Some Highlights of Rob Boston’s Talk on “The Christian Nation Myth”

By Gary Berg-Cross

In January Rob Boston, the Senior Policy Analyst, Americans United (AU) for Separation of Church and State, was the featured speaker at the MDC chapter of WASH. Rob spoke on the very timely topic of “The Christian Nation Myth” and one of the follow on discussion topics was covered in an earlier blog. The MDC March speaker, Edd Doerr, is likely to add to this discussion so people interested in the topic should come March to hear Edd. As a precursor to this and because some may have missed Rob’s talk, I’ve provided some abbreviated notes on the 4 main arguments from Rob’s talk with a few supplements from other sources.

1. Back to Constitution.

As noted on the AU site:

Religious Right groups and their allies insist that the United States was designed to be officially Christian and that our laws should enforce the doctrines of (their version of) Christianity. Is this viewpoint accurate? Is there anything in the Constitution that gives special treatment or preference to Christianity? Did the founders of our government believe this or intend to create a government that gave special recognition to Christianity?

We can start with the Constitution and ask what it says about religion?
First there are no references to Christianity or God in the Constitution. Indeed the words "Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, Creator, Divine, and God" are never mentioned in the Constitution-- not even once.

The word "God" does not appear within the text of the Constitution of the United States. After spending three-and-a-half months debating and negotiating about what should go into the document that would govern the land, the framers drafted a constitution that is secular. The U.S. Constitution is often confused with the Declaration of Independence, and it's important to understand the difference. theocracywatch.org

There are 2 special clauses in Amendments but they show no preference for religion. The 1^st Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Through ratification of the First Amendment, observed Jefferson, the American people built a "wall of separation between church and state."

The 2^nd came from Charles Pinckney of South Carolina who put a prohibit against a religious test as a qualification for federal officeholders office in Article Six since some states required officeholders be of a particular religion. Article VI, which allows persons of all religious viewpoints to hold public office, was adopted by a unanimous vote. (Note - Some have a different view of what the founders intended by these amendments. Supporters of the role of religion in revolutionary times argue they intended only to defuse controversy by disarming potential critics who might claim religious discrimination in eligibility for public office.

We know something of the founders feelings about religion from Luther Martin of Maryland who gave said that:

a handful of delegates to the Constitutional Convention argued for formal recognition of Christianity in the Constitution, insisting that such language was necessary in order to "hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism." But that view was not adopted, and the Constitution gave government no authority over religion.

Luther as actually a fierce opponent of ratification, and reported that the "no religious test" clause easily had passed at Philadelphia, noting sarcastically:

However, there were some members so unfashionable as to think that a belief of the existence of a Deity, and of a state of future rewards and punishments would be some security for the good conduct of our rulers, and that in a Christian country it would be at least decent to hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism.

2 The American Experience and What the Founders thought

We should understand the American experience around the revolutuoinary time and their sense of its European history. The revolution was about breaking away from Europe, but also reforming the American approach. Americans (e.g. Franklyn and Adams) had already experienced harsh legacies of the Pilgrims and in Jefferson’s VA their was a too cozy combination of church and state.
Letters show that Madison and Jefferson’s views on the VA statute (1786) for religious liberty was not limited to Christians and included Moslems and infidels.

our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than [on] our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing [of] any citizen as unworthy [of] the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right

It was clear and the Founders wrote that the new role of President would be only political an not religious.

3 The Founders Religion

Were the core Founder’s Christians? There is a big effort by Christian Revisionists to rewrite history about the Founder’s religion. But this argument has been knocked down in blogs such as Rob’s Alternet.org’s article on five Founding_fathers skepticism_about_christianity

Washington, for example didn’t talk about Christ but was a Deist and left the church. He had a social utilitarian belief of religion – It’s good for morals. And we have Washington's Promises Jewish Congregation that US Will Practice Religious Tolerance as well as this quote:

"As the government of the United States is not in any sense
founded on the Christian religion..."-- George Washington

Adams was Unitarian with a belief that Christ was not God. He believed, however that reason and faith could be combined.

In February 1756, Adams wrote in his diary about a discussion he had had with an officer called Major Greene. Greene was a devout Christian who sought to persuade Adams to adopt conservative Christian views. The 2 apparently argued over the divinity of Jesus & the Trinity. Questioned on the matter of Jesus’ divinity, Greene fell back on an old standby of playing the mystery card:

some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for we puny humans to understand.
Adams wrote that this mystery defense was a convenient cover for “absurdity.”

We have lots of evidence of Jefferson’s religious belief including his famous Bible on display at the Smithsonian and a subject of a previous Blog posting.
There are also pieces from his Letters to Adams (1823):

“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

We also have his 1819 letter on what beliefs he doesn't accept including:

· Immaculate concept

· Divinity and trinity

· Orders of hierarchy

Madison might be a theist but was probably the strictest church-state separationist among the founders. He took stands more bold than the ACLU:

· He opposed government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military.

· As president, Madison rejected a proposed census because it involved counting people by profession.

· For the government to count the clergy, Madison said, would violate the First Amendment. (from Alternet)

Tom Paine is a Founder less often mentioned, but a rationalist and enemy of religion.

· He was also a radical Deist whose later work, The Age of Reason, still infuriates fundamentalists. In the tome, Paine attacked institutionalized religion and all of the major tenets of Christianity. (from Alternet)

4. Founding Period Discussion and Later
This period tells us how the constitution and bill of rights documents were attacked by clergy like Millennialist Reverend David Austin (1759-1831). People tried to add Christian amendment to Constitution to rectify the preamble adding key phrases recognizing Lord Christ as ruler. On the other hand there were things said in the Treaty of Tripoli 1796″

As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” Ordered by George Washington, Signed by President Adams

There was more Christian push back after the civil war (1864-1874).

People voted the amendments down recognizing the dangers of union of church-state. But there was a national myth generated that was latched onto during the social dislocation of the civil war period. People had a hunger to go back to simpler times. The result is a national myth of a golden age. Many cultures have had such things including the garden of Eden idea and the golden age that Greeks looked back to from the 500 BCE era, which was pretty golden itself.

Among the legacies we have from the 1864-1874 period is the idea of putting “God is our Trust” on to coins. This was defeated then but a variant is of recent vintage, having been slipped in during the cold war. Another legacy is the idea of American exceptionalism as an expression of God's favor and will.

So part of the golden story we get is “Everything fine until .. (add your own disturbance such as Gay marriage, Hispanic immigrants, Secular Humanists…)
It’s a convenient ploy which harnesses a plot of a history suppressed by secular elites. One of its appeals is that in the story Christians appear as the exceptional heroes and defenders of civilization. It all seems right that they, rather than others, are the ones who were originally meant to be in charge of society and the myth is they were. This is an appealing, old tale as heard in the story of God’s chosen people. The Hebrew version now has evangelical updates and a Mormon corollary that mixes myth and secrete knowledge.


Recent efforts to use a religious rules for society (e.g. in PA) ignores what governance were really like in biblical times. It was not a gracious society providing a model on how a society should run (remember slavery?). But earlier efforts have left some remnants such as the legacy of no shopping on Sunday. This was an agenda item of National religious reform effort and got a start along with efforts to allow prayer in school.

Indeed the late 19^th century saw efforts to get secular plays banned and the postal service stopped shipping free thinker publications. There was also a religious move against women's rights.

Rob concluded his talk noting where we stand today including recent efforts to not only rewrite history, but also Science. You can see a list of issues that religious folks have with secular governance on many web sites. He argued strongly that:

1. we have to strongly oppose the Christian establishment myth and its associated principles, which exclude many people who now it can claim, are not true Americans. We are still struggling with our pluralism and the claim that non-believers that don't have America’s best interest at heart.

2. We need to promote the teaching of true History and Science and we have to honor our constitutional values.

3. We need to counter the bad arguments that church-state wall is against religion and imposed by courts.

The follow-on discussion of the talk was of the same high quality and I will perhaps cover some of this in a later Blog post. I’m looking forward to Edd Doerr’s talk on March 3^rd at the Wheaton Library which should be equally stimulating and enlightening.

Women's Voices Needed

by Edd Doerr

Disgusting. That's the right word to use to describe the defense of misogynist ideology displayed at a congressional hearing a few days ago by a panel of five male clerics who were opposing the Obama administration's inclusion of birth control in the insurance programs of church-related hospitals, colleges and social service agencies. The Catholic bishops and assorted Religious Right leaders (all male, of course) elevated medieval theology over the health and freedom of religion and conscience claims of the vast numbers of Catholics and non-Catholics employed and/or served by these institutions. Virtually lost in the kerfuffle has been mention of the fact that these institutions are generously subsidized by taxes extracted from citizens of every religious persuasion.

Women make up at least 51% of the US population but only 17% of Congress. No wonder women's health and conscience claims get shortchanged. Then, too, women's voices are just not loud enough. In 2006 I conducted a survey (reported in The Nation) of the gender of the authors of letters to the editor published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Washington Times. Of the letters published in the New York Times 31% were by women, in the Washington Post 26%, and in the hyperconservative Washungton Times 15%. Replicating the survey three years later found very little change.

What we need, then, are more writers like Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, and the late, incomparable ass-kicker Molly Ivins. We need to see more of the likes of Rachel Maddow, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman-Schults, and Jan Shakovsky.

Fortunately, the HHS birth control battle has led to the creation of the Coalition to Protect Women's Health Care, a coalition of about 50 (so far) organizations such as AAUW, AFSCME, Catholics for Choice, EMILY's List, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. (Americans for Religious Liberty will join in a couple of days.)

More individual Humanist women -- and men -- need to get into this fight.

Theism is an existence claim

By Mathew Goldstein

Janet Daley, writing for the British newspaper Telegraph, cites the "clash between President Obama and the Roman Catholic Church over the matter of whether Church institutions should be obliged by federal statute to provide free contraception. There can be no question of where the Constitution stands on this issue: if a case should ever come to the Supreme Court, it is the Church that will win." in her article "A good week for the smiting of the ungodly". Did Janet Daley miss the news that the Obama administration granted religiously affiliated nstitutions an exemption that allows their employees to acquire the contraception coverage from the insurance companies without employer subsidies? Any lawsuits would now be against the contraception coverage subsidy required for institutions not affiliated with a religious institution. Legal precedent says that government can enforce a law that conflicts with some citizen's religious beliefs provided that the law can be shown to benefit the general welfare of citizens.

She then points out that there are questions whose answer is not based on evidence such as: Is it wrong to hurt people unnecessarily? She correctly points out that it is a mistake to require evidence for "those kinds of belief that do not rest on empirical evidence but which are still central to human experience." She then incorrectly concludes that theists are therefore correct to believe without evidence. That final therefore is incorrect because theism is not one of "those kinds of belief" that is exempted from the need for empirical evidence. Claims that theism has moral benefits are derivative, they come after acceptance of the existence claim. Therefore theism is not a moral assertion like the assertion that it is wrong to hurt people. Theism is an existence assertion like the claim that God the Holy Ghost exists as part of a Holy Trinity. So atheists are correct to look to evidence for evaluating the merit of theism.

She then calls it "a very odd kind of obtuseness in people who clearly see themselves as possessing superior intelligence. Do they really not understand what it is that it is so unsatisfactory about “scientific” accounts which reduce life to the ticking over of sensory apparatus?". This is also mistaken. First of all, both theists and atheists posses a full range of intelligence. The difference here is that atheists are applying their intelligence better on this question. Secondly, accurate explanations do not "reduce" that which is being explained. Life continues to be exactly the same phenomena, neither enhanced nor reduced, by the availability of previously unavailable explanations for how it originated and evolved. The obtuseness here is on the side of people like Janet Daley who have this very odd notion that an explanation should be rejected if it is subjectively deemed to change the value of that which is explained in a direction that some people decide is undesirable. We are obliged to follow the evidence wherever it takes us. We are not the creators of the universe. We don't have carte blanche to create the explanations according to our preferences. Janet Daley's self-centered, subjective, wish fullfillment approach to evaluating the merit of explanations is naive and backwards. When a preference conflicts with the evidence the proper way to resolve the conflict is to abandon the preference.

Janet Daley then asserts about Dawkins "Most to the point was the comment that he had failed to “understand the nature of faith”. It is that incomprehension which is perhaps the weakest element in the scientific rationalist atheist case." On the contrary, the irony is that it is the atheists who understand faith better than those who live by it. If the people of faith acknowledged how vacuous this reliance on faith is as a source of knowledge about what exists then they wouldn't be so proud to publicly assert their beliefs are faith-based as if that was a positive attribute or sufficient justification.
.
In defense of faith, Janet Daley returns again to questions of morality, asking: "Why do they, and we, feel such unbearable compassion even for those unknown to us – even, indeed, for hypothetical tortured children who have been invented for the purpose of argument? Why is sympathy, and revulsion at the pain of others, such a characteristic feature of our condition that it is actually called “humanity” and its lapses regarded as “inhuman”? Presumably, the Dawkins lobby would say it arose from the need to preserve our collective genes. What an impoverished view of life and its moral complexity, that is.". Having previously mischaracterized the correct insistence that evidence be provided to support the existence claims intrinsic to theism as " facile atheism", it is actually Janet Daley who is the one being facile here. The explanations for moral sensibility, and life, provided by biology are rich and incredible, it combines a deep simplicity with incredible complexity, with broad implications, and is anything but "impoverished". Most to the point, we are justified in believing that this "view of life", unlike theism, is true because the evidence tells us it is true. And that is what counts here, everything else is hot air.

Invasion of the Soul Snatchers

by Edd Doerr

Let me recommend what may well be one of the most important books published this year -- The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, by Katherine Stewart (Public Affairs Press, 2012, 291 pp, $25.99). My 1,000-word review of the book will appear in the next issue of Free Inquiry, so I need not expand here.

Stewart details this metastasizing invasion of the soul snatchers from mid-town Manhattan to the boonies. Buy it. Read it.

The Robins of February: Following the 37 Degree Isotherm to a New Climate

By Gary Berg-Cross

Heard this song in the morning? It’s a robin song. I woke up to that sound several days ago. Over a hot drink I had an avian voyeuristic morning watching waves of robins cleaning my back yard for worms.

Spring is not yet here in February, but the robins, harbingers of spring, are and you and track their path north at http://www.learner.org/jnorth/robin/index.html In late January they were in Roanoke VA and as far as Hauppauge NY. Our neighbors in Berryville VA reported seeing 2 of the birds on Feb 2^nd and a week later there were flocks of them in my neighborhood. By the 12^th they were seen in upstate NY.

To be sure robins and other birds have to be practical and opportunistic about getting food. If local conditions are favorable, such as soft rains to surface their wormy food, they may do well if the temperature dips a bit lower. This year more Robins than usual seem to have wintered over in our area and apparently they have found places as far north as Vermont as a tolerable enough place to spend the winter finding food on sunny hillside and warmth near houses ( report from Katja Bahnemann-Evans of Braintree, Vt.)

The sharp, clear air feels a but like early Spring. Many people have noted curious sign of an early Spring including folks in Michigan. Besides the robins it’s the house finches. In spring, the males turn a very purple/red color to strut their stuff for their bird girlfriends during mating season. In this February’s Michigan some males are starting to turn that sexy finch red. Then again in some places people report seeing streaks of eastern gray squirrels chasing each other up and down trees getting ready for an early mating season. It used to begin in mid-March. Now they are scampering in my yard with some bold ones lazily scratching in the sun on my deck.

This is all a bit unscientific but it did get me to dip a toe into a bit of the science. I learned something about the Spring movements of robins. They usually follow what is called the 37 degree isotherm. We are well above that, our recent low of 39 was higher than that. What such temperatures allow is what is called a "vertical migration" allowing the first
earthworms of the season. In the fall Earthworms migrate down into the earth to escape below the frostline. Research finds that they sometimes they ball up in wormy groups to reduce moisture loss. A ball may have as many as a hundred worms all bunched together and in this community they spend an inactive winter. But when the weather when drives frost from the soil, the earthworms become vertical migrants and tunneling upward and appear at the surface. A warm rain, of course, helps loosen the ground and you might have noticed we’ve had these along with high average temperatures that have left our ground reaches above 36 degrees. If you look at the WAPO weather page you can see this winter’s stats on “heating degree days” – an index of fuel consumption tell us by how many degrees the daily average fell below 65 degrees and thus required that degree of heating to be comfortable. By this time in February the historical total of such heating has been 2835. We had a cooler than normal winter last year and needed 2913 or some 80 degrees more of heating. This year our total is only 2330 and thus we’ve needed almost 500 degrees less of heating than normal. A measure of how deviant we and many other parts of the US have been.

What's happening is so noticeable in the last few years that scientists can track it from space. A few years ago Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring "green-up" is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 north of the Mason-Dixon line. These trends are showing up in the northern climes more than the south, and up north it affects what is called phenology or biological timing. The mutual timing of worms and robin arrival is one example. To a large extent biological spring is based on the tilt of the Earth as it circles the sun. But climate change seems to be having an influence and we need to better understand the changes, and what do they mean for humanity and our fellow creatures.

Back in 2008 people were talking about winners as well as losers in any change but we still are unsure of the range of ] effect that consistent global warming will have. It is like to confuse the natural coupled timing that evolution has provided. Sure we will appreciate savings from heating bills with milder winters and more bird songs. We and Canada will get a longer growing season and Maryland wines will be taste better.

But the sobering expectation is such things as a broader biological view that foresees big problems such as species to extinction. As with the robins and worms certain plants and animals are dependent on each other for food and shelter. In my garden some of the bulbs are up. If plants bud too early they are vulnerable to a late freeze from an arctic high and weather variability is one thing that may come with the early phases of climate change.

If the plants bloom or bear fruit before animals return or surface from hibernation, our animal friends and their young may not be able to cope and could starve. Tree swallow chicks are laying eggs 9-10 days earlier than in the 1960s in places like NY. They now starve if we have late cold snaps because insects stop flying in the cold, according to reports from ornithologists like University of Maryland biology professor David Inouye.

A more recent story notes:

"U.S. Forest Service researchers have confirmed what has long been suspected about a valuable tree in Alaska's Panhandle: Climate warming is killing off yellow cedar.


The mighty trees can live more than 1,000 years, resisting bugs and rot and even defending themselves against injury, but their shallow roots are vulnerable to freezing if soil is not insulated by snow. And for more than a century, with less snow on the ground, frozen roots have killed yellow cedar on nearly a half-million acres in southeast Alaska, plus another 123,000 acres in adjacent British Columbia. "

I’m enjoying the reset of nature’s clock to an early Spring and my earlier than usual birding and bulb blooms, but I do worry that it is all not just for the good.

Religious Americans enjoy higher-what?

By Hos
A number of recent Gallup polls have been put together by the polling organization, leading to the conclusion that the most religious Americans have the highest level of "wellbeing". You can find the data here, here and here. The neologism not withstanding, the data can be taken to mean that faith brings you physical and mental health.
And yet it doesn't take a genius or social scientists to poke holes in this conclusion the size of your average megachurch.
To start with, the study is based entirely on self reporting. This problem with surveys having to do with religion never seems to bother religious folks who quote them as they tout the glory brought on humanity by the wonderful institution. You ask someone how religious they are, and in the next breath you ask them how much they drink. What is the likelihood that your next door Muslim, Baptist or Mormon will under-report, consciously or not?
The second problem is that it doesn't take into consideration the benefits of community bestowed on the faithful by their houses of worship. Undeniably that is an area where we have fallen short, even though things are getting better. Having long lasting friendships in the context of service attendance could well be helpful in reducing anxiety and depression.
Another factor possibly skewing the results (and not adjusted for in the surveys) is the location of the most versus least religious. Anecdotally at least, rural areas in the US happen to have the most religious populations, while the least religious live in major urban centers. City life stress, plus other factors affecting urban lifestyle (such as diet and exercise) may also be affecting the findings.
There are other effects of religion on health that are a lot more subtle and cannot be surveyed for. One notorious example is HIV. Condemnation and denial of homosexuality among a number of ethnic and religious communities only leads to delayed diagnosis and further spread of the disease among men and women alike. Other examples includes denial of blood transfusions by Jehovah's Witnesses and faith healing leading to delayed care, which at times can be deadly.
Last but not least, let's not forget the hostility directed at non-believers. The kind of threats that activists like Jessica Ahlquist have to deal with represent only the tip of the iceberg. The social situations atheists face are all too similar: keep it to yourself or put your career in jeopardy and risk shunning by friends, family and community. No surprise that the religion report higher levels of "wellbeing".

Faith and Mountains

by Augusto Monterroso (from "The Black Sheep and Other Fables"), Translated from the Spanish by Edd Doerr

In the beginning Faith moved mountains only when absolutely necessary, so that the landscape remained the same for millenia. But when Faith began to spread and people found it fun to move mountains, these began to change locations and it became hard to find where they had been left the previous day; and this created more difficulties than could be resolved. So people preferred to abandon Faith and now mountains generally remain in their place. But when there is a huge pile-up on the Interstate and many people are killed, it is because someone somewhere indulged in a little Faith,

-- oOo --

In spite of what they say, the idea of a Heaven inhabited by Horses and presided over by an equine Deity is repugnant to good taste and elementary logic. So reasoned the Horse the other day. Everyone knows, he reasoned, that if Horses were able to imagine a Deity he would be in the form of a Rider.

-- oOo --

In the home of a rich merchant in Mexico City, surrounded by every sort of luxury and devices, there lived a Dog who decided that he wanted to be a human, and he worked at it in earnest. After a few years and persistent effort he was able to walk upright on two feet and at times felt that he was on the point of becoming human, except that he didn't bite, wagged his tail when he encountered someone he knew, would turn around three times before lying down, would salivate when he heard the church bells, and would howl at the moon.

-- 30 --

Identity versus evidence

A common theme of those who argue in favor of government establishment of a majority's religion is "religious identity". In her speech against "militant secularists" promoting "totalitarian regimes" and "denying people the right to a religious identity", British Cabinet Minister without Portfolio, Sayeeda Warsi, mentioned identity three times in the first three minutes. "In order to encourage social harmony, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their beliefs", "in a globalized world it is easy to think that, to relate to others, you must water down your religious identity", and "it demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes, denying people the right to a religious identity". What is the relationship between belief and identity and secularism?

Religious conservatives have a tendency to assert that a primary purpose of belief is to define individual and group identity. However, that isn't generally true. We believe that cows exist and dragons do not exist, not as a means to give ourselves an identity, but as a result of the evidence for the existence of cows and against the existence of dragons. What religious conservatives are doing here is inconsistent. They are insisting on two conflicting standards for belief justification, one rational, based on the evidence, and another arational, based on maintaining a self-confident identity.

Maintaining self-confidence isn't an issue with rational beliefs. We are self-confident in our rational beliefs in proportion to the evidence. Because rational beliefs are not about self-identity, there is no need for a preset and never changing self-confidence in our beliefs. As additional evidence is accumulated over time, rational beliefs adjust to fit the available evidence. The past is not the future, and rational beliefs are flexible enough to respect and accommodate future changes. Neither self-identity nor self-confidence are dependent on rational beliefs.

In contrast, the religious belief based self-identity, having thus entangled itself with self-confidence, does not like being confined to individual expression. Because religious belief is insecure and entangled with self-confidence, it seeks support from the nation as a whole. Without active and ongoing governmental expression of the majority's religious practice, the otherwise insecure majority religious beliefs are "sidelined, marginalised and downgraded" in the words of Ms. Warsi. Confidence in religious beliefs merges with self-confidence, religious beliefs merge with self-identity, self-identity merges with national identity, and the government sphere merges with the non-governmental sphere. There is then just one comprehensive and indivisible identity and public sphere, and that identity and public sphere are themselves merged together with, and defined for everyone by, a majority religious belief.

Thus, according to Ms. Warsi, merely forbidding a prayer ritual at the start of government meetings becomes a denial of "the right to a religious identity" for people generally. But of course, it is no such thing. Government meeting prayer rituals are not even a denial of the right to an atheist identity. If not having a prayer ritual were a denial of the right to a religious identity then the right to a religious identity would necessarily be incompatible with the right to an atheist identity, or to any conflicting, unrepresented minority religious identity, since the government meeting cannot simultaneously have an opening ritual affirming all conflicting beliefs. That is nonsense, and that is the real core problem here. The people who are insisting on government establishments of their preferred religions are in effect asserting a right to impose promotion of their insecure and arational religious self-identity, practices, and beliefs on all the citizens of the nation through the common government. There is no such right.

Starting with the false foundations that individual identity is the same identity as national identity, government actions are the same public actions as non-government actions, confidence in a particular set of beliefs is the same confidence as self-confidence in one's self, and the purpose and function of beliefs is to define and maintain an identity, is it any surprise that arguments for establishment of religion go awry, descending into bombast and ending in self-contradiction?

The applicable right here is for individuals to freely form and express their own beliefs and identities without government interference. This requires unbiased government with no religious identity. Practice your religion as you wish, in public or privately, government has nothing to say about which religious beliefs, or identities, or rituals and practices, are preferred or patriotic. People do not need their government to practice their religious beliefs for them, or define a national religious identity for them, and there is no civic right to a government favoring your own religious beliefs or identities over competing beliefs or identities. If Ms. Warsi really thinks that is an intolerant prescription that is reminiscent of totalitarian regimes then she is a very confused lady representing a very confused government.