I really want to vent and criticize, and I will, but more importantly, I want to encourage being a better example.
A self-described “Christian” organization1 confronted devout worshippers outside a local mandir after celebrating Diwali, one of Hinduism’s major festivals. The group was allegedly promoting Christianity and condemning Hinduism, going so far as to defile an image of Ganesh, a Hindu deity.
The worshippers were crestfallen and incredulous that, in this land of liberty, people of one faith would denigrate another. True, but religious liberty is paired with freedom of speech, no matter how foolish or bigoted. Because the protest was not a government action and was legally permissible, this regrettable incident involved disrespect and misrepresentation of faith.
Analysis
The group’s actions are despicable, ineffective, and counterproductive.
First, the actions do not reflect their religion’s greatest commandments to love God and your neighbor. You cannot reconcile hate with love, and you can be kind while speaking the truth. More importantly, when you disrespect someone in God’s name, you dishonor God.
Second, can they reasonably believe that picketing outside another’s house of worship would attract someone to theirs? No, it would make them avoid it like the plague. Around 1975, I recall exiting Easter Sunday services at my Catholic Church to discover members of a nearby church had put flyers on our cars, imploring us to become Christians. Unsurprisingly, I did not see one car transfer from our lot to theirs the following week.
Third, their actions have a profoundly negative effect on members of their faith. A non-practicing member is repulsed by their deeds and discouraged from resuming practice. Practicing members are similarly affected. Who would want to claim or share a faith associated with reprehensible acts?
Church & State?
Those who claim this country was founded by Christians for Christians are misinformed. While most were Christian, many sought to escape the King’s control over the Church of England, and leading theologians of the time spoke out against government involvement in religion.
In 1612, Thomas Helwys wrote, “For men’s religion to God, is betwixt God and themselves; the king shall not answer for it, neither may the king be judged between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the last measure.” In 1644, Roger Williams, the founder of the first Baptist Church in America, called for separation between the sacred and the secular.
Before the Constitution, James Madison led the fight to enact a religious freedom statute in Virginia. The Constitution provides that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli purposefully states that the U.S. government “is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion….” In his famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, President Thomas Jefferson advocated “building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
Yes, a majority of colonies had state-established religions at the time of the Revolution, but support for them was fading, and the last was disestablished in 1833, twenty years before slavery was abolished. Without equating them, we can keep state-sponsored religion in the same historical period as slavery.
Response
The faithful should not cower and relinquish faith to those who misrepresent it. Instead, the misguided protest is a call to display a truer version of it. Christians should not let vile protestors define them any more than Muslims should allow those who burn US flags define them.
Our loving actions have a far greater impact than words, posts, and memes. Show them who you are.
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1I omit the group’s name and refer to them in the third person to avoid affording them any recognition.
