#309b: The President's Religion and Our Future

EXCERPT:
The preoccupation with a president’s religion is somewhat recent. When Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952, for example, he was not even baptized. But once Billy Graham persuaded him to be baptized, presidents ever since have felt obliged to offer some explanation of their faith.

But here we have something new: people questioning a president’s faith even after his public explanations. Are they convinced he is lying -- or have they merely ignored his own words? If so, their ignorance is hardly innocent. Ignoring Obama at Notre Dame, at least, required very big blinders and very thick earplugs.
These same folks even question of Obama’s citizenship, despite the conclusive evidence of his Hawaiian birth. Some, confused by his name (especially “Hussein”), thought he was an Arab. Some might even know his father was Muslim. But none of these facts are relevant.

What worries me here is that deliberately ignoring the relevant facts fuels unspecified fears, prejudices, and even hatreds. Questioning Obama’s religion doesn't really matter, even if one believes him to be Muslim, unless one fears or suspects Muslims in general.

The battle over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque” or attacks on mosques in Boston or Minnesota don't matter either, except that millions of Americans remain deliberately ignorant about Islam, persisting in bigoted stereotypes that echo America's history of the anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-immigrant nativism, and racism.

I have long written that America’s future is to become the world’s most multi-religious society. But that future will challenge white Christian Americans to accept their national destiny: they began as the dominant demographic group in America, but soon they will themselves become a minority.

When that happens, white Christian Americans can only hope that the new majority will be less intolerant and belligerent to them than they have been to others. But for that to happen, our national ignorance must end.

This is a multipronged challenge. Our schoolchildren need to study religion. Adult Americans need to become more knowledgeable of their own and others’ faiths. We must not let fear or flag-waving dupe us into ignorant rants, seduce us into fake crusades against fabricated threats, or stain the honor of our heroic youth with lies, as if an ignorant people will be placated or even pleased.

Catholic tradition has long acknowledged that some wrongdoers are incapable of understanding the immorality of their actions. The condition is called "invincible ignorance." we can only hope and pray it will not become a national contagion.