Chris Stedman, Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University.MSNBC
A number of influential political and religious public figures have used this heartbreaking massacre as an opportunity to blame or marginalize nonreligious people, and to decry religious pluralism and the separation of church and state. Shortly after the shooting, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said: “When you have an anti-religious, secular bureaucracy… seeking to drive God out of public life, something fills the vacuum.” Mike Huckabee claimed the shooting happened because America has “systematically removed God” from public schools.” James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, had this to say: “Millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant… Believe me, that is going to have consequences … I think we have turned our back on the scripture and on God almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.” Bryan Fischer, spokesperson for the American Family Association, said that God could have protected the victims of this massacre but didn’t because “God is not going to go where he is not wanted.” In other words: if we want to ensure that students are safe in their schools, we’ll need to incorporate Christian theology into public schools’ curriculum.You know what this is? It's just more of the deflection game. Most of the people who blame godlessness for the frequency of mass shootings are pro-gun folks who, like Wayne La Pierre, desperately want to deflect attention from the first real problem, gun availability to unfit people.
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