The Bible as the Official State Book

The Bible as the Official State Book

Yes, you read that title right. The State of Tennessee, in all of their divine wisdom, has voted to name The Holy Bible as the official State Book of Tennessee. Just when you think the religious right could not get anymore out of touch with the principles our nation was built on, someone comes up with this.

It seems to me there’s battle among the states to see who can piss off the dyed in the wool moderates comprising most of America. Forget about what moves like this do to the far left. They have their own fringe lunatics to deal with. I’m talking about middle America. Not the geographic middle, the ideological middle. People who are not registered anythings. People who don’t want other people telling them which god to worship or that they must worship a god at all. People who don’t like it when other people tell them how to live their lives. People who don’t like those on the lunatic fringes because many of them are lunatic hypocrites.

Making The Bible your official state book is so wrong on so many levels. First, it’s unconstitutional because no matter what the sponsors of this bill say, the Bible is a religious book, not a history book. Somewhere a whole bunch of our founding fathers are rolling over in their graves. Second, it promotes one religion above all others. So not only are the founding fathers rolling over in their graves, everyone who has ever come to our country to escape religious persecution is joining them, including the original settlers of this land and the folks who were here before them, who are actually the real Americans but that’s a whole other story (and this is now one really long sentence).

Enacting this law is just another sign that our country is really divided and that the Christian right has completely lost sight of their own reality. The reality that the percentage of Americans consider themselves Christians is declining, while the number of people who consider themselves a part of other religions (Muslims, Hindus, Jews) has gone up. The reality that America is not a Christian state, it never was and hopefully will never be one. The reality that more Americans consider themselves unaffiliated or worse…atheists…or even worse than that…Muslims.

Can you imagine if an Islamic politician in some state proposed a law making the Koran the official state book? I mean those extremists are everywhere, right? Shouldn’t “their” book be given the same consideration as “the good book.” And what makes The Bible so good?

I wonder how many of the folks who promote The Bible as the actual word of the Almighty have actually read that book. Honestly, I’ve probably read more of The Bible than 90% of all those so called religious experts. If they took that book word-for-word, chapter and verse, and made it into a movie, it would be R-rated. You’ve got sex, war, murder…you name and that books got it.

So Tennessee, go ahead. Be the state that makes The Bible the official book. But be careful what you wish for. You just never know what’s going to happen when you partake of the unconstitutional fruit. Look what happened to Adam and Steve…I mean Adam and Eve.