Tea Party

This is a topic that has been on my mind for a while, so in honor of California's Supreme Court overturning Prop 8, I thought this would be a good time.

I've been given a mission from God to get the Tea Party out of America's politics. Okay, I don't think God spoke to me, but I do feel a strong compulsion to stand outside of their gatherings with picket signs and shout hateful things ...

The Tea Party first came to my attention thanks to Sarah Palin. I actually kind of respected them at first, despite my doppelgangers participation in the party. Although I wasn't on board with their platform, who among us isn't disaffected by politics and the two party system? I was encouraged to see a grassroots movement taking place. But somewhere along the lines things went wrong, terribly wrong.

Their entire party platform has moved from advocating smaller government and fiscal responsibility to trying to turn America into a theocracy. Many of the things they claim are either mostly or entirely false, and now they're trying to rewrite history! How are educated people letting this happen?

Truth be told the only people I know who openly support the Tea Party are my parents. Their reasoning is as a counter balance to Obama's liberalism: "Obama's extremely liberal, it's time to get someone in the White House who is extremely conservative."  I bring this up because I love my parents, and out of respect for them we don't talk politics. So if any of you, my gentle readers, are fans of the Tea Party, I want to hear from you.

Here is my problems with the Tea Party politics: Christianity.

"America is a Christian nation."

Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich love to trot out this argument, so let's know it over first. For starters, lets look to the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, signed by John Adams in 1797: "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." So there's that.

Also, even though many of the founding fathers were in fact Christian, that does not imply they meant for the country to be ruled based on their religious beliefs. Like many American's today, Thomas Jefferson considered himself a Christian, but one only needs to look at the Jefferson Bible to see he wasn't a traditional Christian (if you don't know what the Jefferson Bible is, he cut out all the miracles including the resurrection).

And even if they did intend for America to be ruled based on Christian principals, that doesn't mean we have to be that way now. Our founding fathers meant for all ruling to be made by white, property owning men, but we don't run government that way anymore either.

Whose version of Christianity?
The denominations within Evangelical Christianity alone raise this question. Then you add Catholicism, Anglicanism and Mormonism and you have widely divergent beliefs. Yes, they all agree on whatever the politicians are pandering to now (gay marriage) but what about when they've gained power and want to start further enforcing their beliefs? Once they outlaw gay marriage will they require everyone to acknowledge the physical presence of Jesus when taking communion? Will they require schools to teach that the earth is 6,000 years old or that God used the laws of evolution to create mankind? Where will they draw the line? (Yes, I'm aware this is the slippery slope fallacy. I am only trying to make a point.) These were very real, very divisive issues in t he theocracies of old. Look at the number of Lutherans burned at the stake at the hands of Catholic Mary Tudor.