I’ve been complaining in all of my various online venues this week about the overly-religious bent to the Democratic convention.

Fortunately, I’m not the only one. Here’s a good piece in the Washington Post and here’s the AU take.

Just to be clear, lest some troll leave some ill-conceived response, I have nothing against any individual Democrats being personally religious (although, of course, I wish they weren’t). But I do have a big problem with the majority religion asserting itself into proceedings that are supposed to be about choosing the head of the secular government and, according to the Democrats themselves, are supposed to be “inclusive.” This is the ongoing problem with the Christian majority. It’s not enough that they have total religious freedom, that their churches, which are everywhere, are tax-exempt, that our entire calendar is centered around them and their sabbath and their holy days, and that they can pray, worship, proselytize and pledge themselves to “one nation under god” on their own time to their heart’s content.

And it’s also not enough, apparently, that they already control the Republican agenda.

In reality, I’m fine with the Christian majority controlling both corporate parties, since I belong to neither, and since I ultimately believe that all political parties should be abandoned in favor of a system where we either largely self-govern, or we elect individuals (real people) to represent us, not members of a corporation.

The reason I and others, then, are complaining about the Democrats’ behavior this week is because their rhetoric of inclusion does not jive with invoking the Holy Trinity as part of the official opening of their convention. If individual Democrats want to get up and talk about Jesus and Yahweh, then that’s their right. But the party itself, just like the government, should not be in the business of promoting one religion over the other. And it should definitely not be in the business of excluding the non-religious or those who practice a different religion.

There are already organizations that anyone can join which have the sole purpose of promoting Christianity: they’re called churches, and they’re increasingly desperate for money and membership. In fact, isn’t it rather funny that, in a time when church attendance and membership are generally decreasing, the influence of Christianity on the supposedly secular political party appears to be increasing?

That’s the kind of question I’ll be pondering while I twiddle my thumbs during the next convention benediction.