Santorum Burning with Religious Bigotry

Religious tolerance took another blow recently when a Hasidic Jew in New York City decided a neighbor wasn’t praying with the rest of the community and decided to do something about it.

Spitzer

Shaul Spitzer set the neighbor on fire, but only after stuffing stuffed gasoline-soaked shirts into a bag, lighting the bag and throwing it on the porch of the neighbor's home while the family slept inside.

The problem was, Spitzer told the court, that the neighbor had disobeyed an order from an important rabbi to pray in the community’s main synagogue.  The neighbor had already received several threats and his property was vandalized before Spitzer got really fired up.

Is Spitzer the first person to get all hot and bothered over some inane religious precept?  Hardly.

He initially reminded me of a would-be teenage saint in the Middle Ages who chastised people for laughing since, he noted correctly, the New Testament does not depict Jesus laughing.  The Catholic Church stopped just short of making the very serious young man a saint. 

Santorum

Then, I realized that Spitzer was no different than today’s politicians sure that one religious approach fits all.  Take Rick Santorum, an overly pious Republican presidential candidate.  He dislikes abortion.  Good for him.  However, making the sweeping assumption that because he dislikes abortion, no one should get an abortion, he proceeds to try to impose his thoughts on everyone else via his legislative status.

Spitzer merely tried to kill a neighbor.  Santorum would prefer to condemn millions of women to risky healthy decisions that, in the past, left many women badly injured either at the hands of ill-trained “backyard butchers” or through their own desperate efforts.

Nor, if elected, does he plan to stop there.  Religion, Santorum stressed to a group of pastors shortly after his victories in the western primaries, will guide his decision making.

“I have seen the interaction with faith and public life and to me the bounds there are not boundaries at all," Santorum said. "I can't and I won't check my faith at the door because it motivates me to do things that I believe are best for our country. It motivates me to stand up for those that are the most vulnerable. It motivates me to stand up not just for the unborn child but for that working guy who doesn't have the kind of job that can support his family."

Ironically, as he preaches religious bigotry, Santorum has the chutzpah to foist that view on others. 

“The intolerance of the left, the intolerance of the secular ideology, it is a religion unto itself, it is just not a biblical based religion, and it is the most intolerant," Santorum said. "Just like we saw from the days of the atheists of the Soviet Union, it is completely intolerant of dissent. They fear dissent. Why? Because the dissent comes from folks who use reason, common sense, and divine revelation and they want no part of any of those things.

"They want their world view to be imposed without question, and if you question them, you're haters, you're bigots, and you should be as a result of that ostracized from the public square," he added.

Wrong.  Secularists support freedom of religion and dissent.  It’s ideologues like him who want to stifle it.

In fact, it’s the secularists who gave him the freedom to speak out as he is doing.  Thank God the Constitution prevents people like him from imposing his religious views on everyone else.  The concept developed because some of our Founding fathers wanted their Christian belief to be the required religion.  However, in a fledgling nation already composed of a multitude of faith, leaders recognized such an attempt could lead to the kind of religious wars many had fled Europe to escape.

 

The solution: this is not a Christian nation or any kind of religious nation.  It’s a nation with freedom of religion, which makes it possible for people to worship Charlie Brown, Superman and whichever other god they choose.  And, it prevents someone like Santorum from silencing them.

After all, as men like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison recognized, no one “knows” what the truth is.  As such, no one has the right to impose his “truth” on anyone else.

That’s true for Spitzer, who faces at least five years in jail.  It’s equally true for politicians like Santorum, the former senator who wants to impose his religious views on the rest of us. We saw what happened when George W. Bush let his religious beliefs push faith-based initiatives at the expense of trained professionals. 

Once is too much, whether we’re talking about setting fire to neighbors or to the American Constitution.

Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.com.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.