I don’t know for certain what it takes to become pastor of some obscure little church off in the woods, but the examples of that fellow in Kansas who leads his flock in picketing the funerals of soldiers killed overseas with signs that read “God Hates Fags” and of the other fellow down in Florida who achieved his 15 minutes of infamy by threatening to burn some copies of the Qur’an — such examples suggest that the requirements are small. Declaring oneself a “Rev.” is evidently about as simple as declaring oneself an artist these days, and increasingly they are done for the same reasons. McHenry’s First Law will out.

The surprise is not that such self-seeking, self-righteous types exist but that they seem always able to find followers in numbers sufficient to keep them in business while they shoot for the big time. A lesser surprise is how easily they are tolerated by their brethren and sistren in the more respectable denominations. For these have not always been especially tolerant of difference. Fifty years ago this fact caused the Democratic nominee for President, Sen. John F. Kennedy, to speak these words to an assembly of Protestant Revs. in Houston:

While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election: the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers ninety miles off the coast of Florida; the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice-President by those who no longer respect our power; the hungry children I saw in West Virginia; the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills; the families forced to give up their farms; an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space….

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured, perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again, not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America…where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

The xenophobes and bigots we have always with us; there seems to be a kind of mental aberration that persists in the human race. Only their targets change as time and most of the rest of humanity move on. That fact alone would suffice to teach the lesson that they are incapable of learning.