Misinformed, uneducated Americans

I have a lovely neighbor across the street with whom I talk occasionally, usually when we are both outside tending to our gardens. She is a woman in her sixties, recently retired and caring for a husband who has begun to have disturbing neurological symptoms which aren't yet diagnosed. As my father sees a neurologist for his degenerative brain disease and as I am familiar with some of the neurologists in this geographical area, I asked who her husband was seeing. She gave me a name I didn't recognize, then said "He is a Muslim, but he seems like a good doctor though I can't understand him very well."

I acknowledged the second part of her statement, the difficulty understanding a foreign doctor, as my dad's doctor has a thick Chinese accent which always reminds me of the character Peter Sellers played in the movie Murder by Death.

What I didn't do, because it didn't connect at first, was ask her how she knew the doctor was a Muslim. As far as I know, most doctors don't advertise their religious affiliation, and I don't think most Muslim professionals do or say anything that would give that away. Did he drop down on a prayer rug while they were there? Did she spot a copy of the Koran in his office? Was his first name Mohammed?

What I think is that she made the same mistake a lot of Americans make when they don't know a lot about Islam or the Arab world. She confused being an Arab with being a Muslim. She may not realize that not all Arabs are Muslims, that many are in fact Christians, and others are atheists.

He may not have even been an Arab. He may have been Indian, or Pakistani, or some other nationality and she simply saw him as "Muslim." As to his religion, he could have been Hindu or Sikh.

I don't think my neighbor is unusual in her confusion regarding religion and nationality. I think more Americans are confused about this than are knowledgable, which is why it is so easy for opponents of Barack Obama to disseminate the lie that he is a Muslim. If all it takes for many Americans to believe someone is a Muslim is for that person to be dark skinned and/or have an unusual "Arab sounding" name, then Barack is an easy target.

I find it amazing that in this day, with the internet, hundreds of cable television channels, newspapers, radio, thousands of political books, and more people attending college than ever, that so many voters in this country still don't understand the difference between being an Arab and and being a Muslim, and don't know that not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs.

With such an uneducated populace, and FOX News and right wing radio working overtime to keep them misinformed, it will indeed be a miracle if Obama can overcome the smears and falsehoods, and actually become the next president.

Returning to the Dark Ages

I really, really don't like having the negative view of organized religion that I have these days.

I'm not talking about faith, or spirituality, or one's search for meaning in the universe, or even the sincere practice of a faith that encourages one to love one's enemies and care for one's neighbor.

I'm talking about the many negative manifestations of organized religion today in this country and around the world, manifestations that are self-righteous, arrogant, petty, hateful, and even deadly.

We are all familiar with the self-righteous ramblings of radical Muslims, and their call for jihad against the West, as well as their unconscionable acts, but should we not also be appalled by the Christians and Jews among us who are war's biggest cheerleaders and torture's apologists?

And what are we to think of the Catholic Church scandal involving the molestation of children by priests, and the multiple scandals in evangelical churches involving secret homosexual affairs by ministers even as they rail against homosexuality? The hypocrisy, of course, is stunning.

And now, religion has entered the presidential race in full force.

The Republican Party has been showing great deference to the evangelical community for years now, even as its leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell insist Americans brought 9/11 on themselves, but the presence of a Mormon in the Republican field has made the specter of religion in politics even more absurd, if not dangerous.

Today, for instance, candidate Mike Huckabee, soft voiced, dewey eyed, dimple cheeked minister, with the name reminiscent of that beloved urchin created by Mark Twain, asked if rival Mitt Romney didn't believe Satan was the brother of Jesus. Though he later apologized and acted as if he meant no harm, the horrible word was out: Mitt Romney believes Satan and Jesus are in the same family. Now this is, to the best of my understanding, part of the rather convoluted dogma of Mormons, but how different is it really than believing that Lucifer was once the brightest and most important of all the angels, which is what Christians believe? It isn't all that different. Both are part of the complex narratives each religion tells. (Some of the things I was taught in Catholic school were real doozies, but let's not go there.) However, the very fact that Huckabee would bring this up, knowing how it would inflame Evangelical Christians, shows just how viscious he can be, and how dogmatic he knows many Americans to be, when it comes to religion.

At first, it seemed the republicans might embrace the Mormon Mitt Romney as an acceptable candidate, mostly because Rudy Giuliani was pro-choice and didn't hate gays, and no other candidate seemed capable of beating the democrats. He seemed nice enough, his looks were Reaganesque, and he was a white guy, but that religion thing just wouldn't go away. Apparently a group of evangelical home schooling parents in Iowa who couldn't stomach a Romney presidency began supporting Huckabee big time, and his candidacy has taken off. Now that it seems he can win, the evangelicals are flocking to support him, because, after all, it doesn't matter to them who might have the best economic or foreign policies or who might be the best leader, it only matters what one's religious beliefs are.

This, of course, is why our founders wanted to keep church and state separate, and why they said there must be no religious test for candidates for public office. They wanted to protect us from the kind of nonsense that ensues when we begin judging candidates on the basis of the church they attend and the religious dogma they embrace.

I thought we had gotten over this when Kennedy was elected president and proved that his religion had nothing to do with his presidential decision making. Fears of the pope sending orders to Kennedy, of course, were never realized and Kennedy is revered today by both Protestants and Catholics. But something has changed today. We seem to be in a big hurry to return to the Dark Ages when faith trumped reason, and religious affiliation was somehow proof of one's character and worthiness.

We should all remember how all of that turned out. The Crusades and the Inquisition, the two bloody and vicious historical events that pitted groups of believers against other groups of believers, are permanent blights on Christianity. Huckabee's attack (and other attacks circulating on the internet) may not be of the same severity as the attacks of the Inquisition, but they are in the same tradition.

Fortunately, the Dark Ages gave way to the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, which is what inspired our founders to create this nation and to separate church from state.

Now, it seems, some in the Republican Party want to join church with state again, not formally of course, at least not yet, but informally, through whispering political campaigns, and slipping "innocent" questions about someone's faith into an interview, or as Romney did, implying that atheists and agnostics are simply not good Americans, or as others are doing, using Barack Obama's ancestry to imply he might be a "secret Muslim."

When it comes right down to it, the problem is dogma, i.e. beliefs that are held as absolute, mostly because some "prophet" or group of anonymous writers or preachers declare them to be the truth. Most dogmas contain truly unbelievable things to those who don't share the faith. Not being a Mormon or a Muslim, the belief in the "revelations" to Joseph Smith and Muhammad seem far fetched to me, but then as a Catholic, I have to admit that the teachings about guardian angels, Limbo, Purgatory, and indulgences are pretty out there as well. And the evangelical belief that the earth is only 6000 years old and that someday the good will be "raptured" up into heaven leaving behind their beloved family members, not to mention their clothes, is pure fiction to me. But it doesn't matter what I think or what anyone thinks about one's own or another's religion as long as it doesn't force its way into our politics.

In this country that was founded by wise and enlightened men, who professed many different faiths, there should be no need to debate our religious beliefs. All of us have some nutty teachings in our religions, at least nutty to those outside. So what? We are free to believe what we want about God and spiritual things in this country, and that is what makes us such a great nation. So why do we want to blow it by getting all worked up about what one group believes vs. another group? Do we want to divide the nation even more than it is already divided?

A focus on the religious beliefs of the candidates is simply a distraction from the things that do matter in this presidential campaign, like the war in Iraq, health care, poverty, the shrinking middle class, the environment and global warming, the need to find alternative sources of fuel, the population explosion that threatens to deplete the earth's resources, AIDS, the housing crisis, and so on. I want to hear about those things, not about the candidate's prayer habits or his religion's dogma. Have we forgotten so soon that Saint Ronny of California, the Republican patron saint, and Blessed Nancy, his wife, rarely attended church and brought astrologers into the White House? Perhaps in today's climate, Saint Ronny would have had to drop out before the second debate.

These attacks on people for their religious beliefs are part of the dark side of organized religion, and they both anger and terrify me. Not only does this intolerance divide us from each other, it ensures the ignorance and laziness of certain citizens when it comes to governance and voting. It is much easier to vote for a candidate on the basis of one issue, such as gay marriage or abortion, than to do the hard work of finding out all the policy positions of the candidate and the broad direction in which he or she wants to take the country. And it is much easier to simply believe God will guide the nation and anoint the leader, and then whisper his choice to you through your minister, than it is to educate yourself as a citizen.

It can't be said often enough that we are electing a president, not a saint, a theologian, or a holy man. We should be looking for courage and wisdom and maturity and stability and the ability to remain steadfast when trouble comes. We know that the pressures on any president are enormous. If prayer gives the president courage and strength to endure, terrific! If he gets his courage and wisdom from some other source, who cares? His religion, or even his lack of faith, should not matter. What should matter is his competence, his trustworthiness, and his vision for this country we all claim to love.

What shouldn't matter is whether he believes Lucifer was an angel or the brother of Jesus.