Sally Quinn is as entrenched at the Washington Post as anyone could be. That comes with being Ben Bradlee’s wife. But she is a continuous source of embarrassment for the paper. Consider this segment from her latest column:
This is a religious country. Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian.. We’ve got the Creator in our Declaration of Independence. We’ve got “In God We Trust” on our coins. We’ve got “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. And we say prayers in the Senate and the House of Representatives to God.
An atheist could never get elected dog catcher, much less president. (Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California is a nontheist but doesn’t talk much about it).
Up until now, the idea of being American and believing in God were synonymous.
Let’s split this up.
This is a religious country. TRUE
Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian. FALSE
We’ve got the Creator in our Declaration of Independence. TRUE
We’ve got “In God We Trust” on our coins. TRUE
We’ve got “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. TRUE
And we say prayers in the Senate and the House of Representatives to God. TRUE
An atheist could never get elected dog catcher, much less president. (Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California is a nontheist but doesn’t talk much about it). CONTRADICTORY, BUT MOSTLY TRUE
Up until now, the idea of being American and believing in God were synonymous. FALSE
This is an unholy logical mess. Let’s begin with the problem that we don’t know what Sally Quinn is trying to prove. I thought she was trying to say that you can’t be a U.S. citizen or get elected to office unless you believe in God. But she isn’t really saying that. She acknowledges that Rep. Pete Stark is a “non-theist.” Does she acknowledge that we have Buddhists in Congress who are also non-theists? How about the Democratic senate candidate from Hawai’i? Mazie Hirono is a non-practicising Buddhist who was born in Japan. She’s way ahead in the polls. Uh-oh. She’s an American citizen. She might even wear a flag-pin!
Why does Quinn say “until now” believing in God and being American were synonymous? What changed? Has anything changed? Who changed it? Is she even correct that religious belief has been synonymous with being an American? I think you have to strain pretty hard to make that true, and what you’re left with is something a lot different from what I think Ms. Quinn means.
Is is okay to believe in Providence but not in the divinity of Christ?
“The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.”- Thomas Jefferson
“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”- Abraham Lincoln
“I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.”- William Howard Taft
Imagine any presidential candidate making those comments today. Of course, they all professed a belief in some kind of higher power, so this doesn’t technically negate Sally Quinn’s point. I just think it shows that the country hasn’t been led by orthodox Trinitarian Christians for much of its history. This country has grown more conventionally religious, not less.
Sally Quinn obviously thinks this is a good thing, but we still don’t know why she wrote this column. It appears that she wrote it to congratulate Mitt Romney for mentioning our Creator in the debate and to criticize the president for failing to do so. But we can’t even tell if she offers this opinion as dispassionate analysis or because she personally needed the pat on the head.
She says that an atheist can’t be elected dog-catcher in this country, and she makes it sound like that is a good thing. If she said the same about gays or women or Latinos or Jews or Mormons, would we find her approving tone acceptable? Why is it okay to pick on atheists in this way? When Mitt Romney brought up our Creator in the debate, he did so in part to stress the importance of religious freedom. Was he wrong? Should atheists be barred from holding public office?
There are a lot of atheists in this country, and that has been true for our entire history. I just don’t get how they can in any sense be denied their American citizenship or their place in our culture.
Ms. Quinn could have just said that pandering to religious feelings in a debate is a smart and effective tactic and Romney helped himself when he remembered to do it because this is a very religious country. That would have been straight-up analysis. If she wanted to say she is happy the country values religion so much, that would have a valid expression of her opinion. But, instead, she just vomited up a Jackson Pollack-style logical argument that is needlessly insulting to millions of Americans who did nothing to harm Sally Quinn.
Gotta disagree. This is false. The halls of Congress are filled with the godless. Oh sure, they say they’re believers, but actions speak, you know.
well, that’s another thing. You gotta fake it make it.
I registered just to point out that your comment, by casually equating God-belief with ethical behavior, is just as offensive- unintentionally, I’m quite sure- as Quinn’s column. Please don’t do that.
Not sure how you say that equation. What was said is that unethical behavior tends to make false the statement that the person is a true believer. That is not the same as saying that the only way one can be ethical/moral is through belief in God.
You’re doing it too. Why do you assume there is ANY correlation at all? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing by taking for granted that a bad actor must not be a “real” believer. Seriously, people need to think before they fall into bad, and unintentionally insulting, mental habits like that.
I’d say Mr. LaBonne has your number.
Of course, a fervent belief in God makes you more likely to be total “Kill ’em all” fanatic, but the real question is does a mild belief in God make you more likely to excuse, give $$$ or otherwise support the *** !@#$%^& that call themselves “Real Christians”.
I’d have to say yes. This is based on my experience of being an atheist since I left the ministry … in 1969. I’ll further back it up by suggesting that you peruse FaceBook and look at the crap anyone who posts an atheist thought has to put up with.
I’m sure you can find plenty of examples contrary to my stated position, but then that is only anecdotal evidence.
The halls of Congress are filled with the godless. Oh sure, they say they’re believers, but actions speak, you know.
I don’t know how anyone can read this other than, People in Congress say they’re believers, but their actions speak otherwise.
Now, you’re either a believer or you’re not. That statement infers that if their actions are not in line with those of a believer, they must be in line with those of a non-believer.
I would prefer, though, to give one the benefit of the doubt and think the statement was simply “inartfully phrased”, and not a slam on non-believers.
Objection. Oversimplification.
They say they are moral and ethical because they claim to be believers. Their actions do not measure up to the ideals they espouse. They claim to be Christians but their actions are not Christlike. They claim to be believers, but they do not practice what they claim to believe.
The original comment says that some folks lay claim to piety they don’t practice. Now kindly run along and show me where the original comment says anything at all about people who don’t make these claims.
No, you miss the point. Congress is filled with folks who announce their faith as proof of ethical fitness for office. Their actions, however, demonstrate they don’t really practice what they, you know, preach.
I’m saying that people who claim to follow a particular set of moral beliefs and then demonstrate that they don’t practice those beliefs are false. This has nothing at all to do with those who don’t use religion as evidence of their own morality.
I’m sorry, and I don’t want to keep beating this horse, but this is what the voice of privilege always sounds like. “You’re just being oversensitive”. “You always take things the wrong way”.
I’m a sometime UU and I have a lot of respect for the Friends (making a presumption based on your nym), so it’s a bit disappointing. Please think some more.
but this is what the voice of privilege always sounds like. “You’re just being oversensitive”. “You always take things the wrong way”.
Privilege? No this is the voice of You Don’t Understand Simple Sentences. You’re inventing a reason to take offense that is nowhere in the original comment.
I think Quaker was referring to hypocrisy. But good that you registered, your comments welcome.
I don’t see anything wrong with the statement that those who truly believe number less than those who espouse those beliefs, which is certainly one way that that statement can be taken.
As a non-believer myself, I didn’t even pick up on that while reading it. Thanks for pointing it out.
by casually equating God-belief with ethical behavior
Nope.
The Village is great for satire.
Villagers easily conflate Christianity and the American civil religion that has been forcibly co-opted by Christian Protestantism with likely a little touch of Freemasonry.
And Christian preachers exploit this co-opted civil religion to shove it in the direction of theocracy. And guess who gets to decide what God wants.
I wonder how many of these Protestant/freemasonry/evangelical types even realize that the “one nation under God” part of the Pledge didn’t even come into being until 1954 and that it is there at the urging and active promotion by that Papist organization the Knights of Columbus.
Everyone between age 64 and 76 who had to relearn the Pledge of Allegiance in order to recite it in school.
It seems every time I hear about this Sally Quinn opining on anything, I just know I’m going to be offended by it. And she claims to be a good Christian woman…
How frightening this discussion is. You can’t just be an US person and not spend your time agonizing about someone’s religion. God, give us our freedom!
This afternoon needs to get funked up.
Sally Quinn’s experience changed. She was born in 1941, so she grew up when folks had just had the bejeezus scare of their lives with WW2. I grew up in an irish catholic family a decade after she did, and church participation was huge, but I learned from my grandmother that it was all pretty non-existent before the war. With time, folks got over it, the 60’s happened, George Carlin exposed the seven words you can’t say on tv, and the and the next thing you know, you can get images of the duchess of cornball in the nude on the toy in your pocket.
From time to time I repeat myself, but can’t seem to stop, I will always believe that ‘religion is God’s weakest link’. And today Sally has marched to the front of the weakest link class.
Perhaps Sally favors Christianity for its habit of Sunday forgiveness, which she might want to take advantage of this Sunday.
For me, the wisdom of Marc Hauser’s book “Moral Minds” and ‘how nature designed our universal sense of right and wrong’ offers a stronger argument for diversity than Sally’s non sensical argument for a ‘Christians only need apply’ society.
nice post until the last line. no serious painter or art freak is going to accept the equation of Jackson Pollack with messy logic or the lack of it.