For those of you neither from the MidSouth nor interested in the country music business, Belmont University, located in Nashville, TN, is the place to pursue your degree if you want to make it in the Music City.  It is also financed by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a highly fundamentalist brand of Christianity which, while very wealthy here, is generally incompatible with those who gravitate toward the entertainment business.

As such, Belmont doesn't have a majority SBC enrollment in their student body (it's about 1/3), though their trustees are 100% SBC.  In light of their diversity of enrollment, their status as a feeder to the country music industry, and their need to raise additional funds, Belmont is attempting to reduce its SBC trustee load from 100% to 60%.  The Convention, however, had other ideas, informing the school that if they let other so-called Christians (that would be any denomination other than SBC, including but not limited to Primitive Baptist or Bible Baptist or Old Regular Baptist), then Belmont could expect to stop finding $2MM annual checks in the mail.

Belmont responded with refusing to accept any additional funds.

The Tennessee branch of the SBC subsequently filed a suit in October seeking reparation of the $57MM it's given the school since the Convention took over in 1950. 


Interesting, since Belmont didn't actually want to sever the connection completely, just loosen the stranglehold a bit.  But what else can we expect from a dogma sees most everything in black and white?  If the SBC doesn't own that college lock, stock and barrel, then just hanging on to the lock and the barrel don't count, and they'll spend countless thousands getting that freaking stock back in their pockets.

Belmont is still looking for a way out of being held at SBC gunpoint.  I've got a great idea for them.  They should do what Georgia's Mercer College did earlier this year and host a campus "Coming Out Day."  The Southern Baptists dropped Mercer like a sackful of unblessed snakes, no lawsuit required.

And it had the added benefit of being the right thing to for their students.  Funny how that worked out.

"Think Tank Will Promote Thinking," read the headline in WaPo's politics section this morning - on the Federal Page, no less.

Wow, thought I, that's kind of an oxymoron.  Let me click on that and read more.  So I bypassed a handful of articles detailing how Nancy Pelosi screwed up by writing that letter supporting Murtha, even if she didn't mean it to be taken literally and secretly wants Hoyer to win, and clicked through to read about this strange new species - the think tank that wants people to think.

Scientists, the really good ones, have long been noted for their quasi-detachment from the world.  A shining attribute in scientific study, dispassionate observation does not usually lend itself well to political activism unless that activism is somehow triggered by certain stimuli such as progressive  and unrelenting encroachment, spearing, or repeated facemasking.  Which is to say, it can take a little something to get them to notice that the other team is trying to take the ball, stab 40 holes in it, set it on fire, and bury it in a nuclear waste dump.  Well, some scientists have finally both noticed that "science" has come to be acquainted with "evil," (which is a ridiculous comparison both on its face and under its hood), and decided to do something about it.  They've formed a Washington think tank to attempt to influence public policy regarding the principles of separation of church and state (SOCAS): the Center for Inquiry-Transnational.

Since our arrival on these shores, religion has always attempted to interfere in our public policy.  Though a constant undercurrent even at its weakest points, religion's success in informing said policy, relative to the percentage of widely accepted initiatives grounded in secular human and civil rights as opposed to those founded upon the religious imperatives of the nationally dominant genre (i.e., Christianity) irrespective of empirical data or socioeconomic impact, can be viewed in waves, many of them tied to conflict and political and national uncertainty.  Among other items - in 1864, after an upsurge of religious feeling during the Civil War, Congress approved the addition of "In God We Trust" to coins.  It appeared there on and off until 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) approved a Congressional joint resolution declaring "In God We Trust" the national motto of the US.  Eisenhower also signed the 1954 law adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance - the campaign for which was spearheaded by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal group.  Government-sponsored prayer in public schools, ruled against between the 1850s and 1948, saw a resurgence during the Eisenhower years before being ended again by the Supreme Court's 1962 decision in Engel v. Vitale.  Not coincidentally, Eisenhower's presidency also saw the height of McCarthyism, the Korean War, the Suez conflict, the entrenchment of the Cold War and the beginning of intervention in Vietnam.  Religious influence on public policy relative to perceived security could be a dissertation in and of itself.

While the wave of the 50s briefly abated during the 60s and 70s, it began to rise again in the 1980s concurrent with the ascendance of Reagan conservatism and has since faced little orchestrated opposition from the scientific community.  Though scientists thought it a disease of national import, AIDS research failed to obtain early funding because it was a "gay disease," according to (uninformed) public perception.  "Gay" was evil, and therefore did not merit study or cure the way, say, measles (primarily a "kid" disease) did, even though it was exponentially more fatal.   

The push has become greater since fundamentalist George W. Bush became president, and entered its ascendancy post 9/11 as economic pressures, national instability and concerns over daily security increased.  As though presenting Marshall Applewhite as on equal footing with Einstein, the media, in their over-earnest attempts at "balance," will promote the dissent of 1% of the scientific community on any given issue as on par with the agreement of the significantly larger 99%.  Movements to add the newfangled creationism euphemistically referred to as "Intelligent Design" were largely ignored until a spate of them achieved national notoriety just within the last 5 years.  In the latest developments to come to light the public has discovered that FDA, environmental and health policies have been subject to Christian review and religious affirmation.

The last item is, no doubt, the proverbial straw on the complacent camel's back.

It is high time scientists joined with other SOCAS supporters in providing basis and impetus for pushing back the rising tide of religious fundamentalism undermining a nation founded on secular freedoms.  Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of civil rights infringed upon by religious zealotry, it is reprehensible that this administration has thus far been permitted to either ignore or hide science where it disagrees (as it frequently does) with their theocratic agenda on matters of basic earth science or public health.  And, if we pick civil rights up again, we find the religion extremists no better - attempting to codify discrimination and legislate morality, absent logical reasoning, based entirely upon their interpretations of a collection of stories they deem as "holy" while rejecting any conflicting data - including but not limited to proven science, basic human decency, and anyone else's concept of "holy."

While even the extremists have a right to believe and live their personal lives as they see fit, their religious fervor should give them no additional standing in a country predicated upon equality.  To be balanced and to live up to the egalitarian ideals upon which we claim foundation, health and environmental policies, as well as human and civil rights, must be grounded in the secular and based on facts.  To do otherwise is to grant both political and personal ascendancy to one collection of mythology over all others, even though all have equal basis for belief, nullifying the rights of every citizen.  Because, even though the Christian fundamentalists have found themselves with the power thus far, other faiths in the US are growing and may well one decide to usurp that power for themselves.  Better for all of us, even the fundamentalists, to leaves religion out of government, lest we one day find ourselves subject to a religion not our own.

I look forward to the Center's efforts and seeing the results thereof.  The passion of the dispassionate may yet be something to behold.