the Holy Scriptures.”
The absurdity of this claim is just stunning. Moore is contending that when the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” the document was actually intending to establish a religion. This indicates a type of zealotry willing to call night day and day night.
Read the whole thing.
