Religious Intolerance In America.. Did we take a step backward?

From Article 6 of the Constitution of the United States Of America: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Let me extract the portion that I am looking for : No religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States. 

That says it all, does it not? It means that you do not need to be a Evangelical Christian to hold any office in the this great country. The first people who colonized this country were running from religious repression. And yet, I hear this Reverend Jeffress the other night calling another man’s religion a cult and inferring that, because of his religion, he is not fit to hold office. We have just come through a long, protracted witch hunt over the current President’s religion. There were more conspiracy theories about Obama and his religion, his citizenship and his rightful ability to hold office than there are about the Kennedy assassination and the 1947 crash in Roswell, New Mexico combined. And they continue to this day. Now, we have the controversy over Governor Romney’s religion. This is just anti-American in more ways than I can count. We live now in the 21st Century, and still we have religious fanatics that want to control the government and every aspect of our lives. How can we, as a people, condemn the religious fanatics in the Middle East when we, in fact, have sections of our own people who wish to run our government as a quasi-religious democracy? Are we to continue this child’s game of ‘my god is greater than Your God’? Is this, in fact, how we want to elect leaders in the free world, by what religious sect or order that the candidate belongs to? We are a country of many peoples, not one religion. There are Catholics, various fundamentalist Christian sects, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Orthodox Jews, Reformed Jews, Conservative Jews, Hassidic Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Hindu’s , Sikhs, the list goes on and on. What gives any one religion the right to say that they are the ones to lead this country? I thought that we were over this nonsense when Kennedy was elected... but, no.. it’s worse today than it ever was. I remember being told by nuns when I was a young boy that anyone who was not Catholic was going to hell, no questions asked. Even at the time, that struck me as wrong. And yet, we have the same thing going on today, in 2011. We have a council of religious leaders, read evangelical Christians, trying to dictate to the Republican Party who they should nominate for President. Never mind his or her qualifications. Is that the way that we want to elect the next President?  We are in serious trouble in this country. The jobs have left to go to the far east. Our own businesses have deserted us because of the bad trade agreements made over the last 20 years. We are winding down two wars. Do we really want the next leader chosen by where, or if, he goes to worship on his or her sabbath? 

 What we need is a leader. Someone who understands our problems and can put together a group of people to find us a way out of our morass. I cannot, no, I will not stand by silently and watch people again throw out conspiracy theories because someone is a Mormon, or a Jew, or a Catholic, or any other religion. What matters is how a man or woman performs their duties. Their religion, and every other aspect of their private lives should be their business. If they perform their jobs to the best of their abilities, that’s all we can ask for.

 So, my question to all of you, gentle readers, is: Are we going to stand up and be the America that was designed by the founders, and forged through 200+ years of blood, sweat, and tears? Or are we going to let a small group of religious zealots decide the fate of this nation for the next 8 years? I know how I feel. The rest is up to all of you and the American electorate.