Establishment Clause

Ho-ho-ho, this is not a pun on that other jolly old seasonal icon, just to get that out of the way.

For that matter, it's not an original thought either, so pardon, dear reader (all 2-3 of you) if you've known this all along, and it's taken me 50-plus years to get it straight, but now that it seems perfectly clear and obvious I have to get this said.

There is a difference between living in a country that is 90 percent Christian and living in a Christian nation. Even if the population of that country was 100 percent Christian (or 100 percent Hindu, 100 percent Muslim, 100 percent Wall-Squatting Neoconfucian (my personal preference) or 100 percent Woodstock, that fact alone wouldn't make it a Hindu, Muslim, Wall-Squatting Neoconfucian, or Woodstock nation, with apologies to Abbie Hoffman, may he rest in peace and love. What's obvious to me, but clearly not so obvious to about 59 million others, is the difference between a religious population and the secular state they live in. Render unto Caesar, and all that.

All of which comes down to the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," which effectively and wisely prohibits the establishment of a national religion. Is that so complicated? As for the free-exercise clause which follows it, "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," it would take an extreme, Antonin Scalia-type interpretation to infer that giving legal status to the religious beliefs of a single sect of true believers, and then applying it to the whole population, follows logically from the first-amendment protection of the free-exercise thereof.

But all that is obvious, right? Or should I write to the hydra-headed Bush-Cheney-Rove-Falwell monster in the Oval Office to ask who died and made them Ayatollah?

Does the presence of the word 'god' on money automatically grant official status as National Church in Charge of Inquisitions whichever Christian sect raises the most campaign cash? Or does the free exercise clause trump the establishment clause, allowing the majority - or the minority with the loudest voice and deepest pockets - to freely exercise the imposition of their authoritarian, patriarchal religion on the rest of us. If so, we're not a country ruled by laws, as they taught us in our archaic social studies classes. But you already knew that.