My husband and I have continued watching the Master Class series of lectures on the Tudors and the Stuarts. We are coming to the end of the forty eight episodes and there are certain ideas that stand out from one king or queen to the next.
The ruling class of England during that time consisted of royalty and Parliament with the two institutions struggling to determine who should be in charge. The kings believed in their divine right to be the head of state but that political philosophy constantly came into question as time went by. The budget and ways of funding dominated much of the concerns of the times. There were continuous attempts to forge alliances with the power brokers of Europe. Finally religion and which brand would be endorsed and supported by the government became a front and center issue.
As I watched the lectures I found a bit of amusement in noting that everything changes in the world while at heart staying the same. The program might just as well have been describing modern day issues in the United States today. The names of leaders and countries are different but the problems seem to be similar even hundreds of years later.
In particular the issue of religion became quite bloody during the tenure of the Tudors and Stuarts. The enmity between Catholics and Protestants and even between differing Protestant sects often led to one group or another being burned at the stake. There was a dark irony in the fact that the religious groups seemed to have little or no concern about killing each other to stay in control of the government. Somehow the ideas that Jesus preached did not always comply with what the religious leaders of the time were preaching.
I can’t help but think that the founders of the United States understood that religion had been at the heart of civil wars and persecution in England. Thus came their insistence on enshrining freedom of religion in the Constitution. I do not believe that they would be happy about the new efforts to put prayer and the ten commandments in schools and on public display in the halls of government. I suspect that they would know that praying in Congress and suggesting that our president was sent by God creates a dangerous and slippery slope. They, much more than those of us in the present, knew how ugly religious wars could be.
I am a deeply spiritual person but I do not want my government dictating either my beliefs or anyone else’s as the model for our nation. Faith and how to experience it should not be forced or denied. Each person’s relationship with or without a higher being needs to be respected without judgement. It is in creating an official religion in any country that incredible problems arise. The history of the world is rife with stories of civil wars and wars between nations predicated on religious grounds.
Furthermore, our founders made it clear, and George Washington reinforced the idea, that we should not have or even want a king. Nor should we be constantly worried about who is going to become our next leader. The English obsession with succession resulted in the kind of intrigue and death that we don’t want to encourage in our own government. We should be quite wary of anyone who seems to believe that they and they alone have all of the answers that we need. History has proven that handing over authority to one person or group leads to autocracies rather than democracies.
There was purposefulness in the creation of the three branches of our national government. The idea was to be certain that no single person or group would be able to seize all of the power. The idea of checks and balances was important to our founders because they understood all too well how dangerous it was to concentrate power in one person or one group. George Washington eschewed the offer to stay on as president indefinitely. He disliked the idea of political parties vying for their specific ideas rather than understanding that their duties were to serve all of the people. Washington was well aware of the skirmishes between Whigs and Tories in the British Parliament from which the United States had gained its independence.
Our nation has already endured one civil war. We should be wary of any leaders who constantly encourage angry divisions among us. It should gravely concern us that our current president takes great delight in openly attempting to limit the rights of individuals and groups that he dislikes. Instead of attempting to bring the many differing beliefs together he seems to find great joy in hurting those with whom his own views do not overlap. He has purposely created a schism among our citizens that often comes dangerously close to inciting the kind of political and actual wars that have plagued the world for so long. Our founders and Abraham Lincoln understood the importance of learning how to work together regardless of our individual philosophies. In practice that means making room for everyone to feel comfortable, not creating executive orders to diminish their worth and their rights.
The freedoms of the United States are a delicate commodity. The are predicated on the idea that we are all equal regardless of our various ways of choosing how to live. We can come togehter in a community of tolerance or hark back to dark times when people insisted on forcing their ways on everyone. History tells us that such thinking has never worked to the satisfaction of the whole society. We would do well to be wary of those who would consolidate power into one person or group and then dominate those who think differently. We should all be very afraid when we see such things happening and in this moment the evidence that our nation is backsliding to a darker time is quite clear.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 