Rep. Bill Sali's Contempt for Religious Liberty
DonByrd printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Thu Aug 16, 2007 at 04:39:16 PM EST
I'm regularly amazed (the hopeless romantic in me) at the brazenness with which some elected officials display contempt for religious diversity in America. It's 2007! At the very least, where is their inner political voice reminding them that hateful and intolerant statements toward other religions simply can't be made out loud and with impunity? That is the question I'm letting myself ask out loud while pondering the recent controversial remarks of Idaho congressman Bill Sali (R-ID). Read on for his thoughts, and mine.
As gleefully reported in the American Family Association's One News Network:
Last month, the U.S. Senate was opened for the first time ever with a Hindu prayer. Although the event generated little outrage on Capitol Hill, Representative Bill Sali (R-Idaho) is one member of Congress who believes the prayer should have never been allowed.

"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers," asserts Sali.

Sali says America was built on Christian principles that were derived from scripture. He also says the only way the United States has been allowed to exist in a world that is so hostile to Christian principles is through "the protective hand of God."

"You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike," says the Idaho Republican.

I'll let Pastor Dan respond to the biblical allusion at the end there. But I will add that one thing the Founding Fathers intended wasn't just "envisioned", it was enshrined in the Constitution, which makes explicit that there shall be no religious test for elected office. Why would there be one for opening the Senate with a prayer?

True religious liberty means nothing without religious diversity. Difference is the mark a real freedom of choice leaves behind - both the freedom to choose different ways of believing as well as the freedom not to believe. The presence of difference should be honored and celebrated as a sign of our religious freedom.

On Sunday, one of his local papers, the Idaho Press-Tribune, offered this rebuke:

Sali inexplicably draws the spotlight on matters that have little to do with anything the U.S. government actually administers.
...
The United States is and has always been made up of many different spiritual beliefs. The majority of Americans are Christian, but the founding fathers made it abundantly clear in the Bill of Rights that the government must be tolerant of all faiths.

With debate about religious freedom resolved more than two centuries ago, it's disconcerting to see that Sali wants to stir up the pot today. Saying that a Hindu prayer and a Muslim member of Congress were "not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers" does nothing but generate debate. It doesn't ease dissension about the war in Iraq. It doesn't provide a solution to the substantial national debt. It doesn't offer Idahoans any assurance that the contentious immigration issue will be resolved.

I see that Representative Sali has attempted to "clarify" his remarks. The new version sounds like he believes it's ok for Minnesotans to elect a Muslim to Congress, so long as Rep. Ellison governs like a Christian. Whatever that means, it's not any better. But I'll let you read that for yourself to decide if he helped his cause.

Digging the hole deeper still with yet another interview, Sali added that his beef is really with multi-culturalism, which he strangely contends is un-American:

Friday, Sali said multiculturalism is in conflict with the national motto "E Pluribus Unum," or "out of many, one." He said multiculturalism would mean "out of the many, the many."

"The question is, is multiculturalism good or not?" Sali said. "I don't think the Founding Fathers were multicultural. . . "

David Neiwert notes that Sali's new argument is at least as confused as all the rest:

Actually, E Pluribus Unum is in fact a clear expression of multiculturalism, which is predicated on the idea that our democratic institutions and the values around them are what bind together all Americans from their many diverse walks of life. Simultaneously, it celebrates those differences as part of what makes us great.



Display:
Sali represents a mindset that is eagerly redefining terms we've understood to mean one thing as something else. For example, religious persecution now means any attempt to restrict one's right to proselytize in any arena, including areas where such rights are understandably restricted, such as public schools and command structures in the military. The new definition also encompasses natural differences in religious opinion and religious beliefs, and any criticism of religious belief is deemed to be persecution.

Chris Hedges details the abuses of these redefinitions in American Fascists.

by khughes1963 on Thu Aug 16, 2007 at 04:57:08 PM EST


The right to believe as you will -- and to change your mind without pressure from the governent or powerful and governmentally supported or aligned religious institutions -- is integral to a free society.

The right to think and to believe freely is a necessary prerequisite to the right to speak and to publish freely -- and therefore to all forms of social change as well as the preservation of those very freedoms themselves.  

The demagoguery of Bill Sali and all too many contemporary political leaders needs to be confronted.

by Frederick Clarkson on Thu Aug 16, 2007 at 07:34:28 PM EST


What? Is this guy planning to run for President?
(snark)

by NancyP on Thu Aug 16, 2007 at 11:14:53 PM EST

From Schmitz Blitz: schmitzblitz.wordpress.com

Congressman Bill Sali (R-ID) believes religious freedom for non-Christians will remove "the protective hand of God" from the United States. Sali lamented religious pluralism saying, "we have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers."

Perhaps the Congressmen should take a look a the Constitution, which he gave an oath (before God nonetheless) to uphold. Article VI reads, "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

This is not the first time Sali has tried to push the `Christian Nation' myth. In a speech to the House floor in March commemorating the 220th Anniversary of Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom, Sali argued that Thomas Jefferson never really supported the "wall of separation." He said:

the `wall" was designed not to prevent people of faith from expressing their views in the public square, or to discourage them from applying their faith to public life, but rather to prevent the Federal Government from suppressing Judeo-Christian beliefs or their adherents.

I wonder if Sali actually read Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom? I'm guessing he either missed this point, or couldn't understand the irony of it before writing his speech:

that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time

Seeing as the Congressman had difficulty reading and/or comprehending the Virginia Statute, there's probably a good chance he missed this bit from Thomas Jefferson's autobiography:

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.

It's always frustrating to me that the American people continue to elect guys like Sali who are not only religious bigots, but are also ignorant of the basics of American history.


by Schmitz Blitz on Fri Aug 17, 2007 at 05:29:13 PM EST


There should not be prayers of any kind in Congress. Doesn't anyone read James Madison? He was the principle author of the Establishment Clause and said quite clearly in his writings that chaplains in Congress and in the military were a violation of the First Amendment.

by LindaJoy on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 09:44:51 AM EST
Linda -- could you (or anyone) provide a citation for Madison's remarks to this effect?  Thanks!

by dhr on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 11:51:07 AM EST
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