cognitive dissident

Yesterday, there was another response (of sorts) to my most recent published letter:

Liberals talk of tolerance but still disregard religion

A recent letter writer who was an American Civil Liberties Union member, a liberal and atheist, implied that religion was perfectly fine on public property as long as Christians went into a closet and shut the door before praying.

No God-fearing person of any religion should be placed out of sight just because a non-believer or those of other faiths may be offended by their exercising their religious rights.

Liberals talk of acceptance, equality, tolerance and protection of civil liberties. Their actions and words tell the true intent and mind-set of persons with obvious low regard for true civil liberties.

[name and address redacted]

This illustrates the problems engendered by the heavy editing that goes into the op-ed pages of many publications: in many cases, he was upset by things I did not say, did not mean, or had clarified in the follow-up posts on the newspaper’s website. Accordingly, I went easy on his potentially unintentional misinterpretations:

I made no implications about secret and closeted prayer except by quoting the words of Jesus from Matthew 6:5, which commanded such a practice. I would not wish to restrict individual or group worship, in either private or public; I wholeheartedly support our secular nation’s religiously pluralistic character, and its Constitutional protections. People are free—as they should be—to evangelize on streetcorners, gather around flagpoles, and even pray without ceasing if they wish. I would just like to know how Christians square such public prayer with Jesus’ straightforward injunction against it.

Public piety can often turn into a particularly ugly form of coercive indoctrination when the power of the state is co-opted to support religious opinion, as the practice of mandated prayer in public schools illustrated. Is the faith of some really so insecure that it requires constant affirmation by others, even when such affirmation must be coerced?

The caricature of liberalism that the writer puts forth is an inaccurate as the “War on Xmas” perennially hyped by Faux News. Liberals not only “talk of acceptance, equality, tolerance and protection of civil liberties,” we actually work for it through the lives we live and the organizations—such as the ACLU—that we support. “True civil liberties” may sometimes require state protection, but they should never lead to activities mandated and coerced by the state.