I clearly remember coming off the fields to prepare and go to church on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and twice on Sunday to worship God and find solace in the fact that we were a community even when we traveled across the country. My grandfather was both a contractor that brought people to work in the fields and a minister that organized church gatherings wherever were were.
The music was great and the sermons were simple. People in the congregation felt free to participate and voice their problems for God to hear and give testimony of the Lord’s goodness that had blessed their family in various ways.
In a sense, the church services were an outlet and a temporary escape from our extreme desolation and the human condition that resulted. We found community with other families that also kept the faith and were part of that pocket of poverty that moved from crop to crop. We were taught to accept our place on this earth and to plan on receiving our rich reward in heaven. Happiness came in the form of the days and nights of worship and the fact that we were together as a community.
We never thought of church as part of an organic political movement that could transform our lives as citizens of the country. Our notion of government was the courthouse where we got copies of our birth certificates and the policemen that found reasons to stop us on the road.
Imagine the day I found out that religion did have a strong voice in the affairs of the country. I realized its responsibility in shaping the hierarchy of difference among people including the bigotry that goes with religious affiliation.
One of the selling points of the Protestant Reformation, a significant part of the Renaissance in the 15th Century, was that it supposedly got rid of what was branded as corrupt priests that stood between people and God. As time went on, the notion of a personal relationship with God became a predominant characteristic of the more strident elements of the Reform Movement.
The immigration of Europeans to the northern part of the Americas brought that idea as they wanted to freely practice a way of worship that in their homeland was not always tolerated. It is that brand of Protestant ethic that has colored the social and religious fabric in our country.
As this way of worship generalized through much of the population, leaders that practiced it began to push to exclude other ways of believing. The anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon Movements provide ample examples of that.
This in turn has led to major efforts to make it the pseudo-primary religion of the State. Ironically, a national religion is why many immigrated to what is now the United States in the first place.
That heritage is now being betrayed in the name of they same God they brought with them from Europe. Groups of these people have already captured state governments and are passing laws that ban the teaching of classics and have even gone as far as burning books.
Our founding fathers were very much aware of this possibility and sought to head it off by putting language in the Constitution separating church and state. However, these people have reached the point of discounting their loyalty to the Constitution in favor of iron control of the country.
They have decided that obedience to the Constitution is negotiable. Clearly, using God to substitute for the Constitution is going too far.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of La Voz Bilingüe. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
