Christians are Better Citizens?

I was bopping around the interwebs yesterday and came across an item that caught my eye. The Friendly Atheist website reported on a Christian reaction to an atheist invocation at a city council meeting. Tamara Scott, an Iowa Republican National Committee member, said in hyperbolic language that "those who come against Christianity want to destroy Christianity." To repeat, this is in response to an atheist invocation at a city council meeting. (By the way, the invocation is linked if you care to read it.)

I'd like to set aside that overreaction to focus this post on another point Scott made:

There's no mistaking that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. And they did it because they knew what made better Christians made better citizens.

This post is not about Scott's right to think and speak, which she has the right to do. I often feel that claiming a first amendment right is a way of side-stepping the issue and avoiding discussing content. Sure, she has the right, but is she right? She has been given a platform to broadcast her speech. We have no obligation to nod along and let her assertions go unchallenged. I specifically want to address the content of what she said because I feel her statement entrenches an us-versus-them mentality that feeds into further polarization, and here, because atheists are a minority group, it can be dangerous, encouraging actually violence against individuals, whether she intends it or not.

First off, America was not founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Certainly, the constellation of religions our founders practiced was not an exact replica of those we see today. Religions shift and change over time. But if you actually read the documents, you will not see religion reflected in any meaningful way. I am not going to go into detail on this issue because there are a great many sites that one can visit for that information.

I would like to really challenge the assertion that "what made better Christians made better citizens." This is really empty language, the kind that the listener can fill with whatever they please. They can fill in their own version of Christianity, which may or may not correspond to what Scott thinks. For me, a Christian is whoever claims to be one. I know there are plenty of discussions that amount to a "no true Christian" line of reasoning, and I can't help that there are so many denominations and differences of belief among Christians. Furthermore, it's not for me to sort out which among the various possibilities is the One True Church. It's too bad that the Christian god turned out to be a poor communicator, but that's not my problem.

As for what makes a good citizen, although we may argue over some of the finer points, I think we can all agree that it's a person who is making some kind of contribution to their community (through work, raising family, charity, paying taxes and/or other) and obeying the laws. There are plenty of statistics demonstrating that Christians make up a large part of the prison population, and you only really need to open your news from time to time to see Christian politicians accused of some crime.

My point here is not that Christians are the bad ones, it is that Christianity in and of itself is not a predictor for what kind of person you are. In fact, my broader point in this discussion is that we are all humans and the groups we form are more similar than different. Christians make up the large share of prisoners because they are the biggest slice of the population.\

In my next post, I am going to explore my own anecdotal evidence showing that atheists make upstanding citizens. (Here is part II, part III, and part IV)

To end on a lighter note, some random little pleasures:

-arguing with friends over the meaning of 'nothing'

-learning new philosophical terms from a philosophy professor

-walking the garden at dusk as robbins bark and sing their evening song