Churches, Take Down Your U.S. Flag


On Jan. 6 a crazy with buffalo horns stood at the podium in the Senate Chambers and offered up a quite elegant prayer. He asked God to direct the nation on a good path (or something like that). Ironically, a prayer was also offered at the same spot on the same day by the Senate's Chaplain. The Chaplain's prayer was quite similar. Today the latter prayer is considered quite favorably. The former is "Christian Nationalism." There can be no doubt, however, they are both Christian Nationalism.

Political cycles keep on repeating themselves. Today there is an effort to defund certain agencies. The popular candidate just not is the IRS. President Reagan played the same game. He appointed people to head agencies who saw their job as running those agencies into the ground. One was appointed to head Environmental Enforcement. Eventually she was convicted of something and disappeared. Then there was James Watt who was appointed to run the Department of the Interior. He did not like the National Park System because it prevented longing and oil drilling on park land. One of his famous quotes was, "When the last tree falls, Jesus will return." He was in Fargo when I was Mayor and was returning from a visit to his boyhood church in Wyoming. His eyes teared up talking about seeing the U.S. Flag standing tall in the little church.

It was mainstream, not right wing, denominations back in the 1950's who successfully put "In God we Trust" on our money. These denominations concocted the notion we should be against Communism because it was "Godless." 

These "liberal" denominations supported having Chaplains in Congress. Most of the Chaplains have been from these denominations though lately there have been a couple of Catholics. There have been no Chaplains from other religions even though millions of U.S. taxpayers follow these other faiths.

Today instead of hand wringing about how the religious right has inserted its brand of Christianity into government, "mainline" denominations (I know there are disagreements about which ones should carry this term) should simply remove the U.S. flag from their sanctuaries support doing away with the Senate Chaplain position. We atheists invite them to join us in being genuine critics of the Christain right.   

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