A Cautionary Tale for the Religious Right : Freedom: The role of the Christian Coalition in government should worry us all.

Once there was a man who witnessed the following phenomenon:

Two birds were quarreling. The larger bird pounced on the smaller bird and killed her. As the small bird lay dead, the big bird flew over her, flapping her wings and trying to awaken her.

After realizing what she had done, the larger bird flew away. A short time later she returned with a twig, which she placed in the dead bird’s mouth. A miracle took place. The small bird came back to life and flew off with the big bird.

The man ran to the area and grabbed the twig. He thought to himself, “I have the most important object in the world, a twig that can restore life! If only I could sell it to the king, how wealthy I would become.”

When he arrived at the king’s palace, he saw the carcass of a man-eating lion. “I am now going to sell the twig to the king,” he thought. “But first I must see if it still works.”

He took the twig and placed it into the mouth of the lion. Sure enough, the lion sprang to life. Then he pounced on the man and ate him.

We have witnessed many charges in society--some quite miraculous, such as the failure of fascism, communism and dictatorships. In America, we owe our success to religious democracy. If a country experiences religious democracy, then it has life. The religious freedom of the people gives our great republic its sense of values and moral backbone.

With the Christian Coalition signing an agreement with the Republican Party, I wonder if we may be creating a new monster--a man-eating government taking away our religious freedom.

We now have rights to practice as we wish. However, even the idea of a religious coalition being part of the deal-makers may jeopardize the very existence of the freedom we fought for. Our Founding Fathers were strongly concerned about not having religion established as part of the government. Government was to be religious, but having government dictate a national religion was not part of the plan. Remember, it’s freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, that concerns us.

As in the bird metaphor, the twig of life is religion. It makes the dead come alive. But when religion, the twig, is fed to the lions, it strikes the feeder and destroys life. In our case, it could mean a religious-governmental coalition curtailing the freedom of our great country or causing an anti-religious backlash.

America is a mosaic of religions. We can keep our country teeming with life through religion. Let’s continue to direct our families and friends with religious instruction. But when we deal with government, we must be prudent.

Early in 1790, President George Washington wrote a letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I. In it he stated, “For happily the government of the United States, which gives bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” Washington wanted to see an elected government that would support the people while ignoring their religion.

When the Republican Party and the Christian Coalition speak of using their religious power to control government, they may be discounting the message of our first President.

This is something to think about.