Readers reply to Voices

The majority does not rule regarding religion

As in her past communications, I have again admired the enthusiasm with which Brenda Norris approaches her religious faith (“One Nation, Under God or Gone Under,” Voices column, June 30). I share her appreciation of being able to live here in Maine and her sense of awe and wonder at the beauty and mystery of nature, as well as her gratitude for being born an American. But our approach to faith and how to find and live a good life is remarkably different. Let me explain.

My grandfather was a Lutheran minister, and I was “educated” and confirmed in that faith, but always with a sense of questioning and the need to seek rationality and truth. I recall during many Sunday school classes and church services looking out the window at the magnificent real world of nature and thinking to myself, “If there truly is a God, he is out there, not in here.” As I entered the world of scientific research and began to read the works of many of the world’s great thinkers, past and present, my approach to life moved further away from normal religion mandates and the Bible as a prime source for inspiration and moral values. I have become a member of the American Humanist Association and may be described as a secularist, humanist, free thinker, agnostic, etc., as well as a forceful supporter of our Constitution and its principle of “separation of church and state.”

And with this perspective I find a host of Brenda Norris’ views unreasonable, unscientific, unrewarding and, frankly, also un-American. She seems to be one of the many born-again evangelical fundamentalists who refuse to recognize religious plurality in our nation and who believe we are a “Christian nation” with only the Christian God in control of our destiny. She states: “Supposedly 13 percent of Americans opposed Christian-God references, so why are we even considering such an absurdity … as removing ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance?”

Let me tell you why such thinking is in error. First of all, nontheists in our nation represented only about 9 percent of our population in 1990 and today the figure is nearly 15 percent to 16 percent and rapidly approaching 20 percent, or 60 million Americans. They are a growing voice in our country with young people under 30 already over 20 percent. Second, “under God” was added in 1954 to challenge the communist threat. Our country seemed to be just fine from its founding and through two devastating world wars without such a designation in the pledge. And third let me remind you that our founding fathers deliberately left out any reference to “God,” “Christ” or “Christianity” in our Constitution for they wanted to encourage a pluralistic approach as well as protect those who have no religious affiliation whatsoever. When it comes to religion, the majority does not rule.

Richard E. Faust

Surry

Dear Brenda Norris,

I read your article on June 30, 2007, titled “One Nation Under God.” I feel compelled to write because of the attitude and misconception that is apparent in your writing. Not so much for your message. Your words and attitude show me a complete lack of understanding and appreciation of the origins of the nation state that has come to be known as the USA.

I write as a Red Indian or what Americans now label as Native American, the people who greeted your European ancestors in 1492 with love, respect, trust and compassion. We greeted your ancestors as sacred human beings deserving of love, respect and compassion just as we were taught to do by Great Spirit. Due to our people’s superior numbers our two peoples lived a shaky peaceful coexistence for a very brief period of time.

But the attitudes that the transplanted Europeans brought with them soon began to be asserted by “those visitors who never left.” Those attitudes, which are still very much prevalent in the present, include arrogance and ignorance and they reveal themselves as “white is right” and “might is right” and denial. It is these attitudes that managed to annihilate some 100 million Red Indians who once knew the American USA as their homeland. The history of our homeland that we know as Turtle Island (USA) did not begin in 1492.

If your God was actually ever on your side he-she must have departed very quickly after the Carib were annihilated.

I do not write these emotions to be disrespectful nor to offend but only to open hearts, minds and eyes and to bring all peoples within the Great Circle of Unity as Great Spirit intended.

You may wish to read a couple of books that provide a much more factually accurate portrayal of Indian and white relations in the USA over the last 500 years: “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present” by Ward Churchill; and “American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World” by David E. Stannard.

Dan Ennis, Traditional Elder

Wulustukyeg, Tobique Indian Reserve