According to several US polls, Americans are a very religious country. Nearly 95% of Americans profess some religious beliefs - even though these results are skewed depending on the definition of religion. Of these, only 49% of Americans identify themselves as belonging to a particular denomination. This clearly demonstrates that there are congregationally-based religious Americans and non-congregational religious Americans.
Against this background of religiosity, and rising within it rests the figure of the American experience, including our system of government and politics. While the number of different religions in America varies between 4,300 and 77,000, depending on whom you are asking, there are some collective values that many share; such as a belief in representative democracy, education, some modicum of religious tolerance, deprecation of racism, self-determination, protections for family integrity, protection of children, social welfare, and civic or communal responsibility. These collective values formed the backbone of our government and its policies.
Of late, however, there is a move by some congregationally-based religious Americans to demand special rights not afforded other religious groups. Their claim is that our government, in pursuing the above, which humanists like many other Americans also agree with, and in not allowing theistic religions to also impose school prayer, is violating the separation of church and state by creating a de facto advocacy of humanistic religion. This brings up two issues in my thinking;
• First, that we need to continue to maintain a strict separation of church and state so that some religious groups are not afforded rights that others don’t have equal access to. Simply because humanists believe in representative democracy unencumbered by religious mandates, does not make that government humanisitic, any more than that the claim it was acting Catholic because Catholics desire the same thing.
• Second, the belief that our government through its actions represents solely a humanist belief system denotes a failure by religious humanists to delineate our beliefs to the rest of America.
As an Ethical Culturists, we should be so lucky as to have our religious values predominating within congress. While I know that there isn’t simply one way to be an Ethical Culturists – and we do have conservative voices within our communities as well, as I see it, rather than supporting my religious beliefs, my country has grossly violated many of my basic beliefs. I hope for a government that holds forth the abolition of the death penalty, starting a peace college with funding equal to the war college, building a true department of diplomacy, putting an office of ethics within the CIA and FBI, fostering marriage equality and alternative lifestyles, shifting our economy of waste towards one that is sustainable, closing most prisons and replacing them with vocational schools, providing free healthcare and education, creating a living wage and calling for a body that monitors corporate malfeasance here and abroad, promoting real diversity in our schools and society, replacing many of our courts with conflict resolution and restorative justice programs, and other such religious beliefs. Ethical Culturists need to make a strong stand for many of our values as a way of answering those critics who feel our government is promoting humanism. Perhaps, then, those who now call for the separation of church and state will be joined by others who now support its demise.