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On Faith: Beck's False Inclusivity
Minneapolis, MN (September 2, 2010) -
As a regularly featured blogger on the Washington Post/Newsweek's "On Faith" blog, Dr. Aseem Shukla, member of HAF's Board of Directors, has the opportunity to provide a Hindu viewpoint on various issues. Below is Dr. Shukla's latest blog. Please post your comments directly on the "On Faith" site by clicking here.
Q: In the wake of his weekend rally, Glenn Beck kept up the drumbeat of criticism about President Obama's religion, calling it a "perversion" and saying that America "isn't recognizing his version of Christianity," which Beck characterized as "liberation theology."
Despite critique of Obama's Christianity, a recent poll showed that nearly 20% of Americans believe falsely that the president is Muslim.
A: Of the many faces of demagoguery, the religious variety is the most facile and dangerous. Rousing majoritarian religious fervor to upend a political system and demonize opposition as the "other" is an affliction of a far right extreme in American politics manifested too clearly today. This same polarity that ravaged what could have been a reasoned debate over a mosque at Ground Zero, is on display in the overt piety of today's Glen Beck's and in the scare mongering over President Obama's religious predilections.
Ours is a religious country, and this is the putative strength of Americana. Where conservatives argue that a Christian heritage infuses us with a divine exceptionalism, even man liberals concede that our popular religiosity allows for the flourishing of an individualism and work ethic that differentiates us from static Europe. But for some time now, a persistent insistence on Christian-only exceptionalism and a national Christian primacy is raising alarm bells for others.
I have argued before that a religious litmus test most certainly exists in this country-and the litmus paper only reads two colors: Christian or the other. Indian Americans recently elected to national office, such as Bobby Jindal or Nikki Haley were forced to prove that they as converts, they were even more Christian than most Christians, and President Obama's Muslim heritage has been bandied about as a scarlet letter that somehow renders him suspect or unfit to govern.
We have experienced before the false inclusivity of supposedly ecumenical events of the far right. There may have been a rabbi or imam at the Beck event, but the overall theme was very much "we are a Christian nation" drumbeat, and Hindus have experienced rejection before when they asked to participate in events such as the National Day of Prayer. This is the paradox of religion in the public square: it means very different things to different people.
We are a religious country, but our religious choice is the business of no one. Place a hand on a Bible, a Qu'ran, a Bhagavad Gita when swearing in for elected office--it matters not--as the oath is to the Constitution of the United States of America that never once speaks of a partisan god.
Views expressed here are the personal views of Dr. Aseem Shukla, and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Minnesota or Hindu American Foundation.