A god complex

I’m at the car dealership today, getting some basic maintenance done when I overhear a conversation between a woman and an older man.

“I was brought up a Baptist, ” he said. “But I realized I had to find a different church to hear the real Word.”

“It’s so watered down now, from the Founding Fathers,” she said.

“And we don’t have Christian men leading us, when they endorse homosexuality.”

The Founders, of course, were nominally Christian — they were deists who believed in a creator and were careful to exclude overt mention of god in our founding documents. They were skeptics who understood the dangers of mixing politics with religion because they lived through the violence and intolerance that mixture breeds.

And yet, there’s nothing unusual or ahistorical about this overheard conversation. Since our beginnings as a nation, there have been men — and women — who have wanted to impose their conception of god on their neighbors and who have attempted to claim the Founders as religious zealots like themselves.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet