The best and worst thing about local newspapers is that anyone gets a chance to be published. That means people like Dr. Robert Lewis, the pastor at Solon Road Baptist Church in Waxahachie, Texas get a chance to share their views on how all non-Christians shouldn’t be in the country.

His letter begins with a claim that we live in a nation “Under God,” like in the Pledge of Allegiance. Referring to the Founding Fathers writing the Constitution, he says he doesn’t “know anybody who could have done it without being ‘Under God.'”

I guess no one told him the words were only inserted into the Pledge in 1954, that many of the Founding Fathers were Deists or non-religious, and that religion was purposely left out of the Constitution except to say it couldn’t be forced upon anyone by the government and that it couldn’t be a legal deal-breaker for political office.

Lewis was just getting started. He went on to say that in his ideal nation, atheists would never have been welcomed.

If it were left up to me, I would not have been so generous to the atheists, agnostics, and God haters… I would not have allowed religions to exist in our land which snort at the Bible have a dim view of equality. I would have prevented those from entering in who were not “Under God.” If they desire to have freedom “from God,” then I would have sent them on down the river to another country where there is no structure, no equality, no tolerance, no Bible, and no constitution. There they could snort and shake their fists in God’s face without offense to anybody.

If dismissing the Bible is his prerequisite, then it’s not just atheists who wouldn’t be allowed. It’s people of other faiths, too. And just in case there was any doubt, he made it explicitly clear who he had a problem with:

The homosexuals, the Wiccans, the transcendental meditationists, the Muslims, and many others who deny the Christ of the Bible are given liberty to promote their agendas while the people who hold same values of as our forefathers are mocked, challenged, and scorned by television programming, news broadcasting, and political leaders alike. There needs to be a bottom line below which there is no tolerance for the citizenry to sink.

Right. Those transcendental meditationists always cause all the problems…

The problem with his line of thinking is that he’s not just saying atheists are out. He’s not limiting his banishments to non-Christians either.

Far-Right Christians like Lewis believe other Christians — who happen to be liberal on certain issues — are heretics as well. There are Christians who are LGBTQ-accepting. And Christians who are tolerant of people of other faiths. And Christians who are much more frightened by people like Lewis than someone like me.

Lewis doesn’t care for them. He basically wants a world for people like him and nobody else. And the moment someone dares to think critically about religion, or challenge tradition views, or question him, the Mighty King wants them banished.

It’s such a frightening way of looking at the world.

If a Muslim wrote the same sorts of things, we’d call it a pronouncement of an impending terrorist attack. If an atheist did it, we’d be accused of calling for some sort of genocide. But because Lewis is Christian, this is just printed in a newspaper like it was no big deal. It’s just par for the course. That’s how good Christians in this country have it.

(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to Brian for the link)

