War on Religion? NOT

Earlier this year, I heard Sean Hannity state, “there is a war on religion in this country.”  I thought to myself, “Did I miss something dramatic? Did some church/synagogue/mosque/temple get fire-bombed? Did anyone get killed?” Hannity continued, “and it *IS* a war.  Any person who expresses their religion is likely to be *mocked*.”

I thought to myself, “This is vintage insanity from Sean Hannity.”  A little bit of historical perspective for my readers: of Jesus’s twelve disciples, only one of them, St. John, died of old age in his own bed.  The other 11 were martyred.  Catholics believe that St. Peter was crucified head down.  Please forgive my warped sense of irony when I imagine the roman Centurion in charge of the crucifixion detail informing St. Peter, “Hey Peter, we just got a commutation for you.  Instead of crucifying you head down, we're going to mock you.” 

St. Peter, “Oh no! Not mockery! Anything but that! Just crucify me!”

A Jewish friend of mine has told me that her Ukrainian Grandmother’s parents lived through some horrible pogroms during Czarist times.  I seriously doubt that my friend’s ancestors spent much time worrying about Cossacks saying catty things about the colors of their yarmulkes and the furnishings of their synagogues.  After the death of the profit Mohamed, both the founders of the Shiite branch of Islam, Ali and his son Hussein were killed by proponents of the Sunni branch of the faith.  Anyone with the slightest bit of awareness of the horrendous religious wars in Europe between Protestants and Catholics, or of the Hindu/Islamic conflict in the Indian subcontinent can be profoundly grateful that in America we have never had anything approaching that kind of horrible bloodshed. I thought Sean Hannity’s’ comments were so idiotic that I briefly thought, “Anybody that stupid ought to be nailed to a wall. Instead, I’m going to do something far worse and mock him.”