Friday, March 03, 2006

A Christian God for Missouri? Catholic Pizza in Florida?



Via Atrios, we are given this bit of news:

Missouri legislators in Jefferson City considered a bill that would name Christianity the state's official "majority" religion.



House Concurrent Resolution 13 has [sic] is pending in the state legislature.



Many Missouri residents had not heard about the bill until Thursday.



Karen Aroesty of the Anti-defamation league, along with other watch-groups, began a letter writing and email campaign to stop the resolution.



The resolution would recognize "a Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs.



The resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified recognition."



State representative David Sater of Cassville in southwestern Missouri, sponsored the resolution, but he has refused to talk about it on camera or over the phone.

Joshua Holland on Alternet notes that this proposal will not come to pass. It's purpose is to point out how oppressed the Christian right wing is in this country.

What struck me was the similarity of this to what is happening among the Islamic fringe in other countries and what is also happening among the Jewish fringe in some countries. All these groups appear to feel very threatened by modernity and all that it entails, both bad and good, and their response is to fight modernity tooth and nail. Hence proposals like this one or the weird plan for a Catholic town without any porn or contraceptives that Thomas Monaghan, the billionaire founder of Domino's Pizza, is launching in Florida.

I wouldn't mind so much if they left me and others like me alone in these plans. But it's our very existence that seems to oppress some of these religious folk.