When Leaving Jesus Means Losing Your Family

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

-Jesus, Matthew 10:34-36

When my Gen Y friend Michael confessed publicly that he couldn't believe any longer, it cost him a full ride scholarship and all of his friends but three. But that wasn't the worst of it. Michael had to make a choice: He could stay in his parents' home only if he refrained from "spiritual pornography," meaning any media that were critical of faith. He could stay there only if he kept his doubts muted and invisible. Michael said he couldn't do that and moved out. His mother said it would have been better had he died. His father banned Michael from seeing beloved younger siblings without supervision. (Apparently spiritual pornography can lead to spiritual pedophilia?) Loneliness and despair took him to the brink of suicide.

Michael is warm, funny, and fiercely smart. Today he is back in school at a secular university, going it alone, working his way toward becoming a brain scientist. But the choices he was forced to face and the rejection he experienced are matched in our society only for kids who confess that they are gay.

According to recent Pew data, sixteen percent of Americans say that they don't have a religious affiliation. Other surveys would suggest that most of these still believe in some kind of god, and many probably still identify in some way with Christian teachings. But the fact is, a sizeable number of us no longer ascribe to the faith(s) of our fathers. And for those whose fathers serve a jealous god, the price can be high.

From testimonials at places like exChristian.net; exMormon.org; Faithfreedom.org (leaving Islam) we know that Michael's despair and desperation were not unique. Many who lose religion muddle along in silent shame -- wanting to believe, praying desperately for doubts to be removed, blaming themselves and fending off images of eternal torture before finally giving up the fight. Granted, some lucky few simply flip a bit, but others find themselves dragged reluctantly into an internal conflict takes years.

Most religions implant psychological safeguards against apostasy, little emotional bombs of fear, guilt, shame and self-loathing that get triggered by the mere act of questioning. In religious orthodoxy, doubt is the domain of fools. It is the consequence of having hardened your heart like Pharaoh or resenting God's power like Lucifer. Oh ye of little faith!

Now add to loss and self-loathing a crush of rejection by people who have loved you "unconditionally": friends, cousins, siblings, parents, or even a spouse. When I was a suicidal nineteen-year-old (still a believer), a woman I had looked up to for years, apologized for having counseled me as a Christian when in hindsight I clearly was not. But even now, despite my public apostasy, my family has never cut me off, nor I them. We walk a loving, if uncomfortable line with each other. Our compatibility depends on things not said as much as it depends on conversation, but the common ground is also real.

Not everyone is so lucky. Some families cannot get past revulsion and sense of betrayal they feel toward a member who has literally broken faith. Manifest examples of kindness, integrity, warmth, or generosity get reinterpreted. They were never real -- or the person has changed utterly.

Some former believers, fragile in either their disbelief or their self-worth, can't stand to be in the relentless presence of even unspoken disapproval. Others try to reach out to family members and get turned away with harsh words or silent shunning. Still others face a barrage of re-conversion efforts at any family gathering.

A divorce can get initiated by either side. Either way, it is the renegade who is most likely to end up alone and symptomatic. Think about it: for a person who has already lost a god and consequently a core part of the self, to sever ties with family is an act of desperation or sheer self preservation.

Returning to my earlier comparison with gay kids coming out -- we all know what the worst case scenarios look like. In major cities across the country, outreach programs offer a helping hand to homeless and often self-destructive gay teens, kids who have been given the boot by parents who think they might as well be dead. But who is offering support to kids or adults who lose their religion?

Even among my professional peers, psychologists, far too few understand the depth of harm that can be done to the psyche by fundamentalist religion -- religion that subsumes the individual self to a cult self. The irony is that few mental health professionals are sympathetic to the claims of moral dogma. The practicing therapist is exposed daily to life's caprice: biochemical malfunctions, developmental vagaries, and rotten life circumstances. In contrast to a religious perspective, psychology seeks to understand material and historical roots of symptoms rather than making moral judgments. So the problem is not that the professional world view aligns with a dogmatic world view. It is just that, in the absence of dramatic evidence to the contrary, we are all taught to think of religion as harmless.

It's time to give up the illusion.

Follow Valerie Tarico on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ValerieTarico

Comments

[Dap]

Dear Ms. Tarico,

What an eloquently expressed essay/post, both profound and poignant, and using a excellent analogy equating it to what gay Children go through in religious homes. I was just making this point on Ms.Lalli post or trying too, with my lack of eloquence that you have shown herein.

I concur with you, this is not innocuous. Agape. (Love in fellowship of our shared fragile Humanity)

[EdwardTBabinski]

The stories of people in a similar situation are legion.

I suspect that most who begin to grow disinterested in religion (or who begin to entertain doubts or who leave the fold) do not necessarily turn to atheism, nor do they turn into verbal proselytizers against religion, but simply keep quiet, and hope to pass under their parent's "Jesus radar," while the parents themselves, having been commanded in Jesus's name of the necessity of not remaining silent, but of "converting the world," probably don't think twice (in any sane or cordial way) before hitting their kids with broadside after broadside.

Same goes for similar situations when one spouse grows much more religious than the other, or one spouse grows much less religious than the other. The more religious spouse is probably more active in tossing broadsides at the other, constantly inviting them to church, talking about their "fears of their spouse's damnation" in church prayer circles, and whining about them not attending church, and leaving little tracts or books all over the house so the less religious spouse can see them. While the less religious spouse is the one who more than likely winds up quietly enduring such actions by the more religious spouse, and hence it is the less religious spouse who often winds up acting more Christ-like in such situations. (Though I admit I'm generalizing, I've heard from a number of intelligent spouses who wanted simply to speak to someone who'd been what they went through in terms of their journey toward more questions and fewer absolute answers. They described the situation I mentioned and they did not have the type of support group that the "church" was supplying the more religious spouse. And they mentioned that if they reacted the same way their more religious spouse was reacting, trying to convert them all the time, then their marriages would surely fail. Why didn't the more religious spouse understand this they wondered?)

Here's one person's story that was on the internet...

I was 24 years old when my mother, through a series of mishaps, found out I was gay. My mother came over to where I worked, screaming, and told me I was “dead” to the family. She called me “sick,” “crazy” and “of the devil.” She said that I would never see my family again. For more than five years after that day, I heard nothing from my family. No birthday cards, no invitations to Christmas or Thanksgiving events. It wasn’t just the loss of my immediate family that was difficult, but the loss of my extended family as well. Since my mother refused to be in the same room with me, it forced my aunts and uncles to choose sides. I have not been to a family reunion in more than a decade. When my partner, Trisha, and I decided to have a child, we were not unlike most couples making this decision...The only thing unusual about our pregnancy was the critical necessity of a lawyer. Given my mother’s abject hostility toward gay and lesbian people, in the process of my pregnancy we had to spend thousands of dollars protecting ourselves from her potential interference. In spite of the fact that she has never, in more than a decade, visited me, and has written numerous articles comparing me to pedophiles and people who have sex with animals, according to the law, my mother has more rights to our child than Trisha.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/1004/25fields.html

As seen above, some highly devout parents would sooner risk the loss of their child’s love in order to retain what they imagine to be “God’s.” For instance, a televised report (on Dateline or 20/20) in 1996 told how some “Christian counseling centers” boasted in their brochures they could “treat homosexuality.” Children and adolescents who had been “treated” at such “counseling centers” told reporters they had been locked up, held down, and screamed at to “induce shame” and to “teach them how they should feel about what they were doing to their parents and God.” Worse forms of abuse also took place. Some children and teenagers were detained for weeks, months, even years. At least one young girl sued her parents after she escaped from the “counseling center.”

Makes me wonder when some Christian counseling center is going to claim to be able to cure "apostacy" [leaving the fold] too.

But in the end it's Christians themselves who are continually breaking up, not just families undergoing hardships but congregations splitting over some issue, and half the congregation's members leave to get a new pastor and found a different church; or whole denominations split up (the Anglicans are near a split over the issue of biblical authority and gay priests). There are now over 45,000 known separate Christian churches and missionary organizations round the world. From Pentecostals and Charismatics--to Fundamentalists who hate Christian contemporary music-- to congregations that play Death Metal Christian Rock Music, etc.

CHRISTIANITY RUNS THE GAMUT…

From silent Trappist monks and quiet Quakers -- to hell raisers and serpent-handlers;

From those who believe nearly everyone (excepting themselves and their church) will be damned -- to those who believe everyone may eventually be saved (“Universalist” Christians);

From those who argue that they are predestined to argue in favor of predestination -- to those who argue for free will of their own free will;

From those who argue God is a “Trinity”-- to “Unitarian” Christians (which include not only the “Arian” churches of early Christianity, but also modern day Unitarian-Universalist churches, some modern day Messianic Jewish groups, some primitive Baptist groups, some “cults,” and all of Judaism, since God’s chosen people in the earliest “testament” where taught, “The Lord Your God is One God”);

From those who “hear the Lord” telling them to run for president, seek diamonds and gold (via liaisons with bloody African dictators), or sell “Lake of Galilee” beauty products -- to those who have visions of Mary, the saints, or experience bleeding stigmata;

From those who believe the communion bread and wine remain just that -- to those who believe the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into “invisible” flesh and blood (and can vouch for it with miraculous tales of communion wafers turning into human flesh and wine curdling into blood cells during Mass);

From those who believed that priests who delivered communion should never have ever denied their faith in the past even under threat of persecution -- to those who believed it did not matter whether or not priests forsook their faith when threatened with presecution (I am speaking of a major controversy in early Christianity between “Donatist” and “Catholic” Christiians, both of whom presumed they were the true church on the basis of the division cited above, a division that was never healed, and which ceased only after the North African region where most Donatist churches were located was overrun first by Vandals then later by Muslims.);

From the many Christians that once taught (or teach today as Reconstructionist Christians do) that heretics and apostates ought to be executed -- to Albigensian and Cathar Christians who outlawed violence and taught that the shedding of blood and the killing of any living thing, even the slaughtering of a chicken or ensnaring a squirrel, was a mortal sin (a belief they based on the spirituality and metaphors of Christ’s meekness and forgiveness in the Gospel of John). [See The YellowCross: The Story of the Last Cathars’ Rebellion Against the Inquisition 1290-1329 by René Weis];

From Christians who believe in damning their enemies by calling down God’s wrath on them (as in certain imprecatory psalms) and who cite the verse, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” -- to Amish Christians (among others) who believe in helping the families of those who have offended them. (Case in point, in 2006 a man entered an Amish schoolhouse, gunned down several young female students then shot himself. The Amish later asked what they could do to help the family of the shooter. They planned a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts’s family with offers of food and condolences.);

From Christians who view Eastern religious ideas and practices as “Satanic”-- to Christian monks and priests who have gained insights into their own faith after dialoging with Buddhist monks and Hindu priests;

From castrati (boys in Catholic choirs who underwent castration to retain their high voices) -- to Protestant hymns and Gospel quartets--all the way to “Christian rap;”

From Christians who reject any behavior that even mimics “what homosexuals do” (including a rejection of fellatio and cunnilingus between a husband and wife) -- to Christians who accept committed, loving, homosexual relationships (including gay evangelical Church groups like the nationwide Metropolitan Baptist Church);

From Catholic nuns and Amish women who dress to cover their bodies -- to Christian nudists (viz., there was a sect known as the “Adamites,” not to mention modern day Christians in Florida with their own nude Christian churches, campgrounds and even an amusement park), and let’s not forget born-again strippers;

From those who believe that a husband and wife can have sex for pleasure -- to those who believe that sex should be primarily for procreation -- to those who believe celibacy is superior to marriage (i.e., Catholic priests, monks, nuns, and some Protestant groups like the Shakers who denied themselves sexual pleasure and only maintained their membership by adopting abandoned children until the last Shaker finally died out in the late 1900s)--all the way to those who cut off their genitals for the kingdom of God (the Skoptze, a Russian Christian sect);

From those who believe sending out missionaries to persuade others to become Christians is essential -- to the Anti-Mission Baptists who believe that sending out missionaries and trying to persuade others constitutes a lack of faith and the sin of pride, and that the founding of “extra-congregational missionary organizations” is not Biblical;

From those who believe that the King James Bible is the only inspired translation -- to those who believe that no translation is totally inspired, only the original “autographs” were perfect -- to those who believe that “perfection” only lay in the “spirit” that inspired the writing of the Bible’s books, not in the “letter” of the books themselves;

From those who believe Easter should be celebrated on one date (Roman Catholics) -- to those who believe Easter should be celebrated on another date (Eastern Orthodox). And, from those who believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Roman Catholics) -- to those who believe it proceeds from the Father alone (Eastern Orthodox view as taught by the early Church Fathers). Those disagreements, as well as others, sparked the greatest schism of church history (the Schism of 1054) when the uncompromising patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, and the envoys of the uncompromising Pope Leo IX, excommunicated each other;

From those who worship God on Sunday -- to those who worship God on Saturday (Saturday being the Hebrew “sabbath” that God said to “keep holy” according to one of the Ten Commandments) -- all the way to those who believe their daily walk with God and love of their fellow man is more important than church attendance;

From those who stress “God’s commands” -- to those who stress “God’s love;”

From those who believe that you need only accept Jesus as your “personal savior” to be saved -- to those who believe you must accept Jesus as both savior and “Lord” of your life in order to be saved. (Two major Evangelical Christian seminaries debated this question in the 1970s, and still disagree);

From those who teach that being “baptized with water as an adult believer” is an essential sign of salvation -- to those who deny it is;

From those who believe that unbaptized infants who die go straight to hell -- to those who deny the (once popular) church doctrine known as “infant damnation.”

From those who teach that “baptism in the Holy Spirit” along with “speaking in tongues” are important signs of salvation -- to those who deny they are (some of whom see mental and Satanic delusions in modern day “Spirit baptism” and “tongue-speaking”);

From those who believe that avoiding alcohol, smoking, gambling, dancing, contemporary Christian music, movies, television, long hair (on men), etc., are all important signs of being saved -- to those who believe you need only trust in Jesus as your personal savior to be saved;

From Christians who disagree whether the age of the cosmos should be measured in billions or only thousands of year -- whether God pops new creatures into existence or subtly alters old ones -- even some who disagree whether the earth goes round the sun or vice versa;

From pro-slavery Christians (there are some today who still remind us that the Bible never said slavery was a “sin”) -- to anti-slavery Christians;

From Christians who defend the Biblical idea of having a king (and who oppose democracy as “the meanest and worst of all forms of government” to quote John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with whom some Popes agreed, as well as some of today’s Protestant Reconstructionist Christians)--to Christians who oppose kingships and support democracies;

From “social Gospel” Christians -- to “uncompromised Gospel” Christians;

From Christians who do not believe in sticking their noses in politics -- to coup d’etat Christians;

From “stop the bomb” Christians -- to “drop the bomb” Christians;

From Christians who strongly suspect that the world will end tomorrow -- to those who are equally certain it won’t.

All in all, Christianity gives Hinduism with its infinite variety of sects and practices a run for its money.

Edward T. Babinski
____________________________

The Christian God -- or gods? For out of Paraguayan Catholics, Vermont Congregationalists, Utah Mormons, and New Zealand Anglicans, sprout as many gods as are carved on a Jain temple wall.

John Updike
____________________________

In practice, Christianity, like Hinduism or Buddhism, is not one religion, but several religions, adapted to the needs of different types of human beings. A Christian church in Southern Spain, or Mexico, or Sicily is singularly like a Hindu temple. The eye is delighted by the same gaudy colors, the same tripe-like decorations, the same gesticulating statues; the nose inhales the same intoxicating smells; the ear and, along with it, the understanding, are lulled by the drone of the same incomprehensible incantations [in the old Catholic Latin mass tradition], roused by the same loud, impressive music.

At the other end of the scale, consider the chapel of a Cistercian monastery and the meditation hall of a community of Zen Buddhists. They are equally bare; aids to devotion (in other words fetters holding back the soul from enlightenment) are conspicuously absent from either building. Here are two distinct religions for two distinct kinds of human beings.

In Christianity bhakti [or, loving devotion] towards a personal being has always been the most popular form of religious practice. Up to the time of the [Catholic] Counter-Reformation, however, the way of knowledge (“mystical knowledge” as it is called in Chrstian language) was accorded an honorable place beside the way of devotion. From the middle of the sixteenth century onwards the way of knowledge came to be neglected and even condemned. We are told by Dom John Chapman that “Mercurian, who was general of the society (of Jesus) from 1573 to 1580, forbade the use of the works of Tauler, Ruysbroek, Suso, Harphius, St. Gertrude, and St. Mechtilde.” Every effort was made by the [Catholic] Counter-Reformers to heighten the worshipper’s devotion to a personal divinity. The literary content of Baroque art is hysterical, almost epileptic, in the violence of its emotionality. It even becomes necessary to call in physiology as an aid to feeling. The ecstasies of the saints are represented by seventeenth-century artists as being frankly sexual. Seventeenth-century drapery writhes like so much tripe. In the equivocal personage of Margaret Mary Alacocque, seventeenth-century piety pours over a bleeding and palpitating heart. From this orgy of emotionalism and sensationalism Catholic Christianity seems never completely to have recovered.

The ideal of non-attachment has been formulated and systematically preached again and again in the course of the last three thousand years. We find it (along with everything else) in Hinduism. It is at the very heart of the teachings of the Buddha. For Chinese readers the doctrine is formulated by Lao Tsu. A little later, in Greece, the ideal of non-attachment is proclaimed, albeit with a certain, pharisaic priggishness, by the Stoics. The Gospel of Jesus is essentially a gospel of non-attachment to “the things of this world,” and of attachment to God. Whatever may have been the aberrations of organized Christianity--and they range from extravagant asceticism to the most brutally cynical forms of realpolitik--there has been no lack of Christian philosophers to reaffirm the ideal of non-attachment. Here is John Tauler, for example, telling us that “freedom is complete purity and detachment which seeketh the Eternal...” Here is the author of “The Imitation of Christ,” who bids us “pass through many cares as though without care; not after the manner of a sluggard, but by a certain prerogative of a free mind, which does not cleave with inordinate affection to any creature.”

Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into the Methods Employed for Their Realization
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Live long enough and you’ll encounter a lot of folks who say you are not really a Christian for a host of reasons. I’ve found the “no-true-Christian-would-do-or-believe-XYZ” game one of the more popular among, well, Christians.

Jonathan ( jge642000) at the yahoo group ExitFundyism
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People have an amazing ability to fool themselves. Even Christian theology teaches that there are those who think they are believers but aren’t. But just watching, as I have, an Islamic music group from Malaysia makes one realize how similar their actions are to those of a Christian music group. To see a man standing in deep meditation outside of a Shinto temple in Japan makes one wonder how belief comes about. To see a woman with great concern on her face burning a huge number of incense sticks at a temple in Hangzhou, China (one of my very favorite pictures) tells one that fervent prayer (and belief in the efficacy of prayer) is not the sole province of the Christian. To see how devoted Tibetan Buddhists are to their beliefs when compared with levels of devotion shown by many western Christians to theirs, makes one wonder why so many of us are less committed than them; same with the Islamacists who are willing to die for their beliefs while much of the West is not interested in self-sacrifice.

Glenn Morton [Evangelical Christian], American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) Email Discussion Group (June 16, 2006)
____________________________

In my journeys in Christianity both in America and abroad I’ve run across a myriad of believers, a mosaic of Christianity:

I remember a converted Christian who used to be a “Satanist ,” saying, “What’s the big deal about smoking marijuana?”

A Pentecostal pastor in Holland sat crying at a street side cafe worried that one of his woman parishioners was going to hell since she had stopped coming to church and was now wearing make-up.And as he cried, his tears rolled off his cheeks into his beer. (Many Pentecostal Christians in the U.S. ascribe to an ethic of absolute abstinence from alcohol.)

I’ve known Christians who won’t own a TV; others who won’t allow playing cards in their house, and others who drink alcohol liberally and have every material possession imaginable. Others attempt to memorize the Bible to such an extent that it blocks most of their own personal original thoughts about anything; others who are social activists who take up causes like opposing abortion or picketing a Marilyn Manson concert; others who are simple and humble and feed the poor and house the homeless; others who are missionaries in third world countries suffering hardship for the “cause of Christ.” There was a sub group, however, in my institute who were King James Only--they believed the KJV was the only true inspired Bible for today and that all other versions were corrupted. As a group, they were radically enthusiastic and were proud to be KJV ONLY, and often fueled arguments over alternate translations. Heaven forbid they should catch anyone reading or enjoying The Living Bible (a modern English paraphrased translation of the ancient Hebrew) which they viewed as “the Devil’s work.”

Karl Arendale (mauikarl) at the Yahoo Group, ExitFundyism
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Our divisions should never be discussed except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is his only Son.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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Theology is a comprehensive, rigorous, and systematic attempt to conceal the beam in the scriptures and traditions of one’s own denomination while minutely measuring the mote in the heritages of ones’ brothers.

Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic
___________________________

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”

John Locke

[DPecan]

I heard a talk last night by a many raised in a very prominent fundamentalist family. He left the church because of some extreme racist events (this was the 60's). The next 20 years of his life were devoted to the civil rights movement and towards an increasingly radical leftist politics. He abandoned that and now seems lost and in emotional despair.

The despair seems to come from a need to correct his family's wrongs, driven by an enduring guilt that is at odds with the love his family bestowed upon him. It seems similar to survivor guilt combined with the emotional roller coaster of victims of abuse. He's associating with ex-fundamentalists in a way that reminds me of many gay organizations - a community of people from many backgrounds who hang together as a 'tribe' for refuge from a frightening world.

It would be fascinating if we are seeing the beginnings of a movement of ex-fundamentalists that pushes back against the excesses they experienced. What's lacking is a clear vision of what that future would be. At the moment the public expression is closer to an AA meeting than to a positive vision of a rational and spiritually empowered world would be.

[BusGreg]

HuffPost's Pick

I was born into this world, not knowing God. I was brought up by loving parents. Then came catechism. I remember to this day "Father" Michael who indoctrinated us young in the ways of the Good Book. Starting out with the promise that if we sinful children did not accept the bible unwaveringly, we would burn in hell for all eternity, suffering miserably. Tears in my eyes I went home and asked mom and dad what this was all about, not understanding anything. That was some 40 years ago. I had accepted God later in life when I came to the first age of reason. That was in my teens.
I was a somewhat regular attendee of the Church of Christ and was relatively happy. Religion did not save my dad from a painful and miserable death, nor did it prevent some idiot from running my mom over when I was two and a half, to be raised by a devout baptist step mom. Religion also was of no help in saving my marriage, but I stayed true to what I thought I believed in. Then came the second age of reasoning. I moved from the west coast to North Carolina and after 3 years of exposure to the bible belt I have become a devout atheist. Being disabled places obstacles into my life. While I don't question people's good intentions, I question their sanity when ever they say; That's the good Lord testing your faith.
First, please don't assume that any stranger is a Christian. It is presumptive and yes, to some people it is disrespectful.
Second, if blackmail from Father Michael did not set me in the ways of your God, please tell me why misery heaped on me would make me believe?
Third, we do not live in a Christian country. We live in a free country where we are free to worship any God or no God.
While I fully agree that religion makes a good crutch for many to lean on in the time of need as well as setting good moral examples, please don't force your belief system on me. I am not trying to convert anyone to atheism.
Of course many do not question religion. After all we are brought up to never question authority and what is more authoritative than a grown-up wearing the get-up of a centuries old institution? What is more authoritative than the guy who talks to the Allmighty on a daily basis? We don't question authority. After all as parents we don't teach our children to question authority. That would be silly to encourage our offspring to question us. Then, when our children grow up they will be conditioned by parents,church and state to never question authority and to blindly obey. Guess where that got us? The power hungry in politics align themselves with the power hungry clergy, form a lose coalition and together obfuscate reality. When our elected officials waste time in Congress on our dime to further "morals" promulgated by religious zealots (discriminating against gay marriage, interfering with women's health issues) then things have gone too far and the demarcation line between church and state has been lost.
Our founding fathers, some of whom came to the new world to escape religious persecution deliberately added the following to the Constitution of the United States in Article 6:
"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."

[seawolf77]

Religion is 10 times more addictive and destructive as drugs, yet one is illegal and the other lionized. Why? Authority and control. Religion makes absoluely no sense yet some of the most intelligent people in the world are deeply devout. Why? The same reason the French go to church. To be on the safe side.