The Constitution and the Bible
The Founders would not have created a form of government in which people are expected to govern themselves—a form of government by consent of the governed—if they did not first believe (in principle at least, and as “self-evident”) that a majority of the governed possessed the inherent intelligence, creativity, imagination, and especially the innate ethical conscience to govern themselves. It's called Democracy. And, anyone familiar with the intellectual history behind the Constitution understands that it is a legacy of Modernity: The Renaissance, The Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason. The Founders, as direct witness to a history of abuse and oppression by a hierarchy of unassailable authorities—the popes, the kings, the landed gentry, etc.—created a bottom-up, self-organizing, open-system of government which seeks to deconstruct over-ambitious, potential demagogues by means of a system of checks and balances on individual power.
Many Fundamentalist Christians seem to believe---as evident by their demands that certain conspicuous plaques and monuments be showcased in public courthouses and other public arenas---that the Constitution is based on the Ten Commandments. Though ancient law certainly set a precedent for the basic "idea" of law, the underlying principles and values of Constitution are not the same underlying principles and values we find in Biblical law. In fact, the design and intent of constitutional law is the exact opposite of Biblical law (of all Christianity, for that matter, though the Reformation softened and liberalized Christianity considerably).
Whereas the Constitution is based on modern law---a product of human thought: ideally, an ongoing, mutable debate and conversation among responsible and informed citizens to determine a balance of rights between the individual and the state---Old Testament Biblical law is a rigidly immutable closed-system that stands in stark contrast to the Constitution's open-system of participatory government, "by and for the people." Whereas the Constitution attempts to redistribute political capital back to the community, allowing the community to collectively determine appropriate policy based on its considered needs, the church denies its congregation (or if a theocracy, denies an entire society) of any self-directed political capital to redress God's authority, demanding total obedience to that imaginary, male-entity’s sole demands, or the demands of its self-appointed human representatives.
In other words, it goes against Christianity’s central and necessary obedience to God's authority to suggest that a majority of the governed possess the inherent intelligence, creativity, imagination, and especially the innate ethical conscience---not to mention the independence and personal freedom---to govern themselves.
And due to this distinction, the Founders’ insisted on a separation of church and state leading to “a nation of laws, not men.” --- John Adams.
The Constitution was designed, through free speech and a free press, to allow the community to resolve its conflicts within a free marketplace of ideas. With regard to the recent SCOTUS draft on abortion (see more below): pro-lifers are allowed the freedom of speech (as are all American citizens) as codified in the Bill of Rights, to convince their fellow citizens not to get abortions. To the extent these ideas are sound, and to the extent their advocates are articulate and persuasive, these ideas will resonate with the community. (In fact, data shows that abortions have gone down over the last decade, though this is a complex issue.) In a democracy, we are expected to persuade a majority of citizens of our just cause within the public forum. This persuaded majority, in turn elects officials to establish the just cause as policy, law, etc. (yes, we are "... a Republic, if you can keep it"). And we can mobilize and assemble freely to promote our causes. And so, it runs against the spirit of the Constitution for one party or sect (regardless of their numbers, or what state they happen to reside in), based on non-democratic principles, to force its particular belief-system upon a secular public. No law forces pro-lifers to get abortions, and, for that matter, no law forces heterosexual Christians to marry persons of the same sex. In America, it’s not the government's business what personal lifestyle choices Christians make as long as they are not a threat to the public overall. And it’s not the presumption---in fact, it is appalling to the point of absurdity---that six Catholic Supreme Court Justices should assign greater legal status to a six-week-old fetus, with fewer brain cells than a housefly, than to a fully developed, fully sentient, reasoning, and emotionally responsive woman; a self-aware, independent agent possessed of free will, robustly productive, alive, and contributing to their society at large. It’s not presumption of the SCOTUS to legislate their particular religions moral views. It’s their duty to adjudicate the civil rights of its active and engaged citizens.
They deserve to be cast into hell! The wrath of God burns against them! The pit is prepared! The fire is made ready.
--- Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758)
A social psychologist might identify Christianity’s dark view of humanity as that which over time has instilled in its followers a collective fear and loathing of the other. In Deuteronomy 6:15 we are informed that: “…the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you; lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth”. And later (Deuteronomy 13:6, 8-15) we read the actual word of God:
If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is at your own soul, entices you secretly saying, “Let us go and serve other gods”,... you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him; but you shall kill him; your hand shall be the first against him to put to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God...If you hear in one of your cities...base fellows...have drawn away the inhabitants of the city, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods”, which you have not known, then...you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, destroying it utterly, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword.
This unpleasant character is the central figure in one of the most influential grand narratives in world literature, informing the beliefs of its native civilization over centuries. And my reading is that the highly influential god of the Old Testament is a morbid deification of the male ego. And the Christian belief that humankind is inherently corrupt due to the Fall from Grace (so easily played upon by nefarious agents for profit and power) is arguably the subconscious, stubbornly persistent, neurotic subtext of guilt and self and other loathing that fuels Americans’ ideological schisms, both current and historical, not to mention a self-fulling prophecy of our frantic momentum to planetary suicide.
But what else should we expect from an indoctrination in which the individual is born so morally corrupted that the individual is asked to beg forgiveness for simply being born.
In brief: the Constitution, unlike Christianity, promotes a faith and a healthy belief in human potential. It would, in principle, have us love and respect each other as it is "self-evident" that each of us deserves, equally, to be loved and respected, and that each of us be secured the freedom to prosper according to our many impressive and diverse faculties, and that each of us be secured the freedom to create and live our lives according to our chosen lifestyle. Is it perfect? Hardly. But extreme right-wing Fundamentalism, on the contrary, perpetuates an imaginary evil lurking in every human heart and exhibits a dangerous, un-American (to me, at least) cult-like obsession with saving the other from that imaginary evil within. Many are victims of senseless political campaigns that are driven by paranoia, insecurity, and authoritarian excess. Strip away the self-righteous moralizing and one finds a pathological obsession with controlling the other, and a worship of raw power along with all its ugly, militant paraphernalia: guns, guns, guns, and an entertainment industry rife with horrific violence that justifies might making right. If it means forcing Americans, through legislation (or much worse), to live according to an archaic moral order invented by tribal patriarchs in the Middle East in order to establish and maintain patriarchal theocracy, then so be it. If that runs contrary to separation of church and the state, so be it.
To hell with the Constitution, and Democracy, apparently.
Roe v Wade: Welcome to the Dark Age of American Theocracy
The apparent SCOTUS decision to allow individual states to regulate abortions—some of which, Arkansas, for instance, would not allow abortions after six weeks, or even in cases of incestual rape of a minor—represents an abdication of the Founders clear intent to create a society informed by reason; that is, a free and independent investigation of science and the humanities (in this case the science of reproductive biology in which most experts agree that fetal viability is not established until the 23rd week), and its responsibility to the will of a free and independent citizenry, in this case, polls that show significant majority support for abortion laws as they currently exist. (Some argue that it's not the duty of the Supreme Court to reflect public opinion, that it's their duty to assess and judge an issues legal status according to the Constitution. Which is of course true. But Judge Alito's leaked opinion on Roe v. Wade is not really about judging abortion's legal status according to the Constitution, it is a selective pretense of legalese to obscure his intent to legislate his preferred religious beliefs. As Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post notes: Alito’s “…judicial screed relies on a 13th-century treatise that held women in regard ‘inferior to that of men.’ It cites the work of a 17th-century jurist who treated women as witches, or property.”); it represents an abdication of basic civil rights in favor a moral order invented by an ancient tribe of patriarchs, in which women were considered chattel, intent on forcing society to genuflect before the Almighty Male Ego (or to its many, hyper-ventilating, self-righteous human representatives); it rules that a government---contrary to a separation of church and state---impose a particular religious belief upon the bodies of women to the detriment of the overall health and well-being of those women and to the detriment of the community at large. Can one think of anything more un-American than a government demanding control of a citizen's very body? than a government forcing a citizen to give birth to an unwanted child against their will; to force that citizen, against their will, to live out their life burdened with the extraordinary demands and challenges of a responsibility they never expected or intended, a responsibility they may be ill-prepared for emotionally, psychologically, and economically—simply because six, Catholic Supreme Court justices based on their personal religious indoctrinations, say they must? This is tantamount to the government denying an American citizen the liberty to choose his or her own destiny. Yes. So much for Jefferson’s “unalienable rights…which all governments are created to protect…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Can one fathom the depths of such hubris? This ruling is just one more sad example of that perverse and seductive aphrodisiac, power: the perverted satisfaction that power arouses, the power to subordinate another human being to one’s own will. This is the sickness of popes, potentates, kings, and dictators throughout history. This is the warped psychology of fascism, plain and simple, and it is the mechanism behind all theocracies; and now it is America slouching toward another Dark Age of ignorance and the eventual barbarism ignorance unleashes.
Saving Babies
If pro-lifers want to save babies, perhaps they should consider the following: The Netherlands has among the world’s lowest teenage pregnancy and abortion rates thanks to its sex education, which starts at the age of four. The point to make here, based on my above commentary, is that the Netherlands, like the Founders of our Constitution, rightfully assume that a majority of reasonable individuals, when educated with credible facts, can be trusted to make decisions that serve their own best, self-interest, and, ultimately the best interests of the community. Perfect? Hardly. But the pro-lifers, on the other hand, overwhelmingly right-wing and Christian, who perceive an evil lurking in every human heart, would clearly be horrified at even the thought of introducing sex education to four-year-olds, due to their religious indoctrination which claims that humans are born evil and therefore that such education would certainly lead to rampant promiscuity. But facts—and even the potential to reduce abortions and therefore actually save babies—will never get in the way of the Fundamentalist’s first agenda, which is a deep-seated obsession to impose their particular belief-system, and hostility toward democratic government, on all Americans.
[i] I understand that the historical evolution of representative government is far more complicated and troubled than my simple example suggests, but none of that messy history refutes the implied analogy, i.e., a society established a legal framework as a system of checks and balances, designed, in principle, to deconstruct concentrations of power and its abuses, just as the meditative process is designed to deconstruct the concentrations of an overweening ego
[ii] The reader may think I am overly naïve, but I am fully aware of mans’ well-documented capacity for violence, injustice, and depravity. Maybe the critical reader is naïve. It’s remarkable that any justice and freedom exist at all.
Nail on head. Solid conclusion - driven home.