On this Thanksgiving Day, as a devout Christian, I thank God that I live in a secular nation.
Six months ago the Irish government issued a report detailing decades of abuse at Catholic run boarding schools and orphanages. Thousands of children were subjected to slave-like conditions, including physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse.
Today, the Irish government has released the report of a completely separate investigation detailing 30 years of widespread sexual abuse of children in Dublin by Catholic priests. Most damning (no pun intended) is that four successive archbishops of Dublin were aware of the abuse and covered it up in order to protect themselves, the priests and the church. The report only covers the last 30 years. It is safe to assume that the culture of abuse goes back far beyond that.
The Irish police force has also admitted its culpability of being too beholden to the power of the Catholic Church and, as a result, not adequately investigating claims of abuse.
This is a good example of why I don't want to live in a theocracy, or even a nation where a particular religion has inordinate influence. It's hard to think of a single example in history of a theocracy that was not guilty of egregious abuses of power. Usually the victims of those abuses were minorities, outsiders and the powerless (like children, or in many cases, women).
On this Thanksgiving Day it is worth remembering that the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were utterly intolerant of those with different religious views than their own. Quakers, for example, who arrived in Boston, were subject to public flogging, seizure of property, imprisonment without food and blankets, banishment to the wilderness and execution. Mary Dyer and three other Quakers were publicly hanged in Boston in the late 1600's. A statue of her now stands in front of the Massachusetts state capitol building.
These violent purges were not limited to outsiders however. We all know the stories of the Salem Witch Trials and the stifling cloud of conformity and paranoia that hung over the Puritan settlements.
We could just as easily find similar examples in Calvin's Geneva or Luther's Germany or Cromwell's England or the de facto Mormon state of Deseret or, of course, the various nations ruled by Islamic Sharia law.
When I hear James Dobson and like-minded Evangelicals talk about "returning America to its Christian roots", I shudder. On this Thanksgiving Day, as a devout follower of Jesus, I thank God that I live in a secular nation.
Today, the Irish government has released the report of a completely separate investigation detailing 30 years of widespread sexual abuse of children in Dublin by Catholic priests. Most damning (no pun intended) is that four successive archbishops of Dublin were aware of the abuse and covered it up in order to protect themselves, the priests and the church. The report only covers the last 30 years. It is safe to assume that the culture of abuse goes back far beyond that.
The Irish police force has also admitted its culpability of being too beholden to the power of the Catholic Church and, as a result, not adequately investigating claims of abuse.
This is a good example of why I don't want to live in a theocracy, or even a nation where a particular religion has inordinate influence. It's hard to think of a single example in history of a theocracy that was not guilty of egregious abuses of power. Usually the victims of those abuses were minorities, outsiders and the powerless (like children, or in many cases, women).
On this Thanksgiving Day it is worth remembering that the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were utterly intolerant of those with different religious views than their own. Quakers, for example, who arrived in Boston, were subject to public flogging, seizure of property, imprisonment without food and blankets, banishment to the wilderness and execution. Mary Dyer and three other Quakers were publicly hanged in Boston in the late 1600's. A statue of her now stands in front of the Massachusetts state capitol building.
These violent purges were not limited to outsiders however. We all know the stories of the Salem Witch Trials and the stifling cloud of conformity and paranoia that hung over the Puritan settlements.
We could just as easily find similar examples in Calvin's Geneva or Luther's Germany or Cromwell's England or the de facto Mormon state of Deseret or, of course, the various nations ruled by Islamic Sharia law.
When I hear James Dobson and like-minded Evangelicals talk about "returning America to its Christian roots", I shudder. On this Thanksgiving Day, as a devout follower of Jesus, I thank God that I live in a secular nation.
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