There were three revolutions in the 18th century which followed one after the other in the Western world. The first one was the American revolution, resulting in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The second one was the French revolution led by commoners against taxation and elite privileges. The final one — one which rarely is mentioned — is the Haitian revolution. Conducted by self-liberated slaves in 1791 against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, it resulted in the colony’s independence.
While the French and the Haitian revolution were by the slaves and commoners, the American revolution was a rich man’s revolution. An important point in this regards comes from the life of the first President George Washington as narrated in an AoM podcast. The question that is asked is: when did George Washington become an American?
According to the podcast, Washington, who had served in the British Army, turned against them towards the end of his commission. He wanted to become a regular British officer compared to what was something like a National Guard. He was promised that by one of his superiors, but that man died. Though Washington lobbied and sucked up, nothing came of it. He went to meet the new British Commander for North America with a plan to defeat the French who had control over territories. The discussion turned to books and the Commander’s impression of Washington was of an uneducated provincial. Their tastes in books were quite different. At that moment, Washington realized he is not going to be a red coat.
He was not erudite enough and did not have enough wealth to buy that commission. One he realized that his dream had been squashed, he became a Virginian. (The term American was not so common then). He then pursues his dream of becoming one of the wealthiest planters in Virginia.
Unlike the Haitian slaves or the French commoner, it was not hardship and suffering or some ideal that caused George Washington to revolt, but an offended sense of honor. Later he scales his personal experience with that of the colonies and believes that they would not get a fair treatment by the British.
Category: USA
Revisionist History
The above picture was taken in 1963, during a protest march for civil rights, in the United States. This was the time in history when Martin Luther King and his people were organizing sit-ins, boycotts, and marches to protest their oppression. They were looking for a means to turn public opinion in their favor by provoking the police.
They got their moment on that day in 1963. The protest march started at a church near the Kelly Ingram Park. Besides the protestors, there was a crowd to watch the march and police to control both of them. The police stood between the spectators and the protestors. And they had dogs. Then the dog, controlled by a white police officer, attacked one of the foot soldiers, an innocent looking black boy.
The picture became famous. Newspapers printed it above the fold. The President was asked about it; Congress discussed it; there were debates around the country. Eventually, the civil rights act was passed.
All of this was fine, except that the photo did not represent the reality. This was the topic of a recent Revisionist History podcast.
The boy in the picture was Walter Gadsden. He had skipped school and was walking to meet a friend when he saw the protests. He moved away from the marchers when he was attacked by the dog. In a later interview, Gadsden revealed that he had no connection to the civil rights movement. He was neither a participant nor a foot soldier. Also, the police officer had not unleashed the dog on the boy; he was trying to pull the dog away to save the boy.
There is a statue at the Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham which memorializes this incident. The dog attacking the boy scene has been immortalized; a powerful memory which people had chosen to preserve. The Podcast makes the case that even though that particular incident was technically wrong, the statue is an art (the dog turns into a wolf, the boy is falling down) needs to be seen as an interpretation.
Thus does it matter that the basis of the statue at Kelly Ingram Park was incorrect? Doesn’t it miss the big picture of what happened in 1963? Did police use dogs at that time? Sure they did. These kind of gotcha stories are an example of missing the forest for the trees. Societies which are not obsessed with these low-level details have ways to abstract the wisdom of events into stories which can be retold.
Disputing the Jefferson Davis Theory
In his memoirs, published in 1881, ex-Confederate President Jefferson Davis cast secession as a wholly constitutional move designed to restore government to what the founding fathers had intended. The goal of secession, the late President wrote, was to protect the rights of “sovereign states” from “tremendous and sweeping usurpation” by the federal government. “The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident.” The problem is that Davis’s interpretation was not consistent with case for secession made by southern politicians in the 1850s.
On June 10, 1850, the people of Georgia passed the Georgia Platform and it contained five grievances of the state. One of the main points of contention between Georgia and the Federal Government was related to slavery and its future. For the Georgians, the “ the establishment of a boundary between the latter and the State of Texas, the suppression of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and the extradition of fugitive slaves, the rejection of propositions to exclude slavery from the Mexican territories and to abolish it in the District of Columbia (“Georgia Platform”) ” were all controversial. The fourth clause in the Platform made it clear that when it came to the subject of slavery, there would be no compromise. It clearly stated that it would oppose any action, “upon the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia, or in any places subject to the jurisdiction of Congress incompatible with the safety, domestic tranquility, the rights and honor of the slaveholding States, or any refusal to admit as a State any territory hereafter, applying, because of the existence of slavery therein, or any act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the territories of New Mexico and Utah, or any act repealing or materially modifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves. ” Thus, they were clear about what they were fighting for.
Mississippi too was clear about why were seceding from the Union in A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth,” they stated. Mississippi too was incensed by the dangers to the institution, the refusal of admission of new slaves states to the Union, the nullification of the Fugitive State Law and the proposal for slave equality. They felt that, it was worth seceding from the Union rather than face the loss of four billions dollars of money
.The same spirit about slavery was echoed in the Cotton is King speech of James Henry Hammond in 1858. According to Mr. Hammond, though people claimed that slavery had been abolished, it was in name only and “all the powers of the earth cannot abolish that. God only can do it when he repeals the fiat.” Unlike the Northerners who had kept White men as wage earners, the Southerners, he felt, had “a race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes.” Every society, he argued required a class of people, “do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life” with a “ low order of intellect” and with such people, they were able to produce massive amount of wealth. The new developments, he thought were threatening the business and if required, the South was ready to go to war for it.
The Southerners knew that the admission of a large number of free states would change the balance of power in the Congress. As they struggled to the secure the future of slavery, the edifice on which their wealth was created, they realized that the slavery could soon be abolished. The admission of new states into the Union always resulted in a debate over slavery and they often resulted in a compromise. For the Southerners it was evident that the tide was not going their way and secession was the only option available to preserve their wealth.
The important point to note is that the statement from Jefferson Davis was written in 1881, much after the South lost the war and thus a post-justification for the war they lost. As you read the statements from Mississippi, Georgia and from James Henry Hammond, it is clear that slavery and not the state rights were the cause of secession.
(This was one of the writing assignments for the course History of the Slave South at Coursera)
From a Society with Slaves to a Slave Society
In 1621, an Angolan named Antonio was captured by an enemy tribe and sold to an Arab merchant who eventually sold him to the Virginia Company. The company was chartered in 1606 by King James to grab land in Virginia and propagate Christianity and it was the Virginia Company that established the Jamestown colony. It was during the initial settlement of Jamestown that the myth of John Smith and Pocahontas was created. After the initial hiccups, where they had to resort to cannibalism, the colony had survived.
In Virginia, Antonio worked as an indentured laborer and after a period of time — after he had paid off his dues — he was freed. His wife, Mary, too was freed and as was normal for free indentured people, granted land. Thus, 20 years after he arrived in Virginia, he took the name Anthony Johnson and became the owner of a 250 acre farm with his own servants. Thus an African man becoming a landlord himself may look unusual, it was not odd because slavery was not codified during this period. Though African slaves were present in Jamestown few years at least a decade after its founding, people like Anthony Johnson could buy their freedom and become property owners.
During this period, there was not much of a difference between the White indentured servants and Africans; the difference between slavery and indentured servitude was fuzzy. The slaves and servants would revolt and run away together. Initially the colonies had more indentured servants consisting of poor English folks who were willing to risk everything for a prosperous life. Though the Africans formed less than 5% of the population in Virginia, they were more balanced in gender and age while the indentured Whites were mostly male. The Africans had families and since there was no ban on interracial marriage, free blacks even married Englishwomen. They were also able to court to settle disputes. In this early phase, Virginia was a society built by slaves and servants, but it was not a slave society.
By the 1660s, there was a demographic shift. There was a decline in servant population. The mortality rate began to drop and the White population started increasing and more African slaves were required. According to the Slave Trade voyages database, while Virginia imported a hundred slaves from Africa in the period 1628 – 1650, that number increased to 4754 in the fifty year period after that. To concentrate the powers among the landowners, only the landed were allowed to vote. In one instance, one governor even banned general elections for 15 years.
There were two events that happened which caused a dramatic shift in how the slaves and servants were viewed. The first was passing of the Enactment of Hereditary Slavery Law Virginia in 1662 and the second, the Bacon rebellion of 1676.
Under English law, a child received his or her status from the father. The new colonial law of 1662 made the child of an enslaved mother also a slave for life. Thus this race making piece of legislation ensured that reproductive capacity of the African women was used to feed into the slave system. Slavery was thus codified on the woman’s body. This also made sure that even if the father was one of the English slave owners, their child would still be a slave.
The rebellion of Nathaniel Bacon started when he wanted a commission to fight the native Americans to kill them and drive them off the land. The governor declared him a rebel, but Bacon was resourceful. He built an army with slaves and servants and plundered the region. They took control over Jamestown and burned it to the ground. The rebellion had a surprise ending when Bacon died of dysentery and the armed vessels returned regaining control. This incident showed Virginia’s elite that the slaves were a politically unstable and a dangerous force.
Soon the slave code was enforced by singling out people of African descent from the Christian white servants. Free blacks were stripped off their rights and the rights to marriage. A master had the right to “correct” a slave, and if the slave died during the “correction” process, he would be acquitted. A similar experiment was carried in the English colony of Barbados earlier and the concept of Whiteness and Blackness had been introduced. Due to similar changes, the slave category was codified into law and by the first quarter of the 18th century, Virginia had become a society of slaves.
(Based on the lectures of Prof Stephanie McCurry, University of Pennsylvania for the course History of the Slave South at Coursera)
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Napoleon, New Orleans and British in India
By the 1800s, the British had occupied Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and Northern Circars with the noble goal of personal enrichment. Large parts of the country still lay outside British control with the Marathas, the Nizam of Hyderabad and Tipu Sultan. There was a nominal Mughal emperor who ruled over a vastly shrunk empire. Once forces under Arthur Wellesley, the man who would defeat Napoleon years later, eliminated Tipu Sultan in 1799, it opened up the path for British supremacy in India. While all of these was happening in India, another geopolitical game was being played in the Western hemisphere involving a Spanish playboy, a French emperor, an enlightened American President who kept slaves and actual slaves who defeated two empires. A fortuitous turn of events changed the history of United States and the colonial European powers shifted their gaze to the East.
When Napoleon evaluated the French position towards the end of the 18th century, it looked terrible. The Egyptian invasion had failed, so had the creation of the Mediterranean empire. The French position in India did not look promising and they had already lost the vast territories of Canada to the British. But much more important was the development in their colony Saint-Domingue — the richest colony in the Western hemisphere — where the slaves had revolted. The Austrians and the Russians formed an alliance to stop France and war was happening in Switzerland and Germany. From these data points he decided what had to be done: France needs to reclaim Saint-Domingue as well as create an empire in United States.
In 1800, Spain controlled a vast amount of territory which included large parts of what is now United States (Florida, Louisiana), Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and the entire Western and North parts of South America. In spite of this, Spain was seen as a weak empire due to misrule by Charles IV, who did not want to govern and was happy to delegate the responsibility to someone else. That someone was Manuel de Godoy who became the Prime Minister mostly because he was the Queen’s lover and thus was able to quickly become powerful and influence the King.
Among all the possessions of Spain, the port of New Orleans, was of special interest to Napoleon. During that period, when the United States did not have highways or railroads to transport goods across the nation, but they had rivers. American agricultural goods like wheat, corn and cattle were transported down Ohio river and the Mississippi to the port of New Orleans. At the port, the goods were moved to bigger ships and taken to the East Coast as well as to other countries across the Atlantic. Even though the port was under Spanish control, they had a relatively peaceful policy towards American shipping. No tariff duties had to be paid to Spain before the goods were moved to larger ships. Napoleon knew that if he controlled New Orleans with his new army, he could choke United States and control its fate.
To realize his vision, Napoleon came up with a three point plan.
- Make peace with Austria and Britain. He had problems with Britain during the Egyptian invasion and if he made peace with them, his fleet could cross the Atlantic without collateral damage.
- Create secret deal with Spain
- Assemble a large expeditionary force with hundreds of ships for the conquest of Saint-Domingue and holding on to New Orleans.
Everything went as planned. He made peace with Austria and Britain. Godoy wanted some property in Tuscany and in return he was willing to give Louisiana to the French. The Third Treaty of San Ildefonso was made in secret exactly as Napoleon wanted. The large force was assembled and Napoleon was ready to execute his vision. The United States under Thomas Jefferson was shocked as the country did not have an army to fight Bonaparte. Even though New Orleans was under the control of Spain, Jefferson was sure that he would not have the same business relation with a French controlled New Orleans.
Two events saved United States. First Thomas Jefferson threatened France that if such an event happened, they would join forces with Britain. This was a particularly bold statement because Britain and United States were fighting a war just more than a decade back. Maybe , he was borrowing the enemy of my enemy concept from Chanakya. Then Jefferson had no other choice; he had an army of 1500 men, an unreliable militia, and a navy which was no match against the French. For the security of the nation, he had to align himself with a bigger power.
Second and probably what sealed the fate of the French invasion were guns, germs, steel and something Jared Diamond would not have written about: slaves. When a 10,000 strong French army, under the leadership of Napoleon’s brother-in-law arrived at Saint-Domingue, the slaves gave them a good fight. Napoleon wanted to establish slavery in the colonies and for the slaves, it was a battle for their future. L’Ouverture, the slave leader, was captured through trickery and sent to France where he died in prison. But soon yellow fever stuck and the French army never recovered from it. Those who survived the machetes fell to the germs. Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, too died from the disease.
This was unexpected and Napoleon fell into despair. He had to make a critical decision. Should he proceed to the American mainland or does he withdraw back to Europe? Some of his advisors suggested that he go forward with his plans, but he decided to go back to Europe and continue his wars against the British there. If the United States aligned with the British, that would be a formidable power and in case there was such a battle, he could lose his Caribbean possessions.
What was surprising was another decision he made: he decided to sell Louisiana to the United States at a cheap price of 3 cents per acre. He could have returned it back to Spain, but instead he decided to sell it to the country he was coming to build his empire. There were few reasons for this strange decision. First, the secret deal he made with Spain got bogged down over details. Second, Godoy fell out of favor with the Emperor and compared to this fool, Napoleon found the Americans more palatable because New Orleans would make America more powerful and a powerful America would keep the British busy to his favor. Third, he needed money for his wars in Europe.
This turned out to be a blessing for the Americans. This video shows the population growth of United States through that period; with New Orleans secure, the country started moving from the Atlantic border to the West and the future of North America changed.
A decade earlier the British had made a bid to conquer Saint-Domingue, but they were defeated by the slaves and yellow fever. Then they tried to conquer Buenos Aires and that costly expedition failed as well. The retreat of the French, the stability of United States and Wellesley’s growing Indian empire made the British pay more attention to the East and shift the base of their operations. They would still fight the Americans in the War of 1812, but their shift to India paid rich dividends for them. Following the defeat of the Marathas, they had much of India under their control.
References
- Lecture titled “The Lucky Americans” by Prof. Philip D. Zelikow at the University of Virginia
- Lectures by Prof. Michael Parrish at UC San Diego on America and the World
- Keay, John. India: A History. Grove Press, 2001.
- Sivers, Peter von, Charles A. Desnoyers, and George B. Stow. Patterns of World History: Since 1750. 1st ed. Oxford University Press, USA, 2011.
Cooking acorns in 1750 CE
This is a mortar and pestle dating to 1750 CE, used by the Ohlone people. They used this to ground acorns (not this one) into a coarse powder. The powdered acorns, their major plant diet, was soaked in water to remove their natural bitterness. After that they cooked it into a gruel, made cakes and then baked them in an oven
Two Fiction Writers
1863:
In 1863, six years before the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Twain was working as a journalist in Virginia City, Nevada. Mr. Clemens had adopted a new pen name and according to his own words was, “the most conceited ass in the Territory.”
Ron Powers’ new biography, Mark Twain: A Life,
There was one problem though: the Hopkins family did not exist. In his defence, Mark Twain said that he had invented the story to expose a system of companies tricking investors into buying overpriced stock. He also explained that the only way to get such a story into San Francisco newspapers was through some tragedy.
2002:
In the May 6th, 2002 edition of Outlook, novelist Arundhathi Roy, wrote about the murder of Congress MP Iqbal Ehsan Jaffri in Gujarat. According to Roy, the mob stripped Jaffri’s daughter’s and burned them alive as well.
Nicole Elfi asks:
Wait a minute. Jaffri was burned alive in the house, true — is it not awful enough? Along with some other 41 people. Not enough? But his daughters were neither “stripped” nor burnt alive.Nobody knew my father’s house was the target (Asian Age, May 2nd, Delhi ed.), felt obliged to rectify:
…
There we are, reassured as regards Ehsan Jaffri’s children. He had only one daughter, who was living abroad. No one was raped in the course of this tragedy, and no evidence was given to the police to that effect. [GODHRA: THE TRUE STORY]
Then
The Gujarat Government sued Outlook magazine. In its May 27th issue, Outlook published an apology to save its face. But in the course of its apology, the magazine’s editors quoted a “clarification“ from Roy, who withdrew her lie by planting an even bigger one: the MP’s daughters “were not among the 10 women who were raped and killed in Chamanpura that day“! From Smita Narula to Arundhati Roy, “four or five girls“ had swollen to “ten women,“ equally anonymous and elusive.[GODHRA: THE TRUE STORY]
Finally
The police investigations revealed that no such case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy’s help to identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation. Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no power to issue summons.[6][GODHRA: THE TRUE STORY]
1863:
When he found that people were outraged over his fictional news reports, Mark Twain published a brief byline, “I take it all back.”
Restoring the secular ethos
After eight years of religious pandering America is about to move in a secular direction, where faith remains personal and stays away from the steps of the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This was the way it was always meant to be and the founding fathers — Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who were behind the separation of church and state — will be smiling.[My Op-Ed in Mail Today: Obama Presidency | varnam]
That’s what I wrote when Barack Obama became the President.Now as America is becoming less Christian and less religious,President Obama signed an executive order providing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
This Order is an important step in advancing the cause of science in America. But let’s be clear: promoting science isn’t just about providing resources – it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda – and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology[President Obama’s Speech on Stem Cell Executive Order – US News and World Report]
My Op-Ed in Mail Today: Obama Presidency
(An edited version of this article appeared in Nov 8, 2008 Mail Today)
Two books I read recently — John Adams
A Historic Achievement.
John Adams was the first President to live in the White House which was then known as the President’s House. Mr. Adams visited Washington City in 1800 and was appalled by the sight of the city with the heat and mosquitoes, but more so by the sight of slaves at work and their squalid cabins.
He moved into the President’s House alone, without an honor guard or entourage in October. A few months later he was joined by his wife Abigail who did not like what she saw in the South. According to McCullough, the sight of slaves working in her house left Mrs. Adams, who was from Boston, depressed.
Now, two hundred and eight years after the first resident of the White House, 233 years after Thomas Jefferson wrote, “all men are created equal” while owning slaves and 147 years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a man of color will occupy the White House.
Though a lot has improved over the past two centuries, racial tensions are still present. The attacks on Sen. Obama during the campaign season showed that the possibility of a man of color occupying the highest office in the land had upset a minority. A site which claimed to sell funny t-shirts advertised shirts featuring a noose and Ku Klux Klan members chasing Obama. A Republican Party flyer in California featured a phony $10 bill showing Obama surrounded by racist imagery and recently federal authorities disrupted a plot of two white supremacists to go on a national killing spree and murder Sen. Obama.
The Democratic primaries too had drama. Sen. Hillary Clinton made comments which appeared to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. and Pres. Bill Clinton dismissed Sen. Obama’s image as a “fairy tale” both of which generated outrage among African-Americans.
This victory is significant because Sen. Obama won it fair and square by competing on equal terms with his rivals. He did not milk “white guilt.” He did not have an advantage in the election and no seats were reserved for him. Sen. Obama instead ran as a post-racial candidate, comfortable in his Kenyan ancestry and mid western upbringing. Still the odds he had to surmount were enormous which makes this victory an important point in American history.
Blasphemy
In Blasphemy, a Large Hadron Collider type particle accelerator is activated below a Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. The project’s goal — circulate protons and anti-protons in opposite directions, almost at the speed of light, and collide them to create energy levels not seen the since universe was a millionth of a second old.
Meanwhile a bunch of evangelicals turn against the project since they think it is a government-sponsored secular humanist war on Christianity. For them the opening words of Genesis contained exactly how God created the world and there was no need to investigate the Big Bang theory, the atheistic creation model. Rousing their followers, they flock to Arizona to shutdown this anti-Christian activity.
In Blasphemy, the particle accelerator is the President’s pet project. Also he has low opinion of the evangelicals. In contrast President Bush has always deferred to the evangelical base and their religiously-defined “family values” letting it define American policy.
Soon after he took office, President Bush funded research only on existing stem cell lines and twice vetoed legislation that would have lifted restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. Always obstinate in his opinion, Pres. Bush as Seed magazine noted, “turned the very act of defying science into an art.”
In her book The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa
Separation of Scripture from Public Policy
United States was not created as a Christian nation and when it was launched the country did not have an official cult or official religion. In fact that was the only new thing in the American Constitution since federalism, independent judiciary, bicameral legislature, and tripartite administration existed either in theory or practice. In England the King was the head of Church as well as the State, but United States had the separation of Church and State from the beginning and that was unprecedented for those times. Recently when the Dalai Lama was asked what he would do if he got control over Tibet he replied that he would enforce the separation of Church and State the American way.
Though there is separation of church and state in the country, religious beliefs of the political leaders have played a part in elections. Faith is an important part of American life and every candidate asserts their religious credentials — even the liberals. Sen. Hillary Clinton, during the primary season, mentioned that her faith shaped how she sees the world. Sen. Barack Obama proudly says that he is a Christian; President Jimmy Carter calls himself a Bible evangelist.
All of them declare that Christian faith has provided them with a moral compass. The problem is when they use words in scripture to shape public policy and enforce it on fellow citizens and other nations. Thus in 21st century America there is a debate on the need to teach Creationism or “Intelligent Design” in public schools making it feel as if Pope Urban VIII is in charge.
Under President Obama, government support for embryonic stem cell research will increase. He supported it while in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate. Sen. John McCain, too would have supported stem cell research but with some fine print. He did not want to sacrifice moral values and ethical principles for scientific progress which means yes on adult stem cell research and no on the use of human embryos. McCain’s running mate was sure that she would not support stem cell research which would end in the destruction of life.
Abstinence programs are supported by Sen. Obama as well. But he knows that it cannot reduce teen pregnancy and believes that contraception has to be part of the education process. As one of the sponsors of Prevention First Act he is conscious about the need for funding family planning, ending insurance discrimination against contraception, improving awareness about emergency contraception.
After eight years of religious pandering America is about to move in a secular direction, where faith remains personal and stays away from the steps of the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This was the way it was always meant to be and the founding fathers — Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who were behind the separation of church and state — will be smiling.
God and American Elections
During Pres. George Bush’s eight years there has never been a dull moment — 9/11, invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and North Korea turning a new leaf, economic crash and nationalization of banks and now the election of Sen. Barack Obama’s as the President of United States. All these are historic events about which books will be written and PBS documentaries made.
While the pundits are busy with their 800 word op-ed pieces analyzing why Joe the Biden trumped Joe the Plumber, one angle that may not get attention is the role of God in the campaign. In spite of the separation of church and state, often there was mention of our God versus theirs, godless people and various humans telling others what God wants.
At a rally, a pastor Arnold Conrad said in his invocation that Sen. McCain’s opponents are praying to their Gods — Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that Sen. Obama wins. The pastor portrayed the election as a battle between his God and other Gods. He wanted his God to do some magic so that his (God’s) reputation is maintained.
In California too few of God’s people told people what to do in a full page ad in various newspapers. The issue was Proposition 8, which if passed would eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. While Google, Apple, Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, a vast majority of newspapers and mayors were against the proposition, various churches were for denying equal rights for same-sex couples.
Pastors around the country encouraged their followers to give up solid food for 40 days. One editorial writer quoted Genesis 1:26-28 and wrote, “The Constitution (of the U.S. and state) does not give lawmakers, judges or the people any right (so-called rights) to change the definition and responsibilities and joys of the marriage institution God established his way and in his ultimate wisdom.”
In the Senate election in North Carolina, it was not the presence of God, but the absence that was a campaign issue. Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) released an ad attacking her opponent for being “Godless.”
Dole’s opponent Kay Hagan is a church member and taught Sunday school, but no one asked the question: What if she is godless? There were accusations that Sen. Obama was a Muslim and he came out explaining his Christian roots. What if he is a Muslim? Does that make him a lesser American?
The most eloquent response to this question came from Colin Powell, while endorsing Obama.
Finally as the results came out, Sen. Obama won, which in Pastor Arnold Conrad‘s world means, Hindu, Buddha and Allah triumphed over God. The “Godless” Kay Hagan beat Elizabeth Dole, but Proposition 8 passed in California which for some people means that God’s will triumphed over man’s.
By the way, the year now is 2008.