Keeping the State out of Religion.

America prides itself on the separation of church and state and there is much debate on how much religion should influence the politics of our nation. Some people suggest that interjecting religion into politics corrupts the separation of church and state set by the nation’s founding fathers. However, people never seem to examine the reverse phenomenon of how much religion in America has been corrupted or distorted by the practice of politics and bringing political and economic beliefs into ones interpretation and practice of religion.

The thing about religion is that it is so often open to interpretation. A hundred people can read the same scripture and come up with a hundred different interpretations of it. There is a strong probability that how one interprets the scriptures or what scriptures that they place emphasis on, is greatly determined by ones politics. A conservative and a liberal can worship the same God or religion; pick up the same version of the bible, read the same scripture…yet have completely different strategies or beliefs in regard to dealing with social issues. How can religion be so subjective when Gods intent is objective?

The reason that religion is often distorted is because of the self serving nature of mankind. People find the passages and scriptures that allow them to change the least or that most coincides with their biases and prejudice of others, while ignoring the ones that contradict their biases and practices. For example, many Christians found comfort in passages from the bible that talked about servants being obedient to their masters, during the America era of slavery. They ignored or overrode the other passages that talked about how one treats the least of humanity is how one would treat God. The cannon of scripture is and has always been parsed by religious followers to conform rationalize and continue their mistreatment of other human beings.

If there is a valid reason to separate church from state, then there is an equally valid reason to separate politics, economics and prejudice from religion. We must keep in mind that in this modern era, racism and prejudice being a taboo, that politics has become the Trojan horse for manifesting such attacks. In the past, a southern politician could say “Segregation today, Segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” and point to the target of their hate or disgust without shame. Today, politicians and citizens cannot do this out of fear of being ostracized. Ergo, politics, for many, is the cover needed to exercise ones prejudice without the ostracism and shame that results from their naked ambitions. These same people will then sit up in the pews of Churches and interpret or reinterpret scripture in such a way that allows them to continue their ways under the auspices of religious doctrine.

This country likes to pat itself on the back an awful lot, by judging what we are a specific point in time. The judge of whom and what we are, however, is not measured by a point in time analysis, but rather, the summation of time. This nation was built upon and created by the stealing or conquering of lands from Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans for several centuries. Yet, people still have the audacity to talk about America as a Godly nation, while looking at other nations contemporaneously as evil, which gives us the moral rationalization to invade and reconstruct those places in our image...at least thats the pretext. No one ever stops to think that when this nation was as young as those nations are, that we were just as evil….but slowly and gradually evolved to be less evil to our people via going global and exploitation by proxy against people and resources in other nations.

When I look at America I see a country ripe from the harvest cultivated from centuries of evil and exploitation, as much as anything else. Now that it has created this bountiful harvest, it has released its slaves and ended its genocide against the Indigenous peoples, and now feels free to point the finger at other nations still employing evil to build up the harvest for their elites. Oh how righteous. There is not much moral differnce from employing evil to produce a harvest than there is in willfully consuming the harvest from evil.

If one wants to see the hidden evil in America come out, simply talk about Americas past and watch the demons manifest. Americans want to be “past that”. What this means is that these Christian and God blessed people want to put those memories behind them. They are not as focused on the effects or legacy of the past, just the memory and how it threatens to blow their cover as wolves in sheep clothing. “The bible teaches that we should forgive” and blacks and Native Americans should simply forgive and write off that history, not for the sake of God, but for the sake of white people who want to enjoy the assets from the past without having the burdens of its liabilities born upon them.

I personally get sick of hearing about how great America is. Is true that I would rather live in America that most other places. Yes! But it is also true that I would much rather have lived somewhere else than to live as a black person in this land for most of its colonial and American history. The only reason that this country is what it is today and that I exist here today is due to the evil of racial slavery and the economic motive behind it.

The present cannot be separated from the past, for the present is simply the creation of the past. All this talk about American Democracy, separation of church and state and how America is the model for the world is simply self exaltation that hides the true reality of how this nation arrived at its current station. If America is the template for the world, then every country has a few centuries of slavery, the usurping of native homelands, apartheid and other repressive and oppressive policies and practices to jump start their nation and lead them down the path to prosperity…if we would leave them alone and simply allow them to manifest in our image....as we did.