United States needs more than religion labels

Dear Editor:

Evangelicals tell us the United States is not a Christian nation. There are different ways to consider that.

But there should be something more important than whether one identifies himself or herself as a Christian, Jew, Muslim, non-religious person or “other.” Very important to each of us should be whether one lives life daily by the basic precepts of all major religions: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

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Think about Jesus’ and Buddha’s teachings in relation to greedy CEOs, the obscenely wealthy, military “hawks” and our endless and futile wars, and those who ignore the basic needs of others and our communities.

The reality of our time is that the United States has a greater military establishment than the rest of the world combined. The reality of our time is the desperate need for international cooperation, not bullying and seeking always to have everything go “our way” to advantage corporations that truly have allegiance to no country.

The reality is that the world economy has yet to settle into a “new normal” (of employment and “jobs”) to accommodate new production, transport and communication technologies of recent decades as well as global overpopulation and critical resource and ecological issues.

The reality is that we desperately need a more effective United Nations that can reign in corporations and make possible the abandonment of warfare, disarmament, reasonable settlement of between-nation disputes, and a leveling of health care, education and economic inequalities around the world.

David Christensen

former SIU Associate  Dean of Liberal Arts

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