(RNS) A central Jewish teaching is the creation and maintenance of a sense of “Shalom Bayit,” Hebrew for domestic unity and peace. Without it, families and nations often are torn apart with bitter strife.

Recently we’ve heard angry diatribes that seek to undermine America’s hard-won Shalom Bayit. Perhaps most disturbing, the clergy of this country have been nearly silent in responding to this threat.

For perhaps the first time since the 1850s, an elected official has publicly raised the ugly specter of secession. “When we (Texas) came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said last April. “We got a great Union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it, but if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people … who knows what can come of that.”

Other politicians and late-night TV comedians immediately criticized and mocked Perry’s flirtation with Texas leaving the Union. I may have missed it, but I didn’t hear a peep of opposition from the clergy. Their voices were mute.

Although Perry spoke only implicitly of secession, his words provided the necessary cover and encouragement for others to make that threat explicitly. At an Austin political rally in August, Fred Kilgore, a self-proclaimed “Christian activist,” and a candidate for governor in 2010, juiced up a political rally with these words: “I hate that (U.S.) flag.”

Kilgore continued with additional words of incitement.

“We hate the United States. They’re an evil, corrupt government. They need to go. Sovereignty is not good enough. Secession is what we need.” The excited crowd cheered.

Clergy who frequently speak out in behalf of Jews, African-Americans, Hispanics, women, gays, the disabled and other targets of verbal and physical abuse, have been almost silent in responding to the likes of Perry and Kilgore. Perhaps they think Perry and Kilgore do not believe their own words.

However, every rabbi, priest, and minister is aware that words — whether uttered in love or in hate — have direct consequences in influencing people’s actions. Think of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who absorbed the ugly hateful words of others and became a mass murderer.

Perhaps our spiritual leaders have conveniently forgotten the opening words of Psalm 133: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for sisters and brothers to dwell together, not in uniformity, but in unity.” It’s a perfect description of Shalom Bayit.

Dangerous talk of secession is spreading radioactive material in a highly polarized America. Tragically, we have seen this movie before and we know how it ends: the shattering of a collective Shalom Bayit and a horrific Civil War resulting in the deaths of 625,000 Americans between 1861 and 1865.

Do not underestimate reverence for the Confederacy and secession; it was an integral part of my Virginia childhood where Robert E. Lee’s birthday was a school holiday, but Abraham Lincoln’s was not. Indeed, my fifth grade teacher would not let Lincoln’s name pass her lips. She always called him “The 16th federal president.”

Sure, there were visits to nearby battle sites, but only to those where the Confederacy had won. Once on a class trip to Richmond’s Monument Avenue, I gazed upon the massive statues of Lee, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. I asked the same teacher why the Confederate generals merited such memorials when my father, a U.S. Army Lt. Colonel, considered them “traitors.”

She asked, “Where do your parents come from?”

“Pennsylvania,” I answered.

With a knowing smile, she replied: “That explains why you don’t understand the statues.”

But she was wrong. I understood perfectly.

I am disgusted and angry when Perry, Kilgore and their ilk publicly flirt with secession. I think of the hundreds of thousands of military men and women who died to protect Kilgore’s “hated” flag. I think of the millions of people who came and continue to come to Kilgore’s “hated” America in search of freedom and liberty.

Shalom Bayit in the United States is under attack, and America’s clergy have shamefully been too slow to vigorously respond.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)