This country’s first Muslim congressman plans to take the oath of office upon the Quran and caused a storm in a tea cup. According to USA Today a conservative talk show host blasted him for not swearing on the Bible. Of course, the fact of the matter is that lawmakers just really raise their right hands and are sworn in. The Bible is just part of the photo-op.

But that’s besides the point.

It’s always surprising to me living out in anything-goes San Francisco when this country’s Christian roots suddenly get reaffirmed with such vehemence. While Keith Ellison’s Quran controversy will likely have short legs, America’s religiosity has a much more tenacious grip on the country. It keeps popping up in different place. It’s only this age of terror paranoia that catapulted Keith Ellison’s Quran to the top of the news.
Other recent instances have passed with less furore.

But the Dallas Morning News recently reported that Texas governor, Rick Perry has just said all non-Christians are headed to hell. Apparently he said he agreed with Rev. John Hagee that if you didn’t accept the “authority of Christ and his blood” you were “going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket.” Perry has also been the man behind something called the Texas Restoration Project where ministers get their congregants involved in pushing a Christian agenda politically.

Meanwhile India Abroad reported that after Satveer Chaudhary won re-election handily for the state Senate in Minnesota he got a long rambling concession e-mail from his opponent Rae Hart Anderson. She told him “the race of your life is more important than this one – and it is my sincere wish that you’ll get to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Pay attention… this is very important, Satveer. Have you noticed Jesus for yourself… at some moment in time, yet?”

It would be easy to call this, as the Hindu American Foundation has done, conservatives coming out with “overt bigoted ultraconservative Christian views in public.” But I think it’s a little different – this is not your crusading, burn the infidel kind of bigotry. There is real earnestness in this religiosity. It reminds me of those nice people who would come to the International students gatherings at our university town in Illinois, take us grocery shopping, invite us for our first American Thanksgiving in their houses and then eventually want us to go to Church. They were saving souls in their sturdy American cars, one grocery trip at a time.

I went to a recent talk by Intel chief Andy Grove who is the subject of a new biography. The Silicon Valley legend who fled Nazis and Communists in East Europe told biographer Richard Tedlow and interviewer Lakshmi Pratury that his biggest concern in this country was the erosion of separation of Church and State. I thought that a hi-tech guru like Grove would be more concerned with privacy, wiretapping and civil liberties. But maybe he’s on to something seeing the bigger picture.

Footnote – Whatever Rick Perry might think of Hinduism, here’s something for him to chew on. I read in India Abroad that Mary Poppins, the flying nanny was actually inspired by the Indian monkey god Hanuman. Is nothing sacred anymore?