In Praise of Secularism

It is no secret that the Bush Administration is engaged in the most radical assault on the separation of church and state in American history. The apostles of religious correctness never hesitate to broadcast their contempt for the Republic's secular laws and traditions--whether that means committing the federal government to uphold the "sanctity of marriage," as the President did in his State of the Union address, or stocking Grand Canyon National Park's bookstore with fundamentalist tracts claiming that the awe-inspiring canyon was created in six days.

It is equally evident that most Democrats are too terrified of being seen as antireligious to acknowledge that the very survival of America's secular government may be at stake in the 2004 election. Howard Dean's sudden discovery of the value of daily prayer, after being tarred with the dreaded S-word early in the primary season, exemplified the spinelessness of politicians (and others in public life) who fear identification with secularism, nonreligious humanism, even liberal religion--everything once encompassed by the lovely, evocative term freethinking.

Timid twenty-first-century secularists--in sharp contrast to the bold proselytizing freethinkers of the late nineteenth century--are missing a chance that may never come again if the Republicans have four more years to appoint federal judges who share their scorn for secular government.

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