A true moral conscience?

                                                              

In a column in The Villages Daily Sun of Sunday, September 23 ("Religious Faith Serves as A National Conscience") Kathryn Lopez makes some astoundingly incorrect assertions. In short, her premise is that with all the religious intolerance exhibited by some Muslims in the world, it becomes even more important for strong religious foundations in America.  Ms. Lopez seems to want a return to that "old time religion" of yesteryear which, she says provided a moral compass for the nation. She could hardly be more incorrect!

                Religious intolerance has been a root cause of some of America's most shameful moments. The abandonment to the elements of Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams in early Massachusetts,  The Salem witch trials, Catholic/Protestant warfare in 1640s Maryland, Anglican violence against  Baptists and Presbyterians  in post revolution Virginia, the  "Bible Riots" of the 1840s, Anti-Mormon violence (and vice -versa - "The Meadow Mountain massacre"), The rise of the KKK and lynching as a "protector" of white, Protestant America,  the Red scare of the 1920s, essentially anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic, all are prime examples of how ludicrous her claim is. For those who would claim that those incidents belong to an earlier time, I refer to the Billy Graham conversations recorded by the Oval Office taping system in the Nixon era. The anti Semitic and racist remarks are repulsive.  

                 Combating  religious zealotry with religious zealotry is senseless.   The Inquisition and the Crusades proved that. The idea of an U.S. Army general screaming "My God is better than your God" (true) is simply mind numbingly retrograde.  All of the atrocities  above are violations of our true national conscience, contained in spirit and in print in two simple documents totaling nine pages, more or less. They are The Constitution of The United States and the Declaration of Independence. True adherence to the spirit of both would better the moral status of this nation far beyond any sect, denomination, or  supernatural belief system.