While waiting for the bus Monday, Oct. 26, I decided I would go into the UGA Bookstore and browse for a few minutes. I was in the political science section when I saw the book shown at right, How Would God Vote: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative by David Klinghoffer. As I began to taste stomach acid in the back of my mouth I thought, this must be a joke. Never judge a book by its cover, right? I picked the book up and read some of the pages only to find out it wasn't a satirical title; it was serious. Luckily my mind was sharp -- I had taken my vitamins earlier -- and I knew exactly what to do. I carried the book over to the fiction section where it belonged. I even took the time to alphabetize it with the other books so as to make the UGA Bookstore workers' jobs easier.
There is a reason that America’s founders realized how imperative it was to separate church and state. The Salem Witch Trials served as some of the most notorious historical precedents for this thinking. Further back is the Inquisition endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church. The state is a sovereign entity, which, depending on its socio-politico-economic policies, directly affects the lives of all the citizens harbored in its territory. What our forefathers scorned was the sort of theocracy that necessarily transforms objective reality into subjective reality for the territory it rules. The mystic view of morality is arbitrary. Instead of being founded in reason, mystic morality is laid down without explanation by a force external to reality. This made it easy for 17th Century Bay Staters to spiritually justify the hunting of alleged witches. They thought they were exterminating some mysterious force the Bible had deemed evil. If morality had been established in reason where life is the standard, this would have been avoided. Three centuries later, we are still witnessing the effects of converging church and state, specifically from Islamic totalitarianism (the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran; Sept. 11). Theocratic Islamic states are quick to dish out death sentences to anyone opposed to their religious doctrine. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or public decree, that read:
“I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book Satanic Verses – which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an – and those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death.”
“I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. God willing, whoever is killed on this path is a martyr.”
Just to clarify, the book wasn’t advocating Satanism. Ayatollah Khomeini, however, viewed the book as grossly misrepresentative of Islam’s central prophet, Muhammad. The mystic totalitarianism is scary. Combining religion and politics is what leads to the enslavement and destruction of men and women. Even though Klinghoffer combined the two in a much less extreme way, the nature of his ideas still has serious ramifications. His book attempts to show that the Bible points towards political conservatism. If Klinghoffer’s premises are accepted, readers might hold a conception that political conservatism has some sort of divine right or manifest destiny. Conservatism should be, in a sense, unfettered and allowed absolute power, as implied by Klinghoffer's book. On the other hand, there also are those who argue that modern political liberalism is divinely endorsed. If instead the book were entitled, How Would God Vote: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Liberal, I would have done the same thing – I would have placed it in the fiction section where it belonged. History has proven time and again how disastrous it can be to converge the roles of church and state. To avoid future “witch trials”, it must be accepted on principle that morality and reason should not be categorically segregated. If you’re interested in what it means to derive morality from reason, I recommend reading Ayn Rand’s essay, The Objectivist Ethics. It can be found in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness.
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