[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard writes...

>the people who
> do not share the vision of America as the new Jerusalem, the land from
> which the good news of the coming Kingdom of God (and Wal-Mart) will
> spread like a light to every nation on earth. This sort of rhetoric
> could already be found in the writings of the first pilgrims before
> their stockings got dry from the trans-Atlantic voyage.

...echoing a similar capitulation to the current revisionistic version of
American history touted by the religious right reiterated last Sunday in the
lead article in the New York Times Magazine. Yes, it's true the Pilgrims had
an evangelical, even apocalyptic vision, and other groups over the course of
American history have had similar visions.

But this ignores a very significant "event" in the establishment of the
American govt. and its constitution. The Pilgrims, like many other groups
(Quakers, Mennonites, etc etc), came to the "New World" to escape religious
persecution from the authorities back in the old country. Yet, most of these
groups were no more tolerant of religions different from their own once they
got here than were the govts. they had fled. So Catholics, Jews, and sundry
varieties of Protestants were NOT welcome, and not allowed to settle in
"New" Enland. Peter Styvesandt similarly attempted to bar Jews (and
Catholics, etc.), until Jews filed legal appeals back in Holland compelling
him to be more tolerant. And so on. By the time representatives of the
colonies convened to hash out a Constitution, the de facto reality on the
ground was that numerous religious groups had claimed wide swatches of
territory for their own religion, and were loathe to share that with
alternate religious persuasions. The Quakers, e.g., claimed the area called
Pennsylvania, named after the Quaker William Penn, whose statue still sits
atop City Hall in Philadelphia (with a city law forbidding any building to
be built higher than Penn's hat). The only Buddhism in the mix was the
paltry and neoplatonic sounding ruminations about India and China that
attracted figures such as Jefferson and John Adams. In the 19th c. religious
groups began to share territory more fully (except for the Mormons, who
ghettoized themselves in Utah).

So when the Constitution was forged, the compromise to settle the religious
rivalries -- informed by the shared experience of all the disputants (common
enemies make friends), was that (1) the govt. shall have no official
religion, since that inevitably led to persecution of other religions, and
(2) the govt. shall not persecute the practice of any religion. The govt.
should be free FROM religion in order for the people to be free TO practice
their own religions unhindered. This was a compromise reached because of the
palpable urgency each experienced in the old country and the newly forming
rifts emerging in their debates.

Every revisionist attack on that brilliant and inviolable line between
church and state established by the founding fathers not only threatens to
undo the core of their vision, but, as point (1) indicates, threatens
religion itself.

The Buddhist response to revisionistic disinformation should be accurate
recounting of the events themselves -- their causes and conditions, clearly
explaining WHY the first amendment states what it states, and why it only
works when one retains both sides of the equation.

Dan Lusthaus