I’m glad I don’t live in Canada. What the U.S. is becoming is bad enough.
Some of you may know this Haroon Siddiqui (reg. req. maybe), described as an “Arab-Canadian”, but I’d never heard of him before yesterday. His column, “Bush Plays God Card” is not exactly a Bush/God-bashing piece, but I don’t think he cares for Bush, God or Americans all that much, which seems to be the case for most mainstream American journalists. He writes:
The most devout president in decades, Bush had expressed such sentiments before but not with such clarity. Which prompts the question: Is he cracking the constitutional wall between church and state? [No such thing. See last paragraph of post.]I spoke to two American experts and re-read some of the relevant literature.
It used to be that the more industrialized a nation, the less religious. But by the 1980s, religious activism was not confined to Muslims, as assumed after the 1979 Iranian revolution.
“Newly politicized movements were occurring in virtually every major religious tradition,” writes British author Malise Ruthven in his latest book, Fundamentalism. The biggest upsurge was in America, with the rise of the New Christian Right.
As Canadians were moving away from religion, Americans were getting closer to it. (My emphasis)
This section alone is chockfull of interesting tidbits. I don’t know about these so-called American experts, but what exactly is the “Christian Right” and how is its “rise” measured? Perhaps I should find out about the “experts” and read (or read about) the books before I evaluate their credentials.
I try to keep an open mind and give people the benefit of the doubt. I really do. But if a non-Christian (good guess?) purports to be an expert on Christians or Christian history, I’m skeptical, probably as much as an atheist is about God. 
Mr. Siddiqui (I hope he doesn’t write to me.) implies that Bush is courting a constituency of Americans who believes Jesus Christ is the risen Savior. Fair enough. I don’t have a problem with that. I would have problems if he were courting voters based on skin color.
Bush is a man of faith, and nothing in the Constitution requires him to leave his faith at the door as he leads the free world. All religions in America — Christianity, atheism, evolutionism and Islam, to name a few — can be freely practiced. Within reason.
Siddiqui continues:
He [John Kerry] has always kept his faith private and separated it from his public life, in the tradition of Kennedy and that of the Catholic Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien.But with a majority of Americans wanting their president to be guided by religious values and Bush doing better among the believers, regardless of denomination, Kerry came out of the closet: “I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today. My entire person is affected by my belief structure.”
Obviously Siddiqui thinks “keeping faith private” is a good thing. At least he acknowledges that the majority of us want our president guided by an authority higher than himself. I thought the sentiment was universal, something deep within the human soul. Perhaps not. Again, I don’t want to assume the writer is godless, but by his tone, he’s definitely not a Bible-believing Christian. I don’t think he’s a follower of Muhammad, either.
I like his crack about Kerry “coming out of the closet” about his faith, which is, in my opinion, no faith at all. Kerry, who once said abortion murder, contends he will not allow his “faith” to influence his policy decisions.
On that issue and the made-up doctrine of separation of church and state, Kerry and I have “conversed” in “Incompatible Kerry’s Immaculate Deception.” We talk a lot, don’t we?
