The American flag was hijacked after September 11, 2001. It became a symbol of American might, regardless of right. Of strictly defined patriotism to the exclusion of disagreement. Of a nation that consists wholly of white fire-fighting, crime-busting men who stood tall to the challenges of skinny, darker men with turbans on their heads and disheveled beards on their faces.

Which is not to say that people haven't fought to keep the flag as a symbol of the United States of America without the modern-day McCarthyism. People have, and I salute each and every one. And sometimes, I almost think it's working.

Then there are days like today. The morning after. November 3, 2004. When the next four years stretch ahead of me like the highways of Nevada, where everything is brown, brown, brown and flat, flat, flat. Without even the hope of green because the environment is too harsh to allow it.

And to me, I feel like this election cost me more than the flag (yet again). More than the Supreme Court (please, please, please, God, let Rehnquist be the only retiree). More than my faith in my fellow Americans to look past rhetoric, to mobilize, and to critically analyze their civic duties. No, this time, I'm afraid that I may have lost my Faith-with-a-capital-F. God has not forsaken me, but he has been hijacked right along with the flag.

Although I don't go to church every week, I do believe in God. I even believe in a relatively non-radical, Protestant-approved version of God. While I may not practice religion in such a way that you can't ignore my beliefs, I also don't, as we were taught to sing in Sunday School, hide my light under a barrel.

But over the last four years, President George W. Bush, self-proclaimed born-again Christian, has inflicted a trend on religion -- on Christianity in the United States in particular -- that thrusts my light under a barrel. Only this barrel looks like a bigger, blinding version of my light with a big neon sign pointing to it that reads, "JESUS CHRIST SAVES! ALL NON-BELIEVERS WILL DIE!"

Suddenly, anyone who says, "I'm a Christian," is assumed to be a "real" Christian -- in the same way that anyone who flew a flag was assumed to be a "real" American. By identifying myself with my religion, those who don't know me associate me with the Bush-sponsored message of religion in war, school, and human rights.

To those standing on the other side of the Jesus fence, delineations between denominations are being erased. We already knew the right-wingers managed to make "liberal" a dirty word. What's amazing to me is that they've now managed to do the same with "Jesus" -- and to their advantage. The J-word is a wedge dividing those who should stand together to defend our rights.

Sound extreme? Listen to this: At my wedding, we didn't use the phrase "Jesus Christ" because those two words conjured up such horrible visions of evangelical, fundamentalist Bible-beaters that my now-husband couldn't stomach it. And I couldn't blame him. And when I said that to my pastor (a native of Republican stronghold Indiana, albeit a far more liberal native than most), he nodded his head in understanding. No protest, no questions. Just a faint whiff of resignment.

So I'm asking all of you who spent the night of November 2, 2004, feeling your hearts sink; all of you who believe that there's something better out there than what we re-elected; all of you who believe in the rights of your fellow humans; all of you who want to see our credibility restored; all of you who want to see the anti-Bush contingent join together to prevent the worst of our fears from materializing: Don't let this administration set your preconceptions. "Jesus" is not code for "rabid Bush-supporter," any more than "liberal" is code for "pot-smoking anarchist." And the minute you start believing otherwise is the minute that Bush wins: he will have managed to hijack our nation, our flag, and our beliefs.